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POOR MISS FINCH
by Wilkie Collins
TO MRS. ELLIOT,
(OF THE DEANERY, BRISTOL).
WILL YOU honor me by accepting the Dedication of this book, in
remembrance of an uninterrupted friendship of many years?
More than one charming blind girl, in fiction and in the drama, has
preceded "Poor Miss Finch." But, so far as I know, blindness in these
cases has been always exhibited, more or less exclusively, from the ideal
and the sentimental point of view. The attempt here made is to appeal to
an interest of another kind, by exhibiting blindness as it really is. I
have carefully gathered the information necessary to the execution of
this purpose from competent authorities of all sorts. Whenever "Lucilla"
acts or speaks in these pages, with reference to her blindness, she is
doing or saying what persons afflicted as she is have done or said before
her. Of the other features which I have added to produce and sustain
interest in this central personage of my story, it does not become me to
speak. It is for my readers to say if "Lucilla" has found her way to
their sympathies. In this character, and more especially again in the
characters of "Nugent Dubourg" and "Madame Pratolungo," I have tried to
present human nature in its inherent inconsistencies and
self-contradictions--in its intricate mixture of good and evil, of great
and small--as I see it in the world about me. But the faculty of
observing character is so rare, the curiously mistaken tendency to look
for logical consistency in human motives and human actions is so general,
that I may possibly find the execution of this part of my task
misunderstood--sometimes even resented--in certain quarters. However,
Time has stood my friend in relation to other characters of mine in other
books--and who can say that Time may not help me again here? Perhaps, one
of these days, I may be able to make use of some of the many interesting
stories of events that have really happened, which have been placed in my
hands by persons who could speak as witnesses to the truth of the
narrative. Thus far, I have not ventured to disturb the repose of these
manuscripts in the locked drawer allotted to them. The true incidents are
so "far-fetched"; and the conduct of the real people is so "grossly
improbable"!
As for the object which I have had in view in writing this story, it is,
I hope, plain enough to speak for itself. I subscribe to the article of
belief which declares, that the conditions of human happiness are
independent of bodily affliction, and that it is even possible for bodily
affliction itself to take its place among the ingredients of happiness.
These are the views which "Poor Miss Finch" is intended to advocate--and
this is the impression which I hope to leave on the mind of the reader
when the book is closed.
W. C.
January 16th, 1872.
NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
IN expressing my acknowledgments for the favorable reception accorded to
the previous editions of this story, I may take the present opportunity
of adverting to one of the characters, not alluded to in the Letter of
Dedication. The German oculist--"Herr Grosse"--has impressed himself so
strongly as a real personage on the minds of some of my readers afflicted
with blindness, or suffering from diseases of the eye, that I have
received several written applications requesting me to communicate his
present address to patients desirous of consulting him! Sincerely
appreciating the testimony thus rendered to the truth of this little
study of character, I have been obliged to acknowledge to my
correspondents--and I may as well repeat it here--that Herr Grosse has no
(individual) living prototype. Like the other Persons of the Drama, in
this book and in the books which have preceded it, he is drawn from my
general observation of humanity. I have always considered it to be a
mistake in Art to limit the delineation of character in fiction to a
literary portrait taken from any one "sitter." The result of this process
is generally (to my mind) to produce a caricature instead of a character.
November 27th, 1872
POOR MISS FINCH
CHAPTER THE FIRST
Madame Pratolungo presents Herself
You are here invited to read the story of an Event which occurred in an
out-of-the-way corner of England, some years since.
The persons principally concerned in the Event are:--a blind girl; two
(twin) brothers; a skilled surgeon; and a curious foreign woman. I am the
curious foreign woman. And I take it on myself--for reasons which will
presently appear--to tell the story.
So far we understand each other. Good. I may make myself known to you as
briefly as I can.
I am Madame Pratolungo--widow of that celebrated South American patriot,
Doctor Pratolungo. I am French by birth. Before I married the Doctor, I
went through many vicissitudes in my own country. They ended in leaving
me (at an age which is of no consequence to anybody) with some experience
of the world; with a cultivated musical talent on the pianoforte; and
with a comfortable little fortune unexpectedly bequeathed to me by a
relative of my dear dead mother (which fortune I shared with good Papa
and with my younger sisters). To these qualifications I added another,
the most precious of all, when I married the Doctor; namely--a strong
infusion of ultra-liberal principles. _Vive la Re'publique!_
Some people do one thing, and some do another, in the way of celebrating
the event of their marriage. Having become man and wife, Doctor
Pratolungo and I took ship to Central America--and devoted our
honey-moon, in those disturbed districts, to the sacred duty of
destroying tyrants.
Ah! the vital air of my noble husband was the air of revolutions. From
his youth upwards he had followed the glorious profession of Patriot.
Wherever the people of the Southern New World rose and declared their
independence--and, in my time, that fervent population did nothing
else--there was the Doctor self-devoted on the altar of his adopted
country. He had been fifteen times exiled, and condemned to death in his
absence, when I met with him in Paris--the picture of heroic poverty,
with a brown complexion and one lame leg. Who could avoid falling in love
with such a man? I was proud when he proposed to devote me on the altar
of his adopted country, as well as himself--me, and my money. For, alas!
everything is expensive in this world; including the destruction of
tyrants and the saving of Freedom. All my money went in helping the
sacred cause of the people. Dictators and filibusters flourished in spite
of us. Before we had been a year married, the Doctor had to fly (for the
sixteenth time) to escape being tried for his life. My husband condemned
to death in his absence; and I with my pockets empty. This is how the
Republic rewarded us. And yet, I love the Republic. Ah, you
monarchy-people, sitting fat and contented under tyrants, respect that!
This time, we took refuge in England. The affairs of Central America went
on without us.
I thought of giving lessons in music. But my glorious husband could not
spare me away from him. I suppose we should have starved, and made a sad
little paragraph in the English newspapers--if the end had not come in
another way. My poor Pratolungo was in truth worn out. He sank under his
sixteenth exile. I was left a widow--with nothing but the inheritance of
my husband's noble sentiments to console me.
I went back for awhile to good Papa and my sisters in Paris. But it was
not in my nature to remain and be a burden on them at home. I returned
again to London, with recommendations: and encountered inconceivable
disasters in the effort to earn a living honorably. Of all the wealth
about me--the prodigal, insolent, ostentatious wealth--none fell to my
share. What right has anybody to be rich? I defy you, whoever you may be,
to prove that anybody has a right to be rich.
Without dwelling on my disasters, let it be enough to say that I got up
one morning, with three pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence in my
purse; with my fervid temper, and my republican principles--and with
absolutely nothing in prospect, that is to say with not a halfpenny more
to come to me, unless I could earn it for myself.
In this sad case, what does an honest woman who is bent on winning her
own independence by her own work, do? She takes three and sixpence out of
her little humble store; and she advertises herself in a newspaper.
One always advertises the best side of oneself. (Ah, poor humanity!) My
best side was my musical side. In the days of my vicissitudes (before my
marriage) I had at one time had a share in a millinery establishment in
Lyons. At another time, I had been bedchamber-woman to a great lady in
Paris. But in my present situation, these sides of myself were, for
various reasons, not so presentable as the pianoforte side. I was not a
great player--far from it. But I had been soundly instructed; and I had,
what you call, a competent skill on the instrument. Brief, I made the
best of myself, I promise you, in my advertisement.
The next day, I borrowed the newspaper, to enjoy the pride of seeing my
composition in print.
Ah, heaven! what did I discover? I discovered what other wretched
advertising people have found out before me. Above my own advertisement,
the very thing I wanted was advertised for by somebody else! Look in any
newspaper; and you will see strangers who (if I may so express myself)
exactly fit each other, advertising for each other, without knowing it. I
had advertised myself as "accomplished musical companion for a lady. With
cheerful temper to match." And there above me was my unknown necessitous
fellow-creature, crying out in printers' types:--"Wanted, a companion for
a lady. Must be an accomplished musician, and have a cheerful temper.
Testimonials to capacity, and first-rate references required." Exactly
what I had offered! "Apply by letter only, in the first instance."
Exactly what I had said! Fie upon me, I had spent three and sixpence for
nothing. I threw down the newspaper, in a transport of anger (like a
fool)--and then took it up again (like a sensible woman), and applied by
letter for the offered place.
My letter brought me into contact with a lawyer. The lawyer enveloped
himself in mystery. It seemed to be a professional habit with him to tell
nobody anything, if he could possibly help it.
Drop by drop, this wearisome man let the circumstances out. The lady was
a young lady. She was the daughter of a clergyman. She lived in a retired
part of the country. More even than that, she lived in a retired part of
the house. Her father had married a second time. Having only the young
lady as child by his first marriage, he had (I suppose by way of a
change) a large family by his second marriage. Circumstances rendered it
necessary for the young lady to live as much apart as she could from the
tumult of a houseful of children. So he went on, until there was no
keeping it in any longer--and then he let it out. The young lady was
blind!
Young--lonely--blind. I had a sudden inspiration. I felt I should love
her.
The question of my musical capacity was, in this sad case, a serious one.
The poor young lady had one great pleasure to illumine her dark
life--Music. Her companion was wanted to play from the book, and play
worthily, the works of the great masters (whom this young creature
adored)--and she, listening, would take her place next at the piano, and
reproduce the music morsel by morsel, by ear. A professor was appointed
to pronounce sentence on me, and declare if I could be trusted not to
misinterpret Mozart, Beethoven, and the other masters who have written
for the piano. Through this ordeal I passed with success. As for my
references, they spoke for themselves. Not even the lawyer (though he
tried hard) could pick holes in them. It was arranged on both sides that
I should, in the first instance, go on a month's visit to the young lady.
If we both wished it at the end of the time, I was to stay, on terms
arranged to my perfect satisfaction. There was our treaty!
The next day I started for my visit by the railway.
My instructions directed me to travel to the town of Lewes in Sussex.
Arrived there, I was to ask for the pony-chaise of my young lady's
father--described on his card as Reverend Tertius Finch. The chaise was
to take me to the rectory-house in the village of Dimchurch. And the
village of Dimchurch was situated among the South Down Hills, three or
four miles from the coast.
When I stepped into the railway carriage, this was all I knew. After my
adventurous life--after the volcanic agitations of my republican career
in the Doctor's time--was I about to bury myself in a remote English
village, and live a life as monotonous as the life of a sheep on a hill?
Ah, with all my experience, I had yet to learn that the narrowest human
limits are wide enough to contain the grandest human emotions. I had seen
the Drama of Life amid the turmoil of tropical revolutions. I was to see
it again, with all its palpitating interest, in the breezy solitudes of
the South Down Hills.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
Madame Pratolungo makes a Voyage on Land
A WELL-FED boy, with yellow Saxon hair; a little shabby green chaise; and
a rough brown pony--these objects confronted me at the Lewes Station. I
said to the boy, "Are you Reverend Finch's servant?" And the boy
answered, "I be he."
We drove through the town--a hilly town of desolate clean houses. No
living creatures visible behind the jealously-shut windows. No living
creatures entering or departing through the sad-colored closed doors. No
theater; no place of amusement except an empty town-hall, with a sad
policeman meditating on its spruce white steps. No customers in the
shops, and nobody to serve them behind the counter, even if they had
turned up. Here and there on the pavements, an inhabitant with a capacity
for staring, and (apparently) a capacity for nothing else. I said to
Reverend Finch's boy, "Is this a rich place?" Reverend Finch's boy
brightened and answered, "That it be!" Good. At any rate, they don't
enjoy themselves here--the infamous rich!
Leaving this town of unamused citizens immured in domestic tombs, we got
on a fine high road--still ascending--with a spacious open country on
either side of it.
A spacious open country is a country soon exhausted by a sight-seer's
eye. I have learnt from my poor Pratolungo the habit of searching for the
political convictions of my fellow-creatures, when I find myself in
contact with them in strange places. Having nothing else to do, I
searched Finch's boy. His political programme, I found to be:--As much
meat and beer as I can contain; and as little work to do for it as
possible. In return for this, to touch my hat when I meet the Squire, and
to be content with the station to which it has pleased God to call me.
Miserable Finch's boy!
We reached the highest point of the road. On our right hand, the ground
sloped away gently into a fertile valley--with a village and a church in
it; and beyond, an abominable privileged enclosure of grass and trees
torn from the community by a tyrant, and called a Park; with the palace
in which this enemy of mankind caroused and fattened, standing in the
midst. On our left hand, spread the open country--a magnificent prospect
of grand grassy hills, rolling away to the horizon; bounded only by the
sky. To my surprise, Finch's boy descended; took the pony by the head;
and deliberately led him off the high road, and on to the wilderness of
grassy hills, on which not so much as a footpath was discernible
anywhere, far or near. The chaise began to heave and roll like a ship on
the sea. It became necessary to hold with both hands to keep my place. I
thought first of my luggage--then of myself.
"How much is there of this?" I asked.
"Three mile on't," answered Finch's boy.
I insisted on stopping the ship--I mean the chaise--and on getting out.
We tied my luggage fast with a rope; and then we went on again, the boy
at the pony's head, and I after them on foot.
Ah, what a walk it was! What air over my head; what grass under my feet!
The sweetness of the inner land, and the crisp saltness of the distant
sea, were mixed in that delicious breeze. The short turf, fragrant with
odorous herbs, rose and fell elastic, underfoot. The mountain-piles of
white cloud moved in sublime procession along the blue field of heaven,
overhead. The wild growth of prickly bushes, spread in great patches over
the grass, was in a glory of yellow bloom. On we went; now up, now down;
now bending to the right, and now turning to the left. I looked about me.
No house; no road; no paths, fences, hedges, walls; no land-marks of any
sort. All round us, turn which way we might, nothing was to be seen but
the majestic solitude of the hills. No living creatures appeared but the
white dots of sheep scattered over the soft green distance, and the
skylark singing his hymn of happiness, a speck above my head. Truly a
wonderful place! Distant not more than a morning's drive from noisy and
populous Brighton--a stranger to this neighborhood could only have found
his way by the compass, exactly as if he had been sailing on the sea! The
farther we penetrated on our land-voyage, the more wild and the more
beautiful the solitary landscape grew. The boy picked his way as he
chose--there were no barriers here. Plodding behind, I saw nothing, at
one time, but the back of the chaise, tilted up in the air, both boy and
pony being invisibly buried in the steep descent of the hill. At other
times, the pitch was all the contrary way; the whole interior of the
ascending chaise was disclosed to my view, and above the chaise the pony,
and above the pony the boy--and, ah, my luggage swaying and rocking in
the frail embraces of the rope that held it. Twenty times did I
confidently expect to see baggage, chaise, pony, boy, all rolling down
into the bottom of a valley together. But no! Not the least little
accident happened to spoil my enjoyment of the day. Politically
contemptible, Finch's boy had his merit--he was master of his subject as
guide and pony-leader among the South Down Hills.
Arrived at the top of (as it seemed to me) our fiftieth grassy summit, I
began to look about for signs of the village.
Behind me, rolled back the long undulations of the hills, with the
cloud-shadows moving over the solitudes that we had left. Before me, at a
break in the purple distance, I saw the soft white line of the sea.
Beneath me, at my feet, opened the deepest valley I had noticed yet--with
one first sign of the presence of Man scored hideously on the face of
Nature, in the shape of a square brown patch of cleared and ploughed land
on the grassy slope. I asked if we were getting near the village now.
Finch's boy winked, and answered, "Yes, we be."
Astonishing Finch's boy! Ask him what questions I might, the resources of
his vocabulary remained invariably the same. Still this youthful Oracle
answered always in three monosyllabic words!
We plunged into the valley.
Arrived at the bottom, I discovered another sign of Man. Behold the first
road I had seen yet--a rough wagon-road ploughed deep in the chalky soil!
We crossed this, and turned a corner of a hill. More signs of human life.
Two small boys started up out of a ditch--apparently posted as scouts to
give notice of our approach. They yelled, and set off running before us,
by some short cut, known only to themselves. We turned again, round
another winding of the valley, and crossed a brook. I considered it my
duty to make myself acquainted with the local names. What was the brook
called? It was called "The Cockshoot"! And the great hill, here, on my
right? It was called "The Overblow"! Five minutes more, and we saw our
first house--lonely and little--built of mortar and flint from the hills.
A name to this also? Certainly. Name of "Browndown." Another ten minutes
of walking, involving us more and more deeply in the mysterious green
windings of the valley--and the great event of the day happened at last.
Finch's boy pointed before him with his whip, and said (even at this
supreme moment, still in three monosyllabic words):--
"Here we be!"
So this is Dimchurch! I shake out the chalk-dust from the skirts of my
dress. I long (quite vainly) for the least bit of looking-glass to see
myself in. Here is the population (to the number of at least five or
six), gathered together, informed by the scouts--and it is my woman's
business to produce the best impression of myself that I can. We advance
along the little road. I smile upon the population. The population stares
at me in return. On one side, I remark three or four cottages, and a bit
of open ground; also an inn named "The Cross-Hands," and a bit more of
open ground; also a tiny, tiny butcher's shop, with sanguinary insides of
sheep on one blue pie-dish in the window, and no other meat than that,
and nothing to see beyond, but again the open ground, and again the
hills; indicating the end of the village this side. On the other side
there appears, for some distance, nothing but a long flint wall guarding
the outhouses of a farm. Beyond this, comes another little group of
cottages, with the seal of civilization set on them, in the form of a
post-office. The post-office deals in general commodities--in boots and
bacon, biscuits and flannel, crinoline petticoats and religious tracts.
Farther on, behold another flint wall, a garden, and a private
dwelling-house; proclaiming itself as the rectory. Farther yet, on rising
ground, a little desolate church, with a tiny white circular steeple,
topped by an extinguisher in red tiles. Beyond this, the hills and the
heavens once more. And there is Dimchurch!
As for the inhabitants--what am I to say? I suppose I must tell the
truth.
I remarked one born gentleman among the inhabitants, and he was a
sheep-dog. He alone did the honors of the place. He had a stump of a
tail, which he wagged at me with extreme difficulty, and a good honest
white and black face which he poked companionably into my hand. "Welcome,
Madame Pratolungo, to Dimchurch; and excuse these male and female
laborers who stand and stare at you. The good God who makes us all has
made them too, but has not succeeded so well as with you and me." I
happen to be one of the few people who can read dogs' language as written
in dogs' faces. I correctly report the language of the gentleman
sheep-dog on this occasion.
We opened the gate of the rectory, and passed in. So my Land-Voyage over
the South Down Hills came prosperously to its end.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
Poor Miss Finch
THE rectory resembled, in one respect, this narrative that I am now
writing. It was in Two Parts. Part the First, in front, composed of the
everlasting flint and mortar of the neighborhood, failed to interest me.
Part the Second, running back at a right angle, asserted itself as
ancient. It had been, in its time, as I afterwards heard, a convent of
nuns. Here were snug little Gothic windows, and dark ivy-covered walls of
venerable stone: repaired in places, at some past period, with quaint red
bricks. I had hoped that I should enter the house by this side of it. But
no. The boy--after appearing to be at a loss what to do with me--led the
way to a door on the modern side of the building, and rang the bell.
A slovenly young maid-servant admitted me to the house.
Possibly, this person was new to the duty of receiving visitors.
Possibly, she was bewildered by a sudden invasion of children in dirty
frocks, darting out on us in the hall, and then darting away again into
invisible back regions, screeching at the sight of a stranger. At any
rate, she too appeared to be at a loss what to do with me. After staring
hard at my foreign face, she suddenly opened a door in the wall of the
passage, and admitted me into a small room. Two more children in dirty
frocks darted, screaming, out of the asylum thus offered to me. I
mentioned my name, as soon as I could make myself heard. The maid
appeared to be terrified at the length of it. I gave her my card. The
maid took it between a dirty finger and thumb--looked at it as if it was
some extraordinary natural curiosity--turned it round, exhibiting correct
black impressions in various parts of it of her finger and thumb--gave up
understanding it in despair, and left the room. She was stopped outside
(as I gathered from the sounds) by a returning invasion of children in
the hall. There was whispering; there was giggling; there was, every now
and then, a loud thump on the door. Prompted by the children, as I
suppose--pushed in by them, certainly--the maid suddenly reappeared with
a jerk, "Oh, if you please, come this way," she said. The invasion of
children retreated again up the stairs--one of them in possession of my
card, and waving it in triumph on the first landing. We penetrated to the
other end of the passage. Again, a door was opened. Unannounced, I
entered another, and a larger room. What did I see?
Fortune had favored me at last. My lucky star had led me to the mistress
of the house.
I made my best curtsey, and found myself confronting a large,
light-haired, languid, lymphatic lady--who had evidently been amusing
herself by walking up and down the room, at the moment when I appeared.
If there can be such a thing as a _damp woman_--this was one. There was a
humid shine on her colorless white face, and an overflow of water in her
pale blue eyes. Her hair was not dressed; and her lace cap was all on one
side. The upper part of her was clothed in a loose jacket of blue merino;
the lower part was robed in a dimity dressing gown of doubtful white. In
one hand, she held a dirty dogs'-eared book, which I at once detected to
be a Circulating Library novel. Her other hand supported a baby enveloped
in flannel, sucking at her breast. Such was my first experience of
Reverend Finch's Wife--destined to be also the experience of all
aftertime. Never completely dressed; never completely dry; always with a
baby in one hand and a novel in the other--such was Finch's wife.
"Oh! Madame Pratolungo? Yes. I hope somebody has told Miss Finch you are
here. She has her own establishment, and manages everything herself. Have
you had a pleasant journey?" (These words were spoken vacantly, as if her
mind was occupied with something else. My first impression of her
suggested that she was a weak, good-natured woman, and that she must have
originally occupied a station in the humbler ranks of life.)
"Thank you, Mrs. Finch," I said. "I have enjoyed most heartily my journey
among your beautiful hills."
"Oh! you like the hills? Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this
morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you never can pick it
up again, try how you may." (I soon discovered that Mrs. Finch was always
losing half an hour out of her day, and that she never, by any chance,
succeeded in ending it again, as she had just told me.)
"I understand, madam. The cares of a numerous family--"
"Ah! that's just where it is." (This was a favorite phrase with Mrs.
Finch). "There's Finch, he gets up in the morning and goes and works in
the garden. Then there's the washing of the children; and the dreadful
waste that goes on in the kitchen. And Finch, he comes in without any
notice, and wants his breakfast. And of course I can't leave the baby.
And half an hour does slip away so easily, that how to overtake it again,
I do assure you I really don't know." Here the baby began to exhibit
symptoms of having taken more maternal nourishment than his infant
stomach could comfortably contain. I held the novel, while Mrs. Finch
searched for her handkerchief--first in her bedgown pocket; secondly,
here, there, and everywhere in the room.
At this interesting moment there was a knock at the door. An elderly
woman appeared--who offered a most refreshing contrast to the members of
the household with whom I had made acquaintance thus far. She was neatly
dressed, and she saluted me with the polite composure of a civilized
being.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. My young lady has only this moment heard of
your arrival. Will you be so kind as to follow me?"
I turned to Mrs. Finch. She had found her handkerchief, and had put her
overflowing baby to rights again. I respectfully handed back the novel.
"Thank you," said Mrs. Finch. "I find novels compose my mind. Do you read
novels too? Remind me--and I'll lend you this one to-morrow." I expressed
my acknowledgments, and withdrew. At the door, I look round, saluting the
lady of the house. Mrs. Finch was promenading the room, with the baby in
one hand and the novel in the other, and the dimity bedgown trailing
behind her.
We ascended the stairs, and entered a bare white-washed passage, with
drab-colored doors in it, leading, as I presumed, into the sleeping
chambers of the house.
Every door opened as we passed; children peeped out at me, screamed at
me, and banged the door to again. "What family has the present Mrs.
Finch?" I asked. The decent elderly woman was obliged to stop, and
consider. "Including the baby, ma'am, and two sets of twins, and one
seven months' child of deficient intellect--fourteen in all." Hearing
this, I began--though I consider priests, kings, and capitalists to be
the enemies of the human race--to feel a certain exceptional interest in
Reverend Finch. Did he never wish that he had been a priest of the Roman
Catholic Church, mercifully forbidden to marry at all? While the question
passed through my mind, my guide took out a key, and opened a heavy oaken
door at the further end of the passage.
"We are obliged to keep the door locked, ma'am," she explained, "or the
children would be in and out of our part of the house all day long."
After my experience of the children, I own I looked at the oaken door
with mingled sentiments of gratitude and respect.
We turned a corner, and found ourselves in the vaulted corridor of the
ancient portion of the house.
The casement windows, on one side--sunk deep in recesses--looked into the
garden. Each recess was filled with groups of flowers in pots. On the
other side, the old wall was gaily decorated with hangings of bright
chintz. The doors were colored of a creamy white, with gilt moldings. The
brightly ornamented matting under our feet I at once recognized as of
South American origin. The ceiling above was decorated in delicate pale
blue, with borderings of flowers. Nowhere down the whole extent of the
place was so much as a single morsel of dark color to be seen anywhere.
At the lower end of the corridor, a solitary figure in a pure white robe
was bending over the flowers in the window. This was the blind girl whose
dark hours I had come to cheer. In the scattered villages of the South
Downs, the simple people added their word of pity to her name, and called
her compassionately--"Poor Miss Finch." As for me, I can only think of
her by her pretty Christian name. She is "Lucilla" when my memory dwells
on her. Let me call her "Lucilla" here.
When my eyes first rested on her, she was picking off the dead leaves
from her flowers. Her delicate ear detected the sound of my strange
footstep, long before I reached the place at which she was standing. She
lifted her head--and advanced quickly to meet me with a faint flush on
her face, which came and died away again in a moment. I happen to have
visited the picture gallery at Dresden in former years. As she approached
me, nearer and nearer, I was irresistibly reminded of the gem of that
superb collection--the matchless Virgin of Raphael, called "The Madonna
di San Sisto." The fair broad forehead; the peculiar fullness of the
flesh between the eyebrow and the eyelid; the delicate outline of the
lower face; the tender, sensitive lips; the color of the complexion and
the hair--all reflected, with a startling fidelity, the lovely creature
of the Dresden picture. The one fatal point at which the resemblance
ceased, was in the eyes. The divinely-beautiful eyes of Raphael's Virgin
were lost in the living likeness of her that confronted me now. There was
no deformity; there was nothing to recoil from, in my blind Lucilla. The
poor, dim, sightless eyes had a faded, changeless, inexpressive look--and
that was all. Above them, below them, round them, to the very edges of
her eyelids, there was beauty, movement, life. _In_ them--death! A more
charming creature--with that one sad drawback--I never saw. There was no
other personal defect in her. She had the fine height, the well-balanced
figure, and the length of the lower limbs, which make all a woman's
movements graceful of themselves. Her voice was delicious--clear,
cheerful, sympathetic. This, and her smile--which added a charm of its
own to the beauty of her mouth--won my heart, before she had got close
enough to me to put her hand in mine. "Ah, my dear!" I said, in my
headlong way, "I am so glad to see you!" The instant the words passed my
lips, I could have cut my tongue out for reminding her in that brutal
manner that she was blind.
To my relief, she showed no sign of feeling it as I did. "May I see you,
in _my_ way?" she asked gently--and held up her pretty white hand. "May I
touch your face?"
I sat down at once on the window-seat. The soft rosy tips of her fingers
seemed to cover my whole face in an instant. Three separate times she
passed her hand rapidly over me; her own face absorbed all the while in
breathless attention to what she was about. "Speak again!" she said
suddenly, holding her hand over me in suspense. I said a few words. She
stopped me by a kiss. "No more!" she exclaimed joyously. "Your voice says
to my ears, what your face says to my fingers. I know I shall like you.
Come in, and see the rooms we are going to live in together."
As I rose, she put her arm round my waist--then instantly drew it away
again, and shook her fingers impatiently, as if something had hurt them.
"A pin?" I asked.
"No! no! What colored dress have you got on?"
"Purple."
"Ah! I knew it! Pray don't wear dark colors. I have my own blind horror
of anything that is dark. Dear Madame Pratolungo, wear pretty bright
colors, to please _me!_" She put her arm caressingly round me
again--round my neck, however, this time, where her hand could rest on my
linen collar. "You will change your dress before dinner--won't you?" she
whispered. "Let me unpack for you, and choose which dress I like."
The brilliant decorations of the corridor were explained to me now!
We entered the rooms; her bed-room, my bed-room, and our sitting-room
between the two. I was prepared to find them, what they proved to be--as
bright as looking-glasses, and gilding, and gaily-colored ornaments, and
cheerful knick-knacks of all sorts could make them. They were more like
rooms in my lively native country than rooms in sober colorless England.
The one thing which I own did still astonish me, was that all this
sparkling beauty of adornment in Lucilla's habitation should have been
provided for the express gratification of a young lady who could not see.
Experience was yet to show me that the blind can live in their
imaginations, and have their favorite fancies and illusions like the rest
of us.
To satisfy Lucilla by changing my dark purple dress, it was necessary
that I should first have my boxes. So far as I knew, Finch's boy had
taken my luggage, along with the pony, to the stables. Before Lucilla
could ring the bell to make inquiries, my elderly guide (who had silently
left us while we were talking together in the corridor) re-appeared,
followed by the boy and a groom, carrying my things. These servants also
brought with them certain parcels for their young mistress, purchased in
the town, together with a bottle, wrapped in fair white paper, which
looked like a bottle of medicine--and which had a part of its own to play
in our proceedings, later in the day.
"This is my old nurse," said Lucilla, presenting her attendant to me.
"Zillah can do a little of everything--cooking included. She has had
lessons at a London Club. You must like Zillah, Madame Pratolungo, for my
sake. Are your boxes open?"
She went down on her knees before the boxes, as she asked the question.
No girl with the full use of her eyes could have enjoyed more thoroughly
than she did the trivial amusement of unpacking my clothes. This time,
however, her wonderful delicacy of touch proved to be at fault. Of two
dresses of mine which happened to be exactly the same in texture, though
widely different in color, she picked out the dark dress as being the
light one. I saw that I disappointed her sadly when I told her of her
mistake. The next guess she made, however, restored the tips of her
fingers to their place in her estimation: she discovered the stripes in a
smart pair of stockings of mine, and brightened up directly. "Don't be
long dressing," she said, on leaving me. "We shall have dinner in half an
hour. French dishes, in honor of your arrival. I like a nice dinner--I am
what you call in your country, _gourmande._ See the sad consequence!" She
put one finger to her pretty chin. "I am getting fat! I am threatened
with a double chin--at two and twenty. Shocking! shocking!"
So she left me. And such was the first impression produced on my mind by
"Poor Miss Finch."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
Twilight View of the Man
OUR nice dinner had long since come to an end. We had chattered,
chattered, chattered--as usual with women--all about ourselves. The day
had declined; the setting sun was pouring its last red luster into our
pretty sitting-room--when Lucilla started as if she had suddenly
remembered something, and rang the bell.
Zillah came in. "The bottle from the chemist's," said Lucilla. "I ought
to have remembered it hours ago."
"Are you going to take it to Susan yourself, my dear?"
I was glad to hear the old nurse address her young lady in that familiar
way. It was so thoroughly un-English. Down with the devilish system of
separation between the classes in this country--that is what I say!
"Yes; I am going to take it to Susan myself."
"Shall I go with you?"
"No, no. Not the least occasion." She turned to me. "I suppose you are
too tired to go out again, after your walk on the hills?" she said.
I had dined; I had rested; I was quite ready to go out again, and I said
so.
Lucilla's face brightened. For some reason of her own, she had apparently
attached a certain importance to persuading me to go out with her.
"It's only a visit to a poor rheumatic woman in the village," she said.
"I have got an embrocation for her; and I can't very well send it. She is
old and obstinate. If I take it to her, she will believe in the remedy.
If anybody else takes it, she will throw it away. I had utterly forgotten
her, in the interest of our nice long talk. Shall we get ready?"
I had hardly closed the door of my bedroom when there was a knock at it.
Lucilla? No; the old nurse entering on tiptoe, with a face of mystery,
and a finger confidentially placed on her lips.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," she began in a whisper. "I think you ought to
know that my young lady has a purpose in taking you out with her this
evening. She is burning with curiosity--like all the rest of us for that
matter. She took me out, and used my eyes to see with, yesterday evening;
and they have not satisfied her. She is going to try your eyes, now."
"What is Miss Lucilla so curious about?" I inquired.
"It's natural enough, poor dear," pursued the old woman, following her
own train of thought, without the slightest reference to my question. "We
none of us can find out anything about him. He usually takes his walk at
twilight. You are pretty sure to meet him to-night; and you will judge
for yourself, ma'am--with an innocent young creature like Miss
Lucilla--what it may be best to do?"
This extraordinary answer set _my_ curiosity in a flame.
"My good creature!" I said, "you forget that I am a stranger! I know
nothing about it. Has this mysterious man got a name? Who is 'He'?"
As I said that, there was another knock at the door. Zillah whispered,
eagerly, "Don't tell upon me, ma'am! You will see for yourself. I only
speak for my young lady's good." She hobbled away, and opened the
door--and there was Lucilla, with her smart garden hat on, waiting for
me.
We went out by our own door into the garden, and passing through a gate
in the wall, entered the village.
After the caution which the nurse had given me, it was impossible to ask
any questions, except at the risk of making mischief in our little
household, on the first day of my joining it. I kept my eyes wide open,
and waited for events. I also committed a blunder at starting--I offered
Lucilla my hand to lead her. She burst out laughing.
"My dear Madame Pratolungo! I know my way better than you do. I roam all
over the neighborhood, with nothing to help me but this."
She held up a smart ivory walking-cane, with a bright silk tassel
attached. With her cane in one hand, and her chemical bottle in the
other--and her roguish little hat on the top of her head--she made the
quaintest and prettiest picture I had seen for many a long day. "_You_
shall guide _me_, my dear," I said--and took her arm. We went on down the
village.
Nothing in the least like a mysterious figure passed us in the twilight.
The few scattered laboring people, whom I had already seen, I saw
again--and that was all. Lucilla was silent--suspiciously silent as I
thought, after what Zillah had told me. She had, as I fancied, the look
of a person who was listening intently. Arrived at the cottage of the
rheumatic woman, she stopped and went in, while I waited outside. The
affair of the embrocation was soon over. She was out again in a
minute--and this time, she took my arm of her own accord.
"Shall we go a little farther?" she said. "It is so nice and cool at this
hour of the evening."
Her object in view, whatever it might be, was evidently an object that
lay beyond the village. In the solemn, peaceful twilight we followed the
lonely windings of the valley along which I had passed in the morning.
When we came opposite the little solitary house, which I had already
learnt to know as "Browndown," I felt her hand unconsciously tighten on
my arm. "Aha!" I said to myself. "Has Browndown anything to do with
this?"
"Does the view look very lonely to-night?" she asked, waving her cane
over the scene before us.
The true meaning of that question I took to be, "Do you see anybody
walking out to-night?" It was not my business to interpret her meaning,
before she had thought fit to confide her secret to me. "To my mind, my
dear," was all I said, "it is a very beautiful view."
She fell silent again, and absorbed herself in her own thoughts. We
turned into a new winding of the valley--and there, walking towards us
from the opposite direction, was a human figure at last--the figure of a
solitary man!
As we got nearer to each other I perceived that he was a gentleman;
dressed in a light shooting-jacket, and wearing a felt hat of the conical
Italian shape. A little nearer--and I saw that he was young. Nearer
still--and I discovered that he was handsome, though in rather an
effeminate way. At the same moment, Lucilla heard his footstep. Her color
instantly rose; and once again I felt her hand tighten involuntarily
round my arm. (Good! Here was the mysterious object of Zillah's warning
to me found at last!)
I have, and I don't mind acknowledging it, an eye for a handsome man. I
looked at him as he passed us. Now I solemnly assure you, I am not an
ugly woman. Nevertheless, as our eyes met, I saw the strange gentleman's
face suddenly contract, with an expression which told me plainly that I
had produced a disagreeable impression on him. With some difficulty--for
my companion was holding my arm, and seemed to be disposed to stop
altogether--I quickened my pace so as to get by him rapidly; showing him,
I dare say, that I thought the change in his face when I looked at him,
an impertinence on his part. However that may be, after a momentary
interval, I heard his step behind. The man had turned, and had followed
us.
He came close to me, on the opposite side to Lucilla, and took off his
hat.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he said. "You looked at me just now."
At the first sound of his voice, I felt Lucilla start. Her hand began to
tremble on my arm with some sudden agitation, inconceivable to me. In the
double surprise of discovering this, and of finding myself charged so
abruptly with the offense of looking at a gentleman, I suffered the most
exceptional of all losses (where a woman is concerned)--the loss of my
tongue.
He gave me no time to recover myself. He proceeded with what he had to
say--speaking, mind, in the tone of a perfectly well-bred man; with
nothing wild in his look, and nothing odd in his manner.
"Excuse me, if I venture on asking you a very strange question," he went
on. "Did you happen to be at Exeter, on the third of last month?"
(I must have been more or less than woman, if I had not recovered the use
of my tongue now!)
"I never was at Exeter in my life, sir," I answered. "May I ask, on my
side, why you put the question to me?"
Instead of replying, he looked at Lucilla.
"Pardon me, once more. Perhaps this young lady----?"
He was plainly on the point of inquiring next, whether Lucilla had been
at Exeter--when he checked himself. In the breathless interest which she
felt in what was going on, she had turned her full face upon him. There
was still light enough left for her eyes to tell their own sad story, in
their own mute way. As he read the truth in them, the man's face changed
from the keen look of scrutiny which it had worn thus far, to an
expression of compassion--I had almost said, of distress. He again took
off his hat, and bowed to me with the deepest respect.
"I beg your pardon," he said, very earnestly. "I beg the young lady's
pardon. Pray forgive me. My strange behavior has its excuse--if I could
bring myself to explain it. You distressed me, when you looked at me. I
can't explain why. Good evening."
He turned away hastily, like a man confused and ashamed of himself--and
left us. I can only repeat that there was nothing strange or flighty in
his manner. A perfect gentleman, in full possession of his senses--there
is the unexaggerated and the just description of him.
I looked at Lucilla. She was standing, with her blind face raised to the
sky, lost in herself, like a person wrapped in ecstasy.
"Who is that man?" I asked.
My question brought her down suddenly from heaven to earth. "Oh!" she
said reproachfully, "I had his voice still in my ears--and now I have
lost it! 'Who is he?' " she added, after a moment; repeating my question.
"Nobody knows. Tell me--what is he like. Is he beautiful? He _must_ be
beautiful, with that voice!"
"Is this the first time you have heard his voice?" I inquired.
"Yes. He passed us yesterday, when I was out with Zillah. But he never
spoke. What is he like? Do, pray tell me--what is he like?"
There was a passionate impatience in her tone which warned me not to
trifle with her. The darkness was coming. I thought it wise to propose
returning to the house. She consented to do anything I liked, as long as
I consented, on my side, to describe the unknown man.
All the way back, I was questioned and cross-questioned till I felt like
a witness under skillful examination in a court of law. Lucilla appeared
to be satisfied, so far, with the results. "Ah!" she exclaimed, letting
out the secret which her old nurse had confided to me. "_You_ can use
your eyes. Zillah could tell me nothing."
When we got home again, her curiosity took another turn. "Exeter?" she
said, considering with herself. "He mentioned Exeter. I am like you--I
never was there. What will books tell us about Exeter?" She despatched
Zillah to the other side of the house for a gazetteer. I followed the old
woman into the corridor, and set her mind at ease, in a whisper. "I have
kept what you told me a secret," I said. "The man was out in the
twilight, as you foresaw. I have spoken to him; and I am quite as curious
as the rest of you. Get the book."
Lucilla had (to confess the truth) infected me with her idea, that the
gazetteer might help us in interpreting the stranger's remarkable
question relating to the third of last month, and his extraordinary
assertion that I had distressed him when I looked at him. With the nurse
breathless on one side of me, and Lucilla breathless on the other, I
opened the book at the letter "E," and found the place, and read aloud
these lines, as follows:--
"EXETER: A city and seaport in Devonshire. Formerly the seat of the West
Saxon Kings. It has a large foreign and home commerce. Population 33,738.
The Assizes for Devonshire are held at Exeter in the spring and summer."
"Is that all?" asked Lucilla.
I shut the book, and answered, like Finch's boy, in three monosyllabic
words:
"That is all."
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
Candlelight View of the Man
THERE had been barely light enough left for me to read by. Zillah lit the
candles and drew the curtains. The silence which betokens a profound
disappointment reigned in the room.
"Who can he be?" repeated Lucilla, for the hundredth time. "And why
should your looking at him have distressed him? Guess, Madame
Pratolungo!"
The last sentence in the gazetteer's description of Exeter hung a little
on my mind--in consequence of there being one word in it which I did not
quite understand--the word "Assizes." I have, I hope, shown that I
possess a competent knowledge of the English language, by this time. But
my experience fails a little on the side of phrases consecrated to the
use of the law. I inquired into the meaning of "Assizes," and was
informed that it signified movable Courts, for trying prisoners at given
times, in various parts of England. Hearing this, I had another of my
inspirations. I guessed immediately that the interesting stranger was a
criminal escaped from the Assizes.
Worthy old Zillah started to her feet, convinced that I had hit him off
(as the English saying is) to a T. "Mercy preserve us!" cried the nurse,
"I haven't bolted the garden door!"
She hurried out of the room to defend us from robbery and murder, before
it was too late. I looked at Lucilla. She was leaning back in her chair,
with a smile of quiet contempt on her pretty face. "Madame Pratolungo,"
she remarked, "that is the first foolish thing you have said, since you
have been here."
"Wait a little, my dear," I rejoined. "You have declared that nothing is
known of this man. Now you mean by that--nothing which satisfies _you._
He has not dropped down from Heaven, I suppose? The time when he came
here, must be known. Also, whether he came alone, or not. Also, how and
where he has found a lodging in the village. Before I admit that my guess
is completely wrong, I want to hear what general observation in Dimchurch
has discovered on the subject of this gentleman. How long has he been
here?"
Lucilla did not, at first, appear to be much interested in the purely
practical view of the question which I had just placed before her.
"He has been here a week," she answered carelessly.
"Did he come, as I came, over the hills?"
"Yes."
"With a guide, of course?"
Lucilla suddenly sat up in her chair.
"With his brother," she said. "His _twin_ brother, Madame Pratolungo."
_I_ sat up in _my_ chair. The appearance of his twin-brother in the story
was a complication in itself. Two criminals escaped from the Assizes,
instead of one!
"How did they find their way here?" I asked next.
"Nobody knows."
"Where did they go to, when they got here?"
"To the Cross-Hands--the little public-house in the village. The landlord
told Zillah he was perfectly astonished at the resemblance between them.
It was impossible to know which was which--it was wonderful, even for
twins. They arrived early in the day, when the tap-room was empty; and
they had a long talk together in private. At the end of it, they rang for
the landlord, and asked if he had a bed-room to let in the house. You
must have seen for yourself that The Cross-Hands is a mere beer-shop. The
landlord had a room that he could spare--a wretched place, not fit for a
gentleman to sleep in. One of the brothers took the room for all that."
"What became of the other brother?"
"He went away the same day--very unwillingly. The parting between them
was most affecting. The brother who spoke to us to-night insisted on
it--or the other would have refused to leave him. They both shed
tears----"
"They did worse than that," said old Zillah, re-entering the room at the
moment. "I have made all the doors and windows fast, downstairs; he can't
get in now, my dear, if he tries."
"What did they do that was worse than crying?" I inquired.
"Kissed each other!" said Zillah, with a look of profound disgust. "Two
men! Foreigners, of course."
"Our man is no foreigner," I said. "Did they give themselves a name?"
"The landlord asked the one who stayed behind for his name," replied
Lucilla. "He said it was 'Dubourg.' "
This confirmed me in my belief that I had guessed right. "Dubourg" is as
common a name in my country as "Jones" or "Thompson" is in England--just
the sort of feigned name that a man in difficulties would give among
_us._ Was he a criminal countryman of mine? No! There had been nothing
foreign in his accent when he spoke. Pure English--there could be no
doubt of that. And yet he had given a French name. Had he deliberately
insulted my nation? Yes! Not content with being stained by innumerable
crimes, he had added to the list of his atrocities--he had insulted my
nation!
"Well?" I resumed. "We have left this undetected ruffian deserted in the
public-house. Is he there still?"
"Bless your heart!" cried the old nurse, "he is settled in the
neighborhood. He has taken Browndown."
I turned to Lucilla. "Browndown belongs to Somebody," I said hazarding
another guess. "Did Somebody let it without a reference?"
"Browndown belongs to a gentleman at Brighton," answered Lucilla. "And
the gentleman was referred to a well-known name in London--one of the
great City merchants. Here is the most provoking part of the whole
mystery. The merchant said, 'I have known Mr. Dubourg from his childhood.
He has reasons for wishing to live in the strictest retirement. I answer
for his being an honorable man, to whom you can safely let your house.
More than this I am not authorized to tell you.' My father knows the
landlord of Browndown; and that is what the reference said to him, word
for word. Isn't it provoking? The house was let for six months certain,
the next day. It is wretchedly furnished. Mr. Dubourg has had several
things that he wanted sent from Brighton. Besides the furniture, a
packing-case from London arrived at the house to-day. It was so strongly
nailed up that the carpenter had to be sent for to open it. He reports
that the case was full of thin plates of gold and silver; and it was
accompanied by a box of extraordinary tools, the use of which was a
mystery to the carpenter himself. Mr. Dubourg locked up these things in a
room at the back of the house, and put the key in his pocket. He seemed
to be pleased--he whistled a tune, and said, 'Now we shall do!' The
landlady at the Cross-Hands is our authority for this. She does what
little cooking he requires; and her daughter makes his bed, and so on.
They go to him in the morning, and return to the inn in the evening. He
has no servant with him. He is all by himself at night. Isn't it
interesting? A mystery in real life. It baffles everybody."
"You must be very strange people, my dear," I said, "to make a mystery of
such a plain case as this."
"Plain?" repeated Lucilla, in amazement.
"Certainly! The gold and silver plates, and the strange tools, and the
living in retirement, and the sending the servants away at night--all
point to the same conclusion. My guess is the right one. The man is an
escaped criminal; and his form of crime is coining false money. He has
been discovered at Exeter--he has escaped the officers of justice--and he
is now going to begin again here. You can do as you please. If _I_ happen
to want change, I won't get it in this neighborhood."
Lucilla laid herself back in her chair again. I could see that she gave
me up, in the matter of Mr. Dubourg, as a person willfully and
incorrigibly wrong.
"A coiner of false money, recommended as an honorable man by one of the
first merchants in London!" she exclaimed. "We do some very eccentric
things in England, occasionally--but there is a limit to our national
madness, Madame Pratolungo, and you have reached it. Shall we have some
music?"
She spoke a little sharply. Mr. Dubourg was the hero of her romance. She
resented--seriously resented--any attempt on my part to lower him in her
estimation.
I persisted in my unfavorable opinion of him, nevertheless. The question
between us (as I might have told her) was a question of believing, or not
believing, in the merchant of London. To her mind, it was a sufficient
guarantee of his integrity that he was a rich man. To my mind (speaking
as a good Socialist), that very circumstance told dead against him. A
capitalist is a robber of one sort, and a coiner is a robber of another
sort. Whether the capitalist recommends the coiner, or the coiner the
capitalist, is all one to me. In either case (to quote the language of an
excellent English play) the honest people are the soft easy cushions on
which these knaves repose and fatten. It was on the tip of my tongue to
put this large and liberal view of the subject to Lucilla. But (alas!) it
was easy to see that the poor child was infected by the narrow prejudices
of the class amid which she lived. How could I find it in my heart to run
the risk of a disagreement between us on the first day? No--it was not to
be done. I gave the nice pretty blind girl a kiss. And we went to the
piano together. And I put off making a good Socialist of Lucilla till a
more convenient opportunity.
We might as well have left the piano unopened. The music was a failure.
I played my best. From Mozart to Beethoven. From Beethoven to Schubert.
From Schubert to Chopin. She listened with all the will in the world to
be pleased. She thanked me again and again. She tried, at my invitation,
to play herself; choosing the familiar compositions which she knew by
ear. No! The abominable Dubourg, having got the uppermost place in her
mind, kept it. She tried, and tried, and tried--and could do nothing. His
voice was still in her ears--the only music which could possess itself of
her attention that night. I took her place, and began to play again. She
suddenly snatched my hands off the keys. "Is Zillah here?" she whispered.
I told her Zillah had left the room. She laid her charming head on my
shoulder, and sighed hysterically. "I can't help thinking of him," she
burst out. "I am miserable for the first time in my life--no! I am happy
for the first time in my life. Oh, what must you think of me! I don't
know what I am talking about. Why did you encourage him to speak to us? I
might never have heard his voice but for you." She lifted her head again
with a little shiver, and composed herself. One of her hands wandered
here and there over the keys of the piano, playing softly. "His charming
voice!" she whispered dreamily while she played. "Oh, his charming
voice!" She paused again. Her hand dropped from the piano, and took mine.
"Is this love?" she said, half to herself, half to me.
My duty as a respectable woman lay clearly before me--my duty was to tell
her a lie.
"It is nothing, my dear, but too much excitement and too much fatigue," I
said. "To-morrow you shall be my young lady again. To-night you must be
only my child. Come, and let me put you to bed."
She yielded with a weary sigh. Ah, how lovely she looked in her pretty
night-dress, on her knees at the bed-side--the innocent, afflicted
creature--saying her prayers!
I am, let me own, an equally headlong woman at loving and hating. When I
had left her for the night, I could hardly have felt more tenderly
interested in her if she had been really a child of my own. You have met
with people of my sort--unless you are a very forbidding person
indeed--who have talked to you in the most confidential manner of all
their private affairs, on meeting you in a railway carriage, or sitting
next to you at a table-d'ho^te. For myself, I believe I shall go on
running up sudden friendships with strangers to my dying day. Infamous
Dubourg! If I could have got into Browndown that night, I should have
liked to have done to him what a Mexican maid of mine (at the Central
American period of my career) did to her drunken husband--who was a kind
of peddler, dealing in whips and sticks. She sewed him strongly up one
night in the sheet, while he lay snoring off his liquor in bed; and then
she took his whole stock-in-trade out of the corner of the room, and
broke it on him, to the last article on sale, until he was beaten to a
jelly from head to foot.
Not having this resource open to me, I sat myself down in my bedroom, to
consider--if the matter of Dubourg went any further--what it was my
business to do next.
I have already mentioned that Lucilla and I had idled away the whole
afternoon, woman-like, in talking of ourselves. You will best understand
what course my reflections took, if I here relate the chief particulars
which Lucilla communicated to me, concerning her own singular position in
her father's house.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
A Cage of Finches
LARGE families are--as my experience goes--of two sorts. We have the
families whose members all admire each other. And we have the families
whose members all detest each other. For myself, I prefer the second
sort. Their quarrels are their own affair; and they have a merit which
the first sort are never known to possess--the merit of being sometimes
able to see the good qualities of persons who do not possess the
advantage of being related to them by blood. The families whose members
all admire each other, are families saturated with insufferable conceit.
You happen to speak of Shakespeare, among these people, as a type of
supreme intellectual capacity. A female member of the family will not
fail to convey to you that you would have illustrated your meaning far
more completely if you had referred her to "dear Papa." You are out
walking with a male member of the household; and you say of a woman who
passes, "What a charming creature!" Your companion smiles at your
simplicity, and wonders whether you have ever seen his sister when she is
dressed for a ball. These are the families who cannot be separated
without corresponding with each other every day. They read you extracts
from their letters, and say, "Where is the writer by profession who can
equal this?" They talk of their private affairs, in your presence--and
appear to think that you ought to be interested too. They enjoy their own
jokes across you at table--and wonder how it is that you are not amused.
In domestic circles of this sort the sisters sit habitually on the
brothers' knees; and the husbands inquire into the wives' ailments, in
public, as unconcernedly as if they were closeted in their own room. When
we arrive at a more advanced stage of civilization, the State will supply
cages for these intolerable people; and notices will be posted at the
corners of streets, "Beware of Number Twelve: a family in a state of
mutual admiration is hung up there!"
I gathered from Lucilla that the Finches were of the second order of
large families, as mentioned above. Hardly one of the members of this
domestic group was on speaking terms with the other. And some of them had
been separated for years, without once troubling Her Majesty's Post
Office to convey even the slightest expression of sentiment from one to
the other.
The first wife of Reverend Finch was a Miss Batchford. The members of her
family (limited at the time of the marriage to her brother and her
sister) strongly disapproved of her choice of a husband. The rank of a
Finch (I laugh at these contemptible distinctions!) was decided, in this
case, to be not equal to the rank of a Batchford. Nevertheless, Miss
married. Her brother and sister declined to be present at the ceremony.
First quarrel.
Lucilla was born. Reverend Finch's elder brother (on speaking terms with
no other member of the family) interfered with a Christian
proposal--namely--to shake hands across the baby's cradle. Adopted by the
magnanimous Batchfords. First reconciliation.
Time passed. Reverend Finch--then officiating in a poor curacy near a
great manufacturing town--felt a want (the want of money); and took a
liberty (the liberty of attempting to borrow of his brother-in-law). Mr.
Batchford, being a rich man, regarded this overture, it is needless to
say, in the light of an insult. Miss Batchford sided with her brother.
Second quarrel.
Time passed, as before. Mrs. Finch the first died. Reverend Finch's elder
brother (still at daggers drawn with the other members of the family)
made a second Christian proposal--namely--to shake hands across the
wife's grave. Adopted once more by the bereaved Batchfords. Second
reconciliation.
Another lapse of time. Reverend Finch, left a widower with one daughter,
became personally acquainted with an inhabitant of the great city near
which he ministered, who was also a widower with one daughter. The status
of the parent, in this case--social-political-religious--was
Shoemaker-Radical-Baptist. Reverend Finch, still wanting money, swallowed
it all; and married the daughter, with a dowry of three thousand pounds.
This proceeding alienated from him for ever, not the Batchfords only, but
the peacemaking elder brother as well. That excellent Christian ceased to
be on speaking terms now with his brother the clergyman, as well as with
all the rest of the family. The complete isolation of Reverend Finch
followed. Regularly every year did the second Mrs. Finch afford
opportunities of shaking hands, not only over one cradle, but sometimes
over two. Vain and meritorious fertility! Nothing came of it, but a kind
of compromise. Lucilla, quite overlooked among the rector's
rapidly-increasing second family, was allowed to visit her maternal uncle
and aunt at stated periods in every year. Born, to all appearance with
the full possession of her sight, the poor child had become incurably
blind before she was a year old. In all other respects, she presented a
striking resemblance to her mother. Bachelor uncle Batchford, and his old
maiden sister, both conceived the strongest affection for the child. "Our
niece Lucilla," they said, "has justified our fondest hopes--she is a
Batchford, not a Finch!" Lucilla's father (promoted, by this time, to the
rectory of Dimchurch) let them talk. "Wait a bit, and money will come of
it," was all he said. Truly money was wanted!--with fruitful Mrs. Finch
multiplying cradles, year after year, till the doctor himself (employed
on contract) got tired of it, and said one day, "It is not true that
there is an end to everything: there is no end to the multiplying
capacity of Mrs. Finch."
Lucilla grew up from childhood to womanhood. She was twenty years old,
before her father's expectations were realized, and the money came of it
at last.
Uncle Batchford died a single man. He divided his fortune between his
maiden sister, and his niece. When she came of age, Lucilla was to have
an income of fifteen hundred pounds a year--on certain conditions, which
the will set forth at great length. The effect of these conditions was
(first) to render it absolutely impossible for Reverend Finch, under any
circumstances whatever, to legally inherit a single farthing of the
money--and (secondly), to detach Lucilla from her father's household, and
to place her under the care of her maiden aunt, so long as she remained
unmarried, for a period of three months in every year.
The will avowed the object of this last condition in the plainest words.
"I die as I have lived" (wrote uncle Batchford), "a High Churchman and a
Tory. My legacy to my niece shall only take effect on these
terms--namely--that she shall be removed at certain stated periods from
the Dissenting and Radical influences to which she is subjected under her
father's roof, and shall be placed under the care of an English
gentlewoman who unites to the advantages of birth and breeding the
possession of high and honorable principles"--etcetera, etcetera. Can you
conceive Reverend Finch's feelings, sitting, with his daughter by his
side, among the company, while the will was read, and hearing this? He
got up, like a true Englishman, and made them a speech. "Ladies and
gentlemen," he said, "I admit that I am a Liberal in politics, and that
my wife's family are Dissenters. As an example of the principles thus
engendered in my household, I beg to inform you that my daughter accepts
this legacy with my full permission, and that I forgive Mr. Batchford."
With that, he walked out, with his daughter on his arm. He had heard
enough, please to observe, to satisfy him that Lucilla (while she lived
unmarried) could do what she liked with her income. Before they had got
back to Dimchurch, Reverend Finch had completed a domestic arrangement
which permitted his daughter to occupy a perfectly independent position
in the rectory, and which placed in her father's pockets--as Miss Finch's
contribution to the housekeeping--five hundred a year.
(Do you know what I felt when I heard this? I felt the deepest regret
that Finch of the liberal principles had not made a third with my poor
Pratolungo and me in Central America. With him to advise us, we should
have saved the sacred cause of Freedom without spending a single farthing
on it!)
The old side of the rectory, hitherto uninhabited, was put in order and
furnished--of course at Lucilla's expense. On her twenty-first birthday,
the repairs were completed; the first installment of the housekeeping
money was paid; and the daughter was established, as an independent
lodger, in her own father's house!
In order to thoroughly appreciate Finch's ingenuity, it is necessary to
add here that Lucilla had shown, as she grew up, an increasing dislike of
living at home. In her blind state, the endless turmoil of the children
distracted her. She and her step-mother did not possess a single sympathy
in common. Her relations with her father were in much the same condition.
She could compassionate his poverty, and she could treat him with the
forbearance and respect due to him from his child. As to really
venerating and loving him--the less said about that the better. Her
happiest days had been the days she spent with her uncle and aunt; her
visits to the Batchfords had grown to be longer and longer visits with
every succeeding year. If the father, in appealing to the daughter's
sympathies, had not dexterously contrived to unite the preservation of
her independence with the continuance of her residence under his roof,
she would, on coming of age, either have lived altogether with her aunt,
or have set up an establishment of her own. As it was, the rector had
secured his five hundred a year, on terms acceptable to both sides--and,
more than that, he had got her safe under his own eye. For, remark, there
was one terrible possibility threatening him in the future--the
possibility of Lucilla's marriage!
Such was the strange domestic position of this interesting creature, at
the time when I entered the house.
You will now understand how completely puzzled I was when I recalled what
had happened on the evening of my arrival, and when I asked myself--in
the matter of the mysterious stranger--what course I was to take next. I
had found Lucilla a solitary being--helplessly dependent in her blindness
on others--and, in that sad condition, without a mother, without a
sister, without a friend even in whose sympathies she could take refuge,
in whose advice she could trust. I had produced a first favorable
impression on her; I had won her liking at once, as she had won mine. I
had accompanied her on an evening walk, innocent of all suspicion of what
was going on in her mind. I had by pure accident enabled a stranger to
intensify the imaginary interest which she felt in him, by provoking him
to speak in her hearing for the first time. In a moment of hysterical
agitation--and in sheer despair of knowing who else to confide in--the
poor, foolish, blind, lonely girl had opened her heart to me. What was I
to do?
If the case had been an ordinary one, the whole affair would have been
simply ridiculous.
But the case of Lucilla was not the case of girls in general.
The minds of the blind are, by cruel necessity, forced inward on
themselves. They live apart from us--ah, how hopelessly far apart!--in
their own dark sphere, of which we know nothing. What relief could come
to Lucilla from the world outside? None! It was part of her desolate
liberty to be free to dwell unremittingly on the ideal creature of her
own dream. Within the narrow limit of the one impression that it had been
possible for her to derive of this man--the impression of the beauty of
his voice--her fancy was left to work unrestrained in the changeless
darkness of her life. What a picture! I shudder as I draw it. Oh, yes, it
is easy, I know, to look at it the other way--to laugh at the folly of a
girl, who first excites her imagination about a total stranger; and then,
when she hears him speak, falls in love with his voice! But add that the
girl is blind; that the girl lives habitually in the world of her own
imagination; that the girl has nobody at home who can exercise a
wholesome influence over her. Is there nothing pitiable in such a state
of things as this? For myself, though I come of a light-hearted nation
that laughs at everything--I saw my own face looking horribly grave and
old, as I sat before the glass that night, brushing my hair.
I looked at my bed. Bah! what was the use of going to bed? She was her
own mistress. She was perfectly free to take her next walk to Browndown
alone! and to place herself, for all I knew to the contrary, at the mercy
of a dishonorable and designing man. What was I? Only her companion. I
had no right to interfere--and yet, if anything happened, I should be
blamed. It is so easy to say, "You ought to have done something." Whom
could I consult? The worthy old nurse only held the position of servant.
Could I address myself to the lymphatic lady with the baby in one hand,
and the novel in the other? Absurd! her stepmother was not to be thought
of. Her father? Judging by hearsay, I had not derived a favorable
impression of the capacity of Reverend Finch for interfering successfully
in a matter of this sort. However, he was her father; and I could feel my
way cautiously with him at first. Hearing Zillah moving about the
corridor, I went out to her. In the course of a little gossip, I
introduced the name of the master of the house. How was it I had not seen
him yet? For an excellent reason. He had gone to visit a friend at
Brighton. It was then Tuesday. He was expected back on "sermon-day"--that
is to say on Saturday in the same week.
I returned to my room, a little out of temper. In this state my mind
works with wonderful freedom. I had another of my inspirations. Mr.
Dubourg had taken the liberty of speaking to me that evening. Good. I
determined to go alone to Browndown the next morning, and take the
liberty of speaking to Mr. Dubourg.
Was this resolution solely inspired by my interest in Lucilla? Or had my
own curiosity been all the time working under the surface, and
influencing the course of my reflections unknown to myself? I went to bed
without inquiring. I recommend you to go to bed without inquiring too.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
Daylight View of the Man
WHEN I put out my candle that night, I made a mistake--I trusted entirely
to myself to wake in good time in the morning. I ought to have told
Zillah to call me.
Hours passed before I could close my eyes. It was broken rest when it
came, until the day dawned. Then I fell asleep at last in good earnest.
When I woke, and looked at my watch, I was amazed to find that it was ten
o'clock.
I jumped out of bed, and rang for the old nurse. Was Lucilla at home? No:
she had gone out for a little walk. By herself? Yes--by herself. In what
direction? Up the valley, towards Browndown.
I instantly arrived at my own conclusion.
She had got the start of me--thanks to my laziness in sleeping away the
precious hours of the morning in bed. The one thing to do, was to follow
her as speedily as possible. In half an hour more, _I_ was out for a
little walk by myself--and (what do you think?) _my_ direction also was
up the valley, towards Browndown.
A pastoral solitude reigned round the lonely little house. I went on
beyond it, into the next winding of the valley. Not a human creature was
to be seen. I returned to Browndown to reconnoiter. Ascending the rising
ground on which the house was built, I approached it from the back. The
windows were all open. I listened. (Do you suppose I felt scruples in
such an emergency as this? Oh, pooh! pooh! who but a fool would have felt
anything of the sort!) I listened with both my ears. Through a window at
the side of the house, I heard the sound of voices. Advancing noiselessly
on the turf, I heard the voice of Dubourg. He was answered by a woman.
Aha, I had caught her. Lucilla herself!
"Wonderful!" I heard him say. "I believe you have eyes in the ends of
your fingers. Take this, now--and try if you can tell me what it is."
"A little vase," she answered--speaking, I give you my word of honor, as
composedly as if she had known him for years. "Wait! what metal is it?
Silver? No. Gold. Did you really make this yourself as well as the box?"
"Yes. It is an odd taste of mine--isn't it?--to be fond of chasing in
gold and silver. Years ago I met with a man in Italy, who taught me. It
amused me, then--and it amuses me now. When I was recovering from an
illness last spring, I shaped that vase out of the plain metal, and made
the ornaments on it."
"Another mystery revealed!" she exclaimed. "Now I know what you wanted
with those gold and silver plates that came to you from London. Are you
aware of what a character you have got here? There are some of us who
suspect you of coining false money!"
They both burst out laughing as gaily as a couple of children. I declare
I wished myself one of the party! But no. I had my duty to do as a
respectable woman. My duty was to steal a little nearer, and see if any
familiarities were passing between these two merry young people. One half
of the open window was sheltered, on the outer side, by a Venetian blind.
I stood behind the blind, and peeped in. (Duty! oh, dear me, painful, but
necessary duty!) Dubourg was sitting with his back to the window. Lucilla
faced me opposite to him. Her cheeks were flushed with pleasure. She held
in her lap a pretty little golden vase. Her clever fingers were passing
over it rapidly, exactly as they had passed, the previous evening, over
my face.
"Shall I tell you what the pattern is on your vase?" she went on.
"Can you really do that?"
"You shall judge for yourself. The pattern is made of leaves, with birds
placed among them, at intervals. Stop! I think I have felt leaves like
these on the old side of the rectory, against the wall. Ivy?"
"Amazing! it _is_ ivy."
"The birds," she resumed. "I shan't be satisfied till I have told you
what the birds are. Haven't I got silver birds like them--only much
larger--for holding pepper, and mustard, and sugar, and so on. Owls!" she
exclaimed, with a cry of triumph. "Little owls, sitting in ivy-nests.
What a delightful pattern! I never heard of anything like it before."
"Keep the vase!" he said. "You will honor me, you will delight me, if you
will keep the vase."
She rose and shook her head--without giving him back the vase, however.
"I might take it, if you were not a stranger," she said. "Why don't you
tell us who you are, and what your reason is for living all by yourself
in this dull place?"
He stood before her, with his head down, and sighed bitterly.
"I know I ought to explain myself," he answered. "I can't be surprised if
people are suspicious of me." He paused, and added very earnestly, "I
can't tell it to _you._ Oh, no--not to _you!_"
"Why not?"
"Don't ask me!"
She felt for the table, with her ivory cane, and put the vase down on
it--very unwillingly.
"Good morning, Mr. Dubourg," she said.
He opened the door of the room for her in silence. Waiting close against
the side of the house, I saw them appear under the porch, and cross the
little walled enclosure in front. As she stepped out on the open turf
beyond, she turned, and spoke to him again.
"If you won't tell _me_ your secret," she said, "will you tell it to some
one else? Will you tell it to a friend of mine?"
"To what friend?" he asked.
"To the lady whom you met with me last night."
He hesitated. "I am afraid I offended the lady," he said.
"So much the more reason for your explaining yourself," she rejoined. "If
you will only satisfy _her,_ I might ask you to come and see us--I might
even take the vase." With that strong hint, she actually gave him her
hand at parting. Her perfect self-possession, her easy familiarity with
this stranger--so bold, and yet so innocent--petrified me. "I shall send
my friend to you this morning," she said imperiously, striking her cane
on the turf. "I insist on your telling her the whole truth."
With that, she signed to him that he was to follow her no farther, and
went her way back to the village.
Does it not surprise you, as it surprised me? Instead of her blindness
making her nervous in the presence of a man unknown to her, it appeared
to have exactly the contrary effect. It made her fearless.
He stood on the spot where she had left him, watching her as she receded
in the distance. His manner towards her, in the house and out of the
house, had exhibited, it is only fair to say, the utmost consideration
and respect. Whatever shyness there had been between them, was shyness
entirely on his side. I had a short stuff dress on, which made no noise
over the grass. I skirted the wall of the enclosure, and approached him
unsuspected, from behind. "The charming creature!" he said to himself,
still following her with his eyes. As the words passed his lips, I struck
him smartly on the shoulder with my parasol.
"Mr. Dubourg," I said, "I am waiting to hear the truth."
He started violently--and confronted me in speechless dismay; his color
coming and going like the color of a young girl. Anybody who understands
women will understand that this behavior on his part, far from softening
me towards him, only encouraged me to bully him.
"In your present position in this place, sir," I went on, "do you think
it honorable conduct on your part to decoy a young lady, to whom you are
a perfect stranger, into your house--a young lady who claims, in right of
her sad affliction, even more than the usual forbearance and respect
which a gentleman owes to her sex?"
His shifting color settled, for the time, into an angry red.
"You are doing me a great injustice, ma'am," he answered. "It is a shame
to say that I have failed in respect to the young lady! I feel the
sincerest admiration and compassion for her. Circumstances justify me in
what I have done; I could not have acted otherwise. I refer you to the
young lady herself."
His voice rose higher and higher--he was thoroughly offended with me.
Need I add (seeing the prospect not far off of _his_ bullying _me_), that
I unblushingly shifted my ground, and tried a little civility next?
"If I have done you an injustice, sir, I ask your pardon," I answered.
"Having said so much, I have only to add that I shall be satisfied if I
hear what the circumstances are, from yourself."
This soothed his offended dignity. His gentler manner began to show
itself again.
"The truth is," he said, "that I owe my introduction to the young lady to
an ill-tempered little dog belonging to the people at the inn. The dog
had followed the person here who attends on me: and it startled the lady
by flying out and barking at her as she passed this house. After I had
driven away the dog, I begged her to come in and sit down until she had
recovered herself. Am I to blame for doing that? I don't deny that I felt
the deepest interest in her and that I did my best to amuse her, while
she honored me by remaining in my house. May I ask if I have satisfied
you?"
With the best will in the world to maintain my unfavorable opinion of
him, I was, by this time, fairly forced to acknowledge to myself that the
opinion was wrong. His explanation was, in tone and manner as well as in
language, the explanation of a gentleman.
And, besides--though he was a little too effeminate for my taste--he
really was such a handsome young man! His hair was of a fine bright
chestnut color, with a natural curl in it. His eyes were of the lightest
brown I had ever seen--with a singularly winning gentle modest expression
in them. As for his complexion--so creamy and spotless and fair--he had
no right to it: it ought to have been a woman's complexion, or at least a
boy's. He looked indeed more like a boy than a man: his smooth face was
quite uncovered, either by beard, whisker, or mustache. If he had asked
me, I should have guessed him (though he was really three years older) to
have been younger than Lucilla.
"Our acquaintance has begun rather oddly, sir," I said. "You spoke
strangely to me last night; and I have spoken hastily to you this
morning. Accept my excuses--and let us try if we can't do each other
justice in the end. I have something more to say to you before we part.
Will you think me a very extraordinary woman, if I suggest that you may
as well invite _me_ next, to take a chair in your house?"
He laughed with the pleasantest good temper, and led the way in.
We entered the room in which he had received Lucilla; and sat down
together on the two chairs near the window--with this difference--that I
contrived to possess myself of the seat which he had occupied, and so to
place him with his face to the light.
"Mr. Dubourg," I began, "you will already have guessed that I overheard
what Miss Finch said to you at parting?"
He bowed, in silent acknowledgment that it was so--and began to toy
nervously with the gold vase which Lucilla had left on the table.
"What do you propose to do?" I went on. "You have spoken of the interest
you feel in my young friend. If it is a true interest, it will lead you
to merit her good opinion by complying with her request. Tell me plainly,
if you please. Will you come and see us, in the character of a gentleman
who has satisfied two ladies that they can receive him as a neighbor and
a friend? Or will you oblige me to warn the rector of Dimchurch that his
daughter is in danger of permitting a doubtful character to force his
acquaintance on her?"
He put the vase back on the table, and turned deadly pale.
"If you knew what I have suffered," he said; "if you had gone through
what I have been compelled to endure--" His voice failed him; his soft
brown eyes moistened; his head drooped. He said no more.
In common with all women, I like a man to _be_ a man. There was, to my
mind, something weak and womanish in the manner in which this Dubourg met
the advance which I had made to him. He not only failed to move my
pity--he was in danger of stirring up my contempt.
"I too have suffered," I answered. "I too have been compelled to endure.
But there is this difference between us. _My_ courage is not worn out. In
your place, if I knew myself to be an honorable man, I would not allow
the breath of suspicion to rest on me for an instant. Cost what it might,
I would vindicate myself. I should be ashamed to cry--I should speak."
That stung him. He started up on his feet.
"Have _you_ been stared at by hundreds of cruel eyes?" he burst out
passionately. "Have _you_ been pointed at, without mercy, wherever you
go? Have you been put in the pillory of the newspapers? Has the
photograph proclaimed _your_ infamous notoriety in all the shop-windows?"
He dropped back into his chair, and wrung his hands in a frenzy. "Oh, the
public!" he exclaimed; "the horrible public! I can't get away from
them--I can't hide myself, even here. You have had your stare at me, like
the rest," he cried, turning on me fiercely. "I knew it when you passed
me last night."
"I never saw you out of this place," I answered. "As for the portraits of
you, whoever you may be, I know nothing about them. I was far too anxious
and too wretched, to amuse myself by looking into shop-windows before I
came here. You, and your name, are equally strange to me. If you have any
respect for yourself, tell me who you are. Out with the truth, sir! You
know as well as I do that you have gone too far to stop."
I seized him by the hand. I was wrought up by the extraordinary outburst
that had escaped him to the highest pitch of excitement: I was hardly
conscious of what I said or did. At that supreme moment, we enraged, we
maddened each other. His hand closed convulsively on my hand. His eyes
looked wildly into mine.
"Do you read the newspapers?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Have you seen----?"
"I have _not_ seen the name of 'Dubourg'----"
'My name is not 'Dubourg.' "
"What is it?"
He suddenly stooped over me; and whispered his name in my ear.
In my turn I started, thunderstruck, to my feet.
"Good God!" I cried. "You are the man who was tried for murder last
month, and who was all but hanged, on the false testimony of a clock!"
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
The Perjury of the Clock
WE looked at one another in silence. Both alike, we were obliged to wait
a little and recover ourselves.
I may occupy the interval by answering two questions which will arise in
your minds in this place. How did Dubourg come to be tried for his life?
And what was the connection between this serious matter and the false
testimony of a clock?
The reply to both these inquiries is to be found in the story which I
call the Perjury of the Clock.
In briefly relating this curious incidental narrative (which I take from
a statement of the circumstances placed in my possession) I shall speak
of our new acquaintance at Browndown--and shall continue to speak of him
throughout these pages--by his assumed name. In the first place, it was
the maiden name of his mother, and he had a right to take it if he
pleased. In the second place, the date of our domestic drama at Dimchurch
goes back as far as the years 'fifty-eight and 'fifty-nine; and real
names are (now that it is all over) of no consequence to anybody. With
"Dubourg" we have begun. With "Dubourg" let us go on to the end.
On a summer evening, some years ago, a man was found murdered in a field
near a certain town in the West of England. The name of the field was,
"Pardon's Piece."
The man was a small carpenter and builder in the town, who bore an
indifferent character. On the evening in question, a distant relative of
his, employed as farm-bailiff by a gentleman in the neighborhood,
happened to be passing a stile which led from the field into a road, and
saw a gentleman leaving the field by way of this stile, rather in a
hurry. He recognized the gentleman as Mr. Dubourg.
The two passed each other on the road in opposite directions. After a
certain lapse of time--estimated as being half an hour--the farm-bailiff
had occasion to pass back along the same road. On reaching the stile, he
heard an alarm raised, and entered the field to see what was the matter.
He found several persons running from the farther side of Pardon's Piece
towards a boy who was standing at the back of a cattle-shed, in a remote
part of the enclosure, screaming with terror. At the boy's feet lay, face
downwards, the dead body of a man, with his head horribly beaten in. His
watch was under him, hanging out of his pocket by the chain. It had
stopped--evidently in consequence of the concussion of its owner's fall
on it--at half-past eight. The body was still warm. All the other
valuables, like the watch, were left on it. The farm-bailiff instantly
recognized the man as the carpenter and builder mentioned above.
At the preliminary inquiry, the stoppage of the watch at half-past eight,
was taken as offering good circumstantial evidence that the blow which
had killed the man had been struck at that time.
The next question was--if any one had been seen near the body at
half-past eight? The farm-bailiff declared that he had met Mr. Dubourg
hastily leaving the field by the stile at that very time. Asked if he had
looked at his watch, he owned that he had not done so. Certain previous
circumstances which he mentioned as having impressed themselves on his
memory, enabled him to feel sure of the truth of his assertion, without
having consulted his watch. He was pressed on this important point; but
he held to his declaration. At half-past eight he had seen Mr. Dubourg
hurriedly leave the field. At half-past eight the watch of the murdered
man had stopped.
Had any other person been observed in or near the field at that time?
No witness could be discovered who had seen anybody else near the place.
Had the weapon turned up, with which the blow had been struck? It had not
been found. Was anyone known (robbery having plainly not been the motive
of the crime) to have entertained a grudge against the murdered man? It
was no secret that he associated with doubtful characters, male and
female; but suspicion failed to point to any one of them in particular.
In this state of things, there was no alternative but to request Mr.
Dubourg--well known in, and out of the town, as a young gentleman of
independent fortune; bearing an excellent character--to give some account
of himself.
He immediately admitted that he had passed through the field. But in
contradiction to the farm-bailiff, he declared that _he_ had looked at
his watch at the moment before he crossed the stile, and that the time by
it was exactly a quarter past eight. Five minutes later--that is to say
ten minutes before the murder had been committed, on the evidence of the
dead man's watch--he had paid a visit to a lady living near Pardon's
Piece; and had remained with her, until his watch, consulted once more on
leaving the lady's house, informed him that it was a quarter to nine.
Here was the defense called an "alibi." It entirely satisfied Mr.
Dubourg's friends. To satisfy justice also, it was necessary to call the
lady as a witness. In the meantime, another purely formal question was
put to Mr. Dubourg. Did he know anything of the murdered man?
With some appearance of confusion, Mr. Dubourg admitted that he had been
induced (by a friend) to employ the man on some work. Further
interrogation extracted from him the following statement of facts.
That the work had been very badly done--that an exorbitant price had been
charged for it--that the man, on being remonstrated with, had behaved in
a grossly impertinent manner--that an altercation had taken place between
them--that Mr. Dubourg had seized the man by the collar of his coat, and
had turned him out of the house--that he had called the man an infernal
scoundrel (being in a passion at the time), and had threatened to "thrash
him within an inch of his life" (or words to that effect) if he ever
presumed to come near the house again; that he had sincerely regretted
his own violence the moment he recovered his self-possession; and,
lastly, that, on his oath (the altercation having occurred six weeks
ago), he had never spoken to the man, or set eyes on the man since.
As the matter then stood, these circumstances were considered as being
unfortunate circumstances for Mr. Dubourg--nothing more. He had his
"alibi" to appeal to, and his character to appeal to; and nobody doubted
the result.
The lady appeared as witness.
Confronted with Mr. Dubourg on the question of time, and forced to
answer, she absolutely contradicted him, on the testimony of the clock on
her own mantelpiece. In substance, her evidence was simply this. She had
looked at her clock, when Mr. Dubourg entered the room; thinking it
rather a late hour for a visitor to call on her. The clock (regulated by
the maker, only the day before) pointed to twenty-five minutes to nine.
Practical experiment showed that the time required to walk the distance,
at a rapid pace, from the stile to the lady's house, was just five
minutes. Here then was the statement of the farm-bailiff (himself a
respectable witness) corroborated by another witness of excellent
position and character. The clock, on being examined next, was found to
be right. The evidence of the clock-maker proved that he kept the key,
and that there had been no necessity to set the clock and wind it up
again, since he had performed both those acts on the day preceding Mr.
Dubourg's visit. The accuracy of the clock thus vouched for, the
conclusion on the evidence was irresistible. Mr. Dubourg stood convicted
of having been in the field at the time when the murder was committed; of
having, by his own admission, had a quarrel with the murdered man, not
long before, terminating in an assault and a threat on his side; and,
lastly, of having attempted to set up an alibi by a false statement of
the question of time. There was no alternative but to commit him to take
his trial at the Assizes, charged with the murder of the builder in
Pardon's Piece.
The trial occupied two days.
No new facts of importance were discovered in the interval. The evidence
followed the course which it had taken at the preliminary
examinations--with this difference only, that it was more carefully
sifted. Mr. Dubourg had the double advantage of securing the services of
the leading barrister on the circuit, and of moving the irrepressible
sympathies of the jury, shocked at his position and eager for proof of
his innocence. By the end of the first day, the evidence had told against
him with such irresistible force, that his own counsel despaired of the
result. When the prisoner took his place in the dock on the second day,
there was but one conviction in the minds of the people in
court--everybody said, The clock will hang him."
It was nearly two in the afternoon; and the proceedings were on the point
of being adjourned for half an hour, when the attorney for the prisoner
was seen to hand a paper to the counsel for the defense.
The counsel rose, showing signs of agitation which roused the curiosity
of the audience. He demanded the immediate hearing of a new witness;
whose evidence in the prisoner's favor he declared to be too important to
be delayed for a single moment. After a short colloquy between the judge
and the banisters on either side, the court decided to continue the
sitting.
The witness, appearing in the box, proved to be a young woman, in
delicate health. On the evening when the prisoner had paid his visit to
the lady, she was in that lady's service as housemaid. The day after, she
had been permitted (by previous arrangement with her mistress) to take a
week's holiday, and to go on a visit to her parents, in the west of
Cornwall. While there, she had fallen ill, and had not been strong enough
since to return to her employment. Having given this preliminary account
of herself, the housemaid then stated the following extraordinary
particulars in relation to her mistress's clock.
On the morning of the day when Mr. Dubourg had called at the house, she
had been cleaning the mantelpiece. She had rubbed the part of it which
was under the clock with her duster, had accidentally struck the
pendulum, and had stopped it. Having once before done this, she had been
severely reproved. Fearing that a repetition of the offense, only the day
after the clock had been regulated by the maker, might lead perhaps to
the withdrawal of her leave of absence, she had determined to put matters
right again, if possible, by herself.
After poking under the clock in the dark, and failing to set the pendulum
going again properly in that way, she next attempted to lift the clock,
and give it a shake. It was set in a marble case, with a bronze figure on
the top; and it was so heavy that she was obliged to hunt for something
which she could use as a lever. The thing proved to be not easy to find
on the spur of the moment. Having at last laid her hand on what she
wanted, she contrived so to lift the clock a few inches and drop it again
on the mantelpiece, as to set it going once more.
The next necessity was of course to move the hands on. Here again she was
met by an obstacle. There was a difficulty in opening the glass-case
which protected the dial. After uselessly searching for some instrument
to help her, she got from the footman (without telling him what she
wanted it for) a small chisel. With this, she opened the case--after
accidentally scratching the brass frame of it--and set the hands of the
clock by guess. She was flurried at the time; fearing that her mistress
would discover her. Later in the day, she found that she had
over-estimated the interval of time that had passed while she was trying
to put the clock right. She had, in fact, set it exactly _a quarter of an
hour too fast._
No safe opportunity of secretly putting the clock right again had
occurred, until the last thing at night. She had then moved the hands
back to the right time. At the hour of the evening when Mr. Dubourg had
called on her mistress, she positively swore that the clock was a quarter
of an hour too fast. It had pointed, as her mistress had declared, to
twenty-five minutes to nine--the right time then being, as Mr. Dubourg
had asserted, twenty minutes past eight.
Questioned why she had refrained from giving this extraordinary evidence
at the inquiry before the magistrate, she declared that in the remote
Cornish village to which she had gone the next day, and in which her
illness had detained her from that time, nobody had heard of the inquiry
or the trial. She would not have been then present to state the vitally
important circumstances to which she had just sworn, if the prisoner's
twin-brother had not found her out on the previous day--had not
questioned her if she knew anything about the clock--and had not (hearing
what she had to tell) insisted on her taking the journey with him to the
court the next morning.
This evidence virtually decided the trial. There was a great burst of
relief in the crowded assembly when the woman's statement had come to an
end.
She was closely cross-examined as a matter of course. Her character was
inquired into; corroborative evidence (relating to the chisel and the
scratches on the frame) was sought for and was obtained. The end of it
was that, at a late hour on the second evening, the jury acquitted the
prisoner, without leaving their box. It was not too much to say that his
life had been saved by his brother. His brother alone had persisted, from
first to last, in obstinately disbelieving the clock--for no better
reason than that the clock was the witness which asserted the prisoner's
guilt! He had worried everybody with incessant inquiries--he had
discovered the absence of the housemaid, after the trial had begun--and
he had started off to interrogate the girl, knowing nothing, and
suspecting nothing; simply determined to persist in the one everlasting
question with which he persecuted everybody belonging to the house: "The
clock is going to hang my brother; can you tell me anything about the
clock?"
Four months later, the mystery of the crime was cleared up. One of the
disreputable companions of the murdered man confessed on his death-bed
that he had done the deed. There was nothing interesting or remarkable in
the circumstances. Chance which had put innocence in peril, had offered
impunity to guilt. An infamous woman; a jealous quarrel; and an absence
at the moment of witnesses on the spot--these were really the commonplace
materials which had composed the tragedy of Pardon's Piece.
CHAPTER THE NINTH
The Hero of the Trial
"You have forced it out of me. Now you have had your way, never mind my
feelings--Go!"
Those were the first words the Hero of the Trial said to me, when he was
able to speak again! He withdrew with a curious sullen resignation to the
farther end of the room. There he stood looking at me, as a man might
have looked who carried some contagion about him, and who wished to
preserve a healthy fellow-creature from the peril of touching him.
"Why should I go?" I asked.
"You are a bold woman," he said, "to remain in the same room with a man
who has been pointed at as a murderer, and who has been tried for his
life."
The same unhealthy state of mind which had brought him to Dimchurch, and
which had led him to speak to me as he had spoken on the previous
evening, was, as I understood it, now irritating him against me as a
person who had made his own quick temper the means of entrapping him into
letting out the truth. How was I to deal with a man in this condition? I
decided to perform the feat which you call in England, "taking the bull
by the horns."
"I see but one man here," I said. "A man honorably acquitted of a crime
which he was incapable of committing. A man who deserves my interest, and
claims my sympathy. Shake hands, Mr. Dubourg."
I spoke to him in a good hearty voice, and I gave him a good hearty
squeeze. The poor, weak, lonely, persecuted young fellow dropped his head
on my shoulder like a child, and burst out crying.
"Don't despise me!" he said, as soon as he had got his breath again. "It
breaks a man down to have stood in the dock, and to have had hundreds of
hard-hearted people staring at him in horror--without his deserving it.
Besides, I have been very lonely, ma'am, since my brother left me."
We sat down again, side by side. He was the strangest compound of
anomalies I had ever met with. Throw him into one of those passions in
which he flamed out so easily--and you would have said, This is a tiger.
Wait till he had cooled down again to his customary mild temperature--and
you would have said with equal truth, This is a lamb.
"One thing rather surprises me, Mr. Dubourg," I went on. "I can't quite
understand----"
"Don't call me "Mr. Dubourg," he interposed. "You remind me of the
disgrace which has forced me to change my name. Call me by my Christian
name. It's a foreign name. You are a foreigner by your accent--you will
like me all the better for having a foreign name. I was christened
"Oscar"--after my mother's brother: my mother was a Jersey woman. Call me
"Oscar."--What is it you don't understand?"
"In your present situation," I resumed, "I don't understand your brother
leaving you here all by yourself."
He was on the point of flaming out again at that.
"Not a word against my brother!" he exclaimed fiercely. "My brother is
the noblest creature that God ever created! You must own that
yourself--you know what he did at the trial. I should have died on the
scaffold but for that angel. I insist on it that he is not a man. He is
an angel!"
(I admitted that his brother was an angel. The concession instantly
pacified him.)
"People say there is no difference between us," he went on, drawing his
chair companionably close to mine. "Ah, people are so shallow!
Personally, I grant you, we are exactly alike. (You have heard that we
are twins?) But there it ends, unfortunately for _me._ Nugent--(my
brother was christened Nugent after my father)--Nugent is a hero! Nugent
is a genius. I should have died if he hadn't taken care of me after the
trial. I had nobody but him. We are orphans; we have no brothers or
sisters. Nugent felt the disgrace even more than I felt it--but _he_
could control himself. It fell more heavily on him than it did on me.
I'll tell you why. Nugent was in a fair way to make our family name--the
name that we have been obliged to drop--famous all over the world. He is
a painter--a landscape painter. Have you never heard of him? Ah, you soon
will! Where do you think he has gone to? He has gone to the wilds of
America, in search of new subjects. He is going to found a school of
landscape painting. On an immense scale. A scale that has never been
attempted yet. Dear fellow! Shall I tell you what he said when he left me
here? Noble words--I call them noble words. 'Oscar! I go to make our
assumed name famous. You shall be honorably known--you shall be
illustrious, as the brother of Nugent Dubourg.' Do you think I could
stand in the way of such a career as that? After what he has sacrificed
for _me,_ could I let Such a Man stagnate here--for no better purpose
than to keep me company? What does it matter about _my_ feeling lonely?
Who am I? Oh, if you had seen how he bore with the horrible notoriety
that followed us, after the trial! He was constantly stared at and
pointed at, for _me._ Not a word of complaint escaped him. He snapped his
fingers at it. 'That for public opinion!' he said. What strength of
mind--eh? From one place after another we moved and moved, and still
there were the photographs, and the newspapers, and the whole infamous
story ('romance in real life,' they called it), known beforehand to
everybody. _He_ never lost heart. 'We shall find a place yet' (that was
the cheerful way he put it); 'you have nothing to do with it, Oscar; you
are safe in my hands; I promise you exactly the place of refuge you
want.' It was he who got all the information, and found out this lonely
part of England where you live. _I_ thought it pretty as we wandered
about the hills--it wasn't half grand enough for _him._ We lost
ourselves. I began to feel nervous. He didn't mind it a bit. "You have Me
with you," he said; "My luck is always to be depended on. Mark what I
say! We shall stumble on a village!" You will hardly believe me--in ten
minutes more, we stumbled, exactly as he had foretold, on this place. He
didn't leave me--when I had prevailed on him to go--without a
recommendation. He recommended me to the landlord of the inn here. He
said, "My brother is delicate; my brother wishes to live in retirement;
you will oblige me by looking after my brother." Wasn't it kind? The
landlord seemed to be quite affected by it. Nugent cried when he took
leave of me. Ah, what would I not give to have a heart like his and a
mind like his! It's something--isn't it?--to have a face like him. I
often say that to myself when I look in the glass. Excuse my running on
in this way. When I once begin to talk of Nugent, I don't know when to
leave off."
One thing, at any rate, was plainly discernible in this otherwise
inscrutable young man. He adored his twin-brother.
It would have been equally clear to me that Mr. Nugent Dubourg deserved
to be worshipped, if I could have reconciled to my mind his leaving his
brother to shift for himself in such a place as Dimchurch. I was obliged
to remind myself of the admirable service which he had rendered at the
trial, before I could decide to do him the justice of suspending my
opinion of him, in his absence. Having accomplished this act of
magnanimity, I took advantage of the first opportunity to change the
subject. The most tiresome information that I am acquainted with, is the
information which tells us of the virtues of an absent person--when that
absent person happens to be a stranger.
"Is it true that you have taken Browndown for six months?" I asked. "Are
you really going to settle at Dimchurch?"
"Yes--if you keep my secret," he answered. "The people here know nothing
about me. Don't, pray don't, tell them who I am! You will drive me away,
if you do."
"I must tell Miss Finch who you are," I said.
"No! no! no!" he exclaimed eagerly. "I can't bear the idea of her knowing
it. I have been so horribly degraded. What will she think of me?" He
burst into another explosion of rhapsodies on the subject of
Lucilla--mixed up with renewed petitions to me to keep his story
concealed from everybody. I lost all patience with his want of common
fortitude and common sense.
"Young Oscar, I should like to box your ears!" I said. "You are in a
villainously unwholesome state about this matter. Have you nothing else
to think of? Have you no profession? Are you not obliged to work for your
living?"
I spoke, as you perceive, with some force of expression--aided by a
corresponding asperity of voice and manner.
Mr. Oscar Dubourg looked at me with the puzzled air of a man who feels an
overflow of new ideas forcing itself into his mind. He modestly admitted
the degrading truth. From his childhood upwards, he had only to put his
hand in his pocket, and to find the money there, without any preliminary
necessity of earning it first. His father had been a fashionable
portrait-painter, and had married one of his sitters--an heiress. Oscar
and Nugent had been left in the detestable position of independent
gentlemen. The dignity of labor was a dignity unknown to these degraded
young men. "I despise a wealthy idler," I said to Oscar, with my
republican severity. "You want the ennobling influence of labor to make a
man of you. Nobody has a right to be idle--nobody has a right to be rich.
You would be in a more wholesome state of mind about yourself, my young
gentleman, if you had to earn your bread and cheese before you ate it."
He stared at me piteously. The noble sentiments which I had inherited
from Doctor Pratolungo, completely bewildered Mr. Oscar Dubourg.
"Don't be angry with me," he said, in his innocent way. "I couldn't eat
my cheese, if I did earn it. I can't digest cheese. Besides, I employ
myself as much as I can." He took his little golden vase from the table
behind him, and told me what I had already heard him tell Lucilla while I
was listening at the window. "You would have found me at work this
morning," he went on, "if the stupid people who send me my metal plates
had not made a mistake. The alloy, in the gold and silver both, is all
wrong this time. I must return the plates to be melted again before I can
do anything with them. They are all ready to go back to-day, when the
cart comes. If there are any laboring people here who want money, I'm
sure I will give them some of mine with the greatest pleasure. It isn't
my fault, ma'am, that my father married my mother. And how could I help
it if he left two thousand a year each to my brother and me?"
Two thousand a year each to his brother and him! And the illustrious
Pratolungo had never known what it was to have five pounds sterling at
his disposal before his union with Me!
I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. In my righteous indignation, I forgot
Lucilla and her curiosity about Oscar--I forgot Oscar and his horror of
Lucilla discovering who he was. I opened my lips to speak. In another
moment I should have launched my thunderbolts against the whole infamous
system of modern society, when I was silenced by the most extraordinary
and unexpected interruption that ever closed a woman's lips.
CHAPTER THE TENTH
First Appearance of Jicks
THERE walked in, at the open door of the room--softly, suddenly, and
composedly--a chubby female child, who could not possibly have been more
than three years old. She had no hat or cap on her head. A dirty pinafore
covered her from her chin to her feet. This amazing apparition advanced
into the middle of the room, holding hugged under one arm a ragged and
disreputable-looking doll; stared hard, first at Oscar, then at me;
advanced to my knees; laid the disreputable doll on my lap; and, pointing
to a vacant chair at my side, claimed the rights of hospitality in these
words:
"Jicks will sit down."
How was it possible, under these circumstances, to attack the infamous
system of modern society? It was only possible to kiss "Jicks."
"Do you know who this is?" I inquired, as I lifted our visitor on to the
chair.
Oscar burst out laughing. Like me, he now saw this mysterious young lady
for the first time. Like me, he wondered what the extraordinary nick-name
under which she had presented herself could possibly mean.
We looked at the child. The child--with its legs stretched out straight
before it, terminating in a pair of little dusty boots with holes in
them--lifted its large round eyes, overshadowed by a penthouse of
unbrushed flaxen hair; looked gravely at us in return; and made a second
call on our hospitality, as follows:
"Jicks will have something to drink."
While Oscar ran into the kitchen for some milk, I succeeded in
discovering the identity of "Jicks."
Something--I cannot well explain what--in the manner in which the child
had drifted into the room with her doll, reminded me of the lymphatic
lady of the rectory, drifting backwards and forwards with the baby in one
hand and the novel in the other. I took the liberty of examining
"Jicks's" pinafore, and discovered the mark in one corner:--"Selina
Finch." Exactly as I had supposed, here was a member of Mrs. Finch's
numerous family. Rather a young member, as it struck me, to be wandering
hatless round the environs of Dimchurch, all by herself.
Oscar returned with the milk in a mug. The child--insisting on taking the
mug into her own hands--steadily emptied it to the last drop--recovered
her breath with a gasp--looked at me with a white mustache of milk on her
upper lip--and announced the conclusion of her visit, in these terms:
"Jicks will get down again."
I deposited our young friend on the floor. She took her doll, and stood
for a moment deep in thought. What was she going to do next? We were not
kept long in suspense. She suddenly put her little hot fat hand into
mine, and tried to pull me after her out of the room.
"What do you want?" I asked.
Jicks answered in one untranslatable compound word:
"Man-Gee-gee."
I suffered myself to be pulled out of the room--to see "Man-Gee-gee," to
play "Man-Gee-gee," or to eat "Man-Gee-gee," it was impossible to tell
which. I was pulled along the passage--I was pulled out to the front
door. There--having approached the house inaudibly to us, over the
grass--stood the horse, cart, and man, waiting to take the case of gold
and silver plates back to London. I looked at Oscar, who had followed me.
We now understood, not only the masterly compound word of Jicks
(signifying man and horse, and passing over cart as unimportant), but the
polite attention of Jicks in entering the house to inform us, after a
rest and a drink, of a circumstance which had escaped our notice. The
driver of the cart had, on his own acknowledgment, been investigated and
questioned by this extraordinary child; strolling up to the door of
Browndown to see what he was doing there. Jicks was a public character at
Dimchurch. The driver knew all about her. She had been nicknamed "Gipsy"
from her wandering habits, and had shortened the name in her own dialect,
into "Jicks." There was no keeping her in at the rectory, try how you
might: they had long since abandoned the effort in despair. Sooner or
later, she turned up again--or somebody brought her back--or one of the
sheep-dogs found her asleep under a bush, and gave the alarm. "What goes
on in that child's head," said the driver, regarding Jicks with a sort of
superstitious admiration, "the Lord only knows. She has a will of her
own, and a way of her own. She _is_ a child; and she _aint_ a child. At
three years of age, she's a riddle none of us can guess. And that's the
long and the short of what I know about her."
While this explanation was in progress, the carpenter who had nailed up
the case, and the carpenter's son, accompanying him, joined us in front
of the house. They followed Oscar in, and came out again, bearing the
heavy burden of precious metal--more than one man could conveniently
lift--between them.
The case deposited in the cart, carpenter senior and carpenter junior got
in after it, wanting "a lift" to Brighton.
Carpenter senior, a big burly man, made a joke. "It's a lonely country
between this and Brighton, sir," he said to Oscar. Three of us will be
none too many to see your precious packing-case safe into the railway
station." Oscar took it seriously. "Are there any robbers in this
neighborhood?" he asked. "Lord love you, sir!" said the driver, "robbers
would starve in these parts; we have got nothing worth thieving here."
Jicks--still watching the proceedings with an interest which allowed no
detail to escape unnoticed--assumed the responsibility of starting the
men on their journey. The odd child waved her chubby hand imperiously to
her friend the driver, and cried in her loudest voice, "Away!" The driver
touched his hat with comic respect. "All right, miss--time's money, aint
it?" He cracked his whip, and the cart rolled off noiselessly over the
thick close turf of the South Downs.
It was time for me to go back to the rectory, and to restore the
wandering Jicks, for the time being, to the protection of home. I
returned to Oscar, to say good-bye.
"I wish I was going back with you," he said.
"You will be as free as I am to come and to go at the rectory," I
answered, "when they know what has passed this morning between you and
me. In your own interests, I am determined to tell them who you are. You
have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, by my speaking out. Clear
your mind of fancies and suspicions that are unworthy of you. By
to-morrow we shall be good neighbors; by the end of the week we shall be
good friends. For the present, as we say in France, _au revoir!_"
I turned to take Jicks by the hand. While I had been speaking to Oscar
the child had slipped away from me. Not a sign of her was to be seen.
Before we could stir a step to search for our lost Gipsy, her voice
reached our ears, raised shrill and angry in the regions behind us, at
the side of the house.
"Go away!" we heard the child cry out impatiently. "Ugly men, go away!"
We turned the corner, and discovered two shabby strangers, resting
themselves against the side wall of the house. Their cadaverous faces,
their brutish expressions, and their frowzy clothes, proclaimed them, to
my eye, as belonging to the vilest blackguard type that the civilized
earth has yet produced--the blackguard of London growth. There they
lounged, with their hands in their pockets and their backs against the
wall, as if they were airing themselves on the outer side of a
public-house--and there stood Jicks, with her legs planted wide apart on
the turf, asserting the rights of property (even at that early age!) and
ordering the rascals off.
"What are you doing there?" asked Oscar sharply.
One of the men appeared to be on the point of making an insolent answer.
The other--the younger and the viler-looking villain of the two--checked
him, and spoke first.
"We've had a longish walk, sir," said the fellow, with an impudent
assumption of humility; "and we've took the liberty of resting our backs
against your wall, and feasting our eyes on the beauty of your young lady
here."
He pointed to the child. Jicks shook her fist at him, and ordered him off
more fiercely than ever.
"There's an inn in the village," said Oscar. "Rest there, if you
please--my house is not an inn."
The elder man made a second effort to speak, beginning with an oath. The
younger checked him again.
"Shut up, Jim!" said the superior blackguard of the two. "The gentleman
recommends the tap at the inn. Come and drink the gentleman's health." He
turned to the child, and took off his hat to her with a low bow. "Wish
you good morning, Miss! You're just the style, you are, that I admire.
Please don't engage yourself to be married till I come back."
His savage companion was so tickled by this delicate pleasantry that he
burst suddenly into a roar of laughter. Arm in arm, the two ruffians
walked off together in the direction of the village. Our funny little
Jicks became a tragic and terrible Jicks, all on a sudden. The child
resented the insolence of the two men as if she really understood it. I
never saw so young a creature in such a furious passion before. She
picked up a stone, and threw it at them before I could stop her. She
screamed, and stamped her tiny feet alternately on the ground, till she
was purple in the face. She threw herself down, and rolled in fury on the
grass. Nothing pacified her but a rash promise of Oscar's (which he was
destined to hear of for many a long day afterwards) to send for the
police, and to have the two men soundly beaten for daring to laugh at
Jicks. She got up from the ground, and dried her eyes with her knuckles,
and fixed a warning look on Oscar. "Mind!" said this curious child, with
her bosom still heaving under the dirty pinafore, "the men are to be
beaten. And Jicks is to see it."
I said nothing to Oscar, at the time, but I felt some secret uneasiness
on the way home--an uneasiness inspired by the appearance of the two men
in the neighborhood of Browndown.
It was impossible to say how long they might have been lurking about the
outside of the house, before the child discovered them. They might have
heard, through the open window, what Oscar had said to me on the subject
of his plates of precious metal; and they might have seen the heavy
packing-case placed in the cart. I felt no apprehension about the safe
arrival of the case at Brighton; the three men in the cart were men
enough to take good care of it. My fears were for the future. Oscar was
living, entirely by himself, in a lonely house, more than half a mile
distant from the village. His fancy for chasing in the precious metals
might have its dangers, as well as its attractions, if it became known
beyond the pastoral limits of Dimchurch. Advancing from one suspicion to
another, I asked myself if the two men had roamed by mere accident into
our remote part of the world--or whether they had deliberately found
their way to Browndown with a purpose in view. Having this doubt in my
mind, and happening to encounter the old nurse, Zillah, in the garden as
I entered the rectory gates with my little charge, I put the question to
her plainly, "Do you see many strangers at Dimchurch?"
"Strangers?" repeated the old woman. "Excepting yourself, ma'am, we see
no strangers here, from one year's end to another."
I determined to say a warning word to Oscar before his precious metals
were sent back to Browndown.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
Blind Love
LUCILLA was at the piano when I entered the sitting-room.
"I wanted you of all things," she said. "I have sent all over the house
in search of you. Where have you been?"
I told her.
She sprang to her feet with a cry of delight.
"You have persuaded him to trust you--you have discovered everything. You
only said 'I have been at Browndown'--and I heard it in your voice. Out
with it! out with it!"
She never moved--she seemed hardly to breathe--while I was telling her
all that had passed at the interview between Oscar and me. As soon as I
had done, she got up in a violent hurry--flushed and eager--and made
straight for her bedroom door.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I want my hat and my stick," she answered.
"You are going out?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Can you ask the question? To Browndown of course!"
I begged her to wait a moment, and hear a word or two that I had to say.
It is, I suppose, almost needless to add that my object in speaking to
her was to protest against the glaring impropriety of her paying a second
visit, in one day, to a man who was a stranger to her. I declared, in the
plainest terms, that such a proceeding would be sufficient, in the
estimation of any civilized community, to put her reputation in peril.
The result of my interference was curious and interesting in the extreme.
It showed me that the virtue called Modesty (I am not speaking of
Decency, mind) is a virtue of purely artificial growth; and that the
successful cultivation of it depends in the first instance, not on the
influence of the tongue, but on the influence of the eye.
Suppose the case of an average young lady (conscious of feeling a first
love) to whom I might have spoken in the sense that I have just
mentioned--what would she have done?
She would assuredly have shown some natural and pretty confusion, and
would, in all human probability, have changed color more or less while
she was listening to me. Lucilla's charming face revealed but one
expression--an expression of disappointment, slightly mixed perhaps with
surprise. I believed her to be then, what I knew her to be afterwards, as
pure a creature as ever walked the earth. And yet, of the natural and
becoming confusion, of the little inevitable feminine changes of color
which I had expected to see, not so much as a vestige appeared--and this,
remember, in the case of a person of unusually sensitive and impulsive
nature: quick, on the most trifling occasions, to feel and to express its
feeling in no ordinary degree.
What did it mean?
It meant that here was one strange side shown to me of the terrible
affliction that darkened her life. It meant that modesty is essentially
the growth of our own consciousness of the eyes of others judging us--and
that blindness is never bashful, for the one simple reason that blindness
cannot see. The most modest girl in existence is bolder with her lover in
the dark than in the light. The female model who "sits" for the first
time in a drawing academy, and who shrinks from the ordeal, is persuaded,
in the last resort, to enter the students' room by having a bandage bound
over her eyes. My poor Lucilla had always the bandage over her eyes. My
poor Lucilla was never to meet her lover in the light. She had grown up
with the passions of a woman--and yet, she had never advanced beyond the
fearless and primitive innocence of a child. Ah, if ever there was a
sacred charge confided to any mortal creature, here surely was a sacred
charge confided to Me! I could not endure to see the poor pretty blind
face turned so insensibly towards mine, after such words as I had just
said to her. She was standing within my reach. I took her by the arm, and
made her sit on my knee. "My dear!" I said, very earnestly, "you must not
go to him again to-day."
"I have got so much to say to him," she answered impatiently, "I want to
tell him how deeply I feel for him, and how anxious I am to make his life
a happier one if I can."
"My dear Lucilla! you can't say this to a young man. It is as good as
telling him, in plain words, that you are fond of him!"
"I _am_ fond of him."
"Hush! hush! Keep it to yourself, until you are sure that _he_ is fond of
_you._ It is the man's place, my love--not the woman's--to own the truth
first in matters of this sort."
"That is very hard on the women. If they feel it first, they ought to own
it first." She paused for a moment, considering with herself--and
abruptly got off my knee. "I _must_ speak to him!" she burst out. "I
_must_ tell him that I have heard his story, and that I think all the
better of him after it, instead of the worse!"
She was again on her way to get her hat. My only chance of stopping her
was to invent a compromise.
"Write him a note," I said--and then suddenly remembered that she was
blind. "You shall dictate," I added; "and I will hold the pen. Be content
with that for to-day. For my sake, Lucilla!"
She yielded--not very willingly, poor thing. But she jealously declined
to let me hold the pen.
"My first note to him must be all written by me," she said. "I can
write--in my own roundabout way. It's long and tiresome; but still I can
do it. Come and see."
She led the way to a writing-table in a corner of the room, and sat for
awhile with the pen in her hand, thinking. Her irresistible smile broke
suddenly like a glow of light over her "Ah!" she exclaimed, "I know how
to tell him what I think."
Guiding the pen in her right hand with the fingers of her left she wrote
slowly, in large childish characters, these words:--DEAR MR. OSCAR,--I
have heard all about you. Please send the little gold vase.--Your friend,
LUCILLA."
She enclosed and directed the letter, and clapped her hands for joy. "He
will know what _that_ means!" she said gaily.
It was useless to attempt making a second remonstrance. I rang the bell,
under protest (imagine her receiving a present from a gentleman to whom
she had spoken for the first time that morning!)--and the groom was sent
off to Browndown with the letter. In making this concession, I privately
said to myself, "I shall keep a tight hand over Oscar; he is the
manageable person of the two!"
The interval before the return of the groom was not an easy interval to
fill up. I proposed some music. Lucilla was still too full of her new
interest to be able to give her attention to anything else. She suddenly
remembered that her father and her step-mother ought both to be informed
that Mr. Dubourg was a perfectly presentable person at the rectory: she
decided on writing to her father.
On this occasion, she made no difficulty about permitting me to hold the
pen, while she told me what to write. We produced between us rather a
flighty, enthusiastic, high-flown sort of letter. I felt by no means sure
that we should raise a favorable impression of our new neighbor in the
mind of Reverend Finch. That was, however, not my affair. I appeared to
excellent advantage in the matter, as the judicious foreign lady who had
insisted on making inquiries. For the rest, it was a point of honor with
me--writing for a person who was blind--not to change a single word in
the sentences which Lucilla dictated to me. The letter completed, I wrote
the address of the house in Brighton at which Mr. Finch then happened to
be staying; and I was next about to close the envelope in due
course--when Lucilla stopped me.
"Wait a little," she said. "Don't close the letter yet."
I wondered why the envelope was to be left open, and why Lucilla looked a
little confused when she forbade me to close it. Another unexpected
revelation of the influence of their affliction on the natures of the
blind, was waiting to enlighten me on those two points.
After consultation between us, it had been decided, at Lucilla's express
request, that I should inform Mrs. Finch that the mystery at Browndown
was now cleared up. Lucilla openly owned to having no great relish for
the society of her step-mother, or for the duty invariably devolving on
anybody who was long in the company of that fertile lady, of either
finding her handkerchief or holding her baby. A duplicate key of the door
of communication between the two sides of the house was given to me; and
I left the room.
Before performing my errand, I went for a minute into my bedchamber to
put away my hat and parasol. Returning into the corridor, and passing the
door of the sitting-room, I found that it had been left ajar by some one
who had entered after I had left; and I heard Lucilla's voice say, "Take
that letter out of the envelope, and read it to me."
I pursued my way along the passage--very slowly, I own--and I heard the
first sentences of the letter which I had written under Lucilla's
dictation, read aloud to her in the old nurse's voice. The incurable
suspicion of the blind--always abandoned to the same melancholy distrust
of the persons about them; always doubting whether some deceit is not
being practiced on them by the happy people who can see--had urged
Lucilla, even in the trifling matter of the letter, to put me to the
test, behind my back. She was using Zillah's eyes to make sure that I had
really written all that she had dictated to me--exactly as, on many an
after occasion, she used my eyes to make sure of Zillah's complete
performance of tasks allotted to her in the house. No experience of the
faithful devotion of those who live with them ever thoroughly satisfies
the blind. Ah, poor things, always in the dark! always in the dark!
In opening the door of communication, it appeared as if I had also opened
all the doors of all the bedchambers in the rectory. The moment I stepped
into the passage, out popped the children from one room after another,
like rabbits out of their burrows.
"Where is your mamma?" I asked.
The rabbits answered by one universal shriek, and popped back again into
their burrows.
I went down the stairs to try my luck on the ground floor. The window on
the landing had a view over the front garden. I looked out, and saw the
irrepressible Arab of the family, our small chubby Jicks, wandering in
the garden, all by herself; evidently on the watch for her next
opportunity of escaping from the house. This curious little creature
cared nothing for the society of the other children. Indoors, she sat
gravely retired in corners, taking her meals (whenever she could) on the
floor. Out of doors, she roamed till she could walk no longer, and then
lay down anywhere, like a little animal, to sleep. She happened to look
up as I stood at the window. Seeing me, she waved her hand indicatively
in the direction of the rectory gate. "What is it?" I asked. The Arab
answered, "Jicks wants to get out."
At the same moment, the screaming of a baby below, informed me that I was
in the near neighborhood of Mrs. Finch.
I advanced towards the noise, and found myself standing before the open
door of a large store-room at the extreme end of the passage. In the
middle of the room (issuing household commodities to the cook) sat Mrs.
Finch. She was robed this time in a petticoat and a shawl; and she had
the baby and the novel laid together flat on their backs in her lap.
"Eight pounds of soap? Where does it all go to I wonder!" groaned Mrs.
Finch to the accompaniment of the baby's screams. "Five pounds of soda
for the laundry? One would think we did the washing for the whole
village. Six pounds of candles? You must eat candles, like the Russians:
who ever heard of burning six pounds of candles in a week? Ten pounds of
sugar? Who gets it all? I never taste sugar from one year's end to
another. Waste, nothing but waste." Here Mrs. Finch looked my way, and
saw me at the door. "Oh? Madame Pratolungo? How d'ye do? Don't go
away--I've just done. A bottle of blacking? My shoes are a disgrace to
the house. Five pounds of rice? If I had Indian servants, five pounds of
rice would last them for a year. There! take the things away into the
kitchen. Excuse my dress, Madame Pratolungo. How _am_ I to dress, with
all I have got to do? What do you say? My time must indeed be fully
occupied? Ah, that's just where it is! When you have lost half an hour in
the morning, and can't pick it up again--to say nothing of having the
store-room on your mind, and the children's dinner late, and the baby
fractious--one slips on a petticoat and a shawl, and gives it up in
despair. What _can_ I have done with my handkerchief? Would you mind
looking among those bottles behind you? Oh, here it is, under the baby.
Might I trouble you to hold my book for one moment? I think the baby will
be quieter if I put him the other way." Here Mrs. Finch turned the baby
over on his stomach, and patted him briskly on the back. At this change
in his circumstances, the unappeasable infant only roared louder than
ever. His mother appeared to be perfectly unaffected by the noise. This
resigned domestic martyr looked placidly up at me, as I stood before her,
bewildered, with the novel in my hand. "Ah, that's a very interesting
story," she went on. "Plenty of love in it, you know. You have come for
it, haven't you? I remember I promised to lend it to you yesterday."
Before I could answer the cook appeared again, in search of more
household commodities. Mrs. Finch repeated the woman's demands, one by
one as she made them, in tones of despair. "Another bottle of vinegar? I
believe you water the garden with vinegar! More starch? The Queen's
washing, I'm firmly persuaded, doesn't come to so much as ours.
Sandpaper? Sandpaper means wastepaper in this profligate house. I shall
tell your master. I really _can_ NOT make the housekeeping money last at
this rate. Don't go, Madame Pratolungo! I shall have done directly. What!
You must go! Oh, then, put the book back on my lap, please--and look
behind that sack of flour. The first volume slipped down there this
morning, and I haven't had time to pick it up since. (Sandpaper! Do you
think I'm made of sandpaper!) Have you found the first volume? Ah, that's
it. All over flour! there's a hole in the sack I suppose. Twelve sheets
of sandpaper used in a week! What for? I defy any of you to tell me what
for. Waste! waste! shameful sinful waste!" At this point in Mrs. Finch's
lamentations, I made my escape with the book, and left the subject of
Oscar Dubourg to be introduced at a fitter opportunity. The last words I
heard, through the screams of the baby, as I ascended the stairs, were
words still relating to the week's prodigal consumption of sandpaper. Let
us drop a tear, if you please, over the woes of Mrs. Finch, and leave the
British matron apostrophizing domestic economy in the odorous seclusion
of her own storeroom.
I had just related to Lucilla the failure of my expedition to the other
side of the house, when the groom returned, bringing with him the gold
vase, and a letter.
Oscar's answer was judiciously modeled to imitate the brevity of
Lucilla's note. "You have made me a happy man again. When may I follow
the vase?" There, in two sentences, was the whole letter.
I had another discussion with Lucilla, relating to the propriety of our
receiving Oscar in Reverend Finch's absence. It was only possible to
persuade her to wait until she had at least heard from her father, by
consenting to take another walk towards Browndown the next morning. This
new concession satisfied her. She had received his present; she had
exchanged letters with him--that was enough to content her for the time.
"Do you think he is getting fond of me?" she asked, the last thing at
night; taking her gold vase to bed with her, poor dear--exactly as she
might have taken a new toy to bed with her when she was a child. "Give
him time, my love," I answered. "It isn't everybody who can travel at
your pace in such a serious matter as this." My banter had no effect upon
her. "Go away with your candle," she said. "The darkness makes no
difference to _me._ I can see him in my thoughts." She nestled her head
comfortably on the pillows, and tapped me saucily on the cheek, as I bent
over her. "Own the advantage I have over you now," she said. "_You_ can't
see at night without your candle. _I_ could go all over the house, at
this moment, without making a false step anywhere."
When I left her that night, I sincerely believe "poor Miss Finch" was the
happiest woman in England.
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH
Mr. Finch smells Money
A DOMESTIC alarm deferred for some hours our proposed walk to Browndown.
The old nurse, Zillah, was taken ill in the night. She was so little
relieved by such remedies as we were able to apply, that it became
necessary to summon the doctor in the morning. He lived at some distance
from Dimchurch; and he had to send back to his own house for the
medicines required. As a necessary result of these delays, it was close
on one o'clock in the afternoon before the medical remedies had their
effect, and the nurse was sufficiently recovered to permit of our leaving
her in the servant's care.
We had dressed for our walk (Lucilla being ready long before I was), and
had got as far as the garden gate on our way to Browndown--when we heard,
on the other side of the wall, a man's voice, pitched in superbly deep
bass tones, pronouncing these words:
"Believe me, my dear sir, there is not the least difficulty. I have only
to send the cheque to my bankers at Brighton."
Lucilla started, and caught hold of me by the arm.
"My father!" she exclaimed in the utmost astonishment. "Who is he talking
to?"
The key of the gate was in my possession. "What a grand voice your father
has got!" I said, as I took the key out of my pocket. I opened the gate.
There, confronting us on the threshold, arm in arm, as if they had known
each other from childhood, stood Lucilla's father, and--Oscar Dubourg!
Reverend Finch opened the proceedings by folding his daughter
affectionately in his arms.
"My dear child!" he said, "I received your letter--your most interesting
letter--this morning. The moment I read it I felt that I owed a duty to
Mr. Dubourg. As pastor of Dimchurch, it was clearly incumbent on me to
comfort a brother in affliction. I really felt, so to speak, a longing to
hold out the right hand of friendship to this sorely-tried man. I
borrowed my friend's carriage, and drove straight to Browndown. We have
had a long and cordial talk. I have brought Mr. Dubourg home with me. He
must be one of us. My dear child, Mr. Dubourg must be one of us. Let me
introduce you. My eldest daughter--Mr. Dubourg."
He performed the ceremony of presentation, with the most impenetrable
gravity, as if he really believed that Oscar and his daughter now met
each other for the first time!
Never had I set my eyes on a meaner-looking man than this rector. In
height he barely reached up to my shoulder. In substance, he was so
miserably lean that he looked the living picture of starvation. He would
have made his fortune in the streets of London, if he had only gone out
and shown himself to the public in ragged clothes. His face was deeply
pitted with the small-pox. His short grisly hair stood up stiff and
straight on his head like hair fixed in a broom. His small whitish-grey
eyes had a restless, inquisitive, hungry look in them, indescribably
irritating and uncomfortable to see. The one personal distinction he
possessed consisted in his magnificent bass voice--a voice which had no
sort of right to exist in the person who used it. Until one became
accustomed to the contrast, there was something perfectly unbearable in
hearing those superb big tones come out of that contemptible little body.
The famous Latin phrase conveys, after all, the best description I can
give of Reverend Finch. He was in very truth--Voice, and nothing else.
"Madame Pratolungo, no doubt?" he went on, turning to me. "Delighted to
make the acquaintance of my daughter's judicious companion and friend.
You must be one of us--like Mr. Dubourg. Let me introduce you. Madame
Pratolungo--Mr. Dubourg. This is the old side of the rectory, my dear
sir. We had it put in repair--let me see: how long since?--we had it put
in repair just after Mrs. Finch's last confinement but one." (I soon
discovered that Mr. Finch reckoned time by his wife's confinements.) "You
will find it very curious and interesting inside. Lucilla, my child! (It
has pleased Providence, Mr. Dubourg, to afflict my daughter with
blindness. Inscrutable Providence!) Lucilla, this is your side of the
house. Take Mr. Dubourg's arm, and lead the way. Do the honors, my child.
Madame Pratolungo, let me offer you my arm. I regret that I was not
present, when you arrived, to welcome you at the rectory. Consider
yourself--do pray consider yourself--one of us." He stopped, and lowered
his prodigious voice to a confidential growl. "Delightful person, Mr.
Dubourg. I can't tell you how pleased I am with him. And what a sad
story! Cultivate Mr. Dubourg, my dear madam. As a favor to Me--cultivate
Mr. Dubourg!"
He said this with an appearance of the deepest anxiety--and more, he
emphasized it by affectionately squeezing my hand.
I have met with a great many audacious people in my time. But the
audacity of Reverend Finch--persisting to our faces in the assumption
that he had been the first to discover our neighbor, and that Lucilla and
I were perfectly incapable of understanding and appreciating Oscar,
unassisted by him--was entirely without a parallel in my experience. I
asked myself what his conduct in this matter--so entirely unexpected by
Lucilla, as well as by me--could possibly mean. My knowledge of his
character, obtained through his daughter, and my memory of what we heard
him say on the other side of the wall, suggested that his conduct might
mean--Money.
We assembled in the sitting-room.
The only person among us who was quite at his ease was Mr. Finch. He
never let his daughter and his guest alone for a single moment. "My
child, show Mr. Dubourg this; show Mr. Dubourg that. Mr. Dubourg, my
daughter possesses this; my daughter possesses that." So he went on, all
round the room. Oscar appeared to feel a little daunted by the
overwhelming attentions of his new friend. Lucilla was, as I could see,
secretly irritated at finding herself authorized by her father to pay
those attentions to Oscar which she would have preferred offering to him
of her own accord. As for me, I was already beginning to weary of the
patronizing politeness of the little priest with the big voice. It was a
relief to us all, when a message on domestic affairs arrived in the midst
of the proceedings from Mrs. Finch, requesting to see her husband
immediately on the rectory side of the house.
Forced to leave us, Reverend Finch made his farewell speech; taking
Oscar's hand into a kind of paternal custody in both his own hands. He
spoke with such sonorous cordiality, that the china and glass ornaments
on Lucilla's chiffonier actually jingled an accompaniment to his booming
bass notes.
"Come to tea, my dear sir. Without ceremony. To-night at six. We must
keep up your spirits, Mr. Dubourg. Cheerful society, and a little music.
Lucilla, my dear child, you will play for Mr. Dubourg, won't you? Madame
Pratolungo will do the same--at My request--I am sure. We shall make even
dull Dimchurch agreeable to our new neighbor before we have done. What
does the poet say? 'Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere; 'tis nowhere
to be found, or everywhere.' How cheering! how true! Good day; good day."
The glasses left off jingling. Mr. Finch's wizen little legs took him out
of the room.
The moment his back was turned, we both assailed Oscar with the same
question. What had passed at the interview between the rector and
himself? Men are all alike incompetent to satisfy women, when the
question between the sexes is a question of small details. A woman, in
Oscar's position, would have been able to relate to us, not only the
whole conversation with the rector, but every little trifling incident
which had noticeably illustrated it. As things were, we could only
extract from our unsatisfactory man the barest outline of the interview.
The coloring and the filling-in we were left to do for ourselves.
Oscar had, on his own confession, acknowledged his visitor's kindness, by
opening his whole heart to the sympathizing rector, and placing that wary
priest and excellent man of business in possession of the completest
knowledge of all his affairs. In return, Reverend Finch had spoken in the
frankest manner, on his side. He had drawn a sad picture of the
poverty-stricken condition of Dimchurch, viewed as an ecclesiastical
endowment; and he had spoken in such feeling terms of the neglected
condition of the ancient and interesting church, that poor simple Oscar,
smitten with pity, had produced his cheque-book, and had subscribed on
the spot towards the Fund for repairing the ancient round tower. They had
been still occupied with the subject of the tower and the subscription,
when we had opened the garden gate and had let them in. Hearing this, I
now understood the motives under which our reverend friend was acting as
well as if they had been my own. It was plain to my mind that the rector
had taken his financial measure of Oscar, and had privately satisfied
himself, that if he encouraged the two young people in cultivating each
other's society, money (to use his own phrase) might come of it. He had,
as I believed, put forward "the round tower," in the first instance, as a
feeler; and he would follow it up, in due time, by an appeal of a more
personal nature to Oscar's well-filled purse. Brief, he was, in my
opinion, quite sharp enough (after having studied his young friend's
character) to foresee an addition to his income, rather than a
subtraction from it, if the relations between Oscar and his daughter
ended in a marriage.
Whether Lucilla arrived, on her side, at the same conclusion as mine, is
what I cannot venture positively to declare. I can only relate that she
looked ill at ease as the facts came out; and that she took the first
opportunity of extinguishing her father, viewed as a topic of
conversation.
As for Oscar, it was enough for him that he had already secured his place
as friend of the house. He took leave of us in the highest spirits. I had
my eye on them when he and Lucilla said good-bye. She squeezed his hand.
I saw her do it. At the rate at which things were now going on, I began
to ask myself whether Reverend Finch would not appear at tea-time in his
robes of office, and celebrate the marriage of his "sorely-tried" young
friend between the first cup and the second.
At our little social assembly in the evening, nothing passed worthy of
much remark.
Lucilla and I (I cannot resist recording this) were both beautifully
dressed, in honor of the occasion; Mrs. Finch serving us to perfection,
by way of contrast. She had made an immense effort--she was half dressed.
Her evening costume was an ancient green silk skirt (with traces of past
babies visible on it to an experienced eye), topped by the everlasting
blue merino jacket. "I lose everything belonging to me," Mrs. Finch
whispered in my ear. "I have got a body to this dress, and it can't be
found anywhere." The rector's prodigious voice was never silent: the
pompous and plausible little man talked, talked, talked, in deeper and
deeper bass, until the very teacups on the table shuddered under the
influence of him. The elder children, admitted to the family festival,
ate till they could eat no more; stared till they could stare no more;
yawned till they could yawn no more--and then went to bed. Oscar got on
well with everybody. Mrs. Finch was naturally interested in him as one of
twins--though she was also surprised and disappointed at hearing that his
mother had begun and ended with his brother and himself. As for Lucilla,
she sat in silent happiness, absorbed in the inexhaustible delight of
hearing Oscar's voice. She found as many varieties of expression in
listening to her beloved tones, as the rest of us find in looking at our
beloved face. We had music later in the evening--and I then heard, for
the first time, how charmingly Lucilla played. She was a born musician,
with a delicacy and subtlety of touch such as few even of the greatest
_virtuosi_ possess. Oscar was enchanted. In a word, the evening was a
success.
I contrived, when our guest took his departure, to say my contemplated
word to him in private, on the subject of his solitary position at
Browndown.
Those doubts of Oscar's security in his lonely house, which I have
described as having been suggested to me by the discovery of the two
ruffians lurking under the wall, still maintained their place in my mind;
and still urged me to warn him to take precautions of some sort, before
the precious metals which he had sent to London to be melted, came back
to him again. He gave me the opportunity I wanted, by looking at his
watch, and apologizing for protracting his visit to a terribly late hour,
for the country--the hour of midnight.
"Is your servant sitting up for you?" I asked, assuming to be ignorant of
his domestic arrangements.
He pulled out of his pocket a great clumsy key.
"This is my only servant at Browndown," he said. "By four or five in the
afternoon, the people at the inn have done all for me that I want. After
that time, there is nobody in the house but myself."
He shook hands with us. The rector escorted him as far as the front door.
I slipped out while they were saying their last words, and joined Oscar,
when he advanced alone into the garden.
"I want a breath of fresh air," I said. "I'll go with you as far as the
gate."
He began to talk of Lucilla directly. I surprised him by returning
abruptly to the subject of his position at Browndown.
"Do you think it's wise," I asked, "to be all by yourself at night in
such a lonely house as yours? Why don't you have a manservant?"
"I detest strange servants," he answered. "I infinitely prefer being by
myself."
"When do you expect your gold and silver plates to be returned to you?"
"In about a week."
"What would be the value of them, in money--at a rough guess?"
"At a rough guess--about seventy or eighty pounds."
"In a week's time then," I said, "you will have seventy or eighty pounds'
worth of property at Browndown. Property which a thief need only put into
the melting-pot, to have no fear of its being traced into his hands."
Oscar stopped, and looked at me.
"What _can_ you be thinking of!" he asked. "There are no thieves in this
primitive place."
"There are thieves in other places," I answered. "And they may come here.
Have you forgotten those two men whom we caught hanging about Browndown
yesterday?"
He smiled. I had recalled to him a humourous association--nothing more.
"It was not we who caught them," he said. "It was that strange child.
What do you say to my having Jicks to sleep in the house and take care of
me?"
"I am not joking," I rejoined. "I never met with two more ill-looking
villains in my life. The window was open when you were telling me about
the necessity for melting the plates again. They may know as well as we
do, that your gold and silver will be returned to you after a time."
"What an imagination you have got!" he exclaimed. "You see a couple of
shabby excursionists from Brighton, who have
wandered to Dimchurch--and you instantly transform them into a pair of
housebreakers in a conspiracy to rob and murder me! You and my brother
Nugent would just suit each other. His imagination runs away with him,
exactly like yours."
"Take my advice," I answered gravely. "Don't persist in sleeping at
Browndown without a living creature in the house with you."
He was in wild good spirits. He kissed my hand, and thanked me in his
voluble exaggerated way for the interest that I took in him. "All right!"
he said, as he opened the gate. "I'll have a living creature in the house
with me. I'll get a dog."
We parted. I had told him what was on my mind. I could do no more. After
all, it might be quite possible that his view was the right one, and mine
the wrong.
CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
Second Appearance of Jicks
FIVE more days passed.
During that interval, we saw our new neighbor constantly. Either Oscar
came to the rectory, or we went to Browndown. Reverend Finch waited, with
a masterly assumption of suspecting nothing, until the relations between
the two young people were ripe enough to develop into relations of
acknowledged love. They were already (under Lucilla's influence)
advancing rapidly to that point. You are not to blame my poor blind girl,
if you please, for frankly encouraging the man she loved. He was the most
backward man--viewed as a suitor--whom I ever met with. The fonder he
grew of her, the more timid and self-distrustful he became. I own I don't
like a modest man; and I cannot honestly say that Mr. Oscar Dubourg, on
closer acquaintance, advanced himself much in my estimation. However,
Lucilla understood him, and that was enough. She was determined to have
the completest possible image of him in her mind. Everybody in the house
who had seen him (the children included) she examined and cross-examined
on the subject of his personal appearance, as she had already examined
and cross-examined me. His features and his color, his height and his
breadth; his ornaments and his clothes--on all these points she collected
evidence, in every direction and in the smallest detail. It was an
especial relief and delight to her to hear, on all sides, that his
complexion was fair. There was no reasoning with her against her blind
horror of dark shades of color, whether seen in men, women, or things.
She was quite unable to account for it; she could only declare it.
"I have the strangest instincts of my own about some things," she said to
me one day. "For instance, I knew that Oscar was bright and fair--I mean
I felt it in myself--on that delightful evening when I first heard the
sound of his voice. It went straight from my ear to my heart; and it
described him, just as the rest of you have described him to me since.
Mrs. Finch tells me his complexion is lighter than mine. Do you think so
too? I am so glad to hear that he is fairer than I am! Did you ever meet
before with a person like me? I have the oddest ideas in this blind head
of mine. I associate life and beauty with light colors, and death and
crime with dark colors. If I married a man with a dark complexion, and if
I recovered my sight afterwards, I should run away from him."
This singular prejudice of hers against dark people was a little annoying
to me on personal grounds. It was a sort of reflection on my own taste.
Between ourselves, the late Doctor Pratolungo was of a fine mahogany
brown all over.
As for affairs in general at Dimchurch, my chronicle of the five days
finds little to dwell on that is worth recording.
We were not startled by any second appearance of the two ruffians at
Browndown--neither was any change made by Oscar in his domestic
establishment. He was favored with more than one visit from our little
wandering Jicks. On each occasion, the child gravely reminded him of his
rash promise to appeal to the police, and visit with corporal punishment
the two ugly strangers who had laughed at her. When were the men to be
beaten? and when was Jicks to see it? Such were the serious questions
with which this young lady regularly opened the proceedings, on each
occasion when she favored Oscar with a morning call.
On the sixth day, the gold and silver plates were returned to Browndown
from the manufactory in London.
The next morning a note arrived for me from Oscar. It ran thus:--
"DEAR MADAME PRATOLUNGO,--I regret to inform you that nothing happened to
me last night. My locks and bolts are in their usual good order; my gold
and silver plates are safe in the workshop: and I myself am now eating my
breakfast with an uncut throat--Yours ever,
"OSCAR."
After this, there was no more to be said. Jicks might persist in
remembering the two ill-looking strangers. Older and wiser people
dismissed them from all further consideration.
Saturday came--making the tenth day since the memorable morning when I
had forced Oscar to disclose himself to me in the little side-room at
Browndown.
In the forenoon we had a visit from him at the rectory. In the afternoon
we went to Browndown, to see him begin a new piece of chasing in gold--a
casket for holding gloves--destined to take its place on Lucilla's
toilet-table when it was done. We left him industriously at work;
determined to go on as long as the daylight lasted.
Early in the evening, Lucilla sat down at her pianoforte; and I paid a
visit by appointment to the rectory side of the house.
Unhappy Mrs. Finch had determined to institute a complete reform of her
wardrobe. She had entreated me to give her the benefit of "my French
taste," in the capacity of confidential critic and adviser. "I can't
afford to buy any new things," said the poor lady. "But a deal might be
done in altering what I have got by me, if a clever person took the
matter up." Who could resist that piteous appeal? I resigned myself to
the baby, the novel, and the children in general; and (Reverend Finch
being out of the way, writing his sermon) I presented myself in Mrs.
Finch's parlor, full of ideas, with my scissors and my pattern-paper
ready in my hand.
We had only begun our operations, when one of the elder children arrived
with a message from the nursery.
It was tea-time; and, as usual, Jicks was missing. She was searched for,
first in the lower regions of the house; secondly in the garden. Not a
trace of her was to be discovered in either quarter. Nobody was surprised
or alarmed. We said, "Oh, dear, she has gone to Browndown again!"--and
immersed ourselves once more in the shabby recesses of Mrs. Finch's
wardrobe.
I had just decided that the blue merino jacket was an article of wearing
apparel which had done its duty, and earned its right to final retirement
from the scene--when a plaintive cry reached my ear, through the open
door which led into the back garden.
I stopped, and looked at Mrs. Finch.
The cry was repeated, louder and nearer: recognizable this time as a cry
in a child's voice. The door of the room had been left ajar, when we sent
the messenger back to the nursery. I threw it open, and found myself face
to face with Jicks in the passage.
I felt every nerve in my body shudder at the sight of the child.
The poor little thing was white and wild with terror. She was incapable
of uttering a word. When I knelt down to fondle and soothe her, she
caught convulsively at my hand, and attempted to raise me. I got on my
feet again. She repeated her dumb cry more loudly--and tried to drag me
out of the house. She was so weak that she staggered under the effort. I
took her up in my arms. One of my hands, as I embraced her, touched the
top of her frock, just below the back of her neck. I felt something on my
fingers. I looked at them. Gracious God! I was stained with blood!
I turned the child round. My own blood froze. Her mother, standing behind
me, screamed with horror.
The dear little thing's white frock was spotted and splashed with wet
blood. Not her own blood. There was not a scratch on her. I looked closer
at the horrid marks. They had been drawn purposely on her--drawn, as it
seemed, with a finger. I took her out into the light. It was writing! A
word had been feebly traced on the back of her frock. I made out
something like the letter "H." Then a letter which it was impossible to
read.
Then another next to it, which might have been "L," or might have been
"J." Then a last letter, which I guessed to be "P."
Was the word--"Help"?
Yes!--traced on the back of the child's frock, with a finger dipped in
blood--"HELP."
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
Discoveries at Browndown
IT is needless to tell you at what conclusion I arrived, as soon as I was
sufficiently myself to think at all.
Thanks to my adventurous past life, I have got the habit of deciding
quickly in serious emergencies of all sorts. In the present emergency--as
I saw it--there were two things to be done. One, to go instantly with
help to Browndown: the other, to keep the knowledge of what had happened
from Lucilla until I could get back again, and prepare her for the
discovery.
I looked at Mrs. Finch. She had dropped helplessly into a chair. "Rouse
yourself!" I said--and shook her. It was no time for sympathizing with
swoons and hysterics. The child was still in my arms; fast yielding, poor
little thing, to the exhaustion of fatigue and terror. I could do nothing
until I had relieved myself of the charge of her. Mrs. Finch looked up at
me, trembling and sobbing. I put the child in her lap. Jicks feebly
resisted being parted from me; but soon gave up, and dropped her weary
little head on her mother's bosom. "Can you take off her frock?" I asked,
with another shake--a good one, this time. The prospect of a domestic
occupation (of any sort) appeared to rouse Mrs. Finch. She looked at the
baby, in its cradle in one corner of the room, and at the novel, reposing
on a chair in another corner of the room. The presence of these two
familiar objects appeared to encourage her. She shivered, she swallowed a
sob, she recovered her breath, she began to undo the frock.
"Put it away carefully," I said; "and say nothing to anybody of what has
happened, until I come back. You can see for yourself that the child is
not hurt. Soothe her, and wait here. Is Mr. Finch in the study?"
Mrs. Finch swallowed another sob, and said, "Yes." The child made a last
effort. "Jicks will go with you," said the indomitable little Arab
faintly. I ran out of the room, and left the three babies--big, little,
and least--together.
After knocking at the study door without getting any reply, I opened it
and went in. Reverend Finch, comfortably prostrate in a large arm-chair
(with his sermon-paper spread out in fair white sheets by his side),
started up, and confronted me in the character of a clergyman that moment
awakened from a sound sleep.
The rector of Dimchurch instantly recovered his dignity.
"I beg your pardon, Madame Pratolungo, I was deep in thought. Please
state your business briefly." Saying those words, he waved his hand
magnificently over his empty sheets of paper, and added in his deepest
bass: "Sermon-day."
I told him in the plainest words what I had seen on his child's frock,
and what I feared had happened at Browndown. He turned deadly pale. If I
ever yet set my two eyes on a man thoroughly frightened, Reverend Finch
was that man.
"Do you anticipate danger?" he inquired. "Is it your opinion that
criminal persons are in, or near, the house?"
"It is my opinion that there is not a moment to be lost," I answered. "We
must go to Browndown; and we must get what help we can on the way."
I opened the door, and waited for him to come out with me. Mr. Finch
(still apparently pre-occupied with the question of the criminal persons)
looked as if he wished himself a hundred miles from his own rectory at
that particular moment. But he was the master of the house; he was the
principal man in the place--he had no other alternative, as matters now
stood, than to take his hat and go.
We went out together into the village. My reverend companion was silent
for the first time in my limited experience of him. We inquired for the
one policeman who patrolled the district. He was away on his rounds. We
asked if anybody had seen the doctor. No: it was not the doctor's day for
visiting Dimchurch. I had heard the landlord of the Gross Hands described
as a capable and respectable man; and I suggested stopping at the inn,
and taking him with us. Mr. Finch instantly brightened at that proposal.
His sense of his own importance rose again, like the mercury in a
thermometer when you put it into a warm bath.
"Exactly what I was about to suggest," he said. "Gootheridge of the Gross
Hands is a very worthy person--for his station in life. Let us have
Gootheridge, by all means. Don't be alarmed, Madame Pratolungo. We are
all in the hands of Providence. It is most fortunate for you that I was
at home. What would you have done without me? Now don't, pray don't, be
alarmed. In case of criminal persons--I have my stick, as you see. I am
not tall; but I possess immense physical strength. I am, so to speak, all
muscle. Feel!"
He held out one of his wizen little arms. It was about half the size of
my arm. If I had not been far too anxious to think of playing tricks, I
should certainly have declared that it was needless, with such a tower of
strength by my side, to disturb the landlord. I dare not assert that Mr.
Finch actually detected the turn my thoughts were taking--I can only
declare that he did certainly shout for Gootheridge in a violent hurry,
the moment we were in sight of the inn.
The landlord came out; and, hearing what our errand was, instantly
consented to join us.
"Take your gun," said Mr. Finch.
Gootheridge took his gun. We hastened on to the house.
"Were Mrs. Gootheridge or your daughter at Browndown today?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am--they were both at Browndown. They finished up their work as
usual--and left the house more than an hour since."
"Did anything out of the common happen while they were there?"
"Nothing that I heard of, ma'am."
I considered with myself for a minute, and ventured on putting a few more
questions to Mr. Gootheridge.
"Have any strangers been seen here this evening?" I inquired.
"Yes, ma'am. Nearly an hour ago two strangers drove by my house in a
chaise."
"In what direction?"
"Coming from Brighton way, and going towards Browndown."
"Did you notice the men?"
"Not particularly, ma'am. I was busy. at the time."
A sickening suspicion that the two strangers in the chaise might be the
two men whom I had seen lurking under the wall, forced its way into my
mind. I said no more until we reached the house.
All was quiet. The one sign of anything unusual was in the plain traces
of the passage of wheels over the turf in front of Browndown. The
landlord was the first to see them. "The chaise must have stopped at the
house, sir," he said, addressing himself to the rector.
Reverend Finch was suffering under a second suspension of speech. All he
could say as we approached the door of the silent and solitary
building--and he said that with extreme difficulty--was, "Pray let us be
careful!"
The landlord was the first to reach the door. I was behind him. The
rector--at some little distance--acted as rear-guard, with the South
Downs behind him to retreat upon. Gootheridge rapped smartly on the door,
and called out, "Mr. Dubourg!" There was no answer. There was only a
dreadful silence. The suspense was more than I could endure. I pushed by
the landlord, and turned the handle of the unlocked door.
"Let me go first, ma'am," said Gootheridge.
He pushed by me, in his turn. I followed him close. We entered the house,
and called again. Again there was no answer. We looked into the little
sitting-room on one side of the passage, and into the dining-room on the
other. Both were empty. We went on to the back of the house, where the
room was situated which Oscar called his workshop. When we tried the door
of the workshop it was locked.
We knocked, and called again. The horrid silence was all that
followed--as before.
I tried the keyhole with my finger. The key was not in the lock. I knelt
down, and looked through the keyhole. The next instant, I was up again on
my feet, wild and giddy with horror.
"Burst open the door!" I screamed. "I can just see his hand lying on the
floor!"
The landlord, like the rector, was a little man; and the door, like
everything else at Browndown, was of the clumsiest and heaviest
construction. Unaided by instruments, we should all three together have
been too weak to burst it open. In this difficulty, Reverend Finch proved
to be--for the first time, and also for the last--of some use.
"Stay!" he said. "My friends, if the back garden gate is open, we can get
in by the window."
Neither the landlord nor I had thought of the window. We ran round to the
back of the house; seeing the marks of the chaise-wheels leading in the
same direction. The gate in the wall was wide open. We crossed the little
garden. The window of the workshop--opening to the ground--gave us
admission as the rector had foretold. We entered the room.
There he lay--poor harmless, unlucky Oscar--senseless, in a pool of his
own blood. A blow on the left side of his head had, to all appearance,
felled him on the spot. The wound had split the scalp. Whether it had
also split the skull was more than I was surgeon enough to be able to
say. I had gathered some experience of how to deal with wounded men, when
I served the sacred cause of Freedom with my glorious Pratolungo. Cold
water, vinegar, and linen for bandages--these were all in the house; and
these I called for. Gootheridge found the key of the door flung aside in
a corner of the room. He got the water and the vinegar, while I ran
up-stairs to Oscar's bedroom, and provided myself with some of his
handkerchiefs. In a few minutes, I had a cold water bandage over the
wound, and was bathing his face in vinegar and water. He was still
insensible; but he lived. Reverend Finch--not of the slightest help to
anybody--assumed the duty of feeling Oscar's pulse. He did it as if,
under the circumstances, this was the one meritorious action that could
be performed. He looked as if nobody could feel a pulse but himself.
"Most fortunate," he said, counting the slow, faint throbbing at the poor
fellow's wrist--"most fortunate that I was at home. What would you have
done without me?"
The next necessity was, of course, to send for the doctor, and to get
help, in the meantime, to carry Oscar up-stairs to his bed.
Gootheridge volunteered to borrow a horse, and to ride off for the
doctor. We arranged that he was to send his wife and his wife's brother
to help me. This settled, the one last embarrassment left to deal with,
was the embarrassment of Mr. Finch. Now that we were free from all fear
of encountering bad characters in the house, the _boom-boom_ of the
little man's big voice went on unintermittingly, like a machine at work
in the neighborhood. I had another of my inspirations--sitting on the
floor with Oscar's head on my lap. I gave my reverend companion something
to do. "Look about the room!" I said. "See if the packing-case with the
gold and silver plates is here or not."
Mr. Finch did not quite relish being treated like an ordinary mortal, and
being told what he was to do.
"Compose yourself, Madame Pratolungo," he said. "No hysterical activity,
if you please. This business is in My hands. Quite needless, ma'am, to
tell Me to look for the packing-case."
"Quite needless," I agreed. "I know beforehand the packing-case is gone."
That answer instantly set him fussing about the room. Not a sign of the
case was to be seen.
All doubt in my mind was at an end now. The two ruffians lounging against
the wall had justified, horribly justified, my worst suspicions of them.
On the arrival of Mrs. Gootheridge and her brother, we carried him up to
his room. We laid him on the bed, with his neck-tie off, and his throat
free, and the air blowing over him from the open window. He showed no
sign yet of coming to his senses. But still the pulse went faintly on. No
change was discernible for the worse.
It was useless to hope for the doctor's arrival, before another hour at
least. I felt the necessity of getting back at once to the rectory, so as
to be able to tell Lucilla (with all needful preparation) the melancholy
truth. Otherwise, the news of what had happened would get abroad in the
village, and might come to her ears, in the worst possible way, through
one of the servants. To my infinite relief, Mr. Finch, when I rose to go,
excused himself from accompanying me. He had discovered that it was his
duty, as rector, to give the earliest information of the outrage at
Browndown to the legal authorities. He went his way to the nearest
magistrate. And I went mine--leaving Oscar under the care of Mrs.
Gootheridge and her brother--back to the house. Mr. Finch's last words at
parting reminded me, once more, that we had one thing at least to be
thankful for under the circumstances--sad as they otherwise were.
"Most fortunate, Madame Pratolungo, that I was at home. What would you
have done without me?"
CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH
Events at the Bedside
I AM, if you will be so good as to remember, constitutionally
French--and, therefore, constitutionally averse to distressing myself, if
I can possibly help it. For this reason, I really cannot summon courage
to describe what passed between my blind Lucilla and me when I returned
to our pretty sitting-room. She made me cry at the time; and she would
make me (and perhaps you) cry again now, if I wrote the little melancholy
story of what this tender young creature suffered when I told her my
miserable news. I won't write it; I am dead against tears. They affect
the nose; and my nose is my best feature. Let us use our eyes, my fair
friends, to conquer, not to cry.
Be it enough to say, that when I went back to Browndown, Lucilla went
with me.
I now observed her, for the first time, to be jealous of the eyes of us
happy people who could see. The instant she entered, she insisted on
being near enough to the bed, to hear us, or to touch us, as we waited on
the injured man. This was at once followed by her taking the place
occupied by Mrs. Gootheridge at the bed-head, and herself bathing Oscar's
face and forehead. She was even jealous of _me,_ when she discovered that
I was moistening the bandages on the wound. I irritated her into boldly
kissing the poor insensible face in our presence! The landlady of the
Cross Hands was one of my sort: she took cheerful views of things. "Sweet
on him--eh, ma'am?" she whispered in my ear; "we shall have a wedding in
Dimchurch." In presence of these kissings and whisperings, Mrs.
Gootheridge's brother, as the only man present, began to look very
uncomfortable. This worthy creature belonged to that large and
respectable order of Englishmen, who don't know what to do with their
hands, or how to get out of a room. I took pity on him--he was, I assure
you, a fine man. "Smoke your pipe, sir, in the garden," I said. "We will
call to you from the window, if we want you up here." Mrs. Gootheridge's
brother cast on me one look of unutterable gratitude--and escaped, as if
he had been let out of a trap.
At last, the doctor came.
His first words were an indescribable relief to us. The skull of our poor
Oscar was not injured. There was concussion of the brain, and there was a
scalp-wound--inflicted evidently with a blunt instrument. As to the
wound, I had done all that was necessary in the doctor's absence. As to
the injury to the brain, time and care would put everything right again.
"Make your minds easy, ladies," said this angel of a man. "There is no
reason for feeling the slightest alarm about him."
He came to his senses--that is to say, he opened his eyes and looked
vacantly about him--between four and five hours after the time when we
had found him on the floor of the workshop.
His mind, poor fellow, was still all astray. He recognized nobody. He
imitated the action of writing with his finger; and said very earnestly,
over and over again, "Go home, Jicks; go home, go home!" fancying himself
(as I suppose), lying helpless on the floor, and sending the child back
to us to give the alarm. Later in the night he fell asleep. All through
the next day, he still wandered in his mind when he spoke. It was not
till the day after, that he began feebly to recover his reason. The first
person he recognized was Lucilla. She was engaged at the moment in
brushing his beautiful chestnut hair. To her unutterable joy, he patted
her hand, and murmured her name.
She bent over him; and, under cover of the hair-brush, whispered
something in his ear which made the young fellow's pale face flush, and
his dull eyes brighten with pleasure. A day or two afterwards, she owned
to me that she had said, "Get well, for my sake." She was not in the
least ashamed of having spoken to that plain purpose. On the contrary,
she triumphed in it. "Leave him to me," said Lucilla, in the most
positive manner. "I mean first to cure him. And then I mean to be his
wife."
In a week more, he was in complete possession of his faculties--but still
wretchedly weak, and only gaining ground very slowly after the shock that
he had suffered.
He was now able to tell us, by a little at a time, of what had happened
in the workshop.
After Mrs. Gootheridge and her daughter had quitted the house at their
usual hour, he had gone up to his room; had remained there some little
time; and had then gone downstairs again. On approaching the workshop, he
heard voices talking in whispers in the room. The idea instantly occurred
to him that something was wrong. He softly tried the door, and found it
locked--the robbers having no doubt taken that precaution, to prevent
their being surprised at their thieving work by any person in the house.
The one other way of getting into the room, was the way that we had
tried. He went round to the back garden, and found an empty chaise drawn
up outside the door. This circumstance thoroughly puzzled him. But for
the mysterious locking of the workshop door, it would have suggested to
him nothing more alarming than the arrival of some unexpected visitors.
Eager to solve the mystery, he crossed the garden; and, entering the
room, found himself face to face with the same two men whom Jicks had
discovered ten days previously lounging against the wall.
As he approached the window, they were both busily engaged, with their
backs towards him, in cording up the packing-case which contained the
metal plates.
They rose and faced him as he stepped into the room. The act of robbery
which he found them coolly perpetrating in broad daylight, instantly set
his irritable temper in a flame. He rushed at the younger of the two
men--being the one nearest to him. The ruffian sprang aside out of his
reach; snatched up from the table on which it was lying ready, a short
loaded staff of leather called "a life-preserver;" and struck him with it
on the head, before he had recovered himself, and could face his man once
more.
From that moment, he remembered nothing, until he had regained his
consciousness after the first shock of the blow.
He found himself lying, giddy and bleeding, on the floor; and he saw the
child (who must have strayed into the room while he was senseless)
standing petrified with fear, looking at him. The idea of making use of
her--as the only living being near--to give the alarm, came to him
instinctively the moment he recognized her. He coaxed the little creature
to venture within reach of his hand; and, dipping his finger in the blood
that was flowing from him, sent us the terrible message which I had spelt
out on the back of her frock. That done, he exerted his last remains of
strength to push her gently towards the open window, and direct her to go
home. He fainted from loss of blood, while he was still repeating the
words, "Go home! go home!"--and still seeing, or fancying that he saw,
the child stopping obstinately in the room, stupefied with terror. Of the
time at which she found the courage and the sense to run home, and of all
that had happened after that, he was necessarily ignorant. His next
conscious impression was the impression, already recorded, of seeing
Lucilla sitting by his bedside.
The account of the matter thus given by Oscar, was followed by a
supplementary statement provided by the police.
The machinery of the law was put in action; and the village was kept in a
fever of excitement for days together. Never was there a more complete
investigation--and never was a poorer result achieved. Substantially,
nothing was discovered beyond what I had already found out for myself.
The robbery was declared to have been (as I had supposed) a planned
thing. Though we had none of us noticed them at the rectory, it was
ascertained that the thieves had been at Dimchurch on the day when the
unlucky plates were first delivered at Browndown. Having taken their time
to examine the house, and to make themselves acquainted with the domestic
habits of the persons in it, the rogues had paid their second visit to
the village--no doubt to commit the robbery--on the occasion when we had
discovered them. Foiled by the unexpected return of the gold and silver
to London, they had waited again, had followed the plates back to
Browndown, and had effected their object--thanks to the lonely situation
of the house, and to the murderous blow which had stretched Oscar
insensible on the floor.
More than one witness had met them on the road back to Brighton, with the
packing-case in the chaise. But when they returned to the livery-stables
from which they had hired the vehicle, the case was not to be seen.
Accomplices in Brighton had, in all probability, assisted them in getting
rid of it, and in shifting the plates into ordinary articles of luggage,
which would attract no special attention at the railway station. This was
the explanation given by the police. Right or wrong, the one fact remains
that the villains were not caught, and that the assault and robbery at
Oscar's house may be added to the long list of crimes cleverly enough
committed to defy the vengeance of the law.
For ourselves, we all agreed--led by Lucilla--to indulge in no useless
lamentations, and to be grateful that Oscar had escaped without serious
injury. The mischief was done; and there was an end of it.
In this philosophical spirit, we looked at the affair while our invalid
was recovering. We all plumed ourselves on our excellent good sense--and
(ah, poor stupid human wretches!) we were all fatally wrong. So far from
the mischief being at an end, the mischief had only begun. The true
results of the robbery at Browndown were yet to show themselves, and were
yet to be felt in the strangest and the saddest way by every member of
the little circle assembled at Dimchurch.
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
First Result of the Robbery
BETWEEN five and six weeks passed. Oscar was out of his bed-room, and was
well of his wound.
During this lapse of time, Lucilla steadily pursued that process of her
own of curing him, which was to end in marrying him. Never had I seen
such nursing before--never do I expect to see such nursing again. From
morning to night, she interested him, and kept him in good spirits. The
charming creature actually made her blindness a means of lightening the
weary hours of the man she loved.
Sometimes, she would sit before Oscar's looking-glass, and imitate all
the innumerable tricks, artifices, and vanities of a coquette arraying
herself for conquest--with such wonderful truth and humour of mimicry,
that you would have sworn she possessed the use of her eyes. Sometimes,
she would show him her extraordinary power of calculating by the sound of
a person's voice, the exact position which that person occupied towards
her in a room. Selecting me as the victim, she would first provide
herself with one of the nosegays always placed by her own hands at
Oscar's bedside; and would then tell me to take up my position
noiselessly in any part of the room that I pleased, and to say "Lucilla."
The instant the words were out of my mouth, the nosegay flew from her
hand, and hit me on the face. She never once missed her aim, on any one
of the occasions when this experiment was tried--and she never once
flagged in her childish enjoyment of the exhibition of her own skill.
Nobody was allowed to pour out Oscar's medicine but herself. She knew
when the spoon into which it was to be measured was full, by the sound
which the liquid made in falling into it. When he was able to sit up in
his bed, and when she was standing at the pillow-side, she could tell him
how near his head was to hers, by the change which he produced, when he
bent forward or when he drew back, in the action of the air on her face.
In the same way, she knew as well as he knew, when the sun was out and
when it was behind a cloud--judging by the differing effect of the air,
at such times, on her forehead and on her cheeks.
All the litter of little objects accumulating in a sick-room, she kept in
perfect order on a system of her own. She delighted in putting the room
tidy late in the evening, when we helpless people who could see were
beginning to think of lighting the candles. The time when we could just
discern her, flitting to and fro in the dusk, in her bright summer
dress--now visible as she passed the window, now lost in the shadows at
the end of the room--was the time when she began to clear the tables of
the things that had been wanted in the day, and to replace them by the
things which would be wanted at night. We were only allowed to light the
candles when they showed us the room magically put in order during the
darkness as if the fairies had done it. She laughed scornfully at our
surprise, and said she sincerely pitied the poor useless people who could
only see!
The same pleasure which she had in arranging the room in the dark she
also felt in wandering all over the house in the dark, and in making
herself thoroughly acquainted with every inch of it from top to bottom.
As soon as Oscar was well enough to go down-stairs, she insisted on
leading him.
"You have been so long up in your bedroom," she said, "that you must have
forgotten the rest of the house. Take my arm--and come along. Now we are
out in the passage. Mind! there is a step down, just at this place. And
now a step up again. Here is a sharp corner to turn at the top of the
staircase. And there is a rod out of the stair-carpet, and an awkward
fold in it that might throw you down." So she took him into his own
drawing-room, as if it was he that was blind, and she who had the use of
her eyes. Who could resist such a nurse as this? Is it wonderful that I
heard a sound suspiciously like the sound of a kiss, on that first day of
convalescence, when I happened for a moment to be out of the room? I
strongly suspected her of leading the way in that also. She was so
wonderfully composed when I came back--and he was so wonderfully
flurried.
In a week from his convalescence, Lucilla completed the cure of the
patient. In other words, she received from Oscar an offer of marriage. I
have not the slightest doubt, in my own mind, that he required assistance
in bringing this delicate matter to a climax--and that Lucilla helped
him.
I may be right or I may be wrong about this. But I can at least certify
that Lucilla was in such mad high spirits when she told me the news out
in the garden, on a lovely autumn morning, that she actually danced for
joy--and, more improper still, she made me, at my discreet time of life,
dance too. She took me round the waist, and we waltzed on the grass--Mrs.
Finch standing by in the condemned blue merino jacket (with the baby in
one hand and the novel in the other), and warning us both that if we lost
half an hour out of our day, in whirling each other round the lawn, we
should never succeed in picking it up again in that house. We went on
whirling, for all that, until we were both out of breath. Nothing short
of downright exhaustion could tame Lucilla. As for me, I am, I sincerely
believe, the rashest person of my age now in existence. (What is my age?
Ah, I am always discreet about that; it is the one exception.) Set down
my rashness to my French nationality, my easy conscience, and my
excellent stomach--and let us go on with our story.
There was a private interview at Browndown, later on that day, between
Oscar and Reverend Finch.
Of what passed on that occasion, I was not informed. The rector came back
among us with his head high in the air, strutting magnificently on his
wizen little legs. He embraced his daughter in pathetic silence, and gave
me his hand with a serene smile of condescension worthy of the greatest
humbug (say Louis the Fourteenth) that ever sat on a throne. When he got
the better of his paternal emotion, and began to speak, his voice was so
big that I really thought it must have burst him. The vapor of words in
which he enveloped himself (condensed on paper) amounted to these two
statements. First, that he hailed in Oscar (not having, I suppose,
children enough already of his own) the advent of another son. Secondly,
that he saw the finger of Providence in everything that had happened.
Alas, for me! My irreverent French nature saw nothing but the finger of
Finch--in Oscar's pocket.
The wedding-day was not then actually fixed. It was only generally
arranged that the marriage should take place in about six weeks.
This interval was intended to serve a double purpose. It was to give the
lawyers time to prepare the marriage settlements, and to give Oscar time
to completely recover his health. Some anxiety was felt by all of us on
this latter subject. His wound was well, and his mind was itself again.
But still there was something wrong with him, for all that.
Those curious contradictions in his character which I have already
mentioned, showed themselves more strangely than ever. The man who had
found the courage (when his blood was up) to measure himself alone and
unarmed against two robbers, was now unable to enter the room in which
the struggle had taken place, without trembling from head to foot. He,
who had laughed at me when I begged him not to sleep in the house by
himself, now had two men (a gardener and an indoor servant) domiciled at
Browndown to protect him--and felt no sense of security even in that. He
was constantly dreaming that the ruffian with the "life-preserver" was
attacking him again, or that he was lying bleeding on the floor and
coaxing Jicks to venture within reach of his hand. If any of us hinted at
his occupying himself once more with his favorite art, he stopped his
ears, and entreated us not to renew his horrible associations with the
past. He would not even look at his box of chasing tools. The
doctor--summoned to say what was the matter with him--told us that his
nervous system had been shaken, and frankly acknowledged that there was
nothing to be done but to wait until time set it right again.
I am afraid I must confess that I myself took no very indulgent view of
the patient's case.
It was his duty to exert himself--as I thought. He appeared to me to be
too indolent to make a proper effort to better his own condition. Lucilla
and I had more than one animated discussion about him. On a certain
evening when we were at the piano gossiping, and playing in the
intervals, she was downright angry with me for not sympathizing with her
darling as unreservedly as she did. "I have noticed one thing, Madame
Pratolungo," she said to me, with a flushed face and a heightened tone.
"You have never done Oscar justice from the first."
(Mark those trifling words. The time is coming when you will hear of them
again.)
The preparations for the contemplated marriage went on. The lawyers
produced their sketch of the settlement; and Oscar wrote (to an address
in New York, given to him by Nugent) to tell his brother of the
approaching change in his life, and of the circumstances which had
brought it about.
The marriage settlement was not shown to me; but, from certain signs and
tokens, I guessed that Oscar's perfect disinterestedness on the question
of money had been turned to profitable account by Oscar's future
father-in-law. Reverend Finch was reported to have shed tears when he
first read the document. And Lucilla came out of the study, after an
interview with her father, more thoroughly and vehemently indignant than
I had ever seen her yet. "Don't ask what is the matter!" she said to me
between her teeth. "I am ashamed to tell you." When Oscar came in, a
little later, she fell on her knees--literally on her knees--before him.
Some overmastering agitation was in possession of her whole being, which
made her, for the moment, reckless of what she said or did. "I worship
you!" she burst out hysterically, kissing his hand. "You are the noblest
of living men. I can never, never be worthy of you!" The interpretation
of these high-flown sayings and doings was, to my mind, briefly this:
Oscar's money in the rector's pocket, and the rector's daughter used as
the means.
The interval expired; the weeks succeeded each other. All had been long
since ready for the marriage--and still the marriage did not take place.
Far from becoming himself again, with time to help him--as the doctor had
foretold--Oscar steadily grew worse. All the nervous symptoms (to use the
medical phrase) which I have already described, strengthened instead of
loosening their hold on him. He grew thinner and thinner, and paler and
paler. Early in the month of November, we sent for the doctor again. The
question to be put to him this time, was the question (suggested by
Lucilla) of trying as a last remedy change of air.
Something--I forget what--delayed the arrival of our medical man. Oscar
had given up all idea of seeing him that day, and had come to us at the
rectory--when the doctor drove into Dimchurch. He was stopped before he
went on to Browndown; and he and his patient saw each other alone in
Lucilla's sitting-room.
They were a long time together. Lucilla, waiting with me in my
bed-chamber, grew impatient. She begged me to knock at the sitting-room
door, and inquire when she might be permitted to assist at the
consultation.
I found doctor and patient standing together at the window, talking
quietly. Evidently, nothing had passed to excite either of them in the
smallest degree. Oscar looked a little pale and weary--but he, like his
medical adviser, was perfectly composed.
"There is a young lady in the next room," I said, "who is getting anxious
to hear what your consultation has ended in."
The doctor looked at Oscar, and smiled.
"There is really nothing to tell Miss Finch," he said. "Mr. Dubourg and I
have gone all over the case again--and nothing new has come of it. His
nervous system has not recovered its balance so soon as I expected. I am
sorry--but I am not in the least alarmed. At his age, things are sure to
come right in the end. He must be patient, and the young lady must be
patient. I can say no more."
"Do you see any objection to his trying change of air?" I inquired.
"None, whatever! Let him go where he likes, and amuse himself as he
likes. You are all of you a little disposed to take Mr. Dubourg's case
too seriously. Except the nervous derangement (unpleasant enough in
itself, I grant), there is really nothing the matter with him. He has not
a trace of organic disease anywhere. The pulse," continued the doctor,
laying his fingers lightly on Oscar's wrist, "is perfectly satisfactory.
I never felt a quieter pulse in my life."
As the words passed his lips, a frightful contortion fastened itself on
Oscar's face.
His eyes turned up hideously.
From head to foot his whole body was wrenched round, as if giant hands
had twisted it, towards the right.
Before I could speak, he was in convulsions on the floor at his doctor's
feet.
"Good God, what is this!" I cried out.
The doctor loosened his cravat, and moved away the furniture that was
near him. That done, he waited--looking at the writhing figure on the
floor.
"Can you do nothing more?" I asked.
He shook his head gravely. "Nothing more."
"What is it?"
"An epileptic fit."
CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH
The Doctor's Opinion
BEFORE another word had been exchanged between us, Lucilla entered the
room. We looked at each other. If we could have spoken at that moment, I
believe we should both have said, "Thank God, she is blind!"
"Have you all forgotten me?" she asked. "Oscar! where are you? What does
the doctor say?"
She advanced into the room. In a moment more, she would have stumbled
against the prostrate man still writhing on the floor. I laid my hand on
her arm, and stopped her.
She suddenly caught my hand in hers. "Why did you tremble," she asked,
"when you took me by the arm? Why are you trembling now?" Her delicate
sense of touch was not to be deceived. I vainly denied that anything had
happened: my hand had betrayed me. "There is something wrong!" she
exclaimed, "Oscar has not answered me."
The doctor came to my assistance.
"There is nothing to be alarmed about," he said. "Mr. Dubourg is not very
well to-day."
She turned on the doctor, with a sudden burst of anger.
"You are deceiving me!" she cried. "Something serious has happened to
him. The truth! tell me the truth! Oh! it's shameful, it's heartless of
both of you to deceive a wretched blind creature like me!"
The doctor still hesitated. I told her the truth.
"Where is he?" she asked, seizing me by the two shoulders, and shaking me
in the violence of her agitation.
I entreated her to wait a little; I tried to place her in a chair. She
pushed me contemptuously away, and went down on the floor on her hands
and knees. "I shall find him," she said to herself; "I shall find him in
spite of them!" She began to crawl over the floor, feeling the empty
space before her with her hand. It was horrible. I followed her, and
raised her again, by main force.
"Don't struggle with her," said the doctor. "Let her come here. He is
quiet now."
I looked at Oscar. The worst of it was over. He was exhausted--he was
quite still now. The doctor's voice guided her to the place. She sat down
by Oscar on the floor, and laid his head on her lap. The moment she
touched him, the same effect was produced on her which would be produced
(if our eyes were bandaged) on you or me when the bandage was taken off.
An instant sense of relief diffused itself through her whole being. She
became her gentler and sweeter self again. "I am sorry I lost my temper,"
she said with the simplicity of a child. "But you don't know how hard it
is to be deceived when you are blind." She stooped as she said those
words, and passed her handkerchief lightly over his forehead. "Doctor,"
she asked, "will this happen again?"
"I hope not."
"Are you sure not?"
"I can't say that."
"What has brought it on?"
"I am afraid the blow he received on the head has brought it on."
She asked no more questions; her eager face passed suddenly into a state
of repose. Something seemed to have come into her mind--after the
doctor's answer to her own question--which absorbed her in herself. When
Oscar recovered his consciousness, she left it to me to answer the first
natural questions which he put. When he personally addressed her she
spoke to him kindly, but briefly. Something in her, at that moment,
seemed to keep her apart, even from _him._ When the doctor proposed
taking him back to Browndown, she did not insist, as I had anticipated,
on going with them. She took leave of him tenderly--but still she let him
go. While he yet lingered near the door, looking back at her, she moved
away slowly to the further end of the room; self-withdrawn into her own
dark world--shut up in her thoughts from him and from us.
The doctor tried to rouse her.
"You must not think too seriously of this," he said, following her to the
window at which she stood, and dropping his voice so that Oscar could not
hear him. "He has himself told you that he feels lighter and better than
he felt before the fit. It has relieved instead of injuring him. There is
no danger. I assure you, on my honor, there is nothing to fear."
"Can you assure me, on your honor, of one other thing," she asked,
lowering her voice on her side. "Can you honestly tell me that this is
not the first of other fits that are to come?"
The doctor parried the question.
"We will have another medical opinion," he answered, "before we decide.
The next time I go to see him, a physician from Brighton shall go with
me."
Oscar, who had thus far waited, wondering at the change in her, now
opened the door. The doctor returned to him. They left us.
She sat down on the window-seat, with her elbows on her knees and her
hands grasping her forehead. A long moaning cry burst from her. She said
to herself bitterly the one word--"Farewell!"
I approached her; feeling the necessity of reminding her that I was in
the room.
"Farewell to what?" I asked, taking my place by her side.
"To his happiness and to mine," she answered, without lifting her head
from her hands. "The dark days are coming for Oscar and for me."
"Why should you think that? You heard what the doctor said."
"The doctor doesn't know what I know."
"What do you know?"
She paused before she answered me. "Do you believe in fate?" she said,
suddenly breaking the silence.
"I believe in nothing which encourages people to despair of themselves,"
I replied.
She went on without heeding me.
"What caused the fit which seized him in this room? The blow that struck
him on the head. How did he receive the blow? In trying to defend what
was his and what was mine. What had he been doing on the day when the
thieves entered the house? He had been working on the casket which was
meant for me. Do you see those events linked together in one chain? I
believe the fit will be followed by some next event springing out of it.
Something else is coming to darken his life and to darken mine. There is
no wedding-day near for us. The obstacles are rising in front of him and
in front of me. The next misfortune is very near us. You will see! you
will see!" She shivered as she said those words; and, shrinking away from
me, huddled herself up in a corner of the window-seat.
It was useless to dispute with her; and worse than useless to sit there,
and encourage her to say more. I got up on my feet.
"There is one thing I believe in," I said cheerfully. "I believe in the
breeze on the hills. Come for a walk!"
She shrank closer into her corner and shook her head.
"Let me be!" she broke out impatiently. "Leave me by myself!" She rose,
repenting the words the moment they were uttered--she put her arm round
my neck, and kissed me. "I didn't mean to speak so harshly," said the
gentle affectionate creature. "Sister! my heart is heavy. My life to come
never looked so dark to my blind eyes as it looks now." A tear dropped
from those poor sightless eyes on my cheek. She turned her head aside
abruptly. "Forgive me," she murmured, "and let me go." Before I could
answer, she hurried away to hide herself in her room. The sweet girl! How
you would have pitied her--how you would have loved her!
I went out alone for my walk. She had not infected me with her
superstitious foreboding of ill things to come. But there was one sad
word that she had said, in which I could not but agree. After what I had
witnessed in that room, the wedding-day did indeed look further off than
ever.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH
Family Troubles
IN four or five days more, Lucilla's melancholy doubts about Oscar were
confirmed. He was attacked by a second fit.
The promised consultation with the physician from Brighton took place.
Our new doctor did not encourage us to hope. The second fit following so
close on the first was, in his opinion, a bad sign. He gave general
directions for the treatment of Oscar; and left him to decide for himself
whether he would or would not try change of scene. No change, the
physician appeared to think, would exert any immediate influence on the
recurrence of the epileptic attacks. The patient's general health might
be benefited, and that was all. As for the question of the marriage, he
declared without hesitation that we must for the present dismiss all
consideration of it from our minds.
Lucilla received the account of what passed at the visit of the doctors
with a stubborn resignation which it distressed me to see. "Remember what
I told you when the first attack seized him," she said. "Our summer-time
is ended; our winter is come."
Her manner, while she spoke, was the manner of a person who is waiting
without hope--who feels deliberately that calamity is near. She only
roused herself when Oscar came in. He was, naturally enough, in miserable
spirits, under the sudden alteration in all his prospects. Lucilla did
her best to cheer him, and succeeded. On my side, I tried vainly to
persuade him to leave Browndown and amuse himself in some gayer place. He
shrank from new faces and new scenes. Between these two unelastic young
people, I felt even my native good spirits beginning to sink. If we had
been all three down in the bottom of a dry well in a wilderness, we could
hardly have surveyed a more dismal prospect than the prospect we were
contemplating now. By good luck, Oscar, like Lucilla, was passionately
fond of music. We turned to the piano as our best resource in those days
of our adversity. Lucilla and I took it in turns to play, and Oscar
listened. I have to report that we got through a great deal of music. I
have also to acknowledge that we were very dull.
As for Reverend Finch, he talked his way through his share of the
troubles that were trying us now, at the full compass of his voice.
If you had heard the little priest in those days, you would have supposed
that nobody could feel our domestic misfortunes as _he_ felt them, and
grieve over them as _he_ grieved. He was a sight to see, on the day of
the medical consultation; strutting up and down his wife's sitting-room,
and haranguing his audience--composed of his wife and myself. Mrs. Finch
sat in one corner, with the baby and the novel, and the petticoat and the
shawl. I occupied the other corner; summoned to "consult with the
rector." In plain words, summoned to hear Mr. Finch declare that he was
the person principally overshadowed by the cloud which hung on the
household.
"I despair, Madame Pratolungo--I assure you, I despair--of conveying any
idea of how _I_ feel under this most melancholy state of things. You have
been very good; you have shown the sympathy of a true friend. But you
cannot possibly understand how this blow has fallen on Me. I am crushed.
Madame Pratolungo!" (he appealed to me, in my corner); "Mrs. Finch!" (he
appealed to his wife, in _her_ corner)--"I am crushed. There is no other
word to express it but the word I have used. Crushed." He stopped in the
middle of the room. He looked expectantly at me--he looked expectantly at
his wife. His face and manner said plainly, "If both these women faint, I
shall consider it a natural and becoming proceeding on their parts, after
what I have just told them." I waited for the lead of the lady of the
house. Mrs. Finch did not roll prostrate, with the baby and the novel, on
the floor. Thus encouraged, I presumed to keep my seat. The rector still
waited for us. I looked as miserable as I could. Mrs. Finch cast her eyes
up reverentially at her husband, as if she thought him the noblest of
created beings, and silently put her handkerchief to her eyes. Mr. Finch
was satisfied; Mr. Finch went on. "My health has suffered--I assure you,
Madame Pratolungo, MY health has suffered. Since this sad occurrence, my
stomach has given way. My balance is lost--my usual regularity is gone. I
am subject--entirely through this miserable business--to fits of morbid
appetite. I want things at wrong times--breakfast in the middle of the
night; dinner at four in the morning. I want something now!" Mr. Finch
stopped, horror-struck at his condition; pondering with his eyebrows
fiercely knit, and his hand pressed convulsively on the lower buttons of
his rusty black waistcoat. Mrs. Finch's watery blue eyes looked across
the room at me, in a moist melancholy of conjugal distress. The rector,
suddenly enlightened after his consultation with his stomach, strutted to
the door, flung it wide open, and called down the kitchen stairs with a
voice of thunder, "Poach me an egg!" He came back into the room--held
another consultation, keeping his eyes severely fixed on me--strutted
back in a furious hurry to the door--and bellowed a counter-order down
the kitchen-stairs, "No egg! Do me a red herring!" He came back for the
second time, with his eyes closed and his hand laid distractedly on his
head. He appealed alternately to Mrs. Finch and to me. "See for
yourselves--Mrs. Finch! Madame Pratolungo!--see for yourselves what a
state I am in. It's simply pitiable. I hesitate about the most trifling
things. First, I think I want a poached egg--then, I think I want a red
herring--now I don't know what I want. Upon my word of honor as a
clergyman and a gentleman, I don't know what I want! Morbid appetite all
day; morbid wakefulness all night--what a condition! I can't rest. I
disturb my wife at night. Mrs. Finch! I disturb you at night. How many
times--since this misfortune fell upon us--do I turn in bed before I fall
off to sleep? Eight times? Are you certain of it? Don't exaggerate! Are
you certain you counted! Very well: good creature! I never remember--I
assure you, Madame Pratolungo, I never remember--such a complete upset as
this before. The nearest approach to it was some years since, at my
wife's last confinement but four. Mrs. Finch! was it at your last
confinement but four? or your last but five? Your last but four? Are you
sure. Are you certain you are not misleading our friend here? Very well:
good creature! Pecuniary difficulties, Madame Pratolungo, were at the
bottom of it on that last occasion. I got over the pecuniary
difficulties. How am I to get over this? My plans for Oscar and Lucilla
were completely arranged. My relations with my wedded children were
pleasantly laid out. I saw my own future; I saw the future of my family.
What do I see now? All, so to speak, annihilated at a blow. Inscrutable
Providence!" He paused, and lifted his eyes and hands devotionally to the
ceiling. The cook appeared with the red herring. "Inscrutable
Providence"--proceeded Mr. Finch, a tone lower. "Eat it, dear," said Mrs.
Finch, "while it's hot." The rector paused again. His unresting tongue
urged him to proceed; his undisciplined stomach clamored for the herring.
The cook uncovered the dish. Mr. Finch's nose instantly sided with Mr.
Finch's stomach. He stopped at "Inscrutable Providence"--and peppered his
herring.
Having reported how the rector spoke, in the presence of the disaster
which had fallen on the family, I have only to complete the picture by
stating next what he did. He borrowed two hundred pounds of Oscar; and
left off commanding red herrings in the day and disturbing Mrs. Finch at
night, immediately afterwards.
The dull autumn days ended, and the long nights of winter began.
No change for the better appeared in our prospects. The doctors did their
best for Oscar--without avail. The horrible fits came back, again and
again. Day after day, our dull lives went monotonously on. I almost began
now to believe, with Lucilla, that a crisis of some sort must be at hand.
"This cannot last," I used to say to myself--generally when I was very
hungry. "Something will happen before the year comes to an end."
The month of December began; and something happened at last. The family
troubles at the rectory were matched by family troubles of my own. A
letter arrived for me from one of my younger sisters at Paris. It
contained alarming news of a person very dear to me--already mentioned in
the first of these pages as my good Papa.
Was the venerable author of my being dangerously ill of a mortal disease?
Alas! he was not exactly that--but the next worst thing to it. He was
dangerously in love with a disreputable young woman. At what age? At the
age of seventy-five! What can we say of my surviving parent? We can only
say, This is a vigorous nature; Papa has an evergreen heart.
I am grieved to trouble you with my family concerns. But they mix
themselves up intimately, as you will see in due time, with the concerns
of Oscar and Lucilla. It is my unhappy destiny that I cannot possibly
take you through the present narrative, without sooner or later
disclosing the one weakness (amiable weakness) of the gayest and
brightest and best-preserved man of his time.
Ah, I am now treading on egg-shells, I know! The English specter called
Propriety springs up rampant on my writing-table, and whispers furiously
in my ear, "Madame Pratolungo, raise a blush on the cheek of Innocence,
and it is all over from that moment with you and your story." Oh,
inflammable Cheek of Innocence, be good-natured for once, and I will rack
my brains to try if I can put it to you without offense! May I picture
good Papa as an elder in the Temple of Venus, burning incense
inexhaustibly on the altar of love? No: Temple of Venus is Pagan; altar
of love is not proper--take them out. Let me only say of my evergreen
parent that his life from youth to age had been one unintermitting
recognition of the charms of the sex, and that my sisters and I (being of
the sex) could not find it in our hearts to abandon him on that account.
So handsome, so affectionate, so sweet-tempered; with only one fault--and
that a compliment to the women, who naturally adored him in return! We
accepted our destiny. For years past (since the death of Mamma), we
accustomed ourselves to live in perpetual dread of his marrying some one
of the hundreds of unscrupulous hussies who took possession of him: and,
worse if possible than that, of his fighting duels about them with men
young enough to be his grandsons. Papa was so susceptible! Papa was so
brave! Over and over again, I had been summoned to interfere, as the
daughter who had the strongest influence over him. I had succeeded in
effecting his rescue, now by one means, and now by another; ending
always, however, in the same sad way, by the sacrifice of money for
damages--on which damages, when the woman is shameless enough to claim
them, my verdict is, "Serve her right!"
On the present occasion, it was the old story over again. My sisters had
done their best to stop it, and had failed. I had no choice but to appear
on the scene--to begin, perhaps, by boxing her ears: to end, certainly,
by filling her pockets.
My absence at this time was something more than an annoyance--it was a
downright grief to my blind Lucilla. On the morning of my departure, she
clung to me as if she was determined not to let me go.
"What shall I do without you?" she said. "It is hard, in these dreary
days, to lose the comfort of hearing your voice. I shall feel all my
security gone, when I feel you no longer near me. How many days shall you
be away?"
"A day to get to Paris," I answered; "and a day to get back--two. Five
days (if I can do it in the time) to thunder-strike the hussy, and to
rescue Papa--seven. Let us say, if possible, a week."
"You must be back, no matter what happen, before the new year."
"Why?"
"I have my yearly visit to pay to my aunt. It has been twice put off. I
must absolutely go to London on the last day of the old year, and stay
there my allotted three months in Miss Batchford's house. I had hoped to
be Oscar's wife before the time came round again----" she waited a moment
to steady her voice. "That is all over now. We must be parted. If I can't
leave you here to console him and to take care of him, come what may of
it--I shall stay at Dimchurch."
Her staying at Dimchurch, while she was still unmarried, meant (under the
terms of her uncle's will) sacrificing her fortune. If Reverend Finch had
heard her, he would not even have been able to say "Inscrutable
Providence"--he would have lost his senses on the spot.
"Don't be afraid," I said; "I shall be back, Lucilla, before you go.
Besides, Oscar may get better. He may be able to follow you to London,
and visit you at your aunt's."
She shook her head, with such a sad, sad doubt of it, that the tears came
into my eyes. I gave her a last kiss--and hurried away.
My route was to Newhaven, and then across the Channel to Dieppe. I don't
think I really knew how fond I had grown of Lucilla, until I lost sight
of the rectory at the turn in the road to Brighton. My natural firmness
deserted me; I felt torturing presentiments that some great misfortune
would happen in my absence; I astonished myself--I, the widow of the
Spartan Pratolungo!--by having a good cry, like any other woman.
Sooner or later, we susceptible people pay with the heartache for the
privilege of loving. No matter: heartache or not, one must have something
to love in this world as long as one lives in it. I have lived in
it--never mind how many years--and I have got Lucilla. Before Lucilla I
had the Doctor. Before the Doctor--ah, my friends, we won't look back
beyond the Doctor!
CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH
Second Result of the Robbery
THE history of my proceedings in Paris can be dismissed in a very few
words. It is only necessary to dwell in detail on one among the many
particulars which connect themselves in my memory with the rescue of good
Papa.
The affair, this time, assumed the gravest possible aspect. The venerable
victim had gone the length of renewing his youth, in respect of his
teeth, his hair, his complexion, and his figure (this last involving the
purchase of a pair of stays). I declare I hardly knew him again, he was
so outrageously and unnaturally young. The utmost stretch of my influence
was exerted over him in vain. He embraced me with the most touching
fervour; he expressed the noblest sentiments--but in the matter of his
contemplated marriage, he was immovable. Life was only tolerable to him
on one condition. The beloved object, or death--such was the programme of
this volcanic old man.
To make the prospect more hopeless still, the beloved object proved, on
this occasion, to be a bold enough woman to play her trump card at
starting.
I give the jade her due. She assumed a perfectly unassailable attitude:
we had her full permission to break off the match--if we could. "I refer
you to your father. Pray understand that I don't wish to marry him, if
his daughters object to it. He has only to say, 'Release me.' From that
moment he is free." There was no contending against such a system of
defence as this. We knew as well as she did that our fascinated parent
would not say the word. Our one chance was to spend money in
investigating the antecedent indiscretions of the lady's life, and to
produce against her proof so indisputable that not even an old man's
infatuation could say, This is a lie.
We disbursed; we investigated; we secured our proof. It took a fortnight.
At the end of that time, we had the necessary materials in hand for
opening the eyes of good Papa.
In the course of the inquiry I was brought into contact with many strange
people--among others, with a man who startled me, at our first interview,
by presenting a personal deformity, which, with all my experience of the
world, I now saw oddly enough for the first time.
The man's face, instead of exhibiting any of the usual shades of
complexion, was hideously distinguished by a superhuman--I had almost
said a devilish--colouring of livid blackish _blue!_ He proved to be a
most kind, intelligent, and serviceable person. But when we first
confronted each other, his horrible color so startled me, that I could
not repress a cry of alarm. He not only passed over my involuntary act of
rudeness in the most indulgent manner--he explained to me the cause which
had produced his peculiarity of complexion; so as to put me at my ease
before we entered on the delicate private inquiry which had brought us
together.
"I beg your pardon," said this unfortunate man, "for not having warned
you of my disfigurement, before I entered the room. There are hundreds of
people discolored as I am, in the various parts of the civilized world;
and I supposed that you had met, in the course of your experience, with
other examples of my case. The blue tinge in my complexion is produced by
the effect on the blood of Nitrate of Silver--taken internally. It is the
only medicine which relieves sufferers like me from an otherwise
incurable malady. We have no alternative but to accept the consequences
for the sake of the cure."
He did not mention what his malady had been; and I abstained, it is
needless to say, from questioning him further. I got used to his
disfigurement in the course of my relations with him; and I should no
doubt have forgotten my blue man in attending to more absorbing matters
of interest, if the effects of Nitrate of Silver as a medicine had not
been once more unexpectedly forced on my attention, in another quarter,
and under circumstances which surprised me in no ordinary degree.
Having saved Papa on the brink of--let us say, his twentieth precipice,
it was next necessary to stay a few days longer and reconcile him to the
hardship of being rescued in spite of himself. You would have been
greatly shocked, if you had seen how he suffered. He gnashed his
expensive teeth; he tore his beautifully manufactured hair. In the
fervour of his emotions, I have no doubt he would have burst his new
stays--if I had not taken them away, and sold them half-price, and made
(to that small extent) a profit out of our calamity to set against the
loss. Do what one may in the detestable system of modern society, the
pivot on which it all turns is Money. Money, when you are saving Freedom!
Money, when you are saving Papa! Is there no remedy for this? A word in
your ear. Wait till the next revolution!
During the time of my absence, I had of course corresponded with Lucilla.
Her letters to me--very sad and very short--reported a melancholy state
of things at Dimchurch. While I had been away, the dreadful epileptic
seizures had attacked Oscar with increasing frequency and increasing
severity. The moment I could see my way to getting back to England, I
wrote to Lucilla to cheer her with the intimation of my return. Two days
only before my departure from Paris, I received another letter from her.
I was weak enough to be almost afraid to open it. Her writing to me
again, when she knew that we should be re-united at such an early date,
suggested that she must have some very startling news to communicate. My
mind misgave me that it would prove to be news of the worst sort.
I summoned courage to open the envelope. Ah, what fools we are! For once
that our presentments come right, they prove a hundred times to be wrong.
Instead of distressing me, the letter delighted me. Our gloomy prospect
was brightening at last.
Thus--feeling her way over the paper, in her large childish
characters--Lucilla wrote:
"DEAREST FRIEND AND SISTER,--I cannot wait until we meet, to tell you my
good news. The Brighton doctor has been dismissed; and a doctor from
London has been tried instead. My dear! for intellect there is nothing
like London. The new man sees, thinks, and makes up his mind on the spot.
He has a way of his own of treating Oscar's case; and he answers for
curing him of the horrible fits. There is news for you! Come back, and
let us jump for joy together. How wrong I was to doubt the future! Never,
never, never will I doubt it again. This is the longest letter I have
ever written.
"Your affectionate,
"LUCILLA."
To this, a postscript was added, in Oscar's handwriting, as follows:--
"Lucilla has told you that there is some hope for me at last. What I
write in this place is written without her knowledge--for your private
ear only. Take the first opportunity you can find of coming to see me at
Browndown, without allowing Lucilla to hear of it. I have a great favor
to ask of you. My happiness depends on your granting it. You shall know
what it is, when we meet.
"OSCAR."
This postscript puzzled me.
It was not in harmony with the implicit confidence which I had observed
Oscar to place habitually in Lucilla. It jarred on my experience of his
character, which presented him to me as the reverse of a reserved
secretive man. His concealment of his identity, when he first came among
us, had been a forced concealment--due entirely to his horror of being
identified with the hero of the trial. In all the ordinary relations of
life, he was open and unreserved to a fault. That he could have a secret
to keep from Lucilla, and to confide to me, was something perfectly
unintelligible to my mind. It highly excited my curiosity; it gave me a
new reason for longing to get back.
I was able to make all my arrangements, and to bid adieu to my father and
my sisters on the evening of the twenty-third. Early on the morning of
the twenty-fourth, I left Paris, and reached Dimchurch in time for the
final festivities in celebration of Christmas Eve.
The first hour of Christmas Day had struck on the clock in our own pretty
sitting-room, before I could prevail upon Lucilla to let me rest, after
my journey, in bed. She was now once more the joyous light-hearted
creature of our happier time; and she had so much to say to me, that not
even her father himself (on this occasion) could have talked her down.
The next morning she paid the penalty of exciting herself over-night.
When I went into her room, she was suffering from a nervous head-ache,
and was not able to rise at her usual hour. She proposed of her own
accord that I should go alone to Browndown to see Oscar on my return. It
is only doing common justice to myself to say that this was a relief to
me. If she had had the use of her eyes, my conscience would have been
easy enough--but I shrank from deceiving my dear blind girl, even in the
slightest things.
So, with Lucilla's knowledge and approval, I went to Oscar alone.
I found him fretful and anxious--ready to flame out into one of his
sudden passions, on the smallest provocation. Not the slightest
reflection of Lucilla's recovered cheerfulness appeared in Lucilla's
lover.
"Has she said anything to you about the new doctor?" were the first words
he addressed to me.
"She has told me that she feels the greatest faith in him," I answered.
"She firmly believes that he speaks the truth in saying he can cure you."
"Did she show any curiosity to know _how_ he is curing me?"
"Not the slightest curiosity that I could see. It is enough for her that
you _are_ to be cured. The rest she leaves to the doctor."
My last answer appeared to relieve him. He sighed, and leaned back in his
chair. "That's right!" he said to himself. "I'm glad to hear that."
"Is the doctor's treatment of you a secret?" I asked.
"It must be a secret from Lucilla," he said, speaking very earnestly. "If
she attempts to find it out, she must be kept--for the present, at
least--from all knowledge of it. Nobody has any influence over her but
you. I look to you to help me."
"Is this the favor you had to ask me?"
"Yes."
"Am I to know the secret of the medical treatment?"
"Certainly! How can I expect you to help me unless you know what a
serious reason there is for keeping Lucilla in the dark."
He laid a strong emphasis on the two words "serious reason. I began to
feel a little uneasy. I had never yet taken the slightest advantage of my
poor Lucilla's blindness. And here was her promised husband--of all the
people in the world--proposing to me to keep her in the dark.
"Is the new doctor's treatment dangerous?" I inquired.
"Not in the least."
"Is it not so certain as he has led Lucilla to believe?"
"It is quite certain.
"Did the other doctors know of it?"
"Yes."
"Why did they not try it?"
"They were afraid."
"Afraid? What _is_ the treatment?"
"Medicine."
"Many medicines? or one?"
"Only one."
"What is the name of it?"
"Nitrate of Silver."
I started to my feet, looked at him, and dropped back into my chair.
My mind reverted, the instant I recovered myself, to the effect produced
on me when the blue man in Paris first entered my presence. In informing
me of the effect of the medicine, he had (you will remember) concealed
from me the malady for which he had taken it. It had been left to Oscar,
of all the people in the world, to enlighten me--and that by a reference
to his own case! I was so shocked that I sat speechless.
With his quick sensibilities, there was no need for me to express myself
in words. My face revealed to him what was passing in my mind.
"You have seen a person who has taken Nitrate of Silver!" he exclaimed.
"Have _you?_" I asked.
"I know the price I pay for being cured," he answered quietly.
His composure staggered me. "How long have you been taking this horrible
drug?" I inquired.
"A little more than a week."
"I see no change in you yet."
"The doctor tells me there will be no visible change for weeks and weeks
to come."
Those words roused a momentary hope in me. "There is time to alter your
mind," I said. "For heaven's sake reconsider your resolution before it is
too late!"
He smiled bitterly. "Weak as I am," he answered, "for once, my mind is
made up."
I suppose I took a woman's view of the matter. I lost my temper when I
looked at his beautiful complexion and thought of the future.
"Are you in your right senses?" I burst out. "Do you mean to tell me that
you are deliberately bent on making yourself an object of horror to
everybody who sees you?"
"The one person whose opinion I care for," he replied, "will never see
me."
I understood him at last. _That_ was the consideration which had
reconciled him to it!
Lucilla's horror of dark people and dark shades of color, of all kinds,
was, it is needless to say, recalled to my memory by the turn the
conversation was taking now. Had she confessed it to him, as she had
confessed it to me? No! I remembered that she had expressly warned me not
to admit him into our confidence in this matter. At an early period of
their acquaintance, she had asked him which of his parents he resembled.
This led him into telling her that his father had been a dark man.
Lucilla's delicacy had at once taken the alarm. "He speaks very tenderly
of his dead father," she said to me. "It may hurt him if he finds out the
antipathy I have to dark people. Let us keep it to ourselves." As things
now were, it was on the tip of my tongue to remind him, that Lucilla
would hear of his disfigurement from other people; and then to warn him
of the unpleasant result that might follow. On reflection, however, I
thought it wiser to wait a little and sound his motives first.
"Before you tell me how I can help you," I said, "I want to know one
thing more. Have you decided in this serious matter entirely by yourself?
Have you taken no advice?"
"I don't want advice," he answered sharply. "My case admits of no choice.
Even such a nervous undecided creature as I am, can judge for himself
where there is no alternative."
"Did the doctors tell you there was no alternative?" I asked.
"The doctors were afraid to tell me. I had to force it out of them. I
said, 'I appeal to your honor to answer a plain question plainly. Is
there any certain prospect of my getting the better of the fits?' They
only said, 'At your time of life, we may reasonably hope so.' I pressed
them closer:--'Can you fix a date to which I may look forward as the date
of my deliverance?' They could neither of them do it. All they could say
was, 'Our experience justifies us in believing that you will grow out of
it; but it does _not_ justify us in saying when.' 'Then, I may be years
growing out of it?' They were obliged to own that it might be so. 'Or I
may never grow out of it, at all?' They tried to turn the conversation. I
wouldn't have it. I said, 'Tell me honestly, is that one of the
possibilities, in my case?' The Dimchurch doctor looked at the London
doctor. The London man said, 'If you will have it, it is one of the
possibilities.' Just consider the prospect which his answer placed before
me! Day after day, week after week, month after month, always in danger,
go where I may, of falling down in a fit--is that a miserable position?
or is it not?"
How could I answer him? What could I say?
He went on:--
"Add to that wretched state of things that I am engaged to be married.
The hardest disappointment which can fall on a man, falls on me. The
happiness of my life is within my reach--and I am forbidden to enjoy it.
It is not only my health that is broken up, my prospects in life are
ruined as well. The woman I love is a woman forbidden to me while I
suffer as I suffer now. Realize that--and then fancy you see a man
sitting at this table here, with pen, ink, and paper before him, who has
only to scribble a line or two, and to begin the cure of you from that
moment. Deliverance in a few months from the horror of the fits; marriage
in a few months to the woman you love. That heavenly prospect in exchange
for the hellish existence that you are enduring now. And the one price to
pay for it, a discolored face for the rest of your life--which the one
person who is dearest to you will never see? Would you have hesitated?
When the doctor took up the pen to write the prescription--tell me, if
you had been in my place, would you have said, No?"
I still sat silent. My obstinacy--women are such mules!--declined to give
way, even when my conscience told me that he was right.
He sprang to his feet, in the same fever of excitement which I remembered
so well, when I had irritated him at Browndown into telling me who he
really was.
"Would you have said, No?" he reiterated, stooping over me, flushed and
heated, as he had stooped on that first occasion, when he had whispered
his name in my ear. "Would you?" he repeated, louder and louder--"would
you?"
At the third reiteration of the words, the frightful contortion that I
knew so well, seized on his face. The wrench to the right twisted his
body. He dropped at my feet. Good God! who could have declared that he
was wrong, with such an argument in his favor as I saw at that moment?
Who would not have said that any disfigurement would be welcome as a
refuge from this?
The servant ran in, and helped me to move the furniture to a safe
distance from him, "There won't be much more of it, ma'am," said the man,
noticing my agitation, and trying to compose me. "In a month or two, the
doctor says the medicine will get hold of him." I could say nothing on my
side--I could only reproach myself bitterly for disputing with him and
exciting him, and leading perhaps to the hideous seizure which had
attacked him in my presence for the second time.
The fit on this occasion was a short one. Perhaps the drug was already
beginning to have some influence over him? In twenty minutes, he was able
to resume his chair, and to go on talking to me.
"You think I shall horrify you when my face has turned blue," he said
with a faint smile. "Don't I horrify you now when you see me in
convulsions on the floor?"
I entreated him to dwell on it no more.
"God knows," I said, "you have convinced me--obstinate as I am. Let us
try to think of nothing now but of the prospect of your being cured. What
do you wish me to do?"
"You have great influence over Lucilla," he said. "If she expresses any
curiosity, in future conversations with you, about the effect of the
medicine, check her at once. Keep her as ignorant of it as she is now!"
"Why?"
"Why! If she knows what you know, how will she feel? Shocked and
horrified, as you felt. What will she do? She will come straight here,
and try, as you have tried, to persuade me to give it up. Is that true or
not?"
(Impossible to deny that it was true.)
"I am so fond of her," he went on, "that I can refuse her nothing. She
would end in making me give it up. The instant her back was turned, I
should repent my own weakness, and return to the medicine. Here is a
perpetual struggle in prospect, for a man who is already worn out. Is it
desirable, after what you have just seen, to expose me to that?"
It would have been useless cruelty to expose him to it. How could I do
otherwise than consent to make his sacrifice of himself--his _necessary_
sacrifice--as easy as I could? At the same time, I implored him to
remember one thing.
"Mind," I said, "we can never hope to keep her in ignorance of the change
in you, when the change comes. Sooner or later, some one will let the
secret out."
"I only want it to be concealed from her while the disfigurement of me is
in progress," he answered. "When nothing she can say or do will alter
it--I will tell her myself. She is so happy in the hope of my recovery!
What good can be gained by telling her beforehand of the penalty that I
pay for my deliverance? My ugly color will never terrify my poor darling.
As for other persons, I shall not force myself on the view of the world.
It is my one wish to live out of the world. The few people about me will
soon get reconciled to my face. Lucilla will set them the example. She
won't trouble herself long about a change in me that she can neither feel
nor see.
Ought I to have warned him here of Lucilla's inveterate prejudice, and of
the difficulty there might be in reconciling her to the change in him
when she heard of it? I dare say I ought, I daresay I was to blame in
shrinking from inflicting new anxieties and new distresses on a man who
had already suffered so much. The simple truth is--I could not do it.
Would you have done it? Ah, if you would, I hope I may never come in
contact with you. What a horrid wretch you must be! The end of it was
that I left the house--pledged to keep Lucilla in ignorance of the cost
at which Oscar had determined to purchase his cure, until Oscar thought
fit to enlighten her himself.
CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH
Good Papa again!
THE promise I had given did not expose me to the annoyance of being kept
long on the watch against accidents. If we could pass safely over the
next five days, we might feel pretty sure of the future. On the last day
of the old year, Lucilla was bound by the terms of the will to go to
London, and live her allotted three months under the roof of her aunt.
In the brief interval that elapsed before her departure, she twice
approached the dangerous subject.
On the first occasion, she asked me if I knew what medicine Oscar was
taking. I pleaded ignorance, and passed at once to other matters. On the
second occasion, she advanced still further on the way to discovery of
the truth. She now inquired if I had heard how the physic worked the
cure. Having been already informed that the fits proceeded from a certain
disordered condition of the brain, she was anxious to know whether the
medical treatment was likely to affect the patient's head. This question
(which I was of course unable to answer) she put to both the doctors.
Already warned by Oscar, they quieted her by declaring that the process
of cure acted by general means, and did not attack the head. From that
moment, her curiosity was satisfied. Her mind had other objects of
interest to dwell on, before she left Dimchurch. She touched on the
perilous topic no more.
It was arranged that I was to accompany Lucilla to London. Oscar was to
follow us, when the state of his health permitted him to take the
journey. As betrothed husband of Lucilla, he had his right of entry,
during her residence in her aunt's house. As for me, I was admitted at
Lucilla's intercession. She declined to be separated from me for three
months.
Miss Batchford wrote, most politely, to offer me a hospitable welcome
during the day. She had no second spare-room at her disposal--so we
settled that I was to sleep at a lodging-house in the neighborhood. In
this same house, Oscar was also to be accommodated, when the doctors
sanctioned his removal to London. It was now thought likely--if all went
well--that the marriage might be celebrated at the end of the three
months, from Miss Batchford's residence in town.
Three days before the date of Lucilla's departure, these plans--so far as
I was concerned in them--were all over-thrown.
A letter from Paris reached me, with more bad news. My absence had
produced the worst possible effect on good Papa.
The moment my influence had been removed, he had become perfectly
unmanageable. My sisters assured me that the abominable woman from whom I
had rescued him, would most certainly end in marrying him after all,
unless I reappeared immediately on the scene. What was to be done?
Nothing was to be done, but to fly into a rage--to grind my teeth, and
throw down all my things, in the solitude of my own room--and then to go
back to Paris.
Lucilla behaved charmingly. When she saw how angry and how distressed I
was, she suppressed all exhibition of disappointment on her side, with
the truest and kindest consideration for my feelings. "Write to me
often," said the charming creature, "and come back to me as soon as you
can." Her father took her to London. Two days before they left, I said
good-bye at the rectory and at Browndown; and started--once more by the
Newhaven and Dieppe route--for Paris.
I was in no humour (as your English saying is) to mince matters, in
controlling this new outbreak on the part of my evergreen parent. I
insisted on instantly removing him from Paris, and taking him on a
continental tour. I was proof against his paternal embraces; I was deaf
to his noble sentiments. He declared he should die on the road. When I
look back at it now, I am amazed at my own cruelty. I said, "En route,
Papa!"--and packed him up, and took him to Italy.
He became enamored, at intervals, now of one fair traveler and now of
another, all through the journey from Paris to Rome. (Wonderful old man!)
Arrived at Rome--that hotbed of the enemies of mankind--I saw my way to
putting a moral extinguisher on the author of my being. The Eternal City
contains three hundred and sixty-five churches, and (say) three million
and sixty-five pictures. I insisted on his seeing them all--at the
advanced age of seventy-five years! The sedative result followed, exactly
as I had anticipated. I stupefied good Papa with churches and
pictures--and then I tried him with a marble woman to begin with. He fell
asleep before the Venus of the Capitol. When I saw that, I said to
myself, Now he will do; Don Juan is reformed at last.
Lucilla's correspondence with me--at first cheerful--gradually assumed a
desponding tone.
Six weeks had passed since her departure from Dimchurch; and still
Oscar's letters held out no hope of his being able to join her in London.
His recovery was advancing, but not so rapidly as his medical adviser had
anticipated. It was possible--to look the worst in the face boldly--that
he might not get the doctor's permission to leave Browndown before the
time arrived for Lucilla's return to the rectory. In this event, he could
only entreat her to be patient, and to remember that though he was
gaining ground but slowly, he was still getting on. Under these
circumstances, Lucilla was naturally vexed and dejected. She had never
(she wrote), from her girlhood upward, spent such a miserable time with
her aunt as she was spending now.
On reading this letter, I instantly smelt something wrong.
I corresponded with Oscar almost as frequently as with Lucilla. His last
letter to me flatly contradicted his last letter to his promised wife. In
writing to my address, he declared himself to be rapidly advancing
towards recovery. Under the new treatment, the fits succeeded each other
at longer and longer intervals, and endured a shorter and shorter time.
Here then was plainly a depressing report sent to Lucilla, and an
encouraging report sent to me.
What did it mean?
Oscar's next letter to me answered the question.
"I told you in my last" (he wrote), "that the discoloration of my skin
had begun. The complexion which you were once so good as to admire, has
disappeared for ever. I am now of a livid ashen color--so like death,
that I sometimes startle myself when I look in the glass. In about six
weeks more, as the doctor calculates, this will deepen to a blackish
blue; and then, 'the saturation' (as he calls it) will be complete.
"So far from feeling any useless regrets at having taken the medicine
which is producing these ugly effects, I am more grateful to my Nitrate
of Silver than words can say. If you ask for the secret of this
extraordinary exhibition of philosophy on my part, I can give it in one
line. For the last ten days, I have not had a fit. In other words, for
the last ten days, I have lived in Paradise. I declare I would have
cheerfully lost an arm or a leg to gain the blessed peace of mind, the
intoxicating confidence in the future--it is nothing less--that I feel
now.
"Still there is a drawback which prevents me from enjoying perfect
tranquillity even yet. When was there ever a pleasure in this world,
without a lurking possibility of pain hidden away in it somewhere?
"I have lately discovered a peculiarity in Lucilla which is new to me,
and which has produced a very unpleasant impression on my mind. My
proposed avowal to her of the change in my personal appearance, has now
become a matter of far more serious difficulty than I had anticipated
when the question was discussed between you and me at Browndown.
"Have you ever found out that the strongest antipathy she has, is her
purely imaginary antipathy to dark people and to dark shades of color of
all kinds? This strange prejudice is the result, as I suppose, of some
morbid growth of her blindness, quite as inexplicable to herself as to
other people. Explicable, or not, there it is in her. Read the extract
that follows from one of her letters to her father, which her father
showed to me--and you will not be surprised to hear that I tremble for
myself when the time comes for telling her what I have done.
"Thus she writes to Mr. Finch:--
" 'I am sorry to say, I have had a little quarrel with my aunt. It is all
made up now, but it has hardly left us such good friends as we were
before. Last week, there was a dinner-party here; and, among the guests,
was a Hindoo gentleman (converted to Christianity) to whom my aunt has
taken a great fancy. While the maid was dressing me, I unluckily inquired
if she had seen the Hindoo--and, hearing that she had, I still more
unfortunately asked her to tell me what he was like. She described him as
being very tall and lean, with a dark brown complexion and glittering
black eyes. My mischievous fancy instantly set to work on this horrid
combination of darknesses. Try as I might to resist it, my mind drew a
dreadful picture of the Hindoo, as a kind of monster in human form. I
would have given worlds to have been excused from going down into the
drawing-room. At the last moment I was sent for, and the Hindoo was
introduced to me. The instant I felt him approaching, my darkness was
peopled with brown demons. He took my hand. I tried hard to control
myself--but I really could not help shuddering and starting back when he
touched me. To make matters worse, he sat next to me at dinner. In five
minutes I had long, lean, black-eyed beings all round me; perpetually
growing in numbers, and pressing closer and closer on me as they grew. It
ended in my being obliged to leave the table. When the guests were all
gone, my aunt was furious. I admitted my conduct was unreasonable in the
last degree. At the same time, I begged her to make allowances for me. I
reminded her that I was blind at a year old, and that I had really no
idea of what any person was like, except by drawing pictures of them in
my imagination, from description, and from my own knowledge obtained by
touch. I appealed to her to remember that, situated as I am, my fancy is
peculiarly liable to play me tricks, and that I have no sight to see
with, and to show me--as other people's eyes show _them_--when they have
taken a false view of persons and things. It was all in vain. My aunt
would admit of no excuse for me. I was so irritated by her injustice,
that I reminded her of an antipathy of her own, quite as ridiculous as
mine--an antipathy to cats. She, who can see that cats are harmless,
shudders and turns pale, for all that, if a cat is in the same room with
her. Set my senseless horror of dark people against her senseless horror
of cats--and say which of us has the right to be angry with the other?' "
Such was the quotation from Lucilla's letter to her father. At the end of
it, Oscar resumed, as follows:--
"I wonder whether you will now understand me, if I own to you that I have
made the worst of my case in writing to Lucilla? It is the only excuse I
can produce for not joining her in London. Weary as I am of our long
separation, I cannot prevail on myself to run the risk of meeting her in
the presence of strangers, who would instantly notice my frightful color,
and betray it to her. Think of her shuddering and starting back from my
hand when it took hers! No! no! I must choose my own opportunity, in this
quiet place, of telling her what (I suppose) must be told--with time
before me to prepare her mind for the disclosure (if it must come), and
with nobody but you near to see the first mortifying effect of the shock
which I shall inflict on her.
"I have only to add, before I release you, that I write these lines in
the strictest confidence. You have promised not to mention my
disfigurement to Lucilla, unless I first give you leave. I now, more than
ever, hold you to that promise. The few people about me here, are all
pledged to secrecy as you are. If it is really inevitable that she should
know the truth--I alone must tell it; in my own way, and at my own time."
"If it must come," "if it is really inevitable"--these phrases in Oscar's
letter satisfied me that he was already beginning to comfort himself with
an insanely delusive idea--the idea that it might be possible permanently
to conceal the ugly personal change in him from Lucilla's knowledge.
If I had been at Dimchurch, I have no doubt I should have begun to feel
seriously uneasy at the turn which things appeared to be taking now.
But distance has a very strange effect in altering one's customary way of
thinking of affairs at home. Being in Italy instead of in England, I
dismissed Lucilla's antipathies and Oscar's scruples, as both alike
unworthy of serious consideration. Sooner or later, time (I considered)
would bring these two troublesome young people to their senses. Their
marriage would follow, and there would be an end of it! In the meanwhile,
I continued to feast good Papa on Holy Families and churches. Ah, poor
dear, how he yawned over Caraccis and cupolas! and how fervently he
promised never to fall in love again, if I would only take him back to
Paris!
We set our faces homeward a day or two after the receipt of Oscar's
letter. I left my reformed father, resting his aching old bones in his
own easy-chair; capable perhaps, even yet, of contracting a Platonic
attachment to a lady of his own time of life--but capable (as I firmly
believed) of nothing more. "Oh, my child, let me rest!" he said, when I
wished him good-bye. "And never show me a church or a picture again as
long as I live!"
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST
Madame Pratolungo Returns to Dimchurch
I REACHED London in the last week of Lucilla's residence under her aunt's
roof, and waited in town until it was time to take her back to Dimchurch.
As soon as it had become obviously too late for Oscar to risk the dreaded
meeting with Lucilla before strangers, his correspondence had, as a
matter of course, assumed a brighter tone. She was in high spirits once
more, poor thing, when we met--and full of delight at having me near her
again. We thoroughly enjoyed our few days in London--and took our fill of
music at operas and concerts. I got on excellently well with the aunt
until the last day, when something happened which betrayed me into an
avowal of my political convictions.
The old lady's consternation, when she discovered that I looked hopefully
forward to a coming extermination of kings and priests, and a general
re-distribution of property all over the civilized globe, is unutterable
in words. On that occasion, I made one more aristocrat tremble. I also
closed Miss Batchford's door on me for the rest of my life. No matter!
The day is coming when the Batchford branch of humanity will not possess
a door to close. All Europe is drifting nearer and nearer to the
Pratolungo programme. Cheer up, my brothers without land, and my sisters
without money in the Funds! We will have it out with the infamous rich
yet. Long live the Republic!
Early in the month of April, Lucilla and I took leave of the Metropolis,
and went back to Dimchurch.
As we drew nearer and nearer to the rectory, as Lucilla began to flush
and fidget in eager anticipation of her re-union with Oscar, that
uneasiness of mind which I had so readily dismissed while I was in Italy,
began to find its way back to me again. My imagination now set to work at
drawing pictures--startling pictures of Oscar as a changed being, as a
Medusa's head too terrible to be contemplated by mortal eyes. Where would
he meet us? At the entrance to the village? No. At the rectory gate? No.
In the quieter part of the garden which was at the back of the house?
Yes! There he stood waiting for us--alone!
Lucilla flew into his arms with a cry of delight. I stood behind and
looked at them.
Ah, how vividly I remember--at the moment when she embraced him--the
first shock of seeing the two faces together! The drug had done its work.
I saw her fair cheek laid innocently against the livid blackish blue of
_his_ discolored skin. Heavens, how cruelly that first embrace marked the
contrast between what he had been when I left him, and what he had
changed to when I saw him now! His eyes turned from her face to mine, in
silent appeal to me while he held her in his arms. Their look told me the
thought in him, as eloquently as if he had put it into words. "You, who
love her, say--can we ever be cruel enough to tell her of _this?_"
I approached to take his hand. At the same moment, Lucilla suddenly drew
back from him, laid her left hand on his shoulder, and passed her right
hand rapidly over his face.
For an instant I felt my heart stand still. Her miraculous sensitiveness
of touch had detected the dark color of my dress, on the day when we
first met. Would it serve her, this time, as truly as it had served her
then?
She paused, after the first passage of her fingers over his face, with
the breathless attention to what she was about, which, in my own case, I
remembered so well. A second time, she passed her hand over
him--considered again--and turned my way next.
"What does his face tell _you?_" she asked. "It tells _me_ that he has
something on his mind. What is it?"
We were safe--so far! The hateful medicine, in altering the color, had
not affected the texture, of his skin. As her touch had left it on her
departure, so her touch found it again, on her return.
Before I could reply to Lucilla, Oscar answered for himself.
"Nothing is wrong, my darling," he said. "My nerves are a little out of
order to-day; and the joy of seeing you again has overcome me for the
moment--that is all."
She shook her head impatiently.
"No," she said, "it's not all." She touched his heart. "Why is it beating
so fast?" She took his hand in hers. "Why has it turned so cold? I must
know. I _will_ know! Come indoors."
At that awkward moment, the most wearisome of living men suddenly proved
himself to be the most welcome of living men. The rector appeared in the
garden, to receive his daughter on her return. Enfolded in Reverend
Finch's paternal embraces; harangued by Reverend Finch's prodigious
voice, Lucilla was effectually silenced--the subject was inevitably
changed. Oscar drew me aside out of hearing, while her attention was
diverted from him.
"I saw you," he said. "_You_ were horrified at the first sight of me.
_You_ were relieved when you found that her touch told her nothing. Help
me to keep her from suspecting it, for two months more--and you will be
the best friend that ever man had."
"Two months?" I repeated.
"Yes. If there is no return of the fits in two months, the doctor will
consider my recovery complete. Lucilla and I may be married at the end of
the time."
"My friend Oscar, are you contemplating a fraud on Lucilla?"
"What do you mean?"
"Come! come! you know what I mean! Is it honorable first to entrap her
into marrying you--and then to confess to her the color of your face?"
He sighed bitterly.
"I shall fill her with horror of me, if I confess it. Look at me! look at
me!" he said, lifting his ghastly hands in despair to his blue face.
I was determined not to give way--even to that.
"Be a man!" I said. "Own it boldly. What is she going to marry you for?
For your face that she can never see? No! For your heart that is one with
her own. Trust to her natural good sense--and, better than that, to the
devoted love that you have inspired in her. She will see her stupid
prejudice in its true light, when she feels it trying to part her from
_you._"
"No! no! no! Remember her letter to her father. I shall lose her for
ever, if I tell her now!"
I took his arm, and endeavored to lead him to Lucilla. She as already
trying to escape from her father; she was already longing to hear the
sound of Oscar's voice again.
He obstinately shrank back. I began to feel angry with him. In another
moment, I should have said or done something that I might have repented
of afterwards--if a new interruption had not happened before I could open
my lips.
Another person appeared in the garden--the man-servant from Browndown;
with a letter for his master in his hand.
"This has just come, sir," said the man, "by the afternoon post. It is
marked 'Immediate.' I thought I had better bring it to you here."
Oscar took the letter, and looked at the address. "My brother's writing!"
he exclaimed. "A letter from Nugent!"
He opened the letter--and burst out with a cry of joy which brought
Lucilla instantly to his side.
"What is it?" she asked eagerly.
"Nugent is coming back! Nugent will be here in a week! Oh, Lucilla! my
brother is coming to stay with me at Browndown!"
He caught her in his arms, and kissed her, in the first rapture of
receiving that welcome news. She forced herself away from him without
answering a word. She turned her poor blind face round and round, in the
search for me.
"Here I am!" I said.
She roughly and angrily put her arm in mine. I saw the jealous misery in
her face as she dragged me away with here to the house. Never yet had
Oscar's voice, in _her_ experience of him, sounded the note of happiness
that she heard in it now! Never yet had she felt Oscar's heart on Oscar's
lips, as she felt it when he kissed her in the first joy of anticipating
Nugent's return!
"Can he hear me?" she whispered, when we had left the lawn, and she felt
the gravel under her feet.
"No. What is it?"
"I hate his brother!"
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND
The Twin-Brother's Letter
LITTLE thinking what a storm he had raised, poor innocent
Oscar--paternally escorted by the rector--followed us into the house,
with his open letter in his hand.
Judging by certain signs visible in my reverend friend, I concluded that
the announcement of Nugent Dubourg's coming visit to Dimchurch--regarded
by the rest of us as heralding the appearance of a twin-brother--was
regarded by Mr. Finch as promising the arrival of a twin-fortune. Oscar
and Nugent shared the comfortable paternal inheritance. Finch smelt
money.
"Compose yourself," I whispered to Lucilla as the two gentlemen followed
us into the sitting-room. "Your jealousy of his brother is a childish
jealousy. There is room enough in his heart for his brother as well as
for you."
She only repeated obstinately, with a vicious pinch on my arm, "I hate
his brother!"
"Come and sit down by me," said Oscar, approaching her on the other side.
"I want to run over Nugent's letter. It's so interesting! There is a
message in it to you." Too deeply absorbed in his subject to notice the
sullen submission with which she listened to him, he placed her on a
chair, and began reading. "The first lines," he explained, "relate to
Nugent's return to England, and to his delightful idea of coming to stay
with me at Browndown. Then he goes on: 'I found all your letters waiting
for me on my return to New York. Need I tell you, my dearest brother----'
"
Lucilla stopped him at those words by rising abruptly from her seat.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
"I don't like this chair!"
Oscar got her another--an easy-chair this time--and returned to the
letter.
" 'Need I tell you, my dearest brother, how deeply you have interested me
by the announcement of your contemplated marriage? Your happiness is my
happiness. I feel with you; I congratulate you; I long to see my future
sister-in-law----' "
Lucilla got up again. Oscar, in astonishment, asked what was wrong now?
"I am not comfortable at this end of the room."
She walked to the other end of the room. Patient Oscar walked after her,
with his precious letter in his hand. He offered her a third chair. She
petulantly declined to take it, and selected another chair for herself.
Oscar returned to the letter:--
" 'How melancholy, and yet how interesting it is, to hear that she is
blind! My sketches of American scenery happened to be lying about in the
room when I read your letter. The first thought that came to me, on
hearing of Miss Finch's affliction, was suggested by my sketches. I said
to myself, "Sad! sad! my sister-in-law will never see my Works." The true
artist, Oscar, is always thinking of his Works. I shall bring back, let
me tell you, some very remarkable studies for future pictures. They will
not be so numerous, perhaps, as you may expect. I prefer to trust to my
intellectual perception of beauty, rather than to mere laborious
transcripts from Nature. In certain moods of mine (speaking as an artist)
Nature puts me out.' " There Oscar paused, and appealed to me. "What
writing!--eh? I always told you, Madame Pratolungo, that Nugent was a
genius. You see it now. Don't get up, Lucilla. I am going on. There is a
message to you in this part of the letter. So neatly expressed!"
Lucilla persisted in getting up; the announcement of the neatly-expressed
message to be read next, produced no effect on her. She walked to the
window, and trifled impatiently with the flowers placed in it. Oscar
looked in mild astonishment, first at me--then at the rector. Reverend
Finch--listening thus far with the complimentary attention due to the
correspondence of one young man of fortune with another young man of
fortune--interfered in Oscar's interests, to secure him a patient
hearing.
"My dear Lucilla, endeavor to control your restlessness. You interfere
with our enjoyment of this interesting letter. I could wish to see fewer
changes of place, my child, and a more undivided attention to what Oscar
is reading to you."
"I am not interested in what he is reading to me." In the nervous
irritation which produced this ungracious answer, she overthrew one of
the flower-pots. Oscar set it up again for her with undiminished
good-temper.
"Not interested!" he exclaimed. "Wait a little. You haven't heard
Nugent's message yet. Listen to this! 'Present my best and kindest
regards to the future Mrs. Oscar' (dear fellow!); 'and say that she has
given me a new interest in hastening my return to England.' There! Isn't
that prettily put? Come Lucilla! own that Nugent is worth listening to
when he writes about _you!_"
She turned towards him for the first time. The charm of the tone in which
he spoke those words subdued her, in spite of herself.
"I am much obliged to your brother," she answered gently, "and very much
ashamed of myself for what I said just now." She stole her hand into his,
and whispered, "You are so fond of Nugent--I begin to be almost afraid
there will be no love left for me."
Oscar was enchanted. "Wait till you see him, and you will be as fond of
him as I am," he said. "Nugent is not like me. He fascinates people the
moment they come in contact with him. Nobody can resist Nugent."
She still held his hand, with a perplexed and saddened face. The
admirable absence of any jealousy on his side--his large and generous
confidence in _her_ love for _him--was just the rebuke to her that she
could feel; just the rebuke also (in my opinion) that she had deserved.
"Go on, Oscar," said the rector, in his deepest notes of encouragement.
"What next, dear boy? what next?"
"Another interesting bit, of quite a new kind," Oscar replied. "There is
a little mystery to stir us up on the last page of the letter. Nugent
says:--'I have become acquainted (here, in New York) with a very
remarkable man, a German who has made a great deal of money in the United
States. He proposes visiting England early in the present year; and he
will write and let me know when he has arrived. I shall feel particular
pleasure in presenting him to you and your future wife. It is quite
possible that you may have special reason to congratulate yourselves on
making his acquaintance. For the present, no more of my new friend until
we meet at Browndown.'--'Special reason to congratulate ourselves on
making his acquaintance.' " repeated Oscar, folding up the letter.
"Nugent never writes in that way without a reason for it. Who can the
German gentleman be?"
Mr. Finch suddenly lifted his head, and looked at Oscar with a certain
appearance of alarm.
"Your brother mentions that he has made his fortune in America," said the
Reverend gentleman. "I hope he is not connected with the money-market. He
might infect Mr. Nugent with the spirit of reckless speculation which is,
so to speak, the national sin of the United States. Your brother, having
no doubt the same generous disposition as yours----"
"A far finer disposition than mine, Mr. Finch," interposed Oscar.
"Possessed, like you, of the gifts of fortune," proceeded the rector,
with mounting enthusiasm.
"Once possessed of them," said Oscar. "Far from being overburdened with
the gifts of fortune, now!"
"What!!!" cried Mr. Finch, with a start of consternation.
"Nugent has run through his fortune," proceeded Oscar, quite composedly.
"I lent him the money to go to America. My brother is a genius, Mr.
Finch. When did you ever hear of a genius who could keep within limits?
Nugent is not content to live in my humble way. He has the tastes of a
prince--money is nothing to him. It doesn't matter. He will make a new
fortune Out of his pictures; and, in the meantime, you know, I can always
lend him something to go on with."
Mr. Finch rose from his seat, with the air of a man whose just
anticipations have not been realized--whose innocent confidence has been
scandalously betrayed. Here was a prospect! Another person in perpetual
want of money, going to settle under the shadow of the rectory! Another
man likely to borrow of Oscar--and that man his brother!
"I fail to take your light view of your brother's extravagance," said the
rector, addressing Oscar with his loftiest severity of manner, at the
door. "I deplore and reprehend Mr. Nugent's misuse of the bounty bestowed
on him by an all-wise Providence. You will do well to consider, before
you encourage your brother's extravagance by lending him money. What does
the great poet of humanity say of lenders? The Bard of Avon tells us,
that 'loan oft loses both itself and friend.' Lay that noble line to
heart, Oscar! Lucilla, be on your guard against that restlessness which I
have already had occasion to reprove. I find I must leave you, Madame
Pratolungo. I had forgotten my parish duties. My parish duties are
waiting for me. Good day! good day!"
He looked round on us all three, in turn, with a very sour face, and
walked out. "Surely," I thought to myself, "this brother of Oscar's is
not beginning well! First, the daughter takes offense at him, and now the
father follows her example. Even on the other side of the Atlantic, Mr.
Nugent Dubourg exercises a malignant influence, and disturbs the family
tranquillity before he has shown his nose in the house!"
Nothing more that is worth recording happened on that day. We had a very
dull evening. Lucilla was out of spirits. As for me, I had not yet had
time to accustom myself to the shocking spectacle of Oscar's discolored
face. I was serious and silent. You would never have guessed me to be a
Frenchwoman, if you had seen me for the first time on the occasion of my
return to the rectory.
The next day a small domestic event happened, which must be chronicled in
this place.
Our Dimchurch doctor, always dissatisfied with his position in an obscure
country place, had obtained an appointment in India which offered great
professional advantages to an ambitious man. He called to take leave of
us on his departure. I found an opportunity of speaking to him about
Oscar. He entirely agreed with me that the attempt to keep the change
produced in his former patient by the Nitrate of Silver from Lucilla's
knowledge, was simply absurd. The truth would reach her, he said, before
many days were over our heads. With that prediction, addressed to my
private ear, he left us. The removal of him from the scene was, you will
please to bear in mind, the removal of an important local witness to the
medical treatment of Oscar, and was, as such, an incident with a bearing
of its own on the future, which claims a place for it in the present
narrative.
Two more days passed, and nothing happened. On the morning of the third
day, the doctor's prophecy was all but fulfilled, through the medium of
the wandering Arab of the family, our funny little Jicks.
While Lucilla and I were strolling about the garden with Oscar, the child
suddenly darted out on us from behind a tree, and, seizing Oscar round
the legs, hailed him affectionately at the top of her voice as "The Blue
Man!" Lucilla instantly stopped, and said, "Who do you call 'The Blue
Man'?" Jicks answered boldly, "Oscar." Lucilla caught the child up in her
arms. "Why do you call Oscar 'The Blue Man'?" she asked. Jicks pointed to
Oscar's face, and then, remembering Lucilla's blindness, appealed to me.
"You tell her!" said Jicks, in high glee. Oscar seized my hand, and
looked at me imploringly. I determined not to interfere. It was bad
enough to remain passive, and to let her be kept in the dark. Actively, I
was resolved to take no part in deceiving her. Her color rose; she put
Jicks down on the ground. "Are you both dumb?" she asked. "Oscar! I
insist on knowing it--how have you got the nick-name of 'The Blue Man'?"
Left helpless, Oscar (to my disgust) took refuge in a lie--and, worse
still, a clumsy lie. He declared that he had got his nick-name in the
nursery, at the time of Lucilla's absence in London, by one day painting
his face in the character of Bluebeard to amuse the children! If Lucilla
had felt the faintest suspicion of the truth, blind as she was, she must
now have discovered it. As things were, Oscar annoyed and irritated her.
I could see that it cost her a struggle to suppress something like a
feeling of contempt for him. "Amuse the children, the next time, in some
other way," she said. "Though I can't see you, still I don't like to hear
of your disfiguring your face by painting it blue." With that answer, she
walked away a little by herself, evidently disappointed in her betrothed
husband for the first time in her experience of him.
He cast another imploring look at me. "Did you hear what she said about
my face?" he whispered.
"You have lost an excellent opportunity of speaking out," I answered. "I
believe you will bitterly regret the folly and the cruelty of deceiving
her."
He shook his head, with the immovable obstinacy of a weak man.
"Nugent doesn't think as you do," he said, handing me the letter. "Read
that bit there--now Lucilla is out of hearing."
I paused for a moment before I could read. The resemblance between the
twins extended even to their handwritings! If I had picked Nugent's
letter up, I should have handed it to Oscar as a letter of Oscar's own
writing.
The paragraph to which he pointed, only contained these lines:--"Your
last relieves my anxiety about your health. I entirely agree with you
that any personal sacrifice which cures you of those horrible attacks is
a sacrifice wisely made. As to your keeping the change a secret from the
young lady, I can only say that I suppose you know best how to act in
this emergency. I will abstain from forming any opinion of my own until
we meet."
I handed Oscar back the letter.
"There is no very warm approval there of the course you are taking," I
said. "The only difference between your brother and me is, that he
suspends his opinion, and that I express mine."
"I have no fear of my brother," Oscar answered. "Nugent will feel for me,
and understand me, when he comes to Browndown. In the meantime, this
shall not happen again."
He stooped over Jicks. The child, while we were talking, had laid herself
down luxuriously on the grass, and was singing to herself little snatches
of a nursery song. Oscar pulled her up on her legs rather roughly. He was
out of temper with her, as well as with himself.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I am going to see Mr. Finch," he answered, "and to have Jicks kept for
the future out of Lucilla's garden."
"Does Mr. Finch approve of your silence?"
"Mr. Finch, Madame Pratolungo, leaves me to decide on a matter which
concerns nobody but Lucilla and myself."
After that reply, there was an end of all further remonstrance from me,
as a matter of course.
Oscar walked off with his prisoner to the house. Jicks trotted along by
his side, unconscious of the mischief she had done, singing another verse
of the nursery song. I rejoined Lucilla, with my mind made up as to the
line of conduct I should adopt in the future. If Oscar did succeed in
keeping the truth concealed from her, I was positively resolved, come
what might of it, to enlighten her before they were married, with my own
lips. What! after pledging myself to keep the secret? Yes. Perish the
promise which makes me false to a person whom I love! I despise such
promises from the bottom of my heart.
Two days more slipped by--and then a telegram found its way to Browndown.
Oscar came running to us, at the rectory, with his news. Nugent had
landed at Liverpool. Oscar was to expect him at Dimchurch on the next
day.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD
He sets us All Right
I HAVE thus far quite inadvertently omitted to mention one of the
prominent virtues of Reverend Finch. He was an accomplished master of
that particular form of human persecution which is called reading aloud;
and he inflicted his accomplishment on his family circle at every
available opportunity. Of what we suffered on these occasions, I shall
say nothing. Let it be enough to mention that the rector thoroughly
enjoyed the pleasure of hearing his own magnificent voice.
There was no escaping Mr. Finch when the rage for "reading" seized on
him. Now on one pretense, and now on another, he descended on us
unfortunate women, book in hand; seated us at one end of the room; placed
himself at the other; opened his dreadful mouth; and fired words at us,
like shots at a target, by the hour together. Sometimes he gave us
poetical readings from Shakespeare or Milton; and sometimes Parliamentary
speeches by Burke or Sheridan. Read what he might, he made such a noise
and such a fuss over it; he put his own individuality so prominently in
the foremost place, and he kept the poets or the orators whom he was
supposed to be interpreting so far in the back ground, that they lost
every trace of character of their own, and became one and all perfectly
intolerable reflections of Mr. Finch. I date my first unhappy doubts of
the supreme excellence of Shakespeare's poetry from the rector's
readings; and I attribute to the same exasperating cause my implacable
hostility (on every question of the time) to the policy of Mr. Burke. On
the evening when Nugent Dubourg was expected at Browndown--and when we
particularly wanted to be left alone to dress ourselves, and to gossip by
anticipation about the expected visitor--Mr. Finch was seized with one of
his periodical rages for firing off words at his family, after tea. He
selected _Hamlet_ as the medium for exhibiting his voice, on this
occasion; and he declared, as the principal motive for taking his
elocutionary exercise, that the object he especially had in view was the
benefit of poor Me!
"My good creature, I accidentally heard you reading to Lucilla, the other
day. It was very nice, as far as it went--very nice indeed. But you will
allow me--as a person, Madame Pratolungo, possessing considerable
practice in the art of reading aloud--to observe that you might be
benefited by a hint or two. I will give you a few ideas. (Mrs. Finch! I
propose giving Madame Pratolungo a few ideas.) Pay particular attention,
if you please, to the Pauses, and to the management of the Voice at the
end of the lines. Lucilla, my child, you are interested in this. The
perfecting of Madame Pratolungo is a matter of considerable importance to
_you._ Don't go away."
Lucilla and I happened, on that evening, to be guests at the rectory
table. It was one of the regular occasions on which we left our own side
of the house, and joined the family at (what Mr. Finch called) "the
pastor's evening meal." He had got his wife; he had got his eldest
daughter; he had got your humble servant. A horrid smile of enjoyment
overspread the reverend gentleman's face, as he surveyed us from the
opposite end of the room, and opened his vocal fire on his audience of
three.
"_Hamlet:_ Act the First; Scene the First. Elsinore. A Platform before
the Castle. Francisco on his post" (Mr. Finch). "Enter to him Bernardo"
(Mr. Finch). "Who's there?" "Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself."
(Mrs. Finch unfolds herself--she suckles the baby, and tries to look as
if she was having an intellectual treat.) "Francisco and Bernardo
converse in bass--Boom-boom-boom. Enter Horatio and Marcellus" (Mr. Finch
and Mr. Finch.) "Stand! Who's there?" "Friends to this ground." "And
liegemen to the Dane." (Madame Pratolungo begins to feel the elocutionary
exposition of Shakespeare, where she always feels it, in her legs. She
tries to sit still on her chair. Useless! She is suffering under the
malady known to her by bitter experience of Mr. Finch, as the
Hamlet-Fidgets.) Bernardo and Franciso, Horatio and Marcellus,
converse--Boom-boom-boom. "Enter Ghost of Hamlet's Father." Mr. Finch
makes an awful pause. In the supernatural silence, we can hear the baby
sucking. Mrs. Finch enjoys her intellectual treat. Madame Pratolungo
fidgets. Lucilla catches the infection, and fidgets too. Marcellus-Finch
goes on. "Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio." Bernardo-Finch backs
him: "Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio." Lucilla-Finch
inserts herself in the dialogue: "Papa, I am very sorry; I have had a
nervous headache all day; please excuse me if I take a turn in the
garden." The rector makes another awful pause, and glares at his
daughter. (Exit Lucilla.) Horatio looks at the Ghost, and takes up the
dialogue: "Most like; it harrows me "--Boom-boom-boom. The baby is
satiated. Mrs. Finch wants her handkerchief. Madame Pratolungo seizes the
opportunity of moving her distracted legs, and finds the handkerchief.
Mr. Finch pauses--glares---goes on again--reaches the second scene.
"Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius,
and Lords Attendant." All Mr. Finch! oh, my legs! my legs! all Mr. Finch,
and Boom-boom-boom. Third scene. "Enter Laertes and Ophelia." (Both
Rectors of Dimchurch; both with deep bass voices; both about five feet
high, pitted with the small-pox, and adorned round the neck with dingy
white cravats.) Mr. Finch goes on and on and on. Mrs. Finch and the baby
simultaneously close their eyes in slumber. Madame Pratolungo suffers
such tortures of restlessness in her lower limbs, that she longs for a
skilled surgeon to take out his knife and deliver her from her own legs.
Mr. Finch advances in deeper and deeper bass, in keener and keener
enjoyment, to the Fourth Scene. ("Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.")
Mercy! what do I hear? Is relief approaching to us from the world
outside? Are there footsteps in the hall? Yes! Mrs. Finch opens her eyes;
Mrs. Finch hears the footsteps, and rejoices in them as I do. Reverend
Hamlet hears nothing but his own voice. He begins the scene: "The air
bites shrewdly. It is very cold." The door opens. The rector feels a gust
of air, dramatically appropriate, just at the right moment. He looks
round. If it is a servant, let that domestic person tremble! No--not a
servant. Guests--heavens be praised, guests. Welcome, gentlemen--welcome!
No more Hamlet, tonight, thanks to You. Enter two Characters who must be
instantly attended to:--Mr. Oscar Dubourg; introducing his twin-brother
from America, Mr. Nugent Dubourg.
Astonishment at the extraordinary resemblance between them, was the one
impression felt by all three of us, as the brothers entered the room.
Exactly alike in their height, in their walk, in their features, and in
their voices. Both with the same colored hair and the same beardless
faces. Oscar's smile exactly reflected on Nugent's lips. Oscar's odd
little semi-foreign tricks of gesticulation with his hands, exactly
reproduced in the hands of Nugent. And, to crown it all, there was the
complexion which Oscar had lost for ever (just a shade darker perhaps)
found again on Nugent's cheeks! The one difference which made it possible
to distinguish between them, at the moment when they first appeared
together in the room, was also the one difference which Lucilla was
physically incapable of detecting--the terrible contrast of color between
the brother who bore the blue disfigurement of the drug, and the brother
who was left as Nature had made him.
"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Finch--I have long wished for
this pleasure. Thank you, Mr. Finch, for all your kindness to my brother.
Madame Pratolungo, I presume? Permit me to shake hands. It is needless to
say, I have heard of your illustrious husband. Aha! here's a baby. Yours,
Mrs. Finch? Girl or boy, ma'am? A fine child--if a bachelor may be
allowed to pronounce an opinion. _Tweet--tweet--tweet!_"
He chirruped to the baby, as if he had been a family man, and snapped his
fingers gaily. Poor Oscar's blue face turned in silent triumph towards
me. "What did I tell you?" his look asked. "Did I not say Nugent
fascinated everybody at first sight?" Most true. An irresistible man. So
utterly different in his manner from Oscar--except when he was in
repose--and yet so like Oscar in other respects, I can only describe him
as his brother completed. He had the pleasant lively flow of spirits, the
easy winning gentleman-like confidence in himself, which Oscar wanted.
And, then, what excellent taste he possessed. He liked children! he
respected the memory of my glorious Pratolungo!--In half a minute from
the time when he entered the room, Nugent Dubourg had won Mrs. Finch's
heart and mine.
He turned from the baby to Mr. Finch, and pointed to the open Shakespeare
on the table.
"You were reading to the ladies?" he said. "I am afraid we have
interrupted you."
"Don't mention it," said the rector, with his lofty politeness. "Another
time will do. It is a habit of mine, Mr. Nugent, to read aloud in my
family circle. As a clergyman and a lover of poetry (in both capacities)
I have long cultivated the art of elocution----"
"My dear sir, excuse me, you have cultivated it all wrong!"
Mr. Finch paused, thunderstruck. A man in his presence presuming to have
an opinion of his own! a man in the rectory parlor capable of
interrupting the rector in the middle of a sentence! guilty of the insane
audacity of telling him, as a reader--with Shakespeare open before
them--that he read wrong!
"Oh, we heard you as we came in!" proceeded Nugent, with the most
undiminished confidence, expressed in the most gentlemanlike manner. "You
read it like this." He took up _Hamlet_ and read the opening line of the
Fourth Scene, ("The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold") with an
irresistibly-accurate imitation of Mr. Finch. "That's nor the way Hamlet
would speak. No man in his position would remark that it was very cold in
that bow-wow manner. What is Shakespeare before all things? True to
nature; always true to nature. What condition is Hamlet in when he is
expecting to see the Ghost? He is nervous, and he feels the cold. Let him
show it naturally; let him speak as any other man would speak, under the
circumstances. Look here! Quick and quiet--like this. 'The air bites
shrewdly'--there Hamlet stops and shivers--pur-rer-rer! 'it is very
cold.' That's the way to read Shakespeare!"
Mr. Finch lifted his head into the air as high as it could possibly go,
and brought the flat of his hand down with a solemn and sounding smack on
the open book.
"Allow me to say, sir----!" he began.
Nugent stopped him again, more good-humouredly than ever.
"You don't agree with me? All right! Quite useless to dispute about it. I
don't know what you may be--I am the most opinionated man in existence.
Sheer waste of time, my dear sir, to attempt convincing Me. Now, just
look at that child!" Here Mr. Nugent Dubourg's attention was suddenly
attracted by the baby. He twisted round on his heel, and addressed Mrs.
Finch. "I take the liberty of saying, ma'am, that a more senseless dress
doesn't exist, than the dress that is put, in this country, on infants of
tender years. What are the three main functions which that child--that
charming child of yours-performs? He sucks; he sleeps; and he grows. At
the present moment, he isn't sucking, he isn't sleeping--he is growing
with all his might. Under those interesting circumstances, what does he
want to do? To move his limbs freely in every direction. You let him
swing his arms to his heart's content--and you deny him freedom to kick
his legs. You clothe him in a dress three times as long as himself. He
tries to throw his legs up in the air as he throws his arms, and he can't
do it. There is his senseless long dress entangling itself in his toes,
and making an effort of what Nature intended to be a luxury. Can anything
be more absurd? What are mothers about? Why don't they think for
themselves? Take my advice--short petticoats, Mrs. Finch. Liberty,
glorious liberty, for my young friend's legs! Room, heaps of room, for
that infant martyr's toes!"
Mrs. Finch listened helplessly--lifted the baby's long petticoats, and
looked at them--stared piteously at Nugent Dubourg--opened her lips to
speak--and, thinking better of it, turned her watery eyes on her husband,
appealing to _him_ to take the matter up. Mr. Finch made another attempt
to assert his dignity--a ponderously satirical attempt, this time.
"In offering your advice to my wife, Mr. Nugent," said the rector, "you
must permit me to remark that it would have had more practical force if
it had been the advice of a married man. I beg to remind you----"
"You beg to remind me that it is the advice of a bachelor? Oh, come! that
really won't do at this time of day. Doctor Johnson settled that argument
at once and for ever, a century since. 'Sir!' (he said to somebody of
your way of thinking) 'you may scold your carpenter, when he has made a
bad table, though you can't make a table yourself.' I say to you--'Mr.
Finch, you may point out a defect in a baby's petticoats, though you
haven't got a baby yourself!' Doesn't that satisfy you? All right! Take
another illustration. Look at your room here. I can see in the twinkling
of an eye, that it's badly lit. You have only got one window--you ought
to have two. Is it necessary to be a practical builder to discover that?
Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What's this
printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed
Taxes will do. You're not in the House of Commons; you're not Chancellor
of the Exchequer--but haven't you an opinion of your own about taxation,
in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume
to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its last gasp----?"
"And the vigorous young Republic drawing its first breath of life!" I
burst in; introducing the Pratolungo programme (as my way is) at every
available opportunity.
Nugent Dubourg instantly wheeled round in my direction; and set me right
on my subject, just as he had set the rector right on reading _Hamlet,_
and Mrs. Finch right on clothing babies.
"Not a bit of it!" he pronounced positively. "The 'young Republic' is the
ricketty child of the political family. Give him up, ma'am. You will
never make a man of him."
I tried to assert myself as the rector had tried before me--with
precisely the same result. I appealed indignantly to the authority of my
illustrious husband.
"Doctor Pratolungo--" I began.
"Was an honest man," interposed Nugent Dubourg. "I am an advanced Liberal
myself--I respect him. But he was quite wrong. All sincere republicans
make the same mistake. They believe in the existence of public spirit in
Europe. Amiable delusion! Public spirit is dead in Europe. Public spirit
is the generous emotion of young nations, of new peoples. In selfish old
Europe, private interest has taken its place. When your husband preached
the republic, on what ground did he put it? On the ground that the
republic was going to elevate the nation. Pooh! Ask me to accept the
republic, on the ground that I elevate Myself--and, supposing you can
prove it, I will listen to you. If you are ever to set republican
institutions going, in the Old World--_there_ is the only motive power
that will do it!"
I was indignant at such sentiments. "My glorious husband--" I began
again.
"Would have died rather than appeal to the meanest instincts of his
fellow-creatures. Just so! There was his mistake. That's why he never
could make anything of the republic. That's why the republic is the
ricketty child of the political family. _Quod erat demonstrandum,_" said
Nugent Dubourg, finishing me off with a pleasant smile, and an easy
indicative gesture of the hand which said, "Now I have settled these
three people in succession, I am equally well satisfied with myself and
with them!"
His smile was irresistible. Bent as I was on disputing the degrading
conclusions at which he had arrived, I really had not fire enough in me,
at the moment, to feed my own indignation. As to Reverend Finch, he sat
silently swelling in a corner; digesting, as he best might, the discovery
that there was another man in the world, besides the Rector of Dimchurch,
with an excellent opinion of himself, and with perfectly unassailable
confidence and fluency in expressing it. In the momentary silence that
now followed, Oscar got his first opportunity of speaking. He had, thus
far, been quite content to admire his clever brother. He now advanced to
me, and asked what had become of Lucilla.
"The servant told me she was here," he said. "I am so anxious to
introduce her to Nugent."
Nugent put his arm affectionately round his brother's neck, and gave him
a hug. "Dear old boy! I am just as anxious as you are."
"Lucilla went out a little while since," I said, "to take a turn in the
garden."
"I'll go and find her," said Oscar. "Wait here, Nugent. I'll bring her
in."
He left the room. Before he could close the door one of the servants
appeared, to claim Mrs. Finch's private ear, on some mysterious domestic
emergency. Nugent facetiously entreated her, as she passed him, to clear
her mind of prejudice, and consider the question of infant petticoats on
its own merits. Mr. Finch took offense at this second reference to the
subject. He rose to follow his wife.
"When you are a married man, Mr. Dubourg," said the rector severely, "you
will learn to leave the management of an infant in its mother's hands."
"There's another mistake!" remarked Nugent, following him with unabated
good humour, to the door. "A married man's idea of another man as a
husband, always begins and ends with his idea of himself." He turned to
me, as the door closed on Mr. Finch. "Now we are alone, Madame
Pratolungo," he said, "I want to speak to you about Miss Finch. There is
an opportunity, before she comes in. Oscar's letter only told me that she
was blind. I am naturally interested in everything that relates to my
brother's future wife. I am particularly interested about this affliction
of hers. May I ask how long she has been blind?"
"Since she was a year old," I replied.
"Through an accident?"
"No."
"After a fever? or a disease of any other sort?"
I began to feel a little surprised at his entering into these medical
details.
"I never heard that it was through a fever, or other illness," I said.
"So far as I know, the blindness came on unexpectedly, from some cause
that did not express itself to the people about her, at the time."
He drew his chair confidentially nearer to mine. "How old is she?" he
asked.
I began to feel more than a little surprised; and I showed it, I suppose,
on telling him Lucilla's age.
"As things are now," he explained, "there are reasons which make me
hesitate to enter on the question of Miss Finch's blindness either with
my brother, or with any members of the family. I must wait to speak about
it to _them,_ until I can speak to good practical purpose. There is no
harm in my starting the subject with _you._ When she first lost her
sight, no means of restoring it were left untried, of course?"
"I should suppose not," I replied. "It's so long since, I have never
asked."
"So long since," he repeated--and then considered for a moment.
His reflections ended in a last question.
"She is resigned, I suppose--and everybody about her is resigned--to the
idea of her being hopelessly blind for life."
Instead of answering him, I put a question on my side. My heart was
beginning to beat rapidly--without my knowing why.
"Mr. Nugent Dubourg," I said, "what have you got in your mind about
Lucilla?"
"Madame Pratolungo," he replied, "I have got something in my mind which
was put into it by a friend of mine whom I met in America."
"The friend you mentioned in your letter to your brother?"
"The same."
"The German gentleman whom you propose to introduce to Oscar and
Lucilla?"
"Yes."
"May I ask who he is?"
Nugent Dubourg looked at me attentively; considered with himself for the
second time; and answered in these words:
"He is the greatest living authority, and the greatest living operator,
in diseases of the eye."
The idea in his mind burst its way into my mind in a moment.
"Gracious God!" I exclaimed, "are you mad enough to suppose that
Lucilla's sight can be restored, after a blindness of one-and-twenty
years?"
He suddenly held up his hand, in sign to me to be silent.
At the same moment the door opened; and Lucilla (followed by Oscar)
entered the room.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH
He sees Lucilla
THE first impression which poor Miss Finch produced on Nugent Dubourg,
was precisely the same as the first impression which she had produced on
me.
"Good Heavens!" he cried. "The Dresden Madonna! The Virgin of San Sisto!"
Lucilla had already heard from me of her extraordinary resemblance to the
chief figure in Raphael's renowned picture. Nugent's blunt outburst of
recognition passed unnoticed by her. She stopped short, in the middle of
the room--startled, the instant he spoke, by the extraordinary similarity
of his tone and accent to the tone and accent of his brother's voice.
"Oscar," she asked nervously, "are you behind me? or in front of me?"
Oscar laughed, and answered "Here!"--speaking behind her. She turned her
head towards the place in front of her, from which Nugent had spoken.
"Your voice is wonderfully like Oscar's," she said, addressing him
timidly. "Is your face exactly like his face, too? May I judge for myself
of the likeness between you? I can only do it in one way--by my touch."
Oscar advanced, and placed a chair for his brother by Lucilla's side.
"She has eyes in the tips of her fingers," he said. "Sit down, Nugent,
and let her pass her hand over your face."
Nugent obeyed him in silence. Now that the first impression of surprise
had passed away, I observed that a marked change was beginning to assert
itself in his manner.
Little by little, an unnatural constraint got possession of him. His
fluent tongue found nothing to talk about. His easy movements altered in
the strangest way, until they almost became the movements of a slow
awkward man. He was more like his brother than ever, as he sat down in
the chair to submit himself to Lucilla's investigation. She had produced,
at first sight--as well as I could judge--some impression on him for
which he had not been prepared; causing some mental disturbance in him
which he was for the moment quite unable to control. His eyes looked up
at her, spell-bound; his color came and went; his breath quickened
audibly when her fingers touched his face.
"What's the matter?" said Oscar, looking at him in surprise.
"Nothing is the matter," he answered, in the low absent tone of a man
whose mind was secretly pursuing its own train of thought.
Oscar said no more. Once, twice, three times, Lucilla's hand passed
slowly over Nugent's face. He submitted to it, silently, gravely,
immovably--a perfect contrast to the talkative, lively young man of half
an hour since. Lucilla employed a much longer time in examining him than
she had occupied in examining me.
While the investigation was proceeding, I had leisure to think again over
what had passed between Nugent and me on the subject of Lucilla's
blindness, before she entered the room. My mind had by this time
recovered its balance. I was able to ask myself what this young fellow's
daring idea was really worth. Was it within the range of possibility that
a sense so delicate as the sense of sight, lost for one-and-twenty years,
could be restored by any means short of a miracle? It was monstrous to
suppose it: the thing could not be. If there had been the faintest chance
of giving my poor dear back the blessing of sight, that chance would have
been tried by competent persons years and years since. I was ashamed of
myself for having been violently excited at the moment by the new thought
which Nugent had started in my mind; I was honestly indignant at his
uselessly disturbing me with the vainest of all vain hopes. The one wise
thing to do in the future, was to caution this flighty and inconsequent
young man to keep his mad notion about Lucilla to himself--and to dismiss
it from my own thoughts, at once and for ever.
Just as I arrived at that sensible resolution, I was recalled to what was
going on in the room, by Lucilla's voice, addressing me by my name.
"The likeness is wonderful," she said. "Still, I think I can find a
difference between them."
(The only difference between them was in the contrast of complexion and
in the contrast of manner--both these being dissimilarities which
appealed more or less directly to the eye.)
"What difference do you find?" I asked.
She slowly came towards me, with an anxious perplexed face; pondering as
she advanced.
"I can't explain it," she answered--after a long silence.
When Lucilla left him, Nugent rose from his chair. He abruptly--almost
roughly--took his brother's hand. He spoke to his brother in a strangely
excited, feverish, headlong way.
"My dear fellow, now I have seen her, I congratulate you more heartily
than ever. She is charming; she is unique. Oscar! I could almost envy
you, if you were anyone else!"
Oscar was radiant with delight. His brother's opinion ranked above all
human opinions in his estimation. Before he could say a word in return,
Nugent left him as abruptly as he had approached him; walking away by
himself to the window--and standing there, looking out.
Lucilla had not heard him. She was still pondering, with the same
perplexed face. The likeness between the twins was apparently weighing on
her mind--an unsolved problem that vexed and irritated it. Without
anything said by me to lead to resuming the subject, she returned
obstinately to the assertion that she had just made.
"I tell you again I am sensible of a difference between them," she
repeated--"though you don't seem to believe me."
I interpreted this uneasy reiteration as meaning that she was rather
trying to convince herself than to convince me. In her blind condition,
it was doubly and trebly embarrassing not to know one brother from the
other. I understood her unwillingness to acknowledge this--I felt (in her
position) how it would have irritated me. She was waiting--impatiently
waiting--for me to say something on my side. I am, as you know already,
an indiscreet woman. I innocently said one of my rash things.
"I believe whatever you tell me, my dear," I answered. "You can find out
a difference between them, I have no doubt. Still, I own I should like to
see it put to the proof."
Her color rose. "How?" she asked abruptly.
"Try your touch alternately on both their faces," I suggested, "without
knowing beforehand which position they each of them occupy. Make three
trials--leaving them to change their places or not, between each trial,
just as they please. If you guess which is which correctly three times
following, there will be the proof that you can really lay your hand on a
difference between them."
Lucilla shrank from accepting the challenge. She drew back a step, and
silently shook her head. Nugent, who had overheard me, turned round
suddenly from the window, and supported my proposal.
"A capital notion!" he burst out. "Let's try it! You don't object,
Oscar--do you?"
"_I_ object?" cried Oscar--amazed at the bare idea of his opposing any
assertion of his will to the assertion of his brother's will. "If Lucilla
is willing, I say Yes, with all my heart."
The two brothers approached us, arm in arm. Lucilla, very reluctantly,
allowed herself to be persuaded into trying the experiment. Two chairs,
exactly alike, were placed in front of her. At a sign from Nugent, Oscar
silently took the chair on her right. By this arrangement, the hand which
she had used in touching Nugent's face, would be now the hand that she
would employ in touching Oscar's face. When they were both seated, I
announced that we were ready. Lucilla placed her hands on their faces,
right and left, without the faintest idea in her mind of the positions
which the two relatively occupied.
After first touching them with both hands, and both together, she tried
them separately next, beginning with Oscar, and using her right hand
only. She left him for Nugent; again using her right hand--then came back
to him again--then returned to Nugent--hesitated---decided--tapped Nugent
lightly on the head.
"Oscar!" she said.
Nugent burst out laughing. The laugh told her, before any of us could
speak, that she had made a mistake at the first attempt.
"Try again, Lucilla," said Oscar kindly.
"Never!" she answered, angrily stepping back from both of them. "One
mystification is enough."
Nugent tried next to persuade her to renew the experiment. She checked
him sternly at the first word.
"Do you think if I won't do it for Oscar," she said, "that I would do it
for you? You laughed at me. What was there to laugh at? Your brother's
features are your features; your brother's hair is your hair; your
brother's height is your height. What is there so very ridiculous--with
such a resemblance as that--in a poor blind girl like me mistaking you
one for the other? I wish to preserve a good opinion of you, for Oscar's
sake. Don't turn me into ridicule again--or I shall be forced to think
that your brother's good heart is not yours also!"
Nugent and Oscar looked at each other, petrified by this sudden outbreak;
Nugent, of the two, being the most completely overwhelmed by it.
I attempted to interfere and put things right. My easy philosophy and my
volatile French nature, failed to see any adequate cause for this
vehement exhibition of resentment on Lucilla's part. Something in my
tone, as I suppose, only added to her irritation. I, in my turn, was
checked sternly at the first word. "You proposed it," she said; "You are
the most to blame." I hastened to make my apologies (inwardly remarking
that the habit of raising a storm in a tea-cup is a growing habit with
the rising generation in England). Nugent followed me with more apologies
on his side. Oscar supported us with his superior influence. He took
Lucilla's hand--kissed it--and whispered something in her ear. The kiss
and the whisper acted like a charm. She held out her hand to Nugent, she
put her arm round my neck and embraced me, with all her own grace and
sweetness. "Forgive me," she said to us gently. "I wish I could learn to
be patient. But, oh, Mr. Nugent, it is sometimes so hard to be blind!" I
can repeat the words; but I can give no idea of the touching simplicity
with which they were spoken--of her innocently earnest anxiety to win her
pardon. She so affected Nugent that he too--after a look at Oscar which
said, "May I?"--kissed the hand that she offered to him. As his lips
touched her, she started. The bright flush which always indicated the
sudden rising of a thought in her mind, flew over her face. She
unconsciously held Nugent's hand in her own, absorbed in the interest of
realizing the new thought. For a moment, she stood, still as a statue,
consulting with herself. The moment passed, she dropped Nugent's hand,
and turned gaily to me.
"Will you think me very obstinate?" she asked.
"Why, my love?"
"I am not satisfied yet. I want to try again."
"No! no! At any rate not to-day."
"I want to try again," she repeated. "Not in your way. In a way of my own
that has just come into my head." She turned to Oscar. "Will you humour
me in this?" It is needless to set down Oscar's reply. She turned to
Nugent. "Will you?"
"Only say what you wish me to do!" he answered.
"Go with your brother," she said, "to the other end of the room. I know
where you are each of you standing, at this end. Madame Pratolungo will
lead me to the place, and will put me just within reach of both your
hands. I want each of you in turn (arrange by a sign between yourselves
which is to begin) to take my hand, and hold it for a moment, and then
drop it. I have an idea that I can distinguish between you, in that
way--and I want very much to try it."
The brothers went silently to the other end of the room. I led Lucilla,
after them, to the place in which they stood. At my suggestion, Nugent
was the first to take her hand, as she had requested; to hold it for a
moment, and then to drop it.
"Nugent!" she said, without the slightest hesitation.
"Quite right," I answered.
She laughed gaily. "Go on! Puzzle me if you possibly can.
The brothers noiselessly changed places. Oscar took her hand, standing
exactly where Nugent had stood.
"Oscar!" she said.
"Right again," I told her.
At a sign from Nugent, Oscar took her hand for the second time. She
repeated his name. At a sign from me, the brothers noiselessly placed
themselves, one on either side of her--Oscar on the left; Nugent on the
right. I gave them the signal; and they each took one of her hands at the
same moment. This time, she waited a little longer before she spoke. When
she did speak, she was right once more. She turned smiling, towards the
left side, pointed to him as he stood by her, and said, "Oscar!"
We were all three equally surprised. I examined Oscar's hand and Nugent's
hand alternately. Except the fatal difference in the color, they were, to
all intents and purposes, the same hands--the same size, the same shape,
the same texture of skin; no scar or mark on the hand of one to
distinguish it from the hand of the other. By what mysterious process of
divination had she succeeded in discovering which was which?
She was unwilling, or unable, to reply to that question plainly.
"Something in me answers to one of them and not to the other," she said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I don't know. It answers to Oscar. It doesn't answer to Nugent--that's
all."
She stopped any further inquiries by proposing that we should finish the
evening with some music, in her own sitting-room, on the other side of
the house. When we were seated together at the pianoforte--with the
twin-brothers established as our audience at the other end of the
room--she whispered in my ear:
"I'll tell _you!_"
"Tell me what?"
"How I know which is which when they both of them take my hand. When
Oscar takes it, a delicious tingle runs from his hand into mine, and
steals all over me. I can't describe it any better than that."
"I understand. And when Nugent takes your hand, what do you feel?"
"Nothing!"
"And that is how you found out the difference between them down-stairs?"
"That is how I shall always find out the difference between them. If
Oscar's brother ever attempts to play tricks upon my blindness (he is
quite capable of it--he laughed at my blindness!), that is how I shall
find him out. I told you before I saw him that I hated him. I hate him
still."
"My dear Lucilla!"
"I hate him still!"
She struck the first chords on the piano, with an obstinate frown on her
pretty brow. Our little evening concert began.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Nugent puzzles Madame Pratolungo
I WAS far from sharing Lucilla's opinion of Nugent Dubourg. His enormous
self-confidence was, to my mind, too amusing to be in the least
offensive. I liked the spirit and gaiety of the young fellow. He came
much nearer than his brother did to my ideal of the dash and resolution
which ought to distinguish a man on the right side of thirty. So far as
my experience of them went, Nugent was (in the popular English phrase)
good company--and Oscar was not. My nationality leads me to attach great
importance to social qualities. The higher virtues of a man only show
themselves occasionally on compulsion, His social qualities come
familiarly in contact with us every day of our lives. I like to be
cheerful: I am all for the social qualities.
There was one little obstacle in those early days, which set itself up
between my sympathies and Nugent.
I was thoroughly at a loss to understand the impression which Lucilla had
produced on him.
The same constraint which had, in such a marked manner, subdued him at
his first interview with her, still fettered him in the time when they
became better acquainted with one another. He was never in high spirits
in her presence. Mr. Finch could talk him down without difficulty, if Mr.
Finch's daughter happened to be by. Even when he was vaporing about
himself, and telling us of the wonderful things he meant to do in
Painting, Lucilla's appearance was enough to check him, if she happened
to come into the room. On the first day when he showed me his American
sketches (I define them, if you ask my private opinion, as false
pretenses of Art, by a dashing amateur)--on that day, he was in full
flow; marching up and down the room, smacking his forehead, and
announcing himself quite gravely as "the coming man" in landscape
painting.
"My mission, Madame Pratolungo, is to reconcile Humanity and Nature. I
propose to show (on an immense scale) how Nature (in her grandest
aspects) can adapt herself to the spiritual wants of mankind. In your joy
or your sorrow, Nature has subtle sympathies with you, if you only know
where to look for them. My pictures--no! my poems in color--will show
you. Multiply my works, as they certainly will be multiplied, by means of
prints--and what does Art become in my hands? A Priesthood! In what
aspect do I present myself to the public? As a mere landscape painter?
No! As Grand Consoler!" In the midst of this rhapsody (how wonderfully he
resembled Oscar in _his_ bursts of excitement while he was talking!)--in
the full torrent of his predictions of his own coming greatness, Lucilla
quietly entered the room. The "Grand Consoler" shut up his portfolio;
dropped Painting on the spot; asked for Music, and sat down, a model of
conventional propriety, in a corner of the room. I inquired afterwards,
why he had checked himself when she came in. "Did I?" he said. "I don't
know why." The thing was really inexplicable. He honestly admired
her--one had only to notice him when he was looking at her to see it. He
had not the faintest suspicion of her dislike for him--she carefully
concealed it for Oscar's sake. He felt genuine sympathy for her in her
affliction--his mad idea that her sight might yet be restored, was the
natural offspring of a true feeling for her. He was not unfavorable to
his brother's marriage--on the contrary, he ruffled the rector's dignity
(he was always giving offense to Mr. Finch) by suggesting that the
marriage might be hastened. I heard him say the words myself:--"The
church is close by. Why can't you put on your surplice and make Oscar
happy to-morrow, after breakfast?" More even than this, he showed the
most vivid interest--like a woman's interest rather than a man's--in
learning how the love-affair between Oscar and Lucilla had begun. I
referred him, so far as Oscar was concerned, to his brother as the
fountain-head of information. He did not decline to consult his brother.
He did not own to me that he felt any difficulty in doing so. He simply
dropped Oscar in silence; and asked about Lucilla. How had it begun on
her side? I reminded him of his brother's romantic position at Dimchurch
and told him to judge for himself of the effect it would produce on the
excitable imagination of a young girl. He declined to judge for himself;
he persisted in appealing to me. When I told the little love-story of the
two young people, one event in it appeared to make a very strong
impression on him. The effect produced on Lucilla (when she first heard
it) by the sound of his brother's voice, dwelt strangely on his mind. He
failed to understand it; he ridiculed it; he declined to believe it. I
was obliged to remind him that Lucilla was blind, and that love which, in
other cases, first finds its way to the heart through the eyes, could
only, in her case, first find its way through the ears. My explanation,
thus offered, had its effect: it set him thinking. "The sound of his
voice!" he said to himself, still turning the problem over and over in
his mind. "People say my voice is exactly like Oscar's," he added,
suddenly addressing himself to me. "Do you think so too?" I answered that
there could be no doubt of it. He got up from his chair, with a quick
little shudder, like a man who feels a chill--and changed the subject. On
the next occasion when he and Lucilla met--so far from being more
familiar with her, he was more constrained than ever. As it had begun
between these two, so it seemed likely to continue to the end. In my
society, he was always at his ease. In Lucilla's society, never!
What was the obvious conclusion which a person with my experience ought
to have drawn from all this?
I know well enough what it was, now. On my oath as an honest woman, I
failed to see it at the time. We are not always (suffer me to remind you)
consistent with ourselves. The cleverest people commit occasional lapses
into stupidity--just as the stupid people light up with gleams of
intelligence at certain times. You may have shown your usual good sense
in conducting your affairs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in the week.
But it doesn't at all follow from this, that you may not make a fool of
yourself on Thursday. Account for it as you may--for a much longer time
than it suits my self-esteem to reckon up, I suspected nothing and
discovered nothing. I noted his behavior in Lucilla's presence as odd
behavior and unaccountable behavior--and that was all.
During the first fortnight just mentioned, the London doctor came to see
Oscar.
He left again, perfectly satisfied with the results of his treatment. The
dreadful epileptic malady would torture the patient and shock the friends
about him no more: the marriage might safely be celebrated at the time
agreed on. Oscar was cured.
The doctor's visit--reviving our interest in observing the effect of the
medicine--also revived the subject of Oscar's false position towards
Lucilla. Nugent and I held a debate about it between ourselves. I opened
the interview by suggesting that we should unite our forces to persuade
his brother into taking the frank and manly course. Nugent neither said
Yes nor No to that proposal at the outset. He, who made up his mind at a
moment's notice about everything else, took time to decide on this one
occasion.
"There is something that I want to know first," he said. "I want to
understand this curious antipathy of Lucilla's which my brother regards
with so much alarm. Can you explain it?"
"Has Oscar attempted to explain it?" I inquired on my side.
"He mentioned it in one of his letters to me; and he tried to explain it,
when I asked (on my arrival at Browndown) if Lucilla had discovered the
change in his complexion. But he failed entirely to meet my difficulty in
understanding the case."
"What is your difficulty?"
"This. So far as I can see, she fails to discover intuitively the
presence of dark people in a room, or of dark colors in the ornaments of
a room. It is only when _she is told_ that such persons or such things
are present that her prejudice declares itself. In what state of mind
does such a strange feeling as this take its rise? It seems impossible
that she can have any conscious associations with colors, pleasant or
painful--if it is true that she was blind at a year old. How do you
account for it? Can there be such a thing as a purely instinctive
antipathy; remaining passive until external influences rouse it; and
resting on no sort of practical experience whatever?"
"I think there may be," I replied. "Why, when I was a child just able to
walk, did I shrink away from the first dog I saw who barked at me? I
could not have known, at that age, either by experience or teaching, that
a dog's bark is sometimes the prelude to a dog's bite. My terror, on that
occasion, was purely instinctive surely?"
"Ingeniously put," he said. "But I am not satisfied yet."
"You must also remember," I continued, "that she has a positively painful
association with dark colors, on certain occasions. They sometimes
produce a disagreeable impression on her nerves, through her sense of
touch. She discovered, in that way, that I had a dark gown on, on the day
when I first saw her."
"And yet, she touches my brother's face, and fails to discover any
alteration in it."
I met that objection also--to my own satisfaction, though not to his.
"I am far from sure that she might not have made the discovery," I said,
"if she had touched him for the first time, since the discoloration of
his face. But she examines him now with a settled impression in her mind,
derived from previous experience of what she has felt in touching his
skin. Allow for the modifying influence of that impression on her sense
of touch--and remember at the same time, that it is the color and not the
texture of the skin that is changed--and his escape from discovery
becomes, to my mind, intelligible."
He shook his head; he owned he could not dispute my view. But he was not
content for all that.
"Have you made any inquiries," he asked, "about the period of her infancy
before she was blind? She may be still feeling, indirectly and
unconsciously, the effect of some shock to her nervous system in the time
when she could see."
"I have never thought of making inquiries."
"Is there anybody within our reach, who was familiarly associated with
her in the first year of her life? It is hardly likely, I am afraid, at
this distance of time?"
"There is a person now in the house," I said. "Her old nurse is still
living."
"Send for her directly."
Zillah appeared. After first explaining what he wanted with her, Nugent
went straight to the inquiry which he had in view.
"Was your young lady ever frightened when she was a baby by any dark
person, or any dark thing, suddenly appearing before her?"
"Never, sir! I took good care to let nothing come near her that could
frighten her--so long, poor little thing, as she could see."
"Are you quite sure you can depend on your memory?"
"Quite sure, sir--when it's a long time ago."
Zillah was dismissed. Nugent--thus far, unusually grave, and unusually
anxious--turned to me with an air of relief.
"When you proposed to me to join you in forcing Oscar to speak out," he
said, "I was not quite easy in my mind about the consequences. After what
I have just heard, my fear is removed."
"What fear?" I asked.
"The fear of Oscar's confession producing an estrangement between them
which might delay the marriage. I am against all delays. I am especially
anxious that Oscar's marriage should not be put off. When we began our
conversation, I own to you I was of Oscar's opinion that he would do
wisely to let marriage make him sure of his position in her affections,
before he risked the disclosure. Now--after what the nurse has told us--I
see no risk worth considering."
"In short," I said, "you agree with me?"
"I agree with you--though I _am_ the most opinionated man living. The
chances now seem to me to be all in Oscar's favor, Lucilla's antipathy is
not what I feared it was--an antipathy firmly rooted in a constitutional
malady. It is nothing more serious," said Nugent, deciding the question,
at once and for ever, with the air of a man profoundly versed in
physiology--"it is nothing more serious than a fanciful growth, a morbid
accident, of her blindness. She may live to get over it--she would, I
believe, certainly get over it, if she could see. In two words, after
what I have found out this morning, I say as you say--Oscar is making a
mountain out of a molehill. He ought to have put himself right with
Lucilla long since. I have unbounded influence over him. It shall back
your influence. Oscar shall make a clean breast of it, before the week is
out."
We shook hands on that bargain. As I looked at him--bright and dashing
and resolute; Oscar, as I had always wished Oscar to be--I own to my
shame I privately regretted that we had not met Nugent in the twilight,
on that evening of ours which had opened to Lucilla the gates of a new
life.
Having said to each other all that we had to say--our two lovers being
away together at the time, for a walk on the hills--we separated, as I
then supposed, for the rest of the day. Nugent went to the inn, to look
at a stable which he proposed converting into a studio: no room at
Browndown being half large enough, for the first prodigious picture with
which the "Grand Consoler" in Art proposed to astonish the world. As for
me, having nothing particular to do, I went out to see if I could meet
Oscar and Lucilla on their return from their walk.
Failing to find them, I strolled back by way of Browndown. Nugent was
sitting alone on the low wall in front of the house, smoking a cigar. He
rose and came to meet me, with his finger placed mysteriously on his
lips.
"You mustn't come in," he said; "you mustn't speak loud enough to be
heard." He pointed round the corner of the house to the little room at
the side, already familiar to you in these pages. "Oscar and Lucilla are
shut up together there. And Oscar is making his confession to her at this
moment!"
I lifted my hands and eyes in astonishment. Nugent went on.
"I see you want to know how it has all come about. You shall know.--While
I was looking at the stable (it isn't half big enough for a studio for
Me!), Oscar's servant brought me a little pencil note, entreating me, in
Oscar's name, to go to him directly at Browndown. I found him waiting out
here, dreadfully agitated. He cautioned me (just as I have cautioned you)
not to speak loud. For the same reason too. Lucilla was in the house----"
"I thought they had gone out for a walk," I interposed.
"They did go out for a walk. But Lucilla complained of fatigue; and Oscar
brought her back to Browndown to rest. Well! I inquired what was the
matter. The answer informed me that the secret of Oscar's complexion had
forced its way out for the second time, in Lucilla's hearing."
"Jicks again!" I exclaimed.
"No--not Jicks. Oscar's own man-servant, this time."
"How did it happen?"
"It happened through one of the boys in the village. Oscar and Lucilla
found the little imp howling outside the house. They asked what was the
matter. The imp told them that the servant at Browndown had beaten him.
Lucilla was indignant. She insisted on having the thing inquired into.
Oscar left her in the drawing-room (unluckily, as it turned out, without
shutting the door); called the man up into the passage, and asked what he
meant by ill-using the boy. The man answered, 'I boxed his ears, sir, as
an example to the rest of them.' 'What did he do?' 'Rapped at the door,
sir, with a stick (he is not the first who has done it when you are out);
and asked if Blue Face was at home.' Lucilla heard every word of it,
through the open door. Need I tell you what happened next?"
It was quite needless to relate that part of the story. I remembered too
well what had happened on the former occasion, in the garden. I saw too
plainly that Lucilla must have connected the two occurrences in her mind,
and must have had her ready suspicion roused to serious action, as the
necessary result.
"I understand," I said. "Of course, she insisted on an explanation. Of
course, Oscar compromised himself by a clumsy excuse, and wanted you to
help him. What did you do?"
"What I told you I should do this morning. He had counted confidently on
my taking his side--it was pitiable to see him, poor fellow! Still, for
his own sake, I refused to yield. I left him the choice of giving her the
true explanation himself, or of leaving me to do it. There wasn't a
moment to lose; she was in no humour to be trifled with, I can tell you!
Oscar behaved very well about it--he always behaves well when I drive him
into a corner! In one word, he was man enough to feel that he was the
right person to make a clean breast of it--not I. I gave the poor old boy
a hug to encourage him, pushed him into the room, shut the door on him,
and came out here. He ought to have done it by this time. He _has_ done
it! Here he comes!"
Oscar ran out, bareheaded, from the house. There were signs of
disturbance in him, as he approached us, which warned me that something
had gone wrong, before he opened his lips.
Nugent spoke first.
"What's amiss now?" he asked. "Have you told her the truth?"
"I have tried to tell her the truth."
"Tried? What do you mean?"
Oscar put his arm round his brother's neck, and laid his head on his
brother's shoulder, without answering one word.
I put a question to him on my side.
"Did Lucilla refuse to listen to you?" I asked.
"No."
"Has she said anything or done anything----?"
He lifted his head from his brother's shoulder, and stopped me before I
could finish the sentence.
"You need feel no anxiety about Lucilla. Lucilla's curiosity is
satisfied."
Nugent and I gazed at one another, in complete bewilderment. Lucilla had
heard it all; Lucilla's curiosity was satisfied. He had that incredibly
happy result to communicate to us--and he announced it with a look of
humiliation, in a tone of despair! Nugent's patience gave way.
"Let us have an end of this mystification," he said, putting Oscar back
from him, sharply, at arm's length. "I want a plain answer to a plain
question. She knows that the boy knocked at the door, and asked if Blue
Face was at home. Does she know what the boy's impudence meant? Yes? or
No?"
"Yes."
"Does she know that it is you who are Blue Face?"
"No."
"No!!! Who else does she think it is?"
As he asked the question, Lucilla appeared at the door of the house. She
moved her blind face inquiringly first one way, then the other. "Oscar!"
she called out, "why have you left me alone? where are you?"
Oscar turned, trembling, to his brother.
"For God's sake forgive me, Nugent!" he said. "She thinks it's YOU."
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH
He proves Equal to the Occasion
AT that astounding confession, abruptly revealed in those plain words,
even resolute Nugent lost all power of self-control. He burst out with a
cry which reached Lucilla's ears. She instantly turned towards us, and
instantly assumed that the cry had come from Oscar's lips.
"Ah! there you are!" she exclaimed. "Oscar! Oscar! what is the matter
with you to-day?"
Oscar was incapable of answering her. He had cast one glance of entreaty
at his brother as Lucilla came nearer to us. The mute reproach which had
answered him, in Nugent's eyes, had broken down his last reserves of
endurance. He was crying silently on Nugent's breast.
It was necessary that one of us should make his, or her, voice heard. I
spoke first.
"Nothing is the matter, my dear," I said, advancing to meet Lucilla. "We
were passing the house, and Oscar ran out to stop us and bring us in."
My excuses roused a new alarm in her.
"Us?" she repeated. "Who is with you?"
"Nugent is with me."
The result of the deplorable misunderstanding which had taken place,
instantly declared itself. She turned deadly pale under the horror of
feeling that she was in the presence of the man with the blue face.
"Take me near enough to speak to him, but not to touch him," she
whispered. "I have heard what he is like. (Oh, if you saw him, as I see
him, _in the dark!_) I must control myself. I must speak to Oscar's
brother, for Oscar's sake."
She seized my arm and held me close to her. What ought I to have said?
What ought I to have done? I neither knew what to say or what to do. I
looked from Lucilla to the twin brothers. There was Oscar the Weak,
overwhelmed by the humiliating position in which he had placed himself
towards the woman whom he was to marry, towards the brother whom he
loved! And there was Nugent the Strong, master of himself; with his arm
round his brother, with his head erect, with his hand signing to me to
keep silence. He was right. I had only to look back at Lucilla's face to
see that the delicate and perilous work of undeceiving her, was not work
to be done at a moment's notice, on the spot.
"You are not yourself to-day," I said to her. "Let us go home."
"No!" she answered. "I must accustom myself to speak to him. I will begin
to-day. Take me to him--but don't let him touch me!"
Nugent disengaged himself from Oscar--whose unfitness to help us through
our difficulties was too manifest to be mistaken--as he saw us
approaching. He pointed to the low wall in front of the house, and
motioned to his brother to wait there out of the way before Lucilla could
speak to him again. The wisdom of this proceeding was not long in
asserting itself. Lucilla asked for Oscar the moment after he had left
us. Nugent answered that Oscar had gone back to the house to get his hat.
The sound of Nugent's voice helped her to calculate her distance from him
without assistance from me. Still holding my arm, she stopped and spoke
to him.
"Nugent," she said, "I have made Oscar tell me--what he ought to have
told me long since." (She paused between each sentence; painfully
controlling herself, painfully catching her breath.) "He has discovered a
foolish antipathy of mine. I don't know how; I tried to keep it a secret
from him. I need not tell you what it is."
She made a longer pause at those words, holding me closer and closer to
her; struggling more and more painfully against the irresistible nervous
loathing that had got possession of her.
He listened, on his side, with the constraint which always fell upon him
in her presence more marked than ever. His eyes were on the ground. He
seemed reluctant even to look at her.
"I think I understand," she went on, "why Oscar was unwilling to tell
me----" she stopped, at a loss how to express herself without running the
risk of hurting his feelings--"to tell me," she resumed, "what it is in
you which is not like other people. He was afraid my stupid weakness
might prejudice me against you. I wish to say that I won't let it do
that. I never was more ashamed of it than now. I, too, have my
misfortune. I ought to sympathize with you, instead of----"
Her voice had been growing fainter and fainter as she proceeded. She
leaned against me heavily. One glance at her told me that if I let it go
on any longer she would fall into a swoon. "Tell your brother that we
have gone back to the rectory," I said to Nugent. He looked up at Lucilla
for the first time.
"You are right," he answered. "Take her home." He repeated the sign by
which he had already hinted to me to be silent--and joined Oscar at the
wall in front of the house.
"Has he gone?" she asked.
"He has gone."
The moisture stood thick on her forehead. I passed my handkerchief over
her face, and turned her towards the wind.
"Are you better now?"
"Yes."
"Can you walk home?"
"Easily."
I put her arm in mine. After advancing with me a few steps, she suddenly
stopped--with a blind apprehension, as it seemed, of something in front
of her. She lifted her little walking-cane, and moved it slowly backwards
and forwards in the empty air, with the action of some one who is
clearing away an encumbrance to a free advance--say the action of a
person walking in a thick wood, and pushing aside the lower twigs and
branches that intercept the way.
"What are you about?" I asked.
"Clearing the air," she answered. "The air is full of him. I am in a
forest of hovering figures, with faces of black-blue. Give me your arm.
Come through!"
"Lucilla!"
"Don't be angry with me. I am coming to my senses again. Nobody knows
what folly, what madness it is, better than I do. I have a will of my
own: suffer as I may, I promise to break myself of it this time. I can't,
and won't let Oscar's brother see that he is an object of horror to me."
She stopped once more, and gave me a little propitiatory kiss. "Blame my
blindness, dear, don't blame _me._ If I could only see--! Ah, how can I
make you understand me, you who don't live in the dark?" She went on a
few paces, silent and thoughtful--and then spoke again. "You won't laugh
at me, if I say something?"
"You know I won't."
"Suppose yourself to be in bed at night."
"Yes?"
"I have heard people say that they have sometimes woke in the middle of
the night, on a sudden, without any noise to disturb them. And they have
fancied (without anything particular to justify it) that there was
something, or somebody, in the dark room. Has that ever happened to you?"
"Certainly, my love.--It has happened to most people to fancy what you
say, when their nerves are a little out of order."
"Very well. There is _my_ fancy, and there are _my_ nerves. When it
happened to you, what did you do?"
"I struck a light, and satisfied myself that I was wrong."
"Suppose yourself without candle or matches, in a night without end, left
alone with your fancy in the dark. There you have Me! It would not be
easy, would it, to satisfy yourself; if you were in that helpless
condition? You might suffer under it--very unreasonably--and yet very
keenly for all that." She lifted her little cane, with a sad smile. "You
might be almost as great a fool as poor Lucilla, and clear the air before
you with this!"
The charm of her voice and her manner, added to the touching simplicity,
the pathetic truth of those words. She made me realize, as I had never
realized before, what it is to have, at one and the same time, the
blessing of imagination, and the curse of blindness. For a moment, I was
absorbed in my admiration and my love for her. For a moment, I forgot the
terrible position in which we were all placed. She unconsciously recalled
it to me when she spoke next.
"Perhaps I was wrong to force the truth out of Oscar?" she said, putting
her arm again in mine, and walking on. "I might have reconciled myself to
his brother, if I had never known what his brother was like. And yet I
felt there was something strange in him, without being told, and without
knowing what it was. There must have been a reason in me for the dislike
that I felt for him from the first."
Those words appeared to me to indicate the state of mind which had led to
Lucilla's deplorable mistake. I cautiously put some questions to her to
test the correctness of my own idea.
"You spoke just now of forcing the truth out of Oscar," I said, "What
made you suspect that he was concealing the truth from you?"
"He was so strangely embarrassed and confused," she answered. "Anybody in
my place would have suspected him of concealing the truth."
So far the answer was conclusive.
"And how came you to find out what the truth really was?" I asked next.
"I guessed at it," she replied, "from something he said in referring to
his brother. You know that I took a fanciful dislike to Nugent Dubourg
before he came to Dimchurch?"
"Yes."
"And you remember that my prejudice against him was confirmed, on the
first day when I passed my hand over his face to compare it with his
brother's."
"I remember."
"Well--while Oscar was rambling and contradicting himself--he said
something (a mere trifle) which suggested to me that the person with the
blue face must be his brother. There was the explanation that I had
sought for in vain--the explanation of my persistent dislike to Nugent!
That horrid dark face of his must have produced some influence on me when
I first touched it, like the influence which your horrid purple dress
produced on me, when I first touched _that._ Don't you see?"
I saw but too plainly. Oscar had been indebted for his escape from
discovery entirely to Lucilla's misinterpretation of his language. And
Lucilla's misinterpretation now stood revealed as the natural product of
her anxiety to account for her prejudice against Nugent Dubourg. Although
the mischief had been done--still, for the quieting of my own conscience,
I made an attempt to shake her faith in the false conclusion at which she
had arrived.
"There is one thing I don't see yet," I said. "I don't understand Oscar's
embarrassment in speaking to you. As you interpret him, what had he to be
afraid of?"
She smiled satirically.
"What has become of your memory, my dear?" she asked. "What were you
afraid of? You certainly never said a word to me of this poor man's
deformity. You felt yourself, I suppose, (just as Oscar felt himself),
placed between a choice of difficulties. On one side, my dislike of dark
colors and dark people warned Oscar to hold his tongue. On the other, my
hatred of having advantage taken of my blindness to keep things secret
from me, pressed him to speak out. Isn't that enough--with his shy
disposition, poor fellow--to account for his being embarrassed? Besides,"
she added, speaking more seriously, "perhaps he saw in my manner towards
him that he had disappointed and pained me."
"How?" I asked.
"Don't you remember his once acknowledging in the garden that he had
painted his face in the character of Bluebeard, to amuse the children? It
was not delicate, it was not affectionate--it was not like him--to show
such insensibility as that to his brother's shocking disfigurement. He
ought to have remembered it, he ought to have respected it. There! we
will say no more. We will go indoors and open the piano and try to
forget."
Even Oscar's clumsy excuse in the garden--instead of confirming her
suspicion--had lent itself to strengthen the foregone conclusion rooted
in her mind! At that critical moment--before I had consulted with the
twin-brothers as to what was to be done next--it was impossible to say
more. I felt seriously alarmed when I thought of the future. When she was
told--as told she must be--of the dreadful delusion into which she had
fallen, what would be the result to Oscar? what would be the effect on
herself? I own I shrank from pursuing the inquiry.
When we reached the turn in the valley, I looked back at Browndown for
the last time. The twin-brothers were still in the place at which we had
left them. Though the faces were indistinguishable, I could still see the
figures plainly--Oscar sitting crouched up on the wall; Nugent erect at
his side, with one hand laid on his shoulder. Even at that distance, the
types of the two characters were expressed in the attitudes of the two
men. As we entered the new winding of the valley which shut them out from
view, I felt (so easy is it to comfort a woman!) that the commanding
position of Nugent had produced its encouraging impression on my mind.
"He will find a way out of it," I said to myself, "Nugent will help us
through!"
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH
He finds a Way out of it
WE sat down at the piano, as Lucilla had proposed. She wished me to play
first, and to play alone. I was teaching her, at the time, one of the
_Sonatas_ of Mozart; and I now tried to go on with the lesson. Never
before, or since, have I played so badly, as on that day! The divine
serenity and completeness by which Mozart's music is, to my mind, raised
above all other music that ever was written, can only be worthily
interpreted by a player whose whole mind is given undividedly to the
work. Devoured as I then was by my own anxieties, I might profane those
heavenly melodies--I could not play them. Lucilla accepted my excuses,
and took my place.
Half an hour passed, without news from Browndown.
Calculated by reference to itself, half an hour is no doubt a short space
of time. Calculated by reference to your own suspense, while your own
interests are at stake, half an hour is an eternity. Every minute that
passed, leaving Lucilla still undisturbed in her delusion, was a minute
that pricked me in the conscience. The longer we left her in ignorance,
the more painful to all of us the hard duty of enlightening her would
become. I began to get restless. Lucilla, on her side, began to complain
of fatigue. After the agitation that she had gone through, the inevitable
reaction had come. I recommended her to go to her room and rest. She took
my advice. In the state of my mind at that time, it was an inexpressible
relief to me to be left by myself.
After pacing backwards and forwards for some little time in the
sitting-room, and trying vainly to see my way through the difficulties
that now beset us, I made up my mind to wait no longer for the news that
never came. The brothers were still at Browndown. To Browndown I
determined to return.
I peeped quietly into Lucilla's room. She was asleep. After a word to
Zillah, recommending her young mistress to her care, I slipped out. As I
crossed the lawn, I heard the garden-gate opened. In a minute more, the
man of all others whom I most wanted to see, presented himself before me,
in the person of Nugent Dubourg. He had borrowed Oscar's key, and had set
off alone for the rectory to tell me what had passed between his brother
and himself.
"This is the first stroke of luck that has fallen to me to-day," he said.
"I was wondering how I should contrive to speak to you privately. And
here you are--accessible and alone. Where is Lucilla? Can we depend on
having the garden to ourselves?"
I satisfied him on both those points. He looked sadly pale and worn.
Before he opened his lips, I saw that he too had had his mind disturbed,
and his patience tried, since I had left him. There was a summer-house at
the end of the garden with a view over the breezy solitude of the Downs.
Here we established ourselves; and here, in my headlong way, I opened the
interview with the one formidable question:--"Who is to tell her of the
mistake she has made?"
"Nobody is to tell her."
That answer staggered me at the outset. I looked at Nugent in silent
astonishment.
"There is nothing to be surprised at," he said. "Let me put my point of
view before you in two words. I have had a serious talk with Oscar--"
Women are proverbially bad listeners--and I am no better than the rest of
them. I interrupted him, before he could get any farther.
"I suppose Oscar has told you how the mistake happened?" I said.
"He has no idea how it happened. He owns--when he found himself face to
face with her--that his presence of mind completely failed him: he didn't
himself know what he was saying at the time. _He_ lost his head; and
_she_ lost her patience. Think of his nervous confusion in collision with
her nervous irritability--and the result explains itself: nothing _could_
come of it but misapprehension and mistake. I turned the thing over in my
mind, after you had left us; and the one course to take that _I_ could
see was to accept the position patiently, and to make the best instead of
the worst of it. Having reached this conclusion, I settled the matter (as
I settle most other difficulties)--by cutting the Gordian knot. I said to
Oscar, 'Would it be a relief to your mind to leave her present impression
undisturbed until you are married?' You know him--I needn't tell you what
his answer was. 'Very well,' I said. 'Dry your eyes and compose yourself.
I have begun as Blue Face. As Blue Face I will go on till further
notice.' I spare you the description of Oscar's gratitude. I proposed;
and he accepted. There is the way out of the difficulty as I see it."
"Your way out of the difficulty is an unworthy way, and a false way," I
answered. "I protest against taking that cruel advantage of Lucilla's
blindness. I refuse to have anything to do with it."
He opened his case, and took out a cigar.
"Do as you please," he said. "You saw the pitiable state she was in, when
she forced herself to speak to me. You saw how her disgust and horror
overpowered her at the end. Transfer that disgust and horror to Oscar
(with indignation and contempt added in _his_ case); expose him to the
result of rousing those feelings in her, before he is fortified by a
husband's influence over her mind, and a husband's place in her
affections--if you dare. I love the poor fellow; and _I_ daren't. May I
smoke?"
I gave him his permission to smoke by a gesture. Before I said anything
more to this inscrutable gentleman, I felt the necessity of understanding
him--if I could.
There was no difficulty in accounting for his readiness to sacrifice
himself in the interests of Oscar's tranquillity. He never did things by
halves--he liked dashing at difficulties which would have made other men
pause. The same zeal in his brother's service which had saved Oscar's
life at the Trial, might well be the zeal that animated him now. The
perplexity that I felt was not roused in me by the course that he had
taken--but by the language in which he justified himself, and, more
still, by his behavior to me while he was speaking. The well-bred
brilliant young fellow of my previous experience, had now turned as
dogged and as ungracious as a man could be. He waited to hear what I had
to say to him next, with a hard defiance and desperation of manner
entirely uncalled for by the circumstances, and entirely out of harmony
with his character, so far as I had observed it. That there was something
lurking under the surface, some inner motive at work in him which he was
concealing from his brother and concealing from me, was as plainly
visible as the sunshine and shade on the view that I was looking at from
the summer-house. But what that something was, or what that inner motive
might be, it baffled my utmost sagacity to guess. Not the faintest idea
of the terrible secret that he was hiding from me, crossed my mind.
Innocent of all suspicion of the truth, there I sat opposite to him, the
unconscious witness of that unhappy man's final struggle to be true to
the brother whom he loved, and to master the devouring passion that
consumed him. So long as Lucilla falsely believed him to be disfigured by
the drug, so long the commonest consideration for her tranquillity would,
in the estimation of others, excuse and explain his keeping out of her
presence. In that separation, lay his last chance of raising an
insurmountable barrier between Lucilla and himself. He had already tried
uselessly to place another obstacle in the way--he had vainly attempted
to hasten the marriage which would have made Lucilla sacred to him as his
brother's wife. That effort having failed, there was but one honorable
alternative left to him--to keep out of her society, until she was
married to Oscar. He had accepted the position in which Oscar had placed
him, as the one means of reaching the end in view without exciting
suspicion of the truth--and he had encountered, as his reward for the
sacrifice, my ignorant protest, my stupid opposition, set as obstacles in
his way! There were the motives--the pure, the noble motives--which
animated him, as I know them now. There is the right reading of the
dogged language that mystified me, of the defiant manner that offended
me; interpreted by the one light that I have to guide my pen--the light
of later events!
"Well?" he said. "Are we allies, or not? Are you with me or against me?"
I gave up attempting to understand him; and answered that plain question,
plainly.
"I don't deny that the consequences of undeceiving her may be serious," I
said. "But, for all that, I will have no share in the cruelty of keeping
her deceived."
Nugent held up his forefinger, warningly.
"Pause, and reflect, Madame Pratolungo! The mischief that you may do, as
matters stand now, may be mischief that you can never repair. It's
useless to ask you to alter your mind. I only ask you to wait a little.
There is plenty of time before the wedding-day. Something may happen
which will spare you the necessity of enlightening Lucilla with your own
lips."
"What can happen?" I asked.
"Lucilla may yet see him, as we see him," Nugent answered. "Lucilla's own
eyes may discover the truth."
"What! have you not abandoned the mad notion of curing her blindness,
yet?"
"I will abandon my notion when the German surgeon tells me it is mad. Not
before."
"Have you said anything about it to Oscar?"
"Not a word. I shall say nothing about it to anybody but you, until the
German is safe on the shores of England."
"Do you expect him to arrive before the marriage?"
"Certainly! He would have left New York with me, but for one patient who
still required his care. No new patients will tempt him to stay in
America. His extraordinary success has made his fortune. The ambition of
his life is to see England: and he can afford to gratify it. He may be
here by the next steamer that reaches Liverpool."
"And when he does come, you mean to bring him to Dimchurch?"
"Yes--unless Lucilla objects to it."
"Suppose Oscar objects? She is resigned to be blind for life. If you
disturb that resignation with no useful result, you may make an unhappy
woman of her for the rest of her days. In your brother's place, I should
object to running that risk."
"My brother is doubly interested in running the risk. I repeat what I
have already told you. The physical result will not be the only result,
if her sight can be restored. There will be a new mind put into her as
well as a new sense. Oscar has everything to dread from this morbid fancy
of hers as long as she is blind. Only let her eyes correct her
fancy--only let her see him as we see him, and get used to him, as we
have got used to him; and Oscar's future with her is safe. Will you leave
things as they are for the present, on the chance that the German surgeon
may get here before the wedding-day?"
I consented to that; being influenced, in spite of myself, by the
remarkable coincidence between what Nugent had just said of Lucilla, and
what Lucilla had said to me of herself earlier in the day. It was
impossible to deny that Nugent's theory, wild as it sounded, found its
confirmation, so far, in Lucilla's view of her own case. Having settled
the difference between us in this way, for the time being, I shifted our
talk next to the difficult question of Nugent's relations towards
Lucilla. "How are you to meet her again," I said, "after the effect you
produced on her at the meeting to-day?"
He spoke far more pleasantly in discussing this side of the subject. His
language and his manner both improved together.
"If I could have had my own way," he said, "Lucilla would have been
relieved, by this time, of all fear of meeting with me again. She would
have heard from you, or from Oscar, that business had obliged me to leave
Dimchurch."
"Does Oscar object to let you go?"
"He won't hear of my going. I did my best to persuade him--I promised to
return for the marriage. Quite useless! 'If you leave me here by myself,'
he said, 'to think over the mischief I have done, and the sacrifices I
have forced on you--you will break my heart. You don't know what an
encouragement your presence is to me; you don't know what a blank you
will leave in my life if you go!' I am as weak as Oscar is, when Oscar
speaks to me in that way. Against my own convictions, against my own
wishes, I yielded. I should have been better away--far, far better away!"
He said those closing words in a tone that startled me. It was nothing
less than a tone of despair. How little I understood him then! how well I
understand him now! In those melancholy accents, spoke the last of his
honor, the last of his truth. Miserable, innocent Lucia! Miserable,
guilty Nugent!
"And now you remain at Dimchurch," I resumed, "what are you to do?"
"I must do my best to spare her the nervous suffering which I unwillingly
inflicted on her to-day. The morbid repulsion that she feels in my
presence is not to be controlled--I can see that plainly. I shall keep
out of her way; gradually withdrawing myself, so as not to force my
absence on her attention. I shall pay fewer and fewer visits at the
rectory, and remain longer and longer at Browndown every day. After they
are married----" He suddenly stopped; the words seemed to stick in his
throat. He busied himself in relighting his cigar, and took a long time
to do it.
"After they are married," I repeated. "What then?"
"When Oscar is married, Oscar will not find my presence indispensable to
his happiness. I shall leave Dimchurch."
"You will have to give a reason."
"I shall give the true reason. I can find no studio here big enough for
me--as I have told you. And, even if I could find a studio, I should be
doing no good, if I remained at Dimchurch. My intellect would contract,
my brains would rust, in this remote place. Let Oscar live his quiet
married life here. And let me go to the atmosphere that is fitter for
me--the atmosphere of London or Paris."
He sighed, and fixed his eyes absently on the open hilly view from the
summer-house door.
"It's strange to see _you_ depressed," I said. "Your spirits seemed to be
quite inexhaustible on that first evening when you interrupted Mr. Finch
over _Hamlet._"
He threw away the end of his cigar, and laughed bitterly.
"We artists are always in extremes," he said. "What do you think I was
wishing just before you spoke to me?"
"I can't guess."
"I was wishing I had never come to Dimchurch!"
Before I could return a word, on my side, Lucilla's voice reached our
ears, calling to me from the garden. Nugent instantly sprang to his feet.
"Have we said all we need say?" he asked.
"Yes--for to-day, at any rate."
"For to-day, then--good-bye."
He leapt up; caught the cross-bar of wood over the entrance to the
summer-house; and, swinging himself on to the low garden-wall beyond,
disappeared in the field on the other side. I answered Lucilla's call,
and hastened away to find her. We met on the lawn. She looked wild and
pale, as if something had frightened her.
"Anything wrong at the rectory?" I asked.
"Nothing wrong," she answered--"except with Me. The next time I complain
of fatigue, don't advise me to go and lie down on my bed."
"Why not? I looked in at you, before I came out here. You were fast
asleep--the picture of repose."
"Repose? You never were more mistaken in your life. I was in the agony of
a horrid dream."
"You were perfectly quiet when I saw you."
"It must have been after you saw me, then. Let me come and sleep with you
to-night. I daren't be by myself, if I dream of it again."
"What did you dream of?"
"I dreamt that I was standing, in my wedding dress, before the altar of a
strange church; and that a clergyman whose voice I had never heard
before, was marrying me----" She stopped, impatiently waving her hand
before her in the air. "Blind as I am," she said, "I see him again now!"
"The bridegroom?"
"Yes."
"Oscar?"
"No."
"Who then?"
"Oscar's brother. Nugent Dubourg."
(Have I mentioned before, that I am sometimes a great fool? If I have
not, I beg to mention it now. I burst out laughing.)
"What is there to laugh at?" she asked angrily. "I saw his hideous,
discolored face--I am never blind in my dreams! I felt his blue hand put
the ring on my finger. Wait! The worst part of it is to come. I married
Nugent Dubourg willingly--married him without a thought of my engagement
to Oscar. Yes! yes! I know it's only a dream. I can't bear to think of
it, for all that. I don't like to be false to Oscar even in a dream. Let
us go to him. I want to hear him tell me that he loves me. Come to
Browndown. I'm so nervous, I don't like going by myself. Come to
Browndown!"
I have another humiliating confession to make--I tried to get off going
to Browndown. (So like those unfeeling French people, isn't it?)
But I had my reason too. If I disapproved of the resolution at which
Nugent had arrived, I viewed far more unfavorably the selfish weakness on
Oscar's part, which had allowed his brother to sacrifice himself.
Lucilla's lover had sunk to something very like a despicable character in
my estimation. I felt that I might let him see what I thought of him, if
I found myself in his company at that moment.
"Considering the object that you have in view, my dear," I said to
Lucilla, "do you think you want _me_ at Browndown?"
"Haven't I already told you?" she asked impatiently. "I am so nervous--so
completely upset--that I don't feel equal to going out by myself. Have
you no sympathy for me? Suppose _you_ had dreamed that you were marrying
Nugent instead of Oscar?"
"Ah, bah! what of that? I should only have dreamed that I was marrying
the most agreeable man of the two."
"The most agreeable man of the two! There you are again--always unjust to
Oscar."
"My love! if you could see for yourself, you would learn to appreciate
Nugent's good qualities, as I do."
"I prefer appreciating Oscar's good qualities."
"You are prejudiced, Lucilla."
"So are you!"
"You happen to have met Oscar first."
"That has nothing to do with it."
"Yes! yes! If Nugent had followed us, instead of Oscar; if, of those two
charming voices which are both the same, one had spoken instead of the
other--"
"I won't hear a word more!"
"Tra-la-la-la! It happens to have been Oscar. Turn it the other way--and
Nugent might have been the man.
"Madame Pratolungo, I am not accustomed to be insulted! I have no more to
say to you."
With that dignified reply, and with the loveliest color in her face that
you ever saw in your life, my darling Lucilla turned her pretty back on
me, and set off for Browndown by herself.
Ah, my rash tongue! Ah, my nasty foreign temper! Why did I let her
irritate me? I, the elder of the two--why did I not set her an example of
self-control? Who can tell? When does a woman know why she does anything?
Did Eve know--when Mr. Serpent offered her the apple--why she ate it? not
she!
What was to be done now? Two things were to be done. First thing:--To
cool myself down. Second thing:--To follow Lucilla, and kiss and make it
up.
Either I took some time to cool--or, in the irritation of the moment,
Lucilla walked faster than usual. She had got to Browndown before I could
overtake her. On opening the house-door, I heard them talking. It would
hardly do to disturb them--especially now I was in disgrace. While I was
hesitating, and wondering what my next proceeding had better be, my eye
was attracted by a letter lying on the hall-table. I looked (one is
always inquisitive in those idle moments when one doesn't know what to
do)--I looked at the address. The letter was directed to Nugent; and the
post-mark was Liverpool.
I drew the inevitable conclusion. The German oculist was in England!
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH
He crosses the Rubicon
I WAS still in doubt, whether to enter the room, or to wait outside until
she left Browndown to return to the rectory--when Lucilla's keen sense of
hearing decided the question which I had been unable to settle for
myself. The door of the room opened; and Oscar advanced into the hall.
"Lucilla insisted that she heard somebody outside," he said. "Who could
have guessed it was you? Why did you wait in the hall? Come in! come in!"
He held open the door for me; and I went in. Oscar announced me to
Lucilla. "It was Madame Pratolungo you heard," he said. She took no
notice either of him or of me. A heap of flowers from Oscar's garden lay
in her lap. With the help of her clever fingers, she was sorting them to
make a nosegay, as quickly and as tastefully as if she had possessed the
sense of sight. In all my experience of that charming face, it had never
looked so hard as it looked now. Nobody would have recognized her
likeness to the Madonna of Raphael's picture. Offended--mortally offended
with me--I saw it at a glance.
"I hope you will forgive my intrusion, Lucilla, when you know my motive,"
I said. "I have followed you here to make my excuses."
"Oh, don't think of making excuses!" she rejoined, giving three-fourths
of her attention to the flowers, and one-fourth to me. "It's a pity you
took the trouble of coming here. I quite agree with what you said in the
garden. Considering the object I had in view at Browndown, I could not
possibly expect you to accompany me. True! quite true!"
I kept my temper. Not that I am a patient woman: not that I possess a
meek disposition. Very far from it, I regret to say. Nevertheless, I kept
my temper--so far.
"I wish to apologize for what I said in the garden," I resumed. "I spoke
thoughtlessly, Lucilla. It is impossible that I could intentionally
offend you."
I might as well have spoken to one of the chairs. The whole of her
attention became absorbed in the breathless interest of making her
nosegay.
"_Was_ I offended?" she said, addressing herself to the flowers.
"Excessively foolish of me, if I was." She suddenly became conscious of
my existence. "You had a perfect right to express your opinion," she said
loftily. "Accept _my_ excuses if I appeared to dispute it."
She tossed her pretty head; she showed her brightest color; she tapped
her nice little foot briskly on the floor. (Oh, Lucilla! Lucilla!) I
still kept my temper. More, by this time (I admit,) for Oscar's sake than
for her sake. He looked so distressed, poor fellow--so painfully anxious
to interfere, without exactly knowing how.
"My dear Lucilla!" he began. "Surely you might answer Madame
Pratolungo----"
She petulantly interrupted him, with another toss of the head--a little
higher than the last.
"I don't attempt to answer Madame Pratolungo! I prefer admitting that
Madame Pratolungo may have been quite right. I dare say I am ready to
fall in love with the first man who comes my way. I dare say--if I had
met your brother before I met you--I should have fallen in love with
_him._ Quite likely!"
"Quite likely--as you say,"--answered poor Oscar, humbly. "I am sure I
think it very lucky for _me,_ that you didn't meet Nugent first."
She threw her lapful of flowers away from her on the table at which she
was sitting. She became perfectly furious with him for taking my side. I
permitted myself (the poor child could not see it, remember), the
harmless indulgence of a smile.
"You agree with Madame Pratolungo," she said to him viciously. "Madame
Pratolungo thinks your brother a much more agreeable man than you."
Humble Oscar shook his head in melancholy acknowledgment of this
self-evident fact. "There can be no two opinions about that," he said
resignedly.
She stamped her foot on the carpet--and raised quite a little cloud of
dust. My lungs are occasionally delicate. I permitted myself another
harmless indulgence--indulgence in a slight cough. She heard the second
indulgence--and suddenly controlled herself, the instant it reached her
ears. I am afraid she took my cough as my commentary on what was going
on.
"Come here, Oscar," she said, with a complete change of tone and manner.
"Come and sit down by me."
Oscar obeyed.
"Put your arm round my waist."
Oscar looked at me. Having the use of his sight, he was sensible of the
absurd side of the demonstration required of him--in the presence of a
third person. She, poor soul, strong in her blind insensibility to all
shafts of ridicule shot from the eye, cared nothing for the presence of a
third person. She repeated her commands, in a tone which said sharply,
"Embrace me--I am not to be trifled with."
Oscar timidly put his arm round her waist--with an appealing look at me.
She issued another command instantly.
"Say you love me."
Oscar hesitated.
"Say you love me!"
Oscar whispered it.
"Out loud!"
Endurance has its limits: I began to lose my temper. She could not have
been more superbly indifferent to my presence, if there had been a cat in
the room instead of a lady.
"Permit me to inform you," I said, "that I have not (as you appear to
suppose) left the room."
She took no notice. She went on with her commands, rising irrepressibly
from one amatory climax to another.
"Give me a kiss!"
Unhappy Oscar--sacrificed between us--blushed. Stop! Don't revel
prematurely in the greatest enjoyment a reader has--namely, catching a
writer out in a mistake. I have not forgotten that his disfigured
complexion would prevent his blush from showing on the surface. I beg to
say I saw it under the surface--saw it in his expression: I repeat--he
blushed.
I felt it necessary to assert myself for the second time.
"I have only one object in remaining in the room, Miss Finch. I merely
wish to know whether you refuse to accept my excuses.
"Oscar! give me a kiss!"
He still hesitated. She threw her arm round his neck. My duty to myself
was plain--my duty was to go.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Dubourg," I said--and turned to the door. She heard
me cross the room, and called to me to stop. I paused. There was a glass
on the wall opposite to me. On the authority of the glass, I beg to
mention that I paused in my most becoming manner. Grace tempered with
dignity: dignity tempered with grace.
"Madame Pratolungo!"
"Miss Finch?"
"This is the man who is not half so agreeable as his brother. Look!"
She tightened her hold round his neck, and gave him--ostentatiously gave
him--the kiss which he was ashamed to give _her._ I advanced, in
contemptuous silence, to the door. My attitude expressed disgust
accompanied by sorrow: sorrow, accompanied by disgust.
"Madame Pratolungo!"
I made no answer.
"This is the man whom I should never have loved if I had happened to meet
his brother first. Look!"
She put both arms round his neck; and gave him a shower of kisses all in
one. I indignantly withdrew. The door had been imperfectly closed when I
had entered the room: it was ajar. I pulled it open--and found myself
face to face with Nugent Dubourg, standing by the table, with his letter
from Liverpool in his hand! He must have certainly heard Lucilla cast my
own words back in my teeth--if he had heard no more.
I stopped short; looking at him in silent surprise. He smiled, and held
out the open letter to me. Before we could speak, we heard the door of
the room closed. Oscar had followed me out (shutting the door behind him)
to apologize for Lucilla's behavior to me. He explained what had happened
to his brother. Nugent nodded, and tapped his open letter smartly. "Leave
me to manage it. I shall give you something better to do than quarreling
among yourselves. You will hear what it is directly. In the meantime, I
have got a message for our friend at the inn. Gootheridge is on his way
here, to speak to me about altering the stable. Run and tell him I have
other business on hand, and I can't keep my appointment to-day. Stop!
Give him this at the same time, and ask him to leave it at the rectory."
He took one of his visiting cards out of the case, wrote a few lines on
it in pencil, and handed it to his brother. Oscar (always ready to go on
errands for Nugent) hurried out to meet the landlord. Nugent turned to
me.
"The German is in England," he said. "Now I may open my lips."
"At once!" I exclaimed.
"At once. I have put off my own business (as you heard) in favor of this.
My friend will be in London to-morrow. I mean to get my authority to
consult him to-day, and to start tomorrow for town. Prepare yourself to
meet one of the strangest characters you ever set eyes on! You saw me
write on my card. It was a message to Mr. Finch, asking him to join us
immediately (on important family business) at Browndown. As Lucilla's
father, he has a voice in the matter. When Oscar comes back, and when the
rector joins us, our domestic privy council will be complete."
He spoke with his customary spirit; he moved with his customary
briskness--he had become quite himself again, since I had seen him last.
"I am stagnating in this place," he went on, seeing that I noticed the
change in him. "It puts me in spirits again, having something to do. I am
not like Oscar--I must have action to stir my blood--action to keep me
from fretting over my anxieties. How do you think I found the witness to
my brother's innocence at the Trial? In that way. I said to myself, 'I
shall go mad if I don't do something.' I did something--and saved Oscar.
I am going to do something again. Mark my words! Now I am stirring in it,
Lucilla will recover her sight."
"This is a serious matter," I said. "Pray give it serious consideration."
"Consideration?" he repeated. "I hate the word. I always decide on the
instant. If I am wrong in my view of Lucilla's case, consideration is of
no earthly use. If I am right, every day's delay is a day of sight lost
to the blind. I'll wait for Oscar and Mr. Finch; and then I'll open the
business. Why are we talking in the hall? Come in!"
He led the way to the sitting-room. I had a new interest, now, in going
back. Still, Lucilla's behavior hung on my mind. Suppose she treated me
with renewed coldness and keener contempt? I remained standing at the
table in the hall. Nugent looked back at me, over his shoulder.
"Nonsense!" he said. "I'll set things right. It's beneath a woman like
you to take notice of what a girl says in a pet. Come in!"
I doubt if I should have yielded to please any other living man. But,
there is no denying it, some people have a magnetic attracting power over
others. Nugent had that power over me. Against my own will--for I was
really hurt and offended by her usage of me--I went back with him into
the room.
Lucilla was still sitting in the place which she had occupied when I
withdrew. On hearing the door open, and a man's footsteps entering, she
of course assumed that the man was Oscar. She had penetrated his object
in leaving her to follow me out, and it had not improved her temper.
"Oh?" she said. "You have come back at last? I thought you had offered
yourself as Madame Pratolungo's escort to the rectory." She stopped, with
a sudden frown. Her quick ears had detected my return into the room.
"Oscar!" she exclaimed, "what does this mean? Madame Pratolungo and I
have nothing more to say to each other. What has she come back for? Why
don't you answer? This is infamous! I shall leave the room!"
The utterance of that final threat was followed so rapidly by its
execution that, before Nugent (standing between her and the door) could
get out of her way, she came in violent contact with him. She instantly
caught him by the arm, and shook him angrily. "What does your silence
mean? Is it at Madame Pratolungo's instigation that you are insulting
me?"
I had just opened my lips to make one more attempt at reconciliation, by
saying some pacifying words to her--when she planted that last sting in
me. French flesh and blood (whatever English flesh and blood might have
done) could bear no more. I silently turned my back on her, in a rage.
At the same moment, Nugent's eyes brightened as if a new idea had struck
him. He gave me one significant look--and answered her in his brother's
character. Whether he was possessed at the moment by some demon of
mischief; or whether he had the idea of trying to make Oscar's peace for
him, before Oscar returned--was more than I could say at the time. I
ought to have stopped it--I know. But my temper was in a flame. I was as
spiteful as a cat and as fierce as a bear. I said to myself (in your
English idiom), She wants taking down a peg; quite right, Mr. Nugent; do
it. Shocking! shameful! no words are bad enough for me: give it me well.
Ah, Heaven! what is a human being in a rage? On my sacred word of honor,
nothing but a human beast! The next time it happens to You, look at
yourself in the glass; and you will find your soul gone out of you at
your face, and nothing left but an animal--and a bad, a villainous bad
animal too!
"You ask what my silence means?" said Nugent.
He had only to model his articulation on his brother's slower manner of
speaking as distinguished from his own, to be his brother himself. In
saying those few first words, he did it so dexterously that I could have
sworn--if I had not seen him standing before me--Oscar was in the room.
"Yes," she said, "I ask that."
"I am silent," he answered, "because I am waiting."
"What are you waiting for?"
"To hear you make your apologies to Madame Pratolungo."
She started back a step. Submissive Oscar was taking a peremptory tone
with her for the first time in his life. Submissive Oscar, instead of
giving her time to speak, sternly went on.
"Madame Pratolungo has made her excuses to _you._ You ought to receive
them; you ought to reciprocate them. It is distressing to see you and
hear you. You are behaving ungratefully to your best friend."
She raised her face, she raised her hands, in blank amazement: she looked
as if she distrusted her own ears.
"Oscar!" she exclaimed.
"Here I am," said Oscar, opening the door at the same moment.
She turned like lightning towards the place from which he had spoken. She
detected the deception which Nugent had practiced on her, with a cry of
indignation that rang through the room.
Oscar ran to her in alarm. She thrust him back violently.
"A trick!" she cried. "A mean, vile, cowardly trick played upon my
blindness! Oscar! your brother has been imitating you; your brother has
been speaking to me in your voice. And that woman who calls herself my
friend--that woman stood by and heard him, and never told me. She
encouraged it: she enjoyed it. The wretches! take me away from them. They
are capable of any deceit. She always hated you, dear, from the
first--she took up with your brother the moment he came here. When you
marry me, it mustn't be at Dimchurch; it must be in some place they don't
know of. There is a conspiracy between them against you and against me.
Beware of them! beware of them! She said I should have fallen in love
with your brother, if I had met him first. There is a deeper meaning in
that, my love, than you can see. It means that they will part us if they
can. Ha! I hear somebody moving! Has he changed places with you? Is it
_you_ whom I am speaking to now? Oh, my blindness! my blindness! Oh, God,
of all your creatures, the most helpless, the most miserable, is the
creature who can't see!"
I never heard anything in all my life so pitiable and so dreadful as the
frantic suspicion and misery which tore their way out from her, in those
words. She cut me to the heart. I had spoken rashly--I had behaved
badly--but had I deserved this? No! no! no! I had _not_ deserved it. I
threw myself into a chair, and burst out crying. My tears scalded me; my
sobs choked me. If I had had poison in my hand, I would have drunk it--I
was so furious and so wretched: so hurt in my honor, so wounded at my
heart.
The only voice that answered her was Nugent's. Reckless what the
consequences might be--speaking, in his own proper person, from the
opposite end of the room--he asked the all-important question which no
human being had ever put to her yet.
"Are you sure, Lucilla, that you are blind for life?"
A dead silence followed the utterance of those words.
I brushed away the tears from my eyes, and looked up.
Oscar had been--as I supposed--holding her in his arms, silently soothing
her, when his brother spoke. At the moment when I saw her, she had just
detached herself from him. She advanced a step, towards the part of the
room in which Nugent stood--and stopped, with her face turned towards
him. Every faculty in her seemed to be suspended by the silent passage
into her mind of the new idea that he had called up. Through childhood,
girlhood, womanhood--never once, waking or dreaming, had the prospect of
restoration to sight presented itself within her range of contemplation,
until now. Not a trace was left in her countenance of the indignation
which Nugent had roused in her, hardly more than a moment since. Not a
sign appeared indicating a return of the nervous suffering which the
sense of his presence had inflicted on her, earlier in the day. The one
emotion in possession of her was astonishment--astonishment that had
struck her dumb; astonishment that waited, helplessly and mechanically,
to hear more.
I observed Oscar, next. His eyes were fixed on Lucilla--absorbed in
watching her. He spoke to Nugent, without looking at him; animated, as it
seemed, by a vague fear for Lucilla, which was slowly developing into a
vague fear for himself
"Mind what you are doing!" he said. "Look at her, Nugent--look at her."
Nugent approached his brother, circuitously, so as to place Oscar between
Lucilla and himself.
"Have I offended you?" he asked.
Oscar looked at him in surprise. "Offended with you," he answered, "after
what you have forgiven, and what you have suffered, for my sake?"
"Still," persisted the other, "there is something wrong."
"I am startled, Nugent."
"Startled--by what?"
"By the question you have just put to Lucilla."
"You will understand me, and she will understand me, directly."
While those words were passing between the brothers, my attention
remained fixed on Lucilla. Her head had turned slowly towards the new
position which Nugent occupied when he spoke to Oscar. With this
exception, no other movement had escaped her. No sense of what the two
men were saying to each other seemed to have entered her mind. To all
appearance she had heard nothing, since Nugent had started the first
doubt in her whether she was blind for life.
"Speak to her," I said. "For God's sake, don't keep her in suspense,
_now!_"
Nugent spoke.
"You have had reason to be offended with me, Lucilla. Let me, if I can,
give you reason to be grateful to me, before I have done. When I was in
New York, I became acquainted with a German surgeon, who had made a
reputation and a fortune in America by his skill in treating diseases of
the eye. He had been especially successful in curing cases of blindness
given up as hopeless by other surgeons. I mentioned your case to him. He
could say nothing positively (as a matter of course) without examining
you. All he could do was to place his services at my disposal, when he
came to England. I for one, Lucilla, decline to consider you blind for
life, until this skillful man sees no more hope for you than the English
surgeons have seen. If there is the faintest chance still left of
restoring your sight, his is, I firmly believe, the one hand that can do
it. He is now in England. Say the word--and I will bring him to
Dimchurch."
She slowly lifted her hands to her head, and held it as if she was
holding her reason in its place. Her color changed from pale to red--from
red to pale once more. She drew a long, deep, heavy breath--and dropped
her hands again, recovering from the shock. The change that followed,
held us all three breathless. It was beautiful to see her. It was awful
to see her. A mute ecstasy of hope transfigured her face; a heavenly
smile played serenely on her lips. She was among us, and yet apart from
us. In the still light of evening, shining in on her from the window, she
stood absorbed in her own rapture--the silent creature of another sphere!
There was a moment when she overcame me with admiration, and another
moment when she overcame me with fear. Both the men felt it. Both signed
to me to speak to her first.
I advanced a few steps. I tried to consider with myself what I should
say. It was useless. I could neither think nor speak. I could only look
at her. I could only say, nervously--
"Lucilla!"
She came back to the world--she came back to _us_--with a little start,
and a faint flush of color in her cheeks. She turned herself towards the
place from which I had spoken, and whispered----
"Come!"
In a moment, my arms were round her. Her head sank on my bosom. We were
reconciled without a word. We were friends again, sisters again, in an
instant.
"Have I been fainting? have I been sleeping?" she said to me in low,
bewildered tones. "Am I just awake? Is this Browndown?" She suddenly
lifted her head. "Nugent! are you there?"
"Yes."
She gently withdrew herself from me, and approached Nugent.
"Did you speak to me just now? Was it you who put the doubt into my mind,
whether I am really doomed to be blind for life? Surely, I have not
fancied it? Surely, you said the man was coming, and the time coming?"
Her voice suddenly rose. "The man who may cure me! the time when I may
see!"
"I said it, Lucilla. I meant it, Lucilla."
"Oscar! Oscar!! Oscar!!!"
I stepped forward to lead her to him. Nugent touched me, and pointed to
Oscar, as I took her hand. He was standing before the glass--with an
expression of despair which I see again while I write these lines--he was
standing close to the glass; looking in silence at the hideous reflection
of his face. In sheer pity, I hesitated to take her to him. She stepped
forward, and, stretching out her hand, touched his shoulder. The
reflection of _her_ charming face appeared behind _his_ face in the
glass. She raised herself on tiptoe, with both hands on him, and said,
"The time is coming, my darling, when I may see You!"
With a cry of joy, she drew his face to her, and kissed him on the
forehead. His head fell on his breast when she released it: he covered
his face with his hands, and stifled, for the moment, all outward
expression of the pang that wrung him. I drew her rapidly away, before
her quick sensibilities had time to warn her that something was wrong.
Even as it was, she resisted me. Even as it was, she asked suspiciously,
"Why do you take me away from him?"
What excuse could I make? I was at my wits' end.
She repeated the question. For once Fortune favored us. A timely knock at
the door stopped her just as she was trying to release herself from me.
"Somebody coming in," I said. The servant entered, as I spoke, with a
letter from the rectory.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH
Parliamentary Summary
OH, the welcome interruption! After the agitation that we had suffered,
we all stood equally in need of some such relief as this. It was
absolutely a luxury to fall back again into the common-place daily
routine of life. I asked to whom the letter was addressed? Nugent
answered, "The letter is addressed to me; and the writer is Mr. Finch."
Having read the letter, he turned to Lucilla.
"I sent a message to your father, asking him to join us here," he said.
"Mr. Finch writes back to say that his duties keep him at home, and to
suggest that the rectory is the fitter place for the discussion of family
matters. Have you any objection to return to the house? And do you mind
going on first with Madame Pratolungo?"
Lucilla's quick suspicion was instantly aroused.
"Why not with Oscar?" she asked.
"Your father's note suggests to me," replied Nugent, "that he is a little
hurt at the short notice I gave him of our discussion here. I thought--if
you and Madame Pratolungo went on first--that you might make our peace
with the rector, and assure him that we meant no disrespect, before Oscar
and I appeared. Don't you think yourself you would make it easier for us,
if you did that?"
Having contrived in this dexterous way to separate Oscar and Lucilla, and
to gain time for composing and fortifying his brother before they met
again, Nugent opened the door for us to go out. Lucilla and I left the
twins together, in the modest little room which had witnessed a scene
alike memorable to all of us for its interest at the time, and for the
results which were to come of it in the future.
Half an hour later, we were all assembled at the rectory.
Our adjourned debate--excepting one small suggestion emanating from
myself--was a debate which led to nothing. It may be truly described as
resolving itself into the delivery of an Oration by Mr. Finch. Subject,
the assertion of Mr. Finch's dignity.
On this occasion (having matters of more importance on hand) I take the
liberty of cutting the reverend gentleman's speech by the pattern of the
reverend gentleman's stature. Short in figure, the rector shall be here,
for the first time in his life, short in language too.
Reverend Finch rose, and said--he objected to everything. To receiving a
message on a card instead of a proper note. To being expected to present
himself at Browndown at a moment's notice. To being the last person
informed (instead of the first) of Mr. Nugent Dubourg's exaggerated and
absurd view of the case of his afflicted child. To the German surgeon, as
being certainly a foreigner and a stranger, and possibly a quack. To the
slur implied on British Surgery by bringing the foreigner to Dimchurch.
To the expense involved in the same proceeding. Finally to the whole
scope and object of Mr. Nugent Dubourg's proposal, which had for its
origin rebellion against the decrees of an all-wise Providence, and for
its result the disturbance of his daughter's mind--"under My influence,
sir, a mind in a state of Christian resignation: under Your influence, a
mind in a state of infidel revolt." With those concluding remarks, the
reverend gentleman sat down--and paused for a reply.
A remarkable result followed, which might be profitably permitted to take
place in some other Parliaments. Nobody replied.
Mr. Nugent Dubourg rose--no! sat--and said, he declined to take any part
in the proceedings. He was quite ready to wait, until the end justified
the means which he proposed to employ. For the rest, his conscience was
at ease; and he was entirely at Miss Finch's service.
Mr. Oscar Dubourg, sitting hidden from notice behind his brother,
followed his brother's example. The decision in the matter under
discussion rested with Miss Finch alone. He had no opinion of his own to
offer on it.
Miss Finch herself, appealed to next:--Had but one reply to give. With
all possible respect for her father, she ventured to think that neither
he nor any one, possessing the sense of vision, could quite enter into
her feelings as the circumstances then were. If there really was any
chance of her recovering her sight, the least she could do would be to
give that chance a fair trial. She entreated Mr. Nugent Dubourg not to
lose one unnecessary moment in bringing the German surgeon to Dimchurch.
Mrs. Finch, called upon next. Spoke after some little delay, caused by
the loss of her pocket-handkerchief. Would not presume to differ in
opinion with her husband, whom she had never yet known to be otherwise
than perfectly right about everything. But, if the German surgeon _did_
come, and if Mr. Finch saw no objection to it, she would much like to
consult him (gratis, if possible) on the subject of "baby's eyes." Mrs.
Finch was proceeding to explain that there was happily nothing the
matter, that she could see, with the infant's eyes at that particular
moment, and that she merely wished to take a skilled medical opinion, in
the event of something happening on some future occasion--when she was
called to order by Mr. Finch. The reverend gentleman, at the same time,
appealed to Madame Pratolungo to close the debate by giving frank
expression to her own opinion.
Madame Pratolungo, speaking in conclusion, remarked:--
That the question of consulting the German surgeon appeared (after what
had fallen from Miss Finch) to be a question which had passed beyond the
range of any expression of feeling on the part of other persons. That she
proposed, accordingly, to look, beyond the consultation, at the results
which might follow it. That, contemplating these possible results, she
held very strong views of her own, and would proceed to give frank
expression to them as follows. That in her opinion, the proposed
investigation of the chances which might exist of restoring Miss Finch's
sight, involved consequences far too serious to be trusted to the
decision of any one man, no matter how skillful or how famous he might
be. That, in pursuance of this view, she begged to suggest (1) the
association of an eminent English oculist with the eminent German
oculist; (2) an examination of Miss Finch's case by both the professional
gentlemen, consulting on it together; and (3) a full statement of the
opinions at which they might respectively arrive, to be laid before the
meeting now assembled, and to become the subject of a renewed discussion
before any decisive measures were taken.
Lastly, that this proposal be now submitted, in the form of a resolution,
and forthwith (if necessary) put to the vote.
Resolution, as above, put to the vote.
Majority--Ayes.
Miss Finch. Mr. Nugent Dubourg. Mr. Oscar Dubourg. Madame Pratolungo.
Minority--Noes.
No (on the score of expense), Mr. Finch. No (because Mr. F. says No),
Mrs. Finch.
Resolution carried by a majority of two. Debate adjourned to a day to be
hereafter decided on.
By the first train the next morning, Nugent Dubourg started for London.
At luncheon, the same day, a telegram arrived, reporting his proceedings
in the following terms:--
"I have seen my friend. He is at our service. He is also quite willing to
consult with any English oculist whom we may choose. I am just off to
find the man. Expect a second telegram later in the day."
The second telegram reached us in the evening, and ran thus:--
"Everything is settled. The German oculist and the English oculist leave
London with me, by the twelve-forty train to-morrow afternoon."
After reading this telegram to Lucilla, I sent it to Oscar at Browndown.
Judge for yourself how he slept, and how we slept, that night!
CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH
Herr Grosse
SEVERAL circumstances deserving to be mentioned here, took place in the
early part of the day on which we expected the visit of the two oculists.
I have all the will to relate them--but the capacity to do it completely
fails me.
When I look back at that eventful morning, I recall a scene of confusion
and suspense, the bare recollection of which seems to upset my mind
again, even at this distance of time. Things and persons all blend
distractedly one with another. I see the charming figure of my blind
Lucilla, robed in rose-color and white, flitting hither and thither, in
the house and out of the house--at one time mad with impatience for the
arrival of the surgeons; at another, shuddering with apprehension of the
coming ordeal, and the coming disappointment which might follow. A moment
more--and, just as my mind has seized it, the fair figure melts and
merges into the miserable apparition of Oscar; hovering and hesitating
between Browndown and the rectory; painfully conscious of the new
complications introduced into his position towards Lucilla by the new
state of things; and yet not man enough, even yet, to seize the
opportunity, and set himself right. Another moment passes, and a new
figure--a little strutting consequential figure forces its way into the
foreground, before I am ready for it. I hear a big voice booming in my
ear, with big language to correspond. "No, Madame Pratolungo, nothing
will induce me to sanction by my presence this insane medical
consultation, this extravagant and profane attempt to reverse the decrees
of an all-wise Providence by purely human means. My foot is down--I use
the language of the people, observe, to impress it the more strongly on
your mind--My FOOT is down!" Another moment yet, and Finch and Finch's
Foot disappear over my mental horizon just as my eye has caught them.
Damp Mrs. Finch, and the baby whose everlasting programme is suction and
sleep, take the vacant place. Mrs. Finch pledges me with watery
earnestness to secrecy; and then confides her intention of escaping her
husband's supervision if she can, and bringing British surgery and German
surgery to bear both together (gratis) on baby's eyes. Conceive these
persons all twisting and turning in the convolutions of my brains, as if
those brains were a labyrinth; with the sayings and doings of one,
confusing themselves with the sayings and doings of the other--with a
thin stream of my own private anxieties (comprehending luncheon on a
side-table for the doctors) trickling at intervals through it all--and
you will not wonder if I take a jump, like a sheep, over some six hours
of precious time, and present my solitary self to your eye, posted alone
in the sitting-room to receive the council of surgeons on its arrival at
the house. I had but two consolations to sustain me.
First, a Mayonnaise of chicken of my own making on the luncheon-table,
which, as a work of Art, was simply adorable--I say no more. Secondly, my
green silk dress, trimmed with my mother's famous lace--another work of
Art, equally adorable with the first. Whether I looked at the
luncheon-table, or whether I looked in the glass, I could feel that I
worthily asserted my nation; I could say to myself, Even in this remote
corner of the earth, the pilgrim of civilization searching for the
elegant luxuries of life, looks and sees--France supreme!
The clock chimed the quarter past three. Lucilla, wearying, for the
hundredth time of waiting in her own room, put her head in at the door,
and still repeated the never-changing question--"No signs of them yet?"
"None, my love."
"Oh, how much longer will they keep us waiting!"
"Patience, Lucilla--patience!"
She disappeared again, with a weary sigh. Five minutes more passed; and
old Zillah peeped into the room next.
"Here they are, ma'am, in a chaise at the gate!"
I shook out the skirts of my green silk, I cast a last inspiriting glance
at the Mayonnaise. Nugent's cheerful voice reached me from the garden,
conducting the strangers. "This way, gentlemen--follow me." A pause.
Steps outside. The door opened. Nugent brought them in.
Herr Grosse, from America. Mr. Sebright of London.
The German gave a little start when my name was mentioned. The Englishman
remained perfectly unaffected by it. Herr Grosse had heard of my glorious
Pratolungo. Mr. Sebright was barbarously ignorant of his existence. I
shall describe Herr Grosse first, and shall take the greatest pains with
him.
A squat, broad, sturdy body, waddling on a pair of short bandy legs;
slovenly, shabby, unbrushed clothes; a big square bilious-yellow face,
surmounted by a mop of thick iron-grey hair; dark beetle-brows; a pair of
staring, fierce, black, goggle eyes, with huge circular spectacles
standing up like fortifications in front of them; a shaggy beard and
mustache of mixed black, white, and grey; a prodigious cameo ring on the
forefinger of one hairy hand; the other hand always in and out of a deep
silver snuff-box like a small tea-caddy; a rough rasping voice; a
diabolically humourous smile; a curtly confident way of speaking;
resolution, independence, power, expressed all over him from head to
foot--there is the portrait of the man who held in his hands (if Nugent
was to be trusted) the restoration of Lucilla's sight!
The English oculist was as unlike his German colleague as it is possible
for one human being to be to another.
Mr. Sebright was slim and spare, and scrupulously (painfully) clean and
neat. His smooth light hair was carefully parted; his well-shaved face
exhibited two little crisp morsels of whisker about two inches long, and
no hair more. His decent black clothes were perfectly made; he wore no
ornaments, not even a watch-chain; he moved deliberately, he spoke
gravely and quietly; disciplined attention looked coldly at you out of
his light grey eyes; and said, Here I am if you want me, in every
movement of his thin finely-cut lips. A thoroughly capable man, beyond
all doubt--but defend me from accidentally sitting next to him at dinner,
or traveling with him for my only companion on a long journey!
I received these distinguished persons with my best grace. Herr Grosse
complimented me in return on my illustrious name, and shook hands. Mr.
Sebright said it was a beautiful day, and bowed. The German, the moment
he was at liberty to look about him, looked at the luncheon-table. The
Englishman looked out of window.
"Will you take some refreshment, gentlemen?"
Herr Grosse nodded his shock head in high approval. His wild eyes glared
greedily at the Mayonnaise through his prodigious spectacles. "Aha! I
like that," said the illustrious surgeon, pointing at the dish with his
ringed forefinger. "You know how to make him--you make him with creams.
Is he chickens or lobsters? I like lobsters best, but chickens is goot
too. The garnish is lofely--anchovy, olive, beetroots; brown, green, red,
on a fat white sauce! This I call a heavenly dish. He is nice-cool in two
different ways; nice-cool, to the eye, nice-cool to the taste! Soh! we
will break into his inside. Madame Pratolungo, you shall begin. Here goes
for the liver-wings!"
In this extraordinary English--turning words in the singular into words
in the plural, and banishing from the British vocabulary the copulative
conjunction "and"--Herr Grosse announced his readiness to sit down to
lunch. He was politely recalled from the Mayonnaise to the patient by his
discreet English colleague.
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Sebright. Would it not be advisable to see
the young lady, before we do anything else? I am obliged to return to
London by the next train."
Herr Grosse-with a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other, and a
napkin tied round his neck--stared piteously; shook his shock head; and
turned his back on the Mayonnaise, with a heavy heart at parting.
"Goot. We shall do our works first: then eat our lunches afterwards.
Where is the patients? Come-begin-begin!" He removed the napkin, blew a
sigh (there is no other way of expressing it)--and plunged his finger and
thumb into his tea-caddy snuff-box. "Where is the patients?" he repeated
irritably. "Why is she not close-handy in here?"
"She is waiting in the next room," I said. "I will bring her in directly.
You will make allowances for her, gentlemen, I am sure, if you find her a
little nervous?" I added, looking at both the oculists. Silent Mr.
Sebright bowed. Herr Grosse grinned diabolically, and said, "Make your
mind easy, my goot creature. I am not such a brutes as I look!"
"Where is Oscar?" asked Nugent, as I passed him on my way to Lucilla's
room.
"After altering his mind a dozen times at least," I replied, "he has
decided on not being present at the examination."
I had barely said the words before the door opened, and Oscar entered the
room. He had altered his mind for the thirteenth time--and here he was as
the result of it!
Herr Grosse burst out with an exclamation in his own language, at the
sight of Oscar's face. "Ach, Gott!" he exclaimed, "he has been taking
Nitrates of Silvers. His complexions is spoilt. Poor boys! poor boys!" He
shook his shaggy head--turned--and spat compassionately into a corner of
the room. Oscar looked offended; Mr. Sebright looked disgusted; Nugent
thoroughly enjoyed it. I left the room and closed the door behind me.
I had not taken two steps in the corridor when I heard the door opened
again. Looking back directly, I found myself, to my amazement, face to
face with Herr Grosse--staring ferociously at me through his spectacles,
and offering me his arm!
"Hosh!" said the famous oculist in a heavy whisper. "Say nothing to
nobody. I am come to help you."
"To help me?" I repeated.
Herr Grosse nodded vehemently--so vehemently that his prodigious
spectacles hopped up and down on his nose.
"What did you tell me just now?" he asked. "You told me the patient was
nervous. Goot! I am come to go with you to the patients, and help you to
fetch her. Soh! soh! I am not such a brutes as I look. Come-begin-begin!
Where is she?"
I hesitated for a moment about introducing this remarkable ambassador
into Lucilla's bedroom. One look at him decided me. After all, he was a
doctor,--and such an ugly one! I took his arm.
We went together into Lucilla's room. She started up from the sofa on
which she was reclining when she heard the strange footsteps entering,
side by side with mine.
"Who is it?" she cried.
"It is me, my dears," said Herr Grosse. "Ach, Gott! what a pretty girls!
Here is jost the complexions I like-nice-fair! nice-fair! I am come to
see what I can do, my pretty Miss, for this eyes of yours. If I can let
the light in on you--hey! you will lofe me, won't you? You will kees even
an ugly Germans like me. Soh! Come under my arm. We will go back into the
odder rooms. There is anodder one waiting to let the light in too--Mr.
Sebrights. Two surgeon-optic to one pretty Miss--English surgeon-optic;
German surgeon-optic--hey! between us we shall cure this nice girls.
Madame Pratolungo, here is my odder arms at your service. Hey! what? You
look at my coatsleeve. He is shabby-greasy--I am ashamed of him. No
matter. You have got Mr. Sebrights to look at in the odder rooms. He is
spick-span, beautiful-new. Come! Forwards! Marsch!"
Nugent, waiting in the corridor, threw the door open for us. "Isn't he
delightful?" Nugent whispered behind me, pointing to his friend. Escorted
by Herr Grosse, we made a magnificent entry into the room. Our German
doctor had done Lucilla good already. The examination was relieved of all
its embarrassments and its terrors at the outset. Herr Grosse had made
her laugh--Herr Grosse had set her completely at her ease.
Mr. Sebright and Oscar were talking together in a perfectly friendly way
when we returned to the sitting-room. The reserved Englishman appeared to
have his attraction for the shy Oscar. Even Mr. Sebright was struck by
Lucilla; his cold face lit up with interest when he was presented to her.
He placed a chair for her in front of the window. There was a warmth in
his tone which I had not heard yet, when he begged her to be seated in
that place. She took the chair. Mr. Sebright thereupon drew back, and
bowed to Herr Grosse, with a courteous wave of his hand towards Lucilla
which signified, "You first!"
Herr Grosse met this advance with a counter-wave of the hand, and a
vehement shake of his shock-head, which signified, "I couldn't think of
such a thing!"
"Pardon me," entreated Mr. Sebright. "As my senior, as a visitor to
England, as a master in our art."
Herr Grosse responded by regaling himself with three pinches of snuff in
rapid succession--a pinch as senior, a pinch as visitor to England, a
pinch as master in the art. An awful pause followed. Neither of the
surgeons would take precedence of the other. Nugent interfered.
"Miss Finch is waiting," he said. "Come, Grosse, you were first presented
to her. You examine her first."
Herr Grosse took Nugent's ear between his finger and thumb, and gave it a
good-humoured pinch. "You clever boys!" he said. "You have the right word
always at the tips of your tongue." He waddled to Lucilla's chair; and
stopped short with a scandalized look. Oscar was bending over her, and
whispering to her with her hand in his. "Hey! what?" cried Herr Grosse.
"Is this a third surgeon-optic? What, sir! you treat young Miss's eyes by
taking hold of young Miss's hand? You are a Quack. Get out!" Oscar
withdrew--not very graciously. Herr Grosse took a chair in front of
Lucilla, and removed his spectacles. As a short-sighted man, he had
necessarily excellent eyes for all objects which were sufficiently near
to him. He bent forward, with his face close to Lucilla's, and parted her
eyelids alternately with his finger and thumb; peering attentively, first
into one eye, then into the other.
It was a moment of breathless interest. Who could say what an influence
on her future life might be exercised by this quaint kindly uncouth
little foreign man? How anxiously we watched those shaggy eyebrows, those
piercing goggle eyes! And, oh, heavens, how disappointed we were at the
first result! Lucilla suddenly gave a little irrepressible shudder of
disgust. Herr Grosse drew back from her, and glared at her benignantly
with his diabolical smile.
"Aha!" he said. "I see what it is. I snuff, I smoke, I reek of tobaccos.
The pretty Miss smells me. She says in her inmost heart--Ach Gott, how he
stink!"
Lucilla burst into a fit of laughter. Herr Grosse, unaffectedly amused on
his side, grinned with delight, and snatched her handkerchief out of her
apron-pocket. "Gif me scents," said this excellent German. "I shall stop
up her nose with her handkerchiefs. So she will not smell my
tobacco-stinks--all will be nice-right again--we shall go on." I gave him
some lavender-water from a scent-bottle on the table. He gravely drenched
the handkerchief with it, and popped it suddenly on Lucilla's nose. "Hold
him there, Miss. You cannot for the life of you smell Grosse now. Goot!
We may go on again."
He took a magnifying glass out of his waistcoat pocket, and waited till
Lucilla had fairly exhausted herself with laughing. Then the
examination--so cruelly grotesque in itself, so terribly serious in the
issues which it involved--resumed its course: Herr Grosse glaring at his
patient through his magnifying glass; Lucilla leaning back in the chair,
holding the handkerchief over her nose.
A minute, or more, passed--and the ordeal of the examination came to an
end.
Herr Grosse put back his magnifying glass with a grunt which sounded like
a grunt of relief, and snatched the handkerchief away from Lucilla.
"Ach! what a nasty smell!" he said, holding the handkerchief to his nose
with a grimace of disgust. "Tobaccos is much better than this." He
solaced his nostrils, offended by the lavender-water, with a huge pinch
of snuff. "Now I am going to talk," he went on. "See! I keep my distance.
You don't want your handkerchiefs--you smell me no more."
"Am I blind for life?" said Lucilla. "Pray, pray tell me, sir! Am I blind
for life?"
"Will you kees me if I tell you?"
"Oh, do consider how anxious I am! Pray, pray, pray tell me!"
She tried to go down on her knees before him. He held her back firmly and
kindly in her chair.
"Now! now! now! you be nice-goot, and tell me this first. When you are
out in the garden, taking your little lazy lady's walks on a shiny-sunny
day, is it all the same to your eyes as if you were lying in your bed in
the middles of the night?"
"No."
"Hah! You know it is nice-light at one time? you know it is horrid-dark
at the odder?"
"Yes."
"Then why you ask me if you are blind for life? If you can see as much as
that, you are not properly blind at all?"
She clasped her hands, with a low cry of delight. "Oh, where is Oscar?"
she said softly. "Where is Oscar?" I looked round for him. He was gone.
While his brother and I had been hanging spell-bound over the surgeon's
questions and the patient's answers, he must have stolen silently out of
the room.
Herr Grosse rose, and vacated the chair in favor of Mr. Sebright. In the
ecstasy of the new hope now confirmed in her, Lucilla seemed to be
unconscious of the presence of the English oculist, when he took his
colleague's place. His grave face looked more serious than ever, as he
too produced a magnifying glass from his pocket, and, gently parting the
patient's eyelids, entered on the examination of her blindness, in his
turn.
The investigation by Mr. Sebright lasted a much longer time than the
investigation by Herr Grosse. He pursued it in perfect silence. When he
had done he rose without a word, and left Lucilla as he had found her,
rapt in the trance of her own happiness--thinking, thinking, thinking of
the time when she should open her eyes in the new morning, and see!
"Well?" said Nugent, impatiently addressing Mr. Sebright. "What do you
say?"
"I say nothing yet." With that implied reproof to Nugent, he turned to
me. "I understand that Miss Finch was blind--or as nearly blind as could
be discovered--at a year old?"
"I have always heard so," I replied.
"Is there any person in the house--parent, or relative, or servant--who
can speak to the symptoms noticed when she was an infant?"
I rang the bell for Zillah. "Her mother is dead," I said. "And there are
reasons which prevent her father from being present to-day. Her old nurse
will be able to give you all the information you want."
Zillah appeared. Mr. Sebright put his questions.
"Were you in the house when Miss Finch was born?"
"Yes, sir."
"Was there anything wrong with her eyes at her birth, or soon
afterwards?"
"Nothing, sir."
"How did you know?"
"I knew by seeing her take notice, sir. She used to stare at the candles,
and clutch at things that were held before her, as other babies do."
"How did you discover it, when she began to get blind?"
"In the same way, sir. There came a time, poor little thing, when her
eyes looked glazed-like, and try her as we might, morning or evening, it
was all the same--she noticed nothing."
"Did the blindness come on gradually?"
"Yes, sir--bit by bit, as you may say. Slowly worse and worse one week
after another. She was a little better than a year old before we clearly
made it out that her sight was gone."
"Was her father's sight, or her mother's sight ever affected in any way?"
"Never, sir, that I heard of."
Mr. Sebright turned to Herr Grosse, sitting at the luncheon-table
resignedly contemplating the Mayonnaise. "Do you wish to ask the nurse
any questions?" he said.
Herr Grosse shrugged his shoulders, and pointed backwards with his thumb
at the place in which Lucilla was sitting.
"Her case is as plain to me as twos and twos make fours. Ach Gott! what
do I want with the nurse?" He turned again longingly towards the
Mayonnaise. "My fine appetites is going! When shall we lonch?"
Mr. Sebright dismissed Zillah with a frigid inclination of the head. His
discouraging manner made me begin to feel a little uneasy. I ventured to
ask if he had arrived at a conclusion yet. "Permit me to consult with my
colleague before I answer you," said the impenetrable man. I roused
Lucilla. She again inquired for Oscar. I said I supposed we should find
him in the garden--and so took her out. Nugent followed us. I heard Herr
Grosse whisper to him piteously, as we passed the luncheon-table, "For
the lofe of Heaven, come back soon, and let us lonch!" We left the
ill-assorted pair to their consultation in the sitting-room.
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST
"Who Shall Decide when Doctors disagree?"
WE had certainly not been more than ten minutes in the garden, when we
were startled by an extraordinary outbreak of shouting in broken English,
proceeding from the window of the sitting-room. "Hi-hi-hoi! hoi-hi!
hoi-hi!" We looked up, and discovered Herr Grosse, frantically waving a
huge red silk handkerchief at the window. "Lonch! lonch!" cried the
German surgeon. "The consultations is done. Come begin-begin."
Obedient to this peremptory summons, Lucilla, Nugent, and I returned to
the sitting-room. We had, as I had foreseen, found Oscar wandering alone
in the garden. He had entreated me, by a sign, not to reveal our
discovery of him to Lucilla, and had hurried away to hide himself in one
of the side-walks. His agitation was pitiable to see. He was totally
unfit to be trusted in Lucilla's presence at that anxious moment.
When we had left the oculists together, I had sent Zillah with a little
written message to Reverend Finch; entreating him (if it was only for
form's sake) to reconsider his resolution, and be present on the
all-important occasion to his daughter of the delivery of the medical
opinions on her case. At the bottom of the stairs (on our return), my
answer was handed to me on a slip of sermon-paper. "Mr. Finch declined to
submit a question of principle to any considerations dictated by mere
expediency. He desired seriously to remind Madame Pratolungo of what he
had already told her. In other words, he would repeat, and he would beg
her to remember this time, that his Foot was down."
On re-entering the room, we found the eminent oculists seated as far
apart as possible one from the other. Both gentlemen were engaged in
reading. Mr. Sebright was reading a book. Herr Grosse was reading the
Mayonnaise.
I placed Lucilla close by me, and took her hand. It was as cold as ice.
My poor dear trembled pitiably. For her, what moments of unutterable
suffering were those moments of suspense, before the surgeons delivered
their sentence! I pressed her little cold hand in mine, and whispered
"Courage!" Truly I can say it (though I am not usually one of the
sentimental sort), my heart bled for her.
"Well, gentlemen," said Nugent, "what is the result? Are you both
agreed?"
"No," said Mr. Sebright, putting aside his book.
"No," said Herr Grosse, ogling the Mayonnaise. Lucilla turned her face
towards me; her color shifting and changing, her bosom rising and falling
more and more rapidly. I whispered to her to compose herself. "One of
them, at any rate," I said, "thinks you will recover your sight." She
understood me, and became quieter directly. Nugent went on with his
questions, addressed to the two oculists.
"What do you differ about?" he asked. "Will you let us hear your
opinions?"
The wearisome contest of courtesy was renewed between our medical
advisers. Mr. Sebright bowed to Herr Grosse:
"You first." Herr Grosse bowed to Mr. Sebright: "No--you!" My impatience
broke through this cruel and ridiculous professional restraint. "Speak
both together, gentlemen, if you like!" I said sharply. "Do anything, for
God's sake, but keep us in suspense. Is it, or is it not, possible to
restore her sight?"
"Yes," said Herr Grosse.
Lucilla sprang to her feet, with a cry of joy.
"No," said Mr. Sebright.
Lucilla dropped back again into her chair, and silently laid her head on
my shoulder.
"Are you agreed about the cause of her blindness?" asked Nugent.
"Cataracts is the cause," answered Herr Grosse.
"So far, I agree," said Mr. Sebright. "Cataract is the cause.
"Cataracts is curable," pursued the German.
"I agree again," continued the Englishman--"with a reservation. Cataract
is _sometimes_ curable."
"This cataracts is curable!" cried Herr Grosse.
"With all possible deference," said Mr. Sebright, "I dispute that
conclusion. The cataract, in Miss Finch's case, is _not_ curable."
"Can you give us your reasons, sir, for saying that?" I inquired.
"My reasons are based on surgical considerations which it requires a
professional training to understand," Mr. Sebright replied. "I can only
tell you that I am convinced--after the most minute and careful
examination--that Miss Finch's sight is irrevocably gone. Any attempt to
restore it by an operation, would be, in my opinion, an unwarrantable
proceeding. The young lady would not only have the operation to undergo,
she would be kept secluded afterwards, for at least six weeks or two
months, in a darkened room. During that time, it is needless for me to
remind you that she would inevitably form the most confident hope of her
restoration to sight. Remembering this, and believing as I do that the
sacrifice demanded of her would end in failure, I think it most
undesirable to expose our patient to the moral consequences of a
disappointment which must seriously try her. She has been resigned from
childhood to her blindness. As an honest man, who feels bound to speak
out and to speak strongly, I advise you not further to disturb that
resignation. I declare it to be, in my opinion, certainly useless, and
possibly dangerous, to allow her to be operated on for the restoration of
her sight."
In those uncompromising words, the Englishman delivered his opinion.
Lucilla's hand closed fast on mine. "Cruel! cruel!" she whispered to
herself angrily. I gave her a little squeeze, recommending patience--and
looked in silent expectation (just as Nugent was looking too) at Herr
Grosse. The German rose deliberately to his feet, and waddled to the
place in which Lucilla and I were sitting together.
"Has goot Mr. Sebrights done?" he asked.
Mr. Sebright only replied by his everlasting never-changing bow.
"Goot! I have now my own word to put in," said Herr Grosse. "It shall be
one little word--no more. With my best compliments to Mr. Sebrights, I
set up against what he only thinks, what I--Grosse--with these hands of
mine have done. The cataracts of Miss there, is a cataracts that I have
cut into before, a cataracts that I have cured before. Now look!" He
suddenly wheeled round to Lucilla, tucked up his cuffs, laid a forefinger
of each hand on either side of her forehead, and softly turned down her
eyelids with his two big thumbs. "I pledge you my word as surgeon-optic,"
he resumed, "my knife shall let the light in here. This lofable-nice
girls shall be more lofable-nicer than ever. My pretty Feench must be
first in her best goot health. She must next gif me my own ways with
her--and then one, two, three--ping! my pretty Feench shall see!" He
lifted Lucilla's eyelids again as he said the last word--glared fiercely
at her through his spectacles--gave her the loudest kiss, on the
forehead, that I ever heard given in my life--laughed till the room rang
again--and returned to his post as sentinel on guard over the Mayonnaise.
"Now," cried Herr Grosse cheerfully, "the talkings is all done. Gott be
thanked, the eatings may begin!"
Lucilla left her chair for the second time.
"Herr Grosse," she said, "where are you?"
"Here, my dears!"
She crossed the room to the table at which he was sitting, already
occupied in carving his favorite dish.
"Did you say you must use a knife to make me see?" she asked quite
calmly.
"Yes, yes. Don't you be frightened of that. Not much pains to bear--not
much pains."
She tapped him smartly on the shoulder with her hand.
"Get up, Herr Grosse," she said. "If you have your knife about you, here
am I--do it at once!"
Nugent started. Mr. Sebright started. Her daring amazed them both. As for
me, I am the greatest coward living, in the matter of surgical operations
performed on myself or on others. Lucilla terrified me. I ran headlong
across the room to her. I was even fool enough to scream.
Before I could reach her, Herr Grosse had risen, obedient to command,
with a choice morsel of chicken on the end of his fork. "You charming
little fools," he said, "I don't cut into cataracts in such a hurry as
that. I perform but one operations on you to-day. It is this!" He
unceremoniously popped the morsel of chicken into Lucilla's mouth. "Aha!
Bite him well. He is nice-goot! Now then! Sit down all of you. Lonch!
lonch!"
He was irresistible. We all sat down at table.
The rest of us ate. Herr Grosse gobbled. From Mayonnaise to marmalade
tart. From marmalade tart back again to Mayonnaise. From Mayonnaise,
forward again to ham sandwiches and blancmange; and then back once more
(on the word of an honest woman) to Mayonnaise! His drinking was on the
same scale as his eating. Beer, wine, brandy--nothing came amiss to him;
he mixed them all. As for the lighter elements in the feast--the almonds
and raisins, the preserved ginger and the crystallized fruits, he ate
them as accompaniments to everything. A dish of olives especially won his
favor. He plunged both hands into it, and deposited his fists-full of
olives in the pockets of his trousers. "In this ways," he explained, "I
shall trouble nobody to pass the dish--I shall have by me continually all
the olives that I want." When he could eat and drink no more, he rolled
up his napkin into a ball, and became devoutly thankful. "How goot of
Gott," he remarked, "when he invented the worlds to invent eatings and
drinkings too! Ah!" sighed Herr Grosse, gently laying his outspread
fingers on the pit of his stomach, "what immense happiness there is in
This!"
Mr. Sebright looked at his watch.
"If there is anything more to be said on the question of the operation,"
he announced, "it must be said at once. We have barely five minutes more
to spare. You have heard my opinion. I hold to it."
Herr Grosse took a pinch of snuff. "I also," he said, "hold to mine."
Lucilla turned towards the place from which Mr. Sebright had spoken.
"I am obliged to you, sir, for your opinion," she said, very quietly and
firmly. "I am determined to try the operation. If it does fail, it will
only leave me what I am now. If it succeeds, it gives me a new life. I
will bear anything, and risk anything, on the chance that I may see."
So, she announced her decision. In those memorable words, she cleared the
way for the coming Event in her life and in our lives, which it is the
purpose of these pages to record.
Mr. Sebright answered her, in Mr. Sebright's discreet way.
"I cannot affect to be surprised at your decision," he said. "However
sincerely I may regret it, I admit that it is the natural decision, in
your case."
Lucilla addressed herself next to Herr Grosse.
"Choose your own day," she said. "The sooner, the better. To-morrow, if
you can."
"Answer me one little thing, Miss," rejoined the German, with a sudden
gravity of tone and manner which was quite new in our experience of him.
"Do you mean what you say?"
She answered him gravely on her side. "I mean what I say."
"Goot. There is times, my lofe, to be funny. There is also times to be
grave. It is grave-times now. I have my last word to say to you before I
go."
With his wild black eyes staring through his owlish spectacles at
Lucilla's face, speaking earnestly in his strange broken English, he now
impressed on his patient the necessity of gravely considering, and
preparing for, the operation which he had undertaken to perform.
I was greatly relieved by the tone he took with her. He spoke with
authority: she would be obliged to listen to him.
In the first place, he warned Lucilla, if the operation failed, that
there would be no possibility of returning to it, and trying it again.
Once done, be the results what they might, it was done for good.
In the second place, before he would consent to operate, he must insist
on certain conditions, essential to success, being rigidly complied with,
on the part of the patient and her friends. Mr. Sebright had by no means
exaggerated the length of the time of trial which would follow the
operation, in the darkened room. Under no circumstances could she hope to
have her eyes uncovered, even for a few moments, to the light, after a
shorter interval than six weeks. During the whole of that time, and
probably during another six weeks to follow, it was absolutely necessary
that she should be kept in such a state of health as would assist her,
constitutionally, in her gradual progress towards complete restoration of
sight. If body and mind both were not preserved in their best and
steadiest condition, all that his skill could do might be done in vain.
Nothing to excite or to agitate her, must be allowed to find its way into
the quiet daily routine of her life, until her medical attendant was
satisfied that her sight was safe. The success of Herr Grosse's
professional career had been due, in no small degree, to his rigid
enforcement of these rules: founded on his own experience of the
influence which a patient's general health, moral as well as physical,
exercised on that patient's chance of profiting under an operation--more
especially under an operation on an organ so delicate as the organ of
sight.
Having spoken to this effect, he appealed to Lucilla's own good sense to
recognize the necessity of taking time to consider her decision, and to
consult on it with relatives and friends. In plain words, for at least
three months the family arrangements must be so shaped, as to enable the
surgeon in attendance on her to hold the absolute power of regulating her
life, and of deciding on any changes introduced into it. When she and the
members of her family circle were sure of being able to comply with these
conditions, Lucilla had only to write to him at his hotel in London. On
the next day he would undertake to be at Dimchurch. And then and there
(if he was satisfied with the state of her health at the time), he would
perform the operation.
After pledging himself in those terms, Herr Grosse puffed out his
remaining breath in one deep guttural "Hah!"--and got briskly on his
short legs. At the same moment, Zillah knocked at the door, and announced
that the chaise was waiting for the two gentlemen at the rectory-gate.
Mr. Sebright rose--in some doubt, apparently, whether his colleague had
done talking. "Don't let me hurry you," he said. "I have business in
London; and I must positively catch the next train."
"Soh! I have my business in London, too," answered his
brother-oculist--"the business of pleasure." (Mr. Sebright looked
scandalized at the frankness of this confession, coming from a
professional man). "I am so passion-fond of musics," Herr Grosse went
on--"I want to be in goot times for the opera. Ach Gott! musics is
expensive in England! I climb to the gallery, and pay my five silver
shillingses even there. For five copper pences, in my own country, I can
get the same thing--only better done. From the deep bottoms of my heart,"
proceeded this curious man, taking a cordial leave of me, "I thank you,
dear madam, for the Mayonnaise. When I come again, I pray you more of
that lofely dish." He turned to Lucilla, and popped his thumb on her
eyelids for the last time at parting. "My sweet-Feench, remember what
your surgeon-optic has said to you. I shall let the light in here--but in
my own way, at my own time. Pretty lofe! Ah, how infinitely much prettier
she will be, when she can see!" He took Lucilla's hand, and put it
sentimentally inside the collar of his waistcoat, over the region of the
heart; laying his other hand upon it as if he was keeping it warm. In
this tender attitude, he blew a prodigious sigh; recovered himself, with
a shake of his shock-head; winked at me through his spectacles, and
waddled out after Mr. Sebright, who was already at the bottom of the
stairs. Who would have guessed that this man held the key which was to
open for my blind Lucilla the gates of a new life!
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SECOND
Alas for the Marriage!
WE were left together; Nugent having accompanied the two oculists to the
garden-gate.
Now that we were alone, Oscar's absence could hardly fail to attract
Lucilla's attention. Just as she was referring to him in terms which made
it no easy task for me to quiet her successfully, we were interrupted by
the screams of the baby, ascending from the garden below. I ran to the
window, and looked out.
Mrs. Finch had actually effected her desperate purpose of waylaying the
two surgeons in the interests of "baby's eyes." There she was, in a skirt
and a shawl--with her novel dropped in one part of the lawn, and her
handkerchief in the other--pursuing the oculists on their way to the
chaise. Reckless of appearances, Herr Grosse had taken to his heels. He
was retreating from the screeching infant (with his fingers stuffed into
his ears), as fast as his short legs would let him. Nugent was ahead of
him, hurrying on to open the garden-gate. Respectable Mr. Sebright
(professionally incapable of running) brought up the rear. At short
intervals, Mrs. Finch, close on his heels, held up the baby for
inspection. At short intervals, Mr. Sebright held up his hands in polite
protest. Nugent, roaring with laughter, threw open the garden-gate. Herr
Grosse rushed through the opening, and disappeared. Mr. Sebright followed
Herr Grosse; and Mrs. Finch attempted to follow Mr. Sebright--when a new
personage appeared on the scene. Startled in the sanctuary of his study
by the noise, the rector himself strutted into the garden, and brought
his wife to a sudden standstill, by inquiring in his deepest base notes,
"What does this unseemly disturbance mean?"
The chaise drove off; and Nugent closed the garden-gate.
Some words, inaudible to my ears, passed between Nugent and the
rector--referring, as I could only suppose, to the visit of the two
departing surgeons. After awhile, Mr. Finch turned away (to all
appearance offended by something which had been said to him), and
addressed himself to Oscar, who now reappeared on the lawn; having
evidently only waited to show himself, until the chaise drove away. The
rector paternally took his arm; and, beckoning to his wife with the other
hand, took Mrs. Finch's arm next. Majestically marching back to the house
between the two, Reverend Finch asserted himself and his authority
alternately, now to Oscar and now to his wife. His big booming voice
reached my ears distinctly, accompanied in sharp discord by the last
wailings of the exhausted child.
In these terrible words the Pope of Dimchurch began:--"Oscar! you are to
understand distinctly, if you please, that I maintain my protest against
this impious attempt to meddle with my afflicted daughter's sight.--Mrs.
Finch! _you_ are to understand that I excuse your unseemly pursuit of two
strange surgeons, in consideration of the state that I find you in at
this moment. After your last confinement but eight you became, I
remember, hysterically irresponsible. Hold your tongue. You are
hysterically irresponsible now.--Oscar! I decline, in justice to myself,
to be present at any discussion which may follow the visit of those two
professional persons. But I am not averse to advising you for your own
good. My Foot is down. Put your foot down too.--Mrs. Finch! how long is
it since you ate last? Two hours? Are you sure it is two hours? Very
good. You require a sedative application. I order you, medically, to get
into a warm bath, and stay there till I come to you.--Oscar! you are
deficient, my good fellow, in moral weight. Endeavor to oppose yourself
resolutely to any scheme, on the part of my unhappy daughter or of those
who advise her, which involves more expenditure of money in fees, and new
appearances of professional persons.--Mrs. Finch! the temperature is to
be ninety-eight, and the position partially recumbent.--Oscar! I
authorize you (if you can't stop it in any other way) to throw My moral
weight into the scale. You are free to say 'I oppose This, with Mr.
Finch's approval: I am, so to speak, backed by Mr. Finch.'--Mrs. Finch! I
wish you to understand the object of the bath. Hold your tongue. The
object is to produce a gentle action on your skin. One of the women is to
keep her eye on your forehead. The instant she perceives an appearance of
moisture, she is to run for me.--Oscar! you will let me know at what
decision they arrive, up-stairs in my daughter's room. Not after they
have merely heard what you have to say, but after My Moral Weight has
been thrown into the scale.--Mrs. Finch! on leaving the bath, I shall
have you only lightly clothed. I forbid, with a view to your head, all
compression, whether of stays or strings, round the waist. I forbid
garters--with the same object. You will abstain from tea and talking. You
will lie, loose, on your back. You will----"
What else this unhappy woman was to do, I failed to hear. Mr. Finch
disappeared with her, round the corner of the house. Oscar waited at the
door of our side of the rectory, until Nugent joined him, on their way
back to the sitting-room in which we were expecting their return.
After an interval of a few minutes, the brothers appeared.
Throughout the whole of the time during which the surgeons had been in
the house, I had noticed that Nugent persisted in keeping himself
scrupulously in the background. Having assumed the responsibility of
putting the serious question of Lucilla's sight scientifically to the
test, he appeared to be resolved to pause there, and to interfere no
further in the affair after it had passed its first stage. And now again,
when we were met in our little committee to discuss, and possibly to
combat, Lucilla's resolution to proceed to extremities, he once more
refrained from interfering actively with the matter in hand.
"I have brought Oscar back with me," he said to Lucilla; "and I have told
him how widely the two oculists differ in opinion on your case. He knows
also that you have decided on being guided by the more favorable view
taken by Herr Grosse--and he knows no more."
There he stopped abruptly and seated himself apart from us, at the lower
end of the room.
Lucilla instantly appealed to Oscar to explain his conduct.
"Why have you kept out of the way?" she asked. "Why have you not been
with me, at the most important moment of my life?"
"Because I felt your anxious position too keenly," Oscar answered. "Don't
think me inconsiderate towards you, Lucilla. If I had not kept away, I
might not have been able to control myself."
I thought that reply far too dexterous to have come from Oscar on the
spur of the moment. Besides, he looked at his brother when he said the
last words. It seemed more than likely--short as the interval had been
before they appeared in the sitting-room--that Nugent had been advising
Oscar, and had been telling him what to say.
Lucilla received his excuses with the readiest grace and kindness.
"Mr. Sebright tells me, Oscar, that my sight is hopelessly gone," she
said. "Herr Grosse answers for it that an operation will make me see.
Need I tell you which of the two I believe in? If I could have had my own
way, Herr Grosse should have operated on my eyes, before he went back to
London."
"Did he refuse?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Lucilla told him of the reasons which the German oculist had stated as
unanswerable reasons for delay. Oscar listened attentively, and looked at
his brother again, before he replied.
"As I understand it," he said, "if you decide on risking the operation at
once, you decide on undergoing six weeks' imprisonment in a darkened
room, and on placing yourself entirely at the surgeon's disposal for six
weeks more, after that. Have you considered, Lucilla, that this means
putting off our marriage again, for at least three months?"
"If you were in my place, Oscar, you would let nothing, not even your
marriage, stand in the way of your restoration to sight. Don't ask me to
consider, love. I can consider nothing but the prospect of seeing You!"
That fearlessly frank confession silenced him. He happened to be sitting
opposite to the glass, so that he could see his face. The poor wretch
abruptly moved his chair, so as to turn his back on it.
I looked at Nugent, and surprised him trying to catch his brother's eye.
Prompted by him, as I could now no longer doubt, Oscar had laid his
finger on a certain domestic difficulty which I had had in my mind, from
the moment when the question of the operation had been first agitated
among us.
(The marriage of Oscar and Lucilla--it is here necessary to explain--had
encountered another obstacle, and undergone a new delay, in consequence
of the dangerous illness of Lucilla's aunt. Miss Batchford, formally
invited to the ceremony as a matter of course, had most considerately
sent a message begging that the marriage might not be deferred on her
account. Lucilla, however, had refused to allow her wedding to be
celebrated, while the woman who had been a second mother to her, lay at
the point of death. The rector having an eye to rich Miss Batchford's
money--not for himself (Miss B. detested him), but for Lucilla--had
supported his daughter's decision; and Oscar had been compelled to
submit. These domestic events had taken place about three weeks since;
and we were now in receipt of news which not only assured us of the old
lady's recovery, but informed us also that she would be well enough to
make one of the wedding party in a fortnight's time. The bride's dress
was in the house; the bride's father was ready to officiate--and here,
like a fatality, was the question of the operation unexpectedly starting
up, and threatening another delay yet, for a period which could not
possibly be shorter than a period of three months! Add to this, if you
please, a new element of embarrassment as follows. Supposing Lucilla to
persist in her resolution, and Oscar to persist in concealing from her
the personal change in him produced by the medical treatment of the fits,
what would happen? Nothing less than this. Lucilla, if the operation
succeeded, would find out for herself--before instead of after her
marriage--the deception that had been practiced on her. And how she might
resent that deception, thus discovered, the cleverest person among us
could not pretend to foresee. There was our situation, as we sat in
domestic parliament assembled, when the surgeons had left us!)
Finding it impossible to attract his brother's attention, Nugent had no
alternative but to interfere actively for the first time.
"Let me suggest, Lucilla," he said, "that it is your duty to look at the
other side of the question, before you make up your mind. In the first
place, it is surely hard on Oscar to postpone the wedding-day again. In
the second place, clever as he is, Herr Grosse is not infallible. It is
just possible that the operation may fail, and that you may find you have
put off your marriage for three months, to no purpose. Do think of it! If
you defer the operation on your eyes till after your marriage, you
conciliate all interests, and you only delay by a month or so the time
when you may see."
Lucilla impatiently shook her head.
"If you were blind," she answered, "you would not willingly delay by a
single hour the time when you might see. You ask me to think of it. I ask
_you_ to think of the years I have lost. I ask _you_ to think of the
exquisite happiness I shall feel, when Oscar and I are standing at the
altar, if I can _see_ the husband to whom I am giving my |
