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!youare 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 askyouto think of the years I have lost. I askyouto think of the exquisite happiness I shall feel, when Oscar and I are standing at the altar, if I canseethe husband to whom I am giving myself for life! Put it off for a month? You might as well ask me to die for a month. It is like death to be sitting here blind, and to know that a man is within a few hours' reach of me who can give me my sight! I tell you all plainly, if you go on opposing me in this, I don't answer for myself. If Herr Grosse is not recalled to Dimchurch before the end of the week—I am my own mistress; I will go to him in London!"
Both the brothers looked at me.
"Have you nothing to say, Madame Pratolungo?" asked Nugent.
Oscar was too painfully agitated to speak. He softly crossed to my chair; and, kneeling by me, put my hand entreatingly to his lips.
You may consider me a heartless woman if you will. I remained entirely unmoved even by this. Lucilla's interests and my interests, you will observe, were now one. I had resolved, from the first, that she should not be married in ignorance of which was the man who was disfigured by the blue face. If she took the course which would enable her to make that discovery for herself, at the right time, she would spare me the performance of a very painful and ungracious duty—and she would marry, as I was determined she should marry, with a full knowledge of the truth. In this position of affairs, it was no business of mine to join the twin-brothers in trying to make her alter her resolution. On the contrary, it was my business to confirm her in it.
"I can't see that I have any right to interfere," I said. "In Lucilla's place—after one and twenty years of blindness—I too should sacrifice every other consideration to the consideration of recovering my sight."
Oscar instantly rose, offended with me, and walked away to the window. Lucilla's face brightened gratefully. "Ah!" she said, "youunderstand me!" Nugent, in his turn, left his chair. He had confidently calculated, in his brother's interests, on Lucilla's marriage preceding the recovery of Lucilla's sight. That calculation was completely baffled. The marriage would now depend on the state of Lucilla's feelings, after she had penetrated the truth for herself. I saw Nugent's face darken, as he walked to the door.
"Madame Pratolungo," he said, "you may, one day, regret the course that you have just taken. Do as you please, Lucilla—I have no more to say."
He left the room, with a quiet submission to circumstances which became him admirably. Now, as always, it was impossible not to compare him advantageously with his vacillating brother. Oscar turned round at the window, apparently with the idea of following Nugent out. At the first step he checked himself. There was a last effort still left to make. Reverend Finch's "moral weight" had not been thrown into the scale yet.
"There is one thing more, Lucilla," he said, "which you ought to know before you decide. I have seen your father. He desires me to tell you that he is strongly opposed to the experiment which you are determined to try."
Lucilla sighed wearily. "It is not the first time that I find my father failing to sympathize with me," she said. "I am distressed—but not surprised. It isyouwho surprise me!" she added, suddenly raising her voice. "You, who love me, are not one with me, when I am standing on the brink of a new life. Good Heavens! are my interests not your interests in this? Is it not worth your while to wait till I canlook at youwhen I vow before God to love, honor, and obey you? Do you understand him?" she asked, appealing abruptly to me. "Why does he try to start difficulties? why is he not as eager about it as I am?"
I turned to Oscar. Now was the time for him to fall at her feet and own it! Here was the golden opportunity that might never come again. I signed to him impatiently to take it. He tried to take it—let me do him the justice now, which I failed to do him at the time—he tried to take it. He advanced towards her; he struggled with himself; he said, "There is a motive for my conduct, Lucilla——" and stopped. His breath failed him; he struggled again; he forced out a word or two more: "A motive," he went on, "which I have been afraid to confess——" he paused again, with the perspiration pouring over his livid face.
Lucilla's patience failed her. "What is your motive?" she asked sharply.
The tone in which she spoke broke down his last reserves of resolution. He turned his head suddenly so as not to see her. At the final moment—miserable, miserable man!—at the final moment, he took refuge in an excuse.
"I don't believe in Herr Grosse," he said faintly, "as you believe in him."
Lucilla rose, bitterly disappointed, and opened the door that led into her own room.
"If it had been you who were blind," she answered, "yourbelief would have beenmybelief, andyourhopemyhope. It seems I have expected too much from you. Live and learn! live and learn!"
She went into her room, and closed the door on us. I could bear it no longer. I got up, with the firm resolution in me to follow her, and say the words which he had failed to say for himself. My hand was on the door, when I was suddenly pulled back from it by Oscar. I turned, and faced him in silence.
"No!" he said, with his eyes fixed on mine, and his hand still on my arm. "If I don't tell her, nobody shall tell her for me."
"She shall be deceived no longer—she must, and shall, hear it," I answered. "Let me go!"
"You have given me your promise to wait for my leave before you open your lips. I forbid you to open your lips."
I snapped the fingers of my hand that was free, in his face. "Thatfor my promise!" I said. "Your contemptible weakness is putting her happiness in peril as well as yours." I turned my head towards the door, and called to her. "Lucilla!"
His hand closed fast on my arm. Some lurking devil in him that I had never seen yet, leapt up and looked at me out of his eyes.
"Tell her," he whispered savagely between his teeth; "and I will contradict you to your face! If you are desperate, I am desperate too. I don't care what meanness I am guilty of! I will deny it on my honor; I will deny it on my oath. You heard what she said about you at Browndown. She will believemebeforeyou."
Lucilla opened her door, and stood waiting on the threshold.
"What is it?" she asked quietly.
A moment's glance at Oscar warned me that he would do what he had threatened, if I persisted in my resolution. The desperation of a weak man is, of all desperations, the most unscrupulous and the most unmanageable—when it is once roused. Angry as I was, I shrank from degrading him, as I must now have degraded him, if I matched my obstinacy against his. In mercy to both of them, I gave way.
"I may be going out, my dear, before it gets dark," I said to Lucilla. "Can I do anything for you in the village?"
"Yes," she said, "if you will wait a little, you can take a letter for me to the post."
She went back into her room, and closed the door.
I neither looked at Oscar, nor spoke to him, when we were alone again. He was the first who broke the silence.
"You have remembered your promise to me," he said. "You have done well."
"I have nothing more to say to you," I answered. "I shall go to my own room."
His eyes followed me uneasily as I walked to the door.
"I shall speak to her," he muttered doggedly, "at my own time."
A wise woman would not have allowed him to irritate her into saying another word. Alas! I am not a wise woman—that is to say, not always.
"Your own time?" I repeated with the whole force of my contempt. "If you don't own the truth to her before the German surgeon comes back, your time will have gone by for ever. He has told us in the plainest terms—when once the operation is performed, nothing must be said to agitate or distress her, for months afterwards. The preservation of her tranquillity is the condition of the recovery of her sight. You will soon have an excuse for your silence, Mr. Oscar Dubourg!"
The tone in which I said those last words stung him to some purpose.
"Spare your sneers, you heartless Frenchwoman!" he broke out angrily. "I don't care how I stand inyourestimation. Lucilla loves me. Nugent feels for me."
My vile temper instantly hit on the most merciless answer that I could make to him in return.
"Ah, poor Lucilla!" I said. "What a much happier prospect hers might have been! What a thousand pities it is that she is not going to marry your brother, instead of marryingyou!"
He winced under that reply, as if I had cut him with a knife. His head dropped on his breast. He started back from me like a beaten dog—and suddenly and silently left the room.
I had not been a minute by myself, before my anger cooled. I tried to keep it hot; I tried to remember that he had aspersed my nation in calling me a "heartless Frenchwoman." No! it was not to be done. In spite of myself, I repented what I had said to him.
In a moment more, I was out on the stairs to try if I could overtake him.
I was too late. I heard the garden-gate bang, before I was out of the house. Twice I approached the gate to follow him. And twice I drew back, in the fear of making bad worse. It ended in my returning to the sitting-room, very seriously dissatisfied with myself.
The first welcome interruption to my solitude came—not from Lucilla—but from the old nurse. Zillah appeared with a letter for me: left that moment at the rectory by the servant from Browndown. The direction was in Oscar's handwriting. I opened the envelope, and read these words:—
"MADAME PRATOLUNGO,—YOU have distressed and pained me more than I can say. There are faults, and serious ones, on my side, I know. I heartily beg your pardon for anything that I may have said or done to offend you. I cannot submit to your hard verdict on me. If you knew how I adore Lucilla, you would make allowances for me—you would understand me better than you do. I cannot get your last cruel words out of my ears. I cannot meet you again without some explanation of them. You stabbed me to the heart, when you said to me this evening that it would be a happier prospect for Lucilla if she had been going to marry my brother instead of marrying me. I hope you did not really mean that? Will you please write and tell me whether you did or not?"OSCAR."
Write and tell him? It was absurd enough—when we were within a few minutes' walk of each other—that Oscar should prefer the cold formality of a letter, to the friendly ease of a personal interview. Why could he not have called, and spoken to me? We should have made it up together far more comfortably in that way—and in half the time. At any rate, I determined to go to Browndown, and be good friends again, vivâ-voce, with this poor, weak, well-meaning, ill-judging boy. Was it not monstrous to have attached serious meaning to what Oscar had said when he was in a panic of nervous terror! His tone of writing so keenly distressed me that I resented his letter on that very account. It was one of the chilly evenings of an English June. A small fire was burning in the grate. I crumpled up the letter, and threw it, as I supposed, into the fire. (After-events showed that I only threw it into a corner of the fender instead.) Then, I put on my hat, without stopping to think of Lucilla, or of what she was writing for the post, and ran off to Browndown.
Where do you think I found him? Locked up in his own room! His insane shyness—it was really nothing less—made him shrink from that very personal explanation which (with such a temperament as mine) was the only possible explanation under the circumstances. I had to threaten him with forcing his door, before I could get him to show himself, and take my hand.
Once face to face with him, I soon set things right. I really believe he had been half mad with his own self-imposed troubles, when he had declared he would give me the lie at the door of Lucilla's room.
It is needless to dwell on what took place between us. I shall only say here that I had serious reason, at a later time—as you will soon see—to regret not having humoured Oscar's request that I should reconcile myself to him by writing, instead of by word of mouth. If I had only placed on record, in pen and ink, what I actually said in the way of making atonement to him, I might have spared some suffering to myself and to others. As it was, the only proof that I had absolved myself in his estimation consisted in his cordially shaking hands with me at the door, when I left him.
"Did you meet Nugent?" he asked, as he walked with me across the enclosure in front of the house.
I had gone to Browndown by a short cut at the back of the garden, instead of going through the village. Having mentioned this, I asked if Nugent had returned to the rectory.
"He went back to see you," said Oscar.
"Why?"
"Only his usual kindness. He takes your views of things. He laughed when he heard I had sent a letter to you, and he ran off (dear fellow!) to see you on my behalf. You must have met him, if you had come here by the village."
On getting back to the rectory, I questioned Zillah. Nugent, in my absence, had run up into the sitting-room; had waited there a few minutes alone, on the chance of my return; had got tired of waiting, and had gone away again. I inquired about Lucilla next. A few minutes after Nugent had gone, she had left her room, and she too had asked for me. Hearing that I was not to be found in the house, she had given Zillah a letter to post—and had then returned to her bed-chamber.
I happened to be standing by the hearth, looking into the dying fire, while the nurse was speaking. Not a vestige of Oscar's letter to me (as I now well remember) was to be seen. In my position, the plain conclusion was that I had really done what I supposed myself to have done—that is to say, thrown the letter into the flames.
Entering Lucilla's room, soon afterwards, to make my apologies for having forgotten to wait and take her letter to the post, I found her, weary enough after the events of the day, getting ready for bed.
"I don't wonder at your being tired of waiting for me," she said. "Writing is long, long work for me. But this was a letter which I felt bound to write myself, if I could. Can you guess who I am corresponding with? It is done, my dear! I have written to Herr Grosse!"
"Already!"
"What is there to wait for? What is there left to determine on? I have told Herr Grosse that our family consultation is over, and that I am entirely at his disposal for any length of time he may think right. And I warn him, if he attempts to put it off, that he will be only forcing on me the inconvenience of going to him in London. I have expressed that part of my letter strongly—I can tell you! He will get it to-morrow, by the afternoon post. And the next day—if he is a man of his word—he will be here."
"Oh, Lucilla! not to operate on your eyes?"
"Yes—to operate on my eyes!"
THE interval-day before the second appearance of Herr Grosse, and the experiment on Lucilla's sight that was to follow it, was marked by two incidents which ought to be noticed in this place.
The first incident was the arrival, early in the morning, of another letter addressed to me privately by Oscar Dubourg. Like many other shy people, he had a perfect mania, where any embarrassing circumstances were concerned, for explaining himself, with difficulty, by means of his pen, in preference to explaining himself, with ease, by means of his tongue.
Oscar's present communication informed me that he had left us for London by the first morning train, and that his object in taking this sudden journey was—to state his present position towards Lucilla to a gentleman especially conversant with the peculiarities of blind people. In plain words, he had resolved on applying to Mr. Sebright for advice.
"I like Mr. Sebright" (Oscar wrote) "as cordially as I detest Herr Grosse. The short conversation I had with him has left me with the pleasantest impression of his delicacy and his kindness. If I freely reveal to this skillful surgeon the sad situation in which I am placed, I believe his experience will throw an entirely new light on the present state of Lucilla's mind, and on the changes which we may expect to see produced in her, if she really does recover her sight. The result may be of incalculable benefit in teaching me how I may own the truth, most harmlessly to her, as well as to myself. Pray don't suppose I undervalue your advice. I only want to be doubly fortified, before I risk my confession, by the advice of a scientific man."
All this I took to mean, in plain English, that vacillating Oscar wanted to quiet his conscience by gaining time, and that his absurd idea of consulting Mr. Sebright was nothing less than a new and plausible excuse for putting off the evil day. His letter ended by pledging me to secrecy, and by entreating me so to manage matters as to grant him a private interview on his return to Dimchurch by the evening train.
I confess I felt some curiosity as to what would come of the proposed consultation between unready Oscar and precise Mr. Sebright—and I accordingly arranged to take my walk alone, towards eight o'clock that evening, on the road that led to the distant railway station.
The second incident of the day may be described as a confidential conversation between Lucilla and myself, on the subject which now equally absorbed us both—the momentous subject of her restoration to the blessing of sight.
She joined me at the breakfast-table with her ready distrust newly excited, poor thing, by Oscar. He had accounted to her for his journey to London by putting forward the commonplace excuse of "business." She instantly suspected (knowing how he felt about it) that he was secretly bent on interfering with the performance of the operation by Herr Grosse. I contrived to compose the anxiety thus aroused in her mind, by informing her, on Oscar's own authority, that he personally disliked and distrusted the German oculist. "Make your mind easy," I said. "I answer for his not venturing near Herr Grosse."
A long silence between us followed those words. When Lucilla next referred to Oscar in connection with the coming operation, the depressed state of her spirits seemed to have quite altered her view of her own prospects. She, of all the people in the world, now spoke in disparagement of the blessing conferred on the blind by the recovery of their sight!
"Do you know one thing?" she said. "If I had not been going to be married to Oscar, I doubt if I should have cared to put any oculist, native or foreign, to the trouble of coming to Dimchurch."
"I don't think I understand you," I answered. "You cannot surely mean to say that you would not have been glad, under any circumstances, to recover your sight?"
"That is just what I do mean to say."
"What! you, who have written to Grosse to hurry the operation, don't care to see?"
"I only care to see Oscar. And, what is more, I only care to see him because I am in love with him. But for that, I really don't feel as if it would give me any particular pleasure to use my eyes. I have been blind so long, I have learnt to do without them."
"And yet, you looked perfectly entranced when Nugent first set you doubting whether you were blind for life?"
"Nugent took me by surprise," she answered; "Nugent startled me out of my senses. I have had time to think since; I am not carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment now. You people who can see attach such an absurd importance to your eyes! I set my touch, my dear, against your eyes, as much the most trustworthy, and much the most intelligent sense of the two. If Oscar was not, as I have said, the uppermost feeling with me, shall I tell you what I should have infinitely preferred to recovering my sight—supposing it could have been done?" She shook her head with a comic resignation to circumstances. "Unfortunately, it can't be done!"
"What can't be done?"
She suddenly held out both her arms over the breakfast-table.
"The stretching out oftheseto an enormous and unheard-of length. That is what I should have liked!" she answered. "I could find out better what was going on at a distance with my hands, than you could with your eyes and your telescopes. What doubts I might set at rest for instance about the planetary system, among the people who can see, if I could only stretch out far enough to touch the stars."
"This is talking sheer nonsense, Lucilla!"
"Is it? Just tell me which knows best in the dark—my touch or your eyes? Who has got a sense that she can always trust to serve her equally well through the whole four-and-twenty hours? You or me? But for Oscar—to speak in sober earnest, this time—I tell you I would much rather perfect the sense in me that I have already got, than have a sense given to me that I havenotgot. Until I knew Oscar, I don't think I ever honestly envied any of you the use of your eyes."
"You astonish me, Lucilla!"
She rattled her teaspoon impatiently in her empty cup.
"Can you always trust your eyes, even in broad daylight?" she burst out. "How often do they deceive you, in the simplest things? What did I hear you all disputing about the other day in the garden? You were looking at some view?"
"Yes—at the view down the alley of trees at the other end of the churchyard wall."
"Some object in the alley had attracted general notice—had it not?"
"Yes—an object at the further end of it."
"I heard you up here. You all differed in opinion, in spite of your wonderful eyes. My father said it moved. You said it stood still. Oscar said it was a man. Mrs. Finch said it was a calf. Nugent ran off, and examined this amazing object at close quarters. And what did it turn out to be? A stump of an old tree blown across the road in the night! Why am I to envy people the possession of a sense which plays them such tricks as that? No! no! Herr Grosse is going to 'cut into my cataracts,' as he calls it—because I am going to be married to a man I love; and I fancy, like a fool, I may love him better still, if I can see him. I may be quite wrong," she added archly. "It may end in my not loving him half as well as I do now!"
I thought of Oscar's face, and felt a sickening fear that she might be speaking far more seriously than she suspected. I tried to change the subject. No! Her imaginative nature had found its way into a new region of speculation before I could open my lips.
"I associate light," she said thoughtfully, "with all that is beautiful and heavenly—and dark with all that is vile and horrible and devilish. I wonder how light and dark will look to me when I see?"
"I believe they will astonish you," I answered, "by being entirely unlike what you fancy them to be now."
She started. I had alarmed her without intending it.
"Will Oscar's face be utterly unlike what I fancy it to be now?" she asked, in suddenly altered tones. "Do you mean to say that I have not had the right image of him in my mind all this time?"
I tried again to draw her off to another topic. What more could I do—with my tongue tied by the German's warning to us not to agitate her, in the face of the operation to be performed on the next day?
It was quite useless. She went on, as before, without heeding me.
"Have I no means of judging rightly what Oscar is like?" she said. "I touch my own face; I know how long it is and how broad it is; I know how big the different features are, and where they are. And then I touch Oscar, and compare his face with my knowledge of my own face. Not a single detail escapes me. I see him in my mind as plainly as you see me across this table. Do you mean to say, when I see him with my eyes, that I shall discover something perfectly new to me? I don't believe it!" She started up impatiently, and took a turn in the room. "Oh!" she exclaimed, with a stamp of her foot, "why can't I take laudanum enough, or chloroform enough to kill me for the next six weeks—and then come to life again when the German takes the bandage off my eyes!" She sat down once more, and drifted all on a sudden into a question of pure morality. "Tell me this," she said. "Is the greatest virtue, the virtue which it is most difficult to practice?"
"I suppose so," I answered.
She drummed with both hands on the table, petulantly, viciously, as hard as she could.
"Then, Madame Pratolungo," she said, "the greatest of all the virtues is—Patience. Oh, my friend, how I hate the greatest of all the virtues at this moment!"
That ended it—there the conversation found its way into other topics at last.
Thinking afterwards of the new side of her mind which Lucilla had shown to me, I derived one consolation from what had passed at the breakfast-table. If Mr. Sebright proved to be right, and if the operation failed after all, I had Lucilla's word for it that blindness, of itself, is not the terrible affliction to the blind which the rest of us fancy it to be—because we can see.
Towards half-past seven in the evening, I went out alone, as I had planned, to meet Oscar on his return from London.
At a long straight stretch of the road, I saw him advancing towards me. He was walking more rapidly than usual, and singing as he walked. Even through its livid discoloration, the poor fellow's face looked radiant with happiness as he came nearer. He waved his walking-stick exultingly in the air. "Good news!" he called out at the top of his voice. "Mr. Sebright has made me a happy man again!" I had never before seen him so like Nugent in manner, as I now saw him when we met and he shook hands with me.
"Tell me all about it," I said.
He gave me his arm; and, talking all the way, we walked back slowly to Dimchurch.
"In the first place," he began, "Mr. Sebright holds to his own opinion more firmly than ever. He feels absolutely certain that the operation will fail."
"Is that your good news?" I asked reproachfully.
"No," he said. "Though, mind, I own to my shame there was a time when I almost hoped it would fail. Mr. Sebright has put me in a better frame of mind. I have little or nothing to dread from the success of the operation—if, by any extraordinary chance, it should succeed. I remind you of Mr. Sebright's opinion merely to give you a right idea of the tone which he took with me at starting. He only consented under protest to contemplate the event which Lucilla and Herr Grosse consider to be a certainty. 'If the statement of your position requires it,' he said, 'I will admit that it is barely possible she may be able to see you two months hence. Now begin.' I began by informing him of my marriage engagement."
"Shall I tell you how Mr. Sebright received the information?" I said. "He held his tongue, and made you a bow."
Oscar laughed.
"Quite true!" he answered. "I told him next of Lucilla's extraordinary antipathy to dark people, and dark shades of color of all kinds. Can you guess what he said to me when I had done?"
I owned that my observation of Mr. Sebright's character did not extend to guessing that.
"He said it was a common antipathy in his experience of the blind. It was one among the many strange influences exercised by blindness on the mind. 'The physical affliction has its mysterious moral influence,' he said. 'We can observe it, but we can't explain it. The special antipathy which you mention, is an incurable antipathy, except on one condition—the recovery of the sight.' There he stopped. I entreated him to go on. No! He declined to go on until I had finished what I had to say to him first. I had my confession still to make to him—and I made it."
"You concealed nothing?"
"Nothing. I laid my weakness bare before him. I told him that Lucilla was still firmly convinced that Nugent's was the discolored face, instead of mine. And then I put the question—What am I to do?"
"And how did he reply?"
"In these words:—'If you ask me what you are to do, in the event of her remaining blind (which I tell you again will be the event), I decline to advise you. Your own conscience and your own sense of honor must decide the question. On the other hand, if you ask me what you are to do, in the event of her recovering her sight, I can answer you unreservedly in the plainest terms. Leave things as they are; and wait till she sees.' Those were his own words. Oh, the load that they took off my mind! I made him repeat them—I declare I was almost afraid to trust the evidence of my own ears."
I understood the motive of Oscar's good spirits, better than I understood the motive of Mr. Sebright's advice. "Did he give his reasons?" I asked.
"You shall hear his reasons directly. He insisted on first satisfying himself that I thoroughly understood my position at that moment. 'The prime condition of success, as Herr Grosse has told you,' he said, 'is the perfect tranquillity of the patient. If you make your confession to the young lady when you get back to-night to Dimchurch, you throw her into a state of excitement which will render it impossible for my German colleague to operate on her to-morrow. If you defer your confession, the medical necessities of the case force you to be silent, until the professional attendance of the oculist has ceased. There is your position! My advice to you is to adopt the last alternative. Wait (and make the other persons in the secret wait) until the result of the operation has declared itself.' There I stopped him. 'Do you mean that I am to be present, on the first occasion when she is able to use her eyes?' I asked. 'Am I to let her see me, without a word beforehand to prepare her for the color of my face?'"
We were now getting to the interesting part of it. You English people, when you are out walking and are carrying on a conversation with a friend, never come to a standstill at the points of interest. We foreigners, on the other hand, invariably stop. I surprised Oscar by suddenly pulling him up in the middle of the road.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
"Go on!" I said impatiently.
"I can't go on," he rejoined. "You're holding me."
I held him tighter than ever, and ordered him more resolutely than ever to go on. Oscar resigned himself to a halt (foreign fashion) on the high road.
"Mr. Sebright met my question by putting a question on his side," he resumed. "He asked me how I proposed to prepare her for the color of my face."
"And what did you tell him?"
"I said I had planned to make an excuse for leaving Dimchurch—and, once away, to prepare her, by writing, for what she might expect to see when I returned."
"What did he say to that?"
"He wouldn't hear of it. He said, 'I strongly recommend you to be present on the first occasion when she is capable (if she ever is capable) of using her sight. I attach the greatest importance to her being able to correct the hideous and absurd image now in her mind of a face like yours, by seeing you as you really are at the earliest available opportunity.'"
We were just walking on again, when certain words in that last sentence startled me. I stopped short once more.
"Hideous and absurd image?" I repeated, thinking instantly of my conversation of that morning with Lucilla. "What did Mr. Sebright mean by using such language as that?"
"Just what I asked him. His reply will interest you. It led him into that explanation of his motives which you inquired for just now. Shall we walk on?"
My petrified foreign feet recovered their activity. We went on again.
"When I had spoken to Mr. Sebright of Lucilla's inveterate prejudice," Oscar continued, "he had surprised me by saying that it was common in his experience, and was only curable by her restoration to sight. In support of those assertions, he now told me of two interesting cases which had occurred in his professional practice. The first was the case of the little daughter of an Indian officer—blind from infancy like Lucilla. After operating successfully, the time came when he could permit his patient to try her sight—that is to say, to try if she could see sufficiently well at first, to distinguish dark objects from light. Among the members of the household assembled to witness the removal of the bandage, was an Indian nurse who had accompanied the family to England. The first person the child saw was her mother—a fair woman. She clasped her little hands in astonishment, and that was all. At the next turn of her head, she saw the dark Indian nurse and instantly screamed with terror. Mr. Sebright owned to me that he could not explain it. The child could have no possible association with colors. Yet there nevertheless was the most violent hatred and horror of a dark object (the hatred and horror peculiar to the blind) expressing itself unmistakably in a child of ten years old! My first thought, while he was telling me this, was of myself, and of my chance with Lucilla. My first question was, 'Did the child get used to the nurse?' I can give you his answer in his own words. 'In a week's time, I found the child sitting in the nurse's lap as composedly as I am sitting in this chair.'—"That is encouraging—isn't it?"
"Most encouraging—nobody can deny it."
"The second instance was more curious still. This time the case was the case of a grown man—and the object was to show me what strange fantastic images (utterly unlike the reality) the blind form of the people about them. The patient was married, and was to see his wife (as Lucilla is one day to see me) for the first time. He had been told, before he married her, that she was personally disfigured by the scar of a wound on one of her cheeks. The poor woman—ah, how well I can understand her!—trembled for the consequences. The man who had loved her dearly while he was blind, might hate her when he saw her scarred face. Her husband had been the first to console her when the operation was determined on. He declared that his sense of touch, and the descriptions given to him by others, had enabled him to form, in his own mind, the most complete and faithful image of his wife's face. Nothing that Mr. Sebright could say would induce him to believe that it was physically impossible for him to form a really correct idea of any object, animate or inanimate, which he had never seen. He wouldn't hear of it. He was so certain of the result, that he held his wife's hand in his, to encourage her, when the bandage was removed from him. At his first look at her, he uttered a cry of horror, and fell back in his chair in a swoon. His wife, poor thing, was distracted. Mr. Sebright did his best to compose her, and waited till her husband was able to answer the questions put to him. It then appeared that his blind idea of his wife, and of her disfigurement had been something so grotesquely and horribly unlike the reality, that it was hard to know whether to laugh or to tremble at it. She was as beautiful as an angel, by comparison with her husband's favorite idea of her—and yet, because it was his idea, he was absolutely disgusted and terrified at the first sight of her! In a few weeks he was able to compare his wife with other women, to look at pictures, to understand what beauty was and what ugliness was—and from that time they have lived together as happy a married couple as any in the kingdom."
I was not quite sure which way this last example pointed. It alarmed me when I thought of Lucilla. I came to a standstill again.
"How did Mr. Sebright apply this second case to Lucilla and to you?" I asked.
"You shall hear," said Oscar. "He first appealed to the case as supporting his assertion that Lucilla's idea of me must be utterly unlike what I am myself. He asked if I was now satisfied that she could have no correct conception of what faces and colors were really like? and if I agreed with him in believing that the image in her mind of the man with the blue face, was in all probability something fantastically and hideously unlike the reality? After what I had heard, I agreed with him as a matter of course. 'Very well,' says Mr. Sebright. 'Now let its remember that there is one important difference between the case of Miss Finch, and the case that I have just mentioned. The husband's blind idea of his wife was the husband's favorite idea. The shock of the first sight of her, was plainly a shock to him on that account. Now Miss Finch's blind idea of the blue face is, on the contrary, a hateful idea to her—the image is an image that she loathes. Is it not fair to conclude from this, that the first sight of you as you really are, is likely to be, in her case, a relief to her instead of a shock? Reasoning from my experience, I reach that conclusion; and I advise you, in your own interests, to be present when the bandage is taken off. Even if I prove to be mistaken—even if she is not immediately reconciled to the sight of you—there is the other example of the child and the Indian nurse to satisfy you that it is only a question of time. Sooner or later, she will take the discovery as any other young lady would take it. At first, she will be indignant with you for deceiving her; and then, if you are sure of your place in her affections, she will end in forgiving you.—There is my view of your position, and there are the grounds on which I form it! In the meantime, my own opinion remains unshaken. I firmly believe that you will never have occasion to act on the advice that I have given to you. When the bandage is taken off, the chances are five hundred to one that she is no nearer to seeing you then than she is now.' These were his last words—and on that we parted."
Oscar and I walked on again for a little way, in silence.
I had nothing to say against Mr. Sebright's reasons; it was impossible to question the professional experience from which they were drawn. As to blind people in general, I felt no doubt that his advice was good, and that his conclusions were arrived at correctly. But Lucilla's was no ordinary character. My experience of her was better experience than Mr. Sebright's—and the more I thought of the future, the less inclined I felt to share Oscar's hopeful view. She was just the person to say something or do something, at the critical moment of the experiment, which would take the wisest previous calculation by surprise. Oscar's prospects never had looked darker to me than they looked at that moment.
It would have been useless and cruel to have said to him what I have just said here. I put as bright a face on it as I could, and asked if he proposed to follow Mr. Sebright's advice.
"Yes," he said. "With a certain reservation of my own, which occurred to me after I had left his house."
"May I ask what it is?"
"Certainly. I mean to beg Nugent to leave Dimchurch, before Lucilla tries her sight for the first time. He will do that, I know, to please me."
"And when he has done it, what then?"
"Then I mean to be present—as Mr. Sebright suggested—when the bandage is taken off."
"Previously telling Lucilla," I interposed, "that it is you who are in the room?"
"No. There I take the precaution that I alluded to just now. I propose to leave Lucilla under the impression that it is I who have left Dimchurch, and that Nugent's face is the face she sees. If Mr. Sebright proves to be right, and if her first sensation is a sensation of relief, I will own the truth to her the same day. If not, I will wait to make my confession until she has become reconciled to the sight of me. That plan meets every possible emergency. It is one of the few good ideas that my stupid head has hit on since I have been at Dimchurch."
He said those last words with such an innocent air of triumph, that I really could not find it in my heart to damp his ardor by telling him what I thought of his idea. All I said was, "Don't forget, Oscar, that the cleverest plans are at the mercy of circumstances. At the last moment, an accident may happen which will force you to speak out."
We came in sight of the rectory as I gave him that final warning. Nugent was strolling up and down the road on the look-out for us. I left Oscar to tell his story over again to his brother, and went into the house.
Lucilla was at her piano when I entered the sitting-room. She was not only playing—but (a rare thing with her) singing too. The song was, poetry and music both, of her own composing. "I shall see him! I shall see him!" In those four words the composition began and ended. She adapted them to all the happy melodies in her memory. She accompanied them with hands that seemed to be mad for joy—hands that threatened every moment to snap the chords of the instrument. Never, since my first day at the rectory, had I heard such a noise in our quiet sitting-room as I heard now. She was in a fever of exhilaration which, in my foreboding frame of mind at that moment, it pained and shocked me to see. I lifted her off the music-stool, and shut up the piano by main force.
"Compose yourself for heaven's sake," I said. "Do you want to be completely exhausted when the German comes tomorrow?"
That consideration instantly checked her. She suddenly became quiet, with the abrupt facility of a child.
"I forgot that," she said, sitting down in a corner, with a face of dismay. "He might refuse to perform the operation! Oh, my dear, quiet me down somehow. Get a book, and read to me."
I got the book. Ah, the poor author! Neither she nor I paid the slightest attention to him. Worse still, we abused him for not interesting us—and then shut him up with a bang, and pushed him rudely into his place on the book-shelf, and left him upside down and went to bed.
She was standing at her window when I went in to wish her good night. The mellow moonlight fell tenderly on her lovely face.
"Moon that I have never seen," she murmured softly, "I feel you looking at me! Is the time coming when I shall look at You?" She turned from the window, and eagerly put my fingers on her pulse. "Am I quite composed again?" she asked. "Will he find me well to-morrow? Feel it! feel it! Is it quiet now?"
I felt it—throbbing faster and faster.
"Sleep will quiet it," I said—and kissed her, and left her.