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 showthem—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!"
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 ofhisdiscolored 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 ofthis?"
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 tellyou?" she asked. "It tellsmethat 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. Iwillknow! 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. "Youwere horrified at the first sight of me.Youwere 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 fromyou."
"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, inherexperience 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!"
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 aboutyou!"
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 inherlove forhim—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.
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 selectedHamletas 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 toyou.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.