AT that astounding confession, abruptly revealed in those plain words, even resolute Nugent lost all power of self-control. He burst out with a cry which reached Lucilla's ears. She instantly turned towards us, and instantly assumed that the cry had come from Oscar's lips.
"Ah! there you are!" she exclaimed. "Oscar! Oscar! what is the matter with you to-day?"
Oscar was incapable of answering her. He had cast one glance of entreaty at his brother as Lucilla came nearer to us. The mute reproach which had answered him, in Nugent's eyes, had broken down his last reserves of endurance. He was crying silently on Nugent's breast.
It was necessary that one of us should make his, or her, voice heard. I spoke first.
"Nothing is the matter, my dear," I said, advancing to meet Lucilla. "We were passing the house, and Oscar ran out to stop us and bring us in."
My excuses roused a new alarm in her.
"Us?" she repeated. "Who is with you?"
"Nugent is with me."
The result of the deplorable misunderstanding which had taken place, instantly declared itself. She turned deadly pale under the horror of feeling that she was in the presence of the man with the blue face.
"Take me near enough to speak to him, but not to touch him," she whispered. "I have heard what he is like. (Oh, if you saw him, as I see him,in the dark!) I must control myself. I must speak to Oscar's brother, for Oscar's sake."
She seized my arm and held me close to her. What ought I to have said? What ought I to have done? I neither knew what to say or what to do. I looked from Lucilla to the twin brothers. There was Oscar the Weak, overwhelmed by the humiliating position in which he had placed himself towards the woman whom he was to marry, towards the brother whom he loved! And there was Nugent the Strong, master of himself; with his arm round his brother, with his head erect, with his hand signing to me to keep silence. He was right. I had only to look back at Lucilla's face to see that the delicate and perilous work of undeceiving her, was not work to be done at a moment's notice, on the spot.
"You are not yourself to-day," I said to her. "Let us go home."
"No!" she answered. "I must accustom myself to speak to him. I will begin to-day. Take me to him—but don't let him touch me!"
Nugent disengaged himself from Oscar—whose unfitness to help us through our difficulties was too manifest to be mistaken—as he saw us approaching. He pointed to the low wall in front of the house, and motioned to his brother to wait there out of the way before Lucilla could speak to him again. The wisdom of this proceeding was not long in asserting itself. Lucilla asked for Oscar the moment after he had left us. Nugent answered that Oscar had gone back to the house to get his hat.
The sound of Nugent's voice helped her to calculate her distance from him without assistance from me. Still holding my arm, she stopped and spoke to him.
"Nugent," she said, "I have made Oscar tell me—what he ought to have told me long since." (She paused between each sentence; painfully controlling herself, painfully catching her breath.) "He has discovered a foolish antipathy of mine. I don't know how; I tried to keep it a secret from him. I need not tell you what it is."
She made a longer pause at those words, holding me closer and closer to her; struggling more and more painfully against the irresistible nervous loathing that had got possession of her.
He listened, on his side, with the constraint which always fell upon him in her presence more marked than ever. His eyes were on the ground. He seemed reluctant even to look at her.
"I think I understand," she went on, "why Oscar was unwilling to tell me——" she stopped, at a loss how to express herself without running the risk of hurting his feelings—"to tell me," she resumed, "what it is in you which is not like other people. He was afraid my stupid weakness might prejudice me against you. I wish to say that I won't let it do that. I never was more ashamed of it than now. I, too, have my misfortune. I ought to sympathize with you, instead of——"
Her voice had been growing fainter and fainter as she proceeded. She leaned against me heavily. One glance at her told me that if I let it go on any longer she would fall into a swoon. "Tell your brother that we have gone back to the rectory," I said to Nugent. He looked up at Lucilla for the first time.
"You are right," he answered. "Take her home." He repeated the sign by which he had already hinted to me to be silent—and joined Oscar at the wall in front of the house.
"Has he gone?" she asked.
"He has gone."
The moisture stood thick on her forehead. I passed my handkerchief over her face, and turned her towards the wind.
"Are you better now?"
"Yes."
"Can you walk home?"
"Easily."
I put her arm in mine. After advancing with me a few steps, she suddenly stopped—with a blind apprehension, as it seemed, of something in front of her. She lifted her little walking-cane, and moved it slowly backwards and forwards in the empty air, with the action of some one who is clearing away an encumbrance to a free advance—say the action of a person walking in a thick wood, and pushing aside the lower twigs and branches that intercept the way.
"What are you about?" I asked.
"Clearing the air," she answered. "The air is full of him. I am in a forest of hovering figures, with faces of black-blue. Give me your arm. Come through!"
"Lucilla!"
"Don't be angry with me. I am coming to my senses again. Nobody knows what folly, what madness it is, better than I do. I have a will of my own: suffer as I may, I promise to break myself of it this time. I can't, and won't let Oscar's brother see that he is an object of horror to me." She stopped once more, and gave me a little propitiatory kiss. "Blame my blindness, dear, don't blameme.If I could only see—! Ah, how can I make you understand me, you who don't live in the dark?" She went on a few paces, silent and thoughtful—and then spoke again. "You won't laugh at me, if I say something?"
"You know I won't."
"Suppose yourself to be in bed at night."
"Yes?"
"I have heard people say that they have sometimes woke in the middle of the night, on a sudden, without any noise to disturb them. And they have fancied (without anything particular to justify it) that there was something, or somebody, in the dark room. Has that ever happened to you?"
"Certainly, my love.—It has happened to most people to fancy what you say, when their nerves are a little out of order."
"Very well. There ismyfancy, and there aremynerves. When it happened to you, what did you do?"
"I struck a light, and satisfied myself that I was wrong."
"Suppose yourself without candle or matches, in a night without end, left alone with your fancy in the dark. There you have Me! It would not be easy, would it, to satisfy yourself; if you were in that helpless condition? You might suffer under it—very unreasonably—and yet very keenly for all that." She lifted her little cane, with a sad smile. "You might be almost as great a fool as poor Lucilla, and clear the air before you with this!"
The charm of her voice and her manner, added to the touching simplicity, the pathetic truth of those words. She made me realize, as I had never realized before, what it is to have, at one and the same time, the blessing of imagination, and the curse of blindness. For a moment, I was absorbed in my admiration and my love for her. For a moment, I forgot the terrible position in which we were all placed. She unconsciously recalled it to me when she spoke next.
"Perhaps I was wrong to force the truth out of Oscar?" she said, putting her arm again in mine, and walking on. "I might have reconciled myself to his brother, if I had never known what his brother was like. And yet I felt there was something strange in him, without being told, and without knowing what it was. There must have been a reason in me for the dislike that I felt for him from the first."
Those words appeared to me to indicate the state of mind which had led to Lucilla's deplorable mistake. I cautiously put some questions to her to test the correctness of my own idea.
"You spoke just now of forcing the truth out of Oscar," I said, "What made you suspect that he was concealing the truth from you?"
"He was so strangely embarrassed and confused," she answered. "Anybody in my place would have suspected him of concealing the truth."
So far the answer was conclusive.
"And how came you to find out what the truth really was?" I asked next.
"I guessed at it," she replied, "from something he said in referring to his brother. You know that I took a fanciful dislike to Nugent Dubourg before he came to Dimchurch?"
"Yes."
"And you remember that my prejudice against him was confirmed, on the first day when I passed my hand over his face to compare it with his brother's."
"I remember."
"Well—while Oscar was rambling and contradicting himself—he said something (a mere trifle) which suggested to me that the person with the blue face must be his brother. There was the explanation that I had sought for in vain—the explanation of my persistent dislike to Nugent! That horrid dark face of his must have produced some influence on me when I first touched it, like the influence which your horrid purple dress produced on me, when I first touchedthat.Don't you see?"
I saw but too plainly. Oscar had been indebted for his escape from discovery entirely to Lucilla's misinterpretation of his language. And Lucilla's misinterpretation now stood revealed as the natural product of her anxiety to account for her prejudice against Nugent Dubourg. Although the mischief had been done—still, for the quieting of my own conscience, I made an attempt to shake her faith in the false conclusion at which she had arrived.
"There is one thing I don't see yet," I said. "I don't understand Oscar's embarrassment in speaking to you. As you interpret him, what had he to be afraid of?"
She smiled satirically.
"What has become of your memory, my dear?" she asked. "What were you afraid of? You certainly never said a word to me of this poor man's deformity. You felt yourself, I suppose, (just as Oscar felt himself), placed between a choice of difficulties. On one side, my dislike of dark colors and dark people warned Oscar to hold his tongue. On the other, my hatred of having advantage taken of my blindness to keep things secret from me, pressed him to speak out. Isn't that enough—with his shy disposition, poor fellow—to account for his being embarrassed? Besides," she added, speaking more seriously, "perhaps he saw in my manner towards him that he had disappointed and pained me."
"How?" I asked.
"Don't you remember his once acknowledging in the garden that he had painted his face in the character of Bluebeard, to amuse the children? It was not delicate, it was not affectionate—it was not like him—to show such insensibility as that to his brother's shocking disfigurement. He ought to have remembered it, he ought to have respected it. There! we will say no more. We will go indoors and open the piano and try to forget."
Even Oscar's clumsy excuse in the garden—instead of confirming her suspicion—had lent itself to strengthen the foregone conclusion rooted in her mind! At that critical moment—before I had consulted with the twin-brothers as to what was to be done next—it was impossible to say more. I felt seriously alarmed when I thought of the future. When she was told—as told she must be—of the dreadful delusion into which she had fallen, what would be the result to Oscar? what would be the effect on herself? I own I shrank from pursuing the inquiry.
When we reached the turn in the valley, I looked back at Browndown for the last time. The twin-brothers were still in the place at which we had left them. Though the faces were indistinguishable, I could still see the figures plainly—Oscar sitting crouched up on the wall; Nugent erect at his side, with one hand laid on his shoulder. Even at that distance, the types of the two characters were expressed in the attitudes of the two men. As we entered the new winding of the valley which shut them out from view, I felt (so easy is it to comfort a woman!) that the commanding position of Nugent had produced its encouraging impression on my mind. "He will find a way out of it," I said to myself, "Nugent will help us through!"
WE sat down at the piano, as Lucilla had proposed. She wished me to play first, and to play alone. I was teaching her, at the time, one of theSonatasof Mozart; and I now tried to go on with the lesson. Never before, or since, have I played so badly, as on that day! The divine serenity and completeness by which Mozart's music is, to my mind, raised above all other music that ever was written, can only be worthily interpreted by a player whose whole mind is given undividedly to the work. Devoured as I then was by my own anxieties, I might profane those heavenly melodies—I could not play them. Lucilla accepted my excuses, and took my place.
Half an hour passed, without news from Browndown.
Calculated by reference to itself, half an hour is no doubt a short space of time. Calculated by reference to your own suspense, while your own interests are at stake, half an hour is an eternity. Every minute that passed, leaving Lucilla still undisturbed in her delusion, was a minute that pricked me in the conscience. The longer we left her in ignorance, the more painful to all of us the hard duty of enlightening her would become. I began to get restless. Lucilla, on her side, began to complain of fatigue. After the agitation that she had gone through, the inevitable reaction had come. I recommended her to go to her room and rest. She took my advice. In the state of my mind at that time, it was an inexpressible relief to me to be left by myself.
After pacing backwards and forwards for some little time in the sitting-room, and trying vainly to see my way through the difficulties that now beset us, I made up my mind to wait no longer for the news that never came. The brothers were still at Browndown. To Browndown I determined to return.
I peeped quietly into Lucilla's room. She was asleep. After a word to Zillah, recommending her young mistress to her care, I slipped out. As I crossed the lawn, I heard the garden-gate opened. In a minute more, the man of all others whom I most wanted to see, presented himself before me, in the person of Nugent Dubourg. He had borrowed Oscar's key, and had set off alone for the rectory to tell me what had passed between his brother and himself.
"This is the first stroke of luck that has fallen to me to-day," he said. "I was wondering how I should contrive to speak to you privately. And here you are—accessible and alone. Where is Lucilla? Can we depend on having the garden to ourselves?"
I satisfied him on both those points. He looked sadly pale and worn. Before he opened his lips, I saw that he too had had his mind disturbed, and his patience tried, since I had left him. There was a summer-house at the end of the garden with a view over the breezy solitude of the Downs. Here we established ourselves; and here, in my headlong way, I opened the interview with the one formidable question:—"Who is to tell her of the mistake she has made?"
"Nobody is to tell her."
That answer staggered me at the outset. I looked at Nugent in silent astonishment.
"There is nothing to be surprised at," he said. "Let me put my point of view before you in two words. I have had a serious talk with Oscar—"
Women are proverbially bad listeners—and I am no better than the rest of them. I interrupted him, before he could get any farther.
"I suppose Oscar has told you how the mistake happened?" I said.
"He has no idea how it happened. He owns—when he found himself face to face with her—that his presence of mind completely failed him: he didn't himself know what he was saying at the time.Helost his head; andshelost her patience. Think of his nervous confusion in collision with her nervous irritability—and the result explains itself: nothingcouldcome of it but misapprehension and mistake. I turned the thing over in my mind, after you had left us; and the one course to take thatIcould see was to accept the position patiently, and to make the best instead of the worst of it. Having reached this conclusion, I settled the matter (as I settle most other difficulties)—by cutting the Gordian knot. I said to Oscar, 'Would it be a relief to your mind to leave her present impression undisturbed until you are married?' You know him—I needn't tell you what his answer was. 'Very well,' I said. 'Dry your eyes and compose yourself. I have begun as Blue Face. As Blue Face I will go on till further notice.' I spare you the description of Oscar's gratitude. I proposed; and he accepted. There is the way out of the difficulty as I see it."
"Your way out of the difficulty is an unworthy way, and a false way," I answered. "I protest against taking that cruel advantage of Lucilla's blindness. I refuse to have anything to do with it."
He opened his case, and took out a cigar.
"Do as you please," he said. "You saw the pitiable state she was in, when she forced herself to speak to me. You saw how her disgust and horror overpowered her at the end. Transfer that disgust and horror to Oscar (with indignation and contempt added inhiscase); expose him to the result of rousing those feelings in her, before he is fortified by a husband's influence over her mind, and a husband's place in her affections—if you dare. I love the poor fellow; andIdaren't. May I smoke?"
I gave him his permission to smoke by a gesture. Before I said anything more to this inscrutable gentleman, I felt the necessity of understanding him—if I could.
There was no difficulty in accounting for his readiness to sacrifice himself in the interests of Oscar's tranquillity. He never did things by halves—he liked dashing at difficulties which would have made other men pause. The same zeal in his brother's service which had saved Oscar's life at the Trial, might well be the zeal that animated him now. The perplexity that I felt was not roused in me by the course that he had taken—but by the language in which he justified himself, and, more still, by his behavior to me while he was speaking. The well-bred brilliant young fellow of my previous experience, had now turned as dogged and as ungracious as a man could be. He waited to hear what I had to say to him next, with a hard defiance and desperation of manner entirely uncalled for by the circumstances, and entirely out of harmony with his character, so far as I had observed it. That there was something lurking under the surface, some inner motive at work in him which he was concealing from his brother and concealing from me, was as plainly visible as the sunshine and shade on the view that I was looking at from the summer-house. But what that something was, or what that inner motive might be, it baffled my utmost sagacity to guess. Not the faintest idea of the terrible secret that he was hiding from me, crossed my mind. Innocent of all suspicion of the truth, there I sat opposite to him, the unconscious witness of that unhappy man's final struggle to be true to the brother whom he loved, and to master the devouring passion that consumed him. So long as Lucilla falsely believed him to be disfigured by the drug, so long the commonest consideration for her tranquillity would, in the estimation of others, excuse and explain his keeping out of her presence. In that separation, lay his last chance of raising an insurmountable barrier between Lucilla and himself. He had already tried uselessly to place another obstacle in the way—he had vainly attempted to hasten the marriage which would have made Lucilla sacred to him as his brother's wife. That effort having failed, there was but one honorable alternative left to him—to keep out of her society, until she was married to Oscar. He had accepted the position in which Oscar had placed him, as the one means of reaching the end in view without exciting suspicion of the truth—and he had encountered, as his reward for the sacrifice, my ignorant protest, my stupid opposition, set as obstacles in his way! There were the motives—the pure, the noble motives—which animated him, as I know them now. There is the right reading of the dogged language that mystified me, of the defiant manner that offended me; interpreted by the one light that I have to guide my pen—the light of later events!
"Well?" he said. "Are we allies, or not? Are you with me or against me?"
I gave up attempting to understand him; and answered that plain question, plainly.
"I don't deny that the consequences of undeceiving her may be serious," I said. "But, for all that, I will have no share in the cruelty of keeping her deceived."
Nugent held up his forefinger, warningly.
"Pause, and reflect, Madame Pratolungo! The mischief that you may do, as matters stand now, may be mischief that you can never repair. It's useless to ask you to alter your mind. I only ask you to wait a little. There is plenty of time before the wedding-day. Something may happen which will spare you the necessity of enlightening Lucilla with your own lips."
"What can happen?" I asked.
"Lucilla may yet see him, as we see him," Nugent answered. "Lucilla's own eyes may discover the truth."
"What! have you not abandoned the mad notion of curing her blindness, yet?"
"I will abandon my notion when the German surgeon tells me it is mad. Not before."
"Have you said anything about it to Oscar?"
"Not a word. I shall say nothing about it to anybody but you, until the German is safe on the shores of England."
"Do you expect him to arrive before the marriage?"
"Certainly! He would have left New York with me, but for one patient who still required his care. No new patients will tempt him to stay in America. His extraordinary success has made his fortune. The ambition of his life is to see England: and he can afford to gratify it. He may be here by the next steamer that reaches Liverpool."
"And when he does come, you mean to bring him to Dimchurch?"
"Yes—unless Lucilla objects to it."
"Suppose Oscar objects? She is resigned to be blind for life. If you disturb that resignation with no useful result, you may make an unhappy woman of her for the rest of her days. In your brother's place, I should object to running that risk."
"My brother is doubly interested in running the risk. I repeat what I have already told you. The physical result will not be the only result, if her sight can be restored. There will be a new mind put into her as well as a new sense. Oscar has everything to dread from this morbid fancy of hers as long as she is blind. Only let her eyes correct her fancy—only let her see him as we see him, and get used to him, as we have got used to him; and Oscar's future with her is safe. Will you leave things as they are for the present, on the chance that the German surgeon may get here before the wedding-day?"
I consented to that; being influenced, in spite of myself, by the remarkable coincidence between what Nugent had just said of Lucilla, and what Lucilla had said to me of herself earlier in the day. It was impossible to deny that Nugent's theory, wild as it sounded, found its confirmation, so far, in Lucilla's view of her own case. Having settled the difference between us in this way, for the time being, I shifted our talk next to the difficult question of Nugent's relations towards Lucilla. "How are you to meet her again," I said, "after the effect you produced on her at the meeting to-day?"
He spoke far more pleasantly in discussing this side of the subject. His language and his manner both improved together.
"If I could have had my own way," he said, "Lucilla would have been relieved, by this time, of all fear of meeting with me again. She would have heard from you, or from Oscar, that business had obliged me to leave Dimchurch."
"Does Oscar object to let you go?"
"He won't hear of my going. I did my best to persuade him—I promised to return for the marriage. Quite useless! 'If you leave me here by myself,' he said, 'to think over the mischief I have done, and the sacrifices I have forced on you—you will break my heart. You don't know what an encouragement your presence is to me; you don't know what a blank you will leave in my life if you go!' I am as weak as Oscar is, when Oscar speaks to me in that way. Against my own convictions, against my own wishes, I yielded. I should have been better away—far, far better away!"
He said those closing words in a tone that startled me. It was nothing less than a tone of despair. How little I understood him then! how well I understand him now! In those melancholy accents, spoke the last of his honor, the last of his truth. Miserable, innocent Lucia! Miserable, guilty Nugent!
"And now you remain at Dimchurch," I resumed, "what are you to do?"
"I must do my best to spare her the nervous suffering which I unwillingly inflicted on her to-day. The morbid repulsion that she feels in my presence is not to be controlled—I can see that plainly. I shall keep out of her way; gradually withdrawing myself, so as not to force my absence on her attention. I shall pay fewer and fewer visits at the rectory, and remain longer and longer at Browndown every day. After they are married——" He suddenly stopped; the words seemed to stick in his throat. He busied himself in relighting his cigar, and took a long time to do it.
"After they are married," I repeated. "What then?"
"When Oscar is married, Oscar will not find my presence indispensable to his happiness. I shall leave Dimchurch."
"You will have to give a reason."
"I shall give the true reason. I can find no studio here big enough for me—as I have told you. And, even if I could find a studio, I should be doing no good, if I remained at Dimchurch. My intellect would contract, my brains would rust, in this remote place. Let Oscar live his quiet married life here. And let me go to the atmosphere that is fitter for me—the atmosphere of London or Paris."
He sighed, and fixed his eyes absently on the open hilly view from the summer-house door.
"It's strange to seeyoudepressed," I said. "Your spirits seemed to be quite inexhaustible on that first evening when you interrupted Mr. Finch overHamlet."
He threw away the end of his cigar, and laughed bitterly.
"We artists are always in extremes," he said. "What do you think I was wishing just before you spoke to me?"
"I can't guess."
"I was wishing I had never come to Dimchurch!"
Before I could return a word, on my side, Lucilla's voice reached our ears, calling to me from the garden. Nugent instantly sprang to his feet.
"Have we said all we need say?" he asked.
"Yes—for to-day, at any rate."
"For to-day, then—good-bye."
He leapt up; caught the cross-bar of wood over the entrance to the summer-house; and, swinging himself on to the low garden-wall beyond, disappeared in the field on the other side. I answered Lucilla's call, and hastened away to find her. We met on the lawn. She looked wild and pale, as if something had frightened her.
"Anything wrong at the rectory?" I asked.
"Nothing wrong," she answered—"except with Me. The next time I complain of fatigue, don't advise me to go and lie down on my bed."
"Why not? I looked in at you, before I came out here. You were fast asleep—the picture of repose."
"Repose? You never were more mistaken in your life. I was in the agony of a horrid dream."
"You were perfectly quiet when I saw you."
"It must have been after you saw me, then. Let me come and sleep with you to-night. I daren't be by myself, if I dream of it again."
"What did you dream of?"
"I dreamt that I was standing, in my wedding dress, before the altar of a strange church; and that a clergyman whose voice I had never heard before, was marrying me——" She stopped, impatiently waving her hand before her in the air. "Blind as I am," she said, "I see him again now!"
"The bridegroom?"
"Yes."
"Oscar?"
"No."
"Who then?"
"Oscar's brother. Nugent Dubourg."
(Have I mentioned before, that I am sometimes a great fool? If I have not, I beg to mention it now. I burst out laughing.)
"What is there to laugh at?" she asked angrily. "I saw his hideous, discolored face—I am never blind in my dreams! I felt his blue hand put the ring on my finger. Wait! The worst part of it is to come. I married Nugent Dubourg willingly—married him without a thought of my engagement to Oscar. Yes! yes! I know it's only a dream. I can't bear to think of it, for all that. I don't like to be false to Oscar even in a dream. Let us go to him. I want to hear him tell me that he loves me. Come to Browndown. I'm so nervous, I don't like going by myself. Come to Browndown!"
I have another humiliating confession to make—I tried to get off going to Browndown. (So like those unfeeling French people, isn't it?)
But I had my reason too. If I disapproved of the resolution at which Nugent had arrived, I viewed far more unfavorably the selfish weakness on Oscar's part, which had allowed his brother to sacrifice himself. Lucilla's lover had sunk to something very like a despicable character in my estimation. I felt that I might let him see what I thought of him, if I found myself in his company at that moment.
"Considering the object that you have in view, my dear," I said to Lucilla, "do you think you wantmeat Browndown?"
"Haven't I already told you?" she asked impatiently. "I am so nervous—so completely upset—that I don't feel equal to going out by myself. Have you no sympathy for me? Supposeyouhad dreamed that you were marrying Nugent instead of Oscar?"
"Ah, bah! what of that? I should only have dreamed that I was marrying the most agreeable man of the two."
"The most agreeable man of the two! There you are again—always unjust to Oscar."
"My love! if you could see for yourself, you would learn to appreciate Nugent's good qualities, as I do."
"I prefer appreciating Oscar's good qualities."
"You are prejudiced, Lucilla."
"So are you!"
"You happen to have met Oscar first."
"That has nothing to do with it."
"Yes! yes! If Nugent had followed us, instead of Oscar; if, of those two charming voices which are both the same, one had spoken instead of the other—"
"I won't hear a word more!"
"Tra-la-la-la! It happens to have been Oscar. Turn it the other way—and Nugent might have been the man.
"Madame Pratolungo, I am not accustomed to be insulted! I have no more to say to you."
With that dignified reply, and with the loveliest color in her face that you ever saw in your life, my darling Lucilla turned her pretty back on me, and set off for Browndown by herself.
Ah, my rash tongue! Ah, my nasty foreign temper! Why did I let her irritate me? I, the elder of the two—why did I not set her an example of self-control? Who can tell? When does a woman know why she does anything? Did Eve know—when Mr. Serpent offered her the apple—why she ate it? not she!
What was to be done now? Two things were to be done. First thing:—To cool myself down. Second thing:—To follow Lucilla, and kiss and make it up.
Either I took some time to cool—or, in the irritation of the moment, Lucilla walked faster than usual. She had got to Browndown before I could overtake her. On opening the house-door, I heard them talking. It would hardly do to disturb them—especially now I was in disgrace. While I was hesitating, and wondering what my next proceeding had better be, my eye was attracted by a letter lying on the hall-table. I looked (one is always inquisitive in those idle moments when one doesn't know what to do)—I looked at the address. The letter was directed to Nugent; and the post-mark was Liverpool.
I drew the inevitable conclusion. The German oculist was in England!
I WAS still in doubt, whether to enter the room, or to wait outside until she left Browndown to return to the rectory—when Lucilla's keen sense of hearing decided the question which I had been unable to settle for myself. The door of the room opened; and Oscar advanced into the hall.
"Lucilla insisted that she heard somebody outside," he said. "Who could have guessed it was you? Why did you wait in the hall? Come in! come in!"
He held open the door for me; and I went in. Oscar announced me to Lucilla. "It was Madame Pratolungo you heard," he said. She took no notice either of him or of me. A heap of flowers from Oscar's garden lay in her lap. With the help of her clever fingers, she was sorting them to make a nosegay, as quickly and as tastefully as if she had possessed the sense of sight. In all my experience of that charming face, it had never looked so hard as it looked now. Nobody would have recognized her likeness to the Madonna of Raphael's picture. Offended—mortally offended with me—I saw it at a glance.
"I hope you will forgive my intrusion, Lucilla, when you know my motive," I said. "I have followed you here to make my excuses."
"Oh, don't think of making excuses!" she rejoined, giving three-fourths of her attention to the flowers, and one-fourth to me. "It's a pity you took the trouble of coming here. I quite agree with what you said in the garden. Considering the object I had in view at Browndown, I could not possibly expect you to accompany me. True! quite true!"
I kept my temper. Not that I am a patient woman: not that I possess a meek disposition. Very far from it, I regret to say. Nevertheless, I kept my temper—so far.
"I wish to apologize for what I said in the garden," I resumed. "I spoke thoughtlessly, Lucilla. It is impossible that I could intentionally offend you."
I might as well have spoken to one of the chairs. The whole of her attention became absorbed in the breathless interest of making her nosegay.
"WasI offended?" she said, addressing herself to the flowers. "Excessively foolish of me, if I was." She suddenly became conscious of my existence. "You had a perfect right to express your opinion," she said loftily. "Acceptmyexcuses if I appeared to dispute it."
She tossed her pretty head; she showed her brightest color; she tapped her nice little foot briskly on the floor. (Oh, Lucilla! Lucilla!) I still kept my temper. More, by this time (I admit,) for Oscar's sake than for her sake. He looked so distressed, poor fellow—so painfully anxious to interfere, without exactly knowing how.
"My dear Lucilla!" he began. "Surely you might answer Madame Pratolungo——"
She petulantly interrupted him, with another toss of the head—a little higher than the last.
"I don't attempt to answer Madame Pratolungo! I prefer admitting that Madame Pratolungo may have been quite right. I dare say I am ready to fall in love with the first man who comes my way. I dare say—if I had met your brother before I met you—I should have fallen in love withhim.Quite likely!"
"Quite likely—as you say,"—answered poor Oscar, humbly. "I am sure I think it very lucky forme,that you didn't meet Nugent first."
She threw her lapful of flowers away from her on the table at which she was sitting. She became perfectly furious with him for taking my side. I permitted myself (the poor child could not see it, remember), the harmless indulgence of a smile.
"You agree with Madame Pratolungo," she said to him viciously. "Madame Pratolungo thinks your brother a much more agreeable man than you."
Humble Oscar shook his head in melancholy acknowledgment of this self-evident fact. "There can be no two opinions about that," he said resignedly.
She stamped her foot on the carpet—and raised quite a little cloud of dust. My lungs are occasionally delicate. I permitted myself another harmless indulgence—indulgence in a slight cough. She heard the second indulgence—and suddenly controlled herself, the instant it reached her ears. I am afraid she took my cough as my commentary on what was going on.
"Come here, Oscar," she said, with a complete change of tone and manner. "Come and sit down by me."
Oscar obeyed.
"Put your arm round my waist."
Oscar looked at me. Having the use of his sight, he was sensible of the absurd side of the demonstration required of him—in the presence of a third person. She, poor soul, strong in her blind insensibility to all shafts of ridicule shot from the eye, cared nothing for the presence of a third person. She repeated her commands, in a tone which said sharply, "Embrace me—I am not to be trifled with."
Oscar timidly put his arm round her waist—with an appealing look at me. She issued another command instantly.
"Say you love me."
Oscar hesitated.
"Say you love me!"
Oscar whispered it.
"Out loud!"
Endurance has its limits: I began to lose my temper. She could not have been more superbly indifferent to my presence, if there had been a cat in the room instead of a lady.
"Permit me to inform you," I said, "that I have not (as you appear to suppose) left the room."
She took no notice. She went on with her commands, rising irrepressibly from one amatory climax to another.
"Give me a kiss!"
Unhappy Oscar—sacrificed between us—blushed. Stop! Don't revel prematurely in the greatest enjoyment a reader has—namely, catching a writer out in a mistake. I have not forgotten that his disfigured complexion would prevent his blush from showing on the surface. I beg to say I saw it under the surface—saw it in his expression: I repeat—he blushed.
I felt it necessary to assert myself for the second time.
"I have only one object in remaining in the room, Miss Finch. I merely wish to know whether you refuse to accept my excuses.
"Oscar! give me a kiss!"
He still hesitated. She threw her arm round his neck. My duty to myself was plain—my duty was to go.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Dubourg," I said—and turned to the door. She heard me cross the room, and called to me to stop. I paused. There was a glass on the wall opposite to me. On the authority of the glass, I beg to mention that I paused in my most becoming manner. Grace tempered with dignity: dignity tempered with grace.
"Madame Pratolungo!"
"Miss Finch?"
"This is the man who is not half so agreeable as his brother. Look!"
She tightened her hold round his neck, and gave him—ostentatiously gave him—the kiss which he was ashamed to giveher.I advanced, in contemptuous silence, to the door. My attitude expressed disgust accompanied by sorrow: sorrow, accompanied by disgust.
"Madame Pratolungo!"
I made no answer.
"This is the man whom I should never have loved if I had happened to meet his brother first. Look!"
She put both arms round his neck; and gave him a shower of kisses all in one. I indignantly withdrew. The door had been imperfectly closed when I had entered the room: it was ajar. I pulled it open—and found myself face to face with Nugent Dubourg, standing by the table, with his letter from Liverpool in his hand! He must have certainly heard Lucilla cast my own words back in my teeth—if he had heard no more.
I stopped short; looking at him in silent surprise. He smiled, and held out the open letter to me. Before we could speak, we heard the door of the room closed. Oscar had followed me out (shutting the door behind him) to apologize for Lucilla's behavior to me. He explained what had happened to his brother. Nugent nodded, and tapped his open letter smartly. "Leave me to manage it. I shall give you something better to do than quarreling among yourselves. You will hear what it is directly. In the meantime, I have got a message for our friend at the inn. Gootheridge is on his way here, to speak to me about altering the stable. Run and tell him I have other business on hand, and I can't keep my appointment to-day. Stop! Give him this at the same time, and ask him to leave it at the rectory."
He took one of his visiting cards out of the case, wrote a few lines on it in pencil, and handed it to his brother. Oscar (always ready to go on errands for Nugent) hurried out to meet the landlord. Nugent turned to me.
"The German is in England," he said. "Now I may open my lips."
"At once!" I exclaimed.
"At once. I have put off my own business (as you heard) in favor of this. My friend will be in London to-morrow. I mean to get my authority to consult him to-day, and to start tomorrow for town. Prepare yourself to meet one of the strangest characters you ever set eyes on! You saw me write on my card. It was a message to Mr. Finch, asking him to join us immediately (on important family business) at Browndown. As Lucilla's father, he has a voice in the matter. When Oscar comes back, and when the rector joins us, our domestic privy council will be complete."
He spoke with his customary spirit; he moved with his customary briskness—he had become quite himself again, since I had seen him last.
"I am stagnating in this place," he went on, seeing that I noticed the change in him. "It puts me in spirits again, having something to do. I am not like Oscar—I must have action to stir my blood—action to keep me from fretting over my anxieties. How do you think I found the witness to my brother's innocence at the Trial? In that way. I said to myself, 'I shall go mad if I don't do something.' I did something—and saved Oscar. I am going to do something again. Mark my words! Now I am stirring in it, Lucilla will recover her sight."
"This is a serious matter," I said. "Pray give it serious consideration."
"Consideration?" he repeated. "I hate the word. I always decide on the instant. If I am wrong in my view of Lucilla's case, consideration is of no earthly use. If I am right, every day's delay is a day of sight lost to the blind. I'll wait for Oscar and Mr. Finch; and then I'll open the business. Why are we talking in the hall? Come in!"
He led the way to the sitting-room. I had a new interest, now, in going back. Still, Lucilla's behavior hung on my mind. Suppose she treated me with renewed coldness and keener contempt? I remained standing at the table in the hall. Nugent looked back at me, over his shoulder.
"Nonsense!" he said. "I'll set things right. It's beneath a woman like you to take notice of what a girl says in a pet. Come in!"
I doubt if I should have yielded to please any other living man. But, there is no denying it, some people have a magnetic attracting power over others. Nugent had that power over me. Against my own will—for I was really hurt and offended by her usage of me—I went back with him into the room.
Lucilla was still sitting in the place which she had occupied when I withdrew. On hearing the door open, and a man's footsteps entering, she of course assumed that the man was Oscar. She had penetrated his object in leaving her to follow me out, and it had not improved her temper.
"Oh?" she said. "You have come back at last? I thought you had offered yourself as Madame Pratolungo's escort to the rectory." She stopped, with a sudden frown. Her quick ears had detected my return into the room. "Oscar!" she exclaimed, "what does this mean? Madame Pratolungo and I have nothing more to say to each other. What has she come back for? Why don't you answer? This is infamous! I shall leave the room!"
The utterance of that final threat was followed so rapidly by its execution that, before Nugent (standing between her and the door) could get out of her way, she came in violent contact with him. She instantly caught him by the arm, and shook him angrily. "What does your silence mean? Is it at Madame Pratolungo's instigation that you are insulting me?"
I had just opened my lips to make one more attempt at reconciliation, by saying some pacifying words to her—when she planted that last sting in me. French flesh and blood (whatever English flesh and blood might have done) could bear no more. I silently turned my back on her, in a rage.
At the same moment, Nugent's eyes brightened as if a new idea had struck him. He gave me one significant look—and answered her in his brother's character. Whether he was possessed at the moment by some demon of mischief; or whether he had the idea of trying to make Oscar's peace for him, before Oscar returned—was more than I could say at the time. I ought to have stopped it—I know. But my temper was in a flame. I was as spiteful as a cat and as fierce as a bear. I said to myself (in your English idiom), She wants taking down a peg; quite right, Mr. Nugent; do it. Shocking! shameful! no words are bad enough for me: give it me well. Ah, Heaven! what is a human being in a rage? On my sacred word of honor, nothing but a human beast! The next time it happens to You, look at yourself in the glass; and you will find your soul gone out of you at your face, and nothing left but an animal—and a bad, a villainous bad animal too!
"You ask what my silence means?" said Nugent.
He had only to model his articulation on his brother's slower manner of speaking as distinguished from his own, to be his brother himself. In saying those few first words, he did it so dexterously that I could have sworn—if I had not seen him standing before me—Oscar was in the room.
"Yes," she said, "I ask that."
"I am silent," he answered, "because I am waiting."
"What are you waiting for?"
"To hear you make your apologies to Madame Pratolungo."
She started back a step. Submissive Oscar was taking a peremptory tone with her for the first time in his life. Submissive Oscar, instead of giving her time to speak, sternly went on.
"Madame Pratolungo has made her excuses toyou.You ought to receive them; you ought to reciprocate them. It is distressing to see you and hear you. You are behaving ungratefully to your best friend."
She raised her face, she raised her hands, in blank amazement: she looked as if she distrusted her own ears.
"Oscar!" she exclaimed.
"Here I am," said Oscar, opening the door at the same moment.
She turned like lightning towards the place from which he had spoken. She detected the deception which Nugent had practiced on her, with a cry of indignation that rang through the room.
Oscar ran to her in alarm. She thrust him back violently.
"A trick!" she cried. "A mean, vile, cowardly trick played upon my blindness! Oscar! your brother has been imitating you; your brother has been speaking to me in your voice. And that woman who calls herself my friend—that woman stood by and heard him, and never told me. She encouraged it: she enjoyed it. The wretches! take me away from them. They are capable of any deceit. She always hated you, dear, from the first—she took up with your brother the moment he came here. When you marry me, it mustn't be at Dimchurch; it must be in some place they don't know of. There is a conspiracy between them against you and against me. Beware of them! beware of them! She said I should have fallen in love with your brother, if I had met him first. There is a deeper meaning in that, my love, than you can see. It means that they will part us if they can. Ha! I hear somebody moving! Has he changed places with you? Is ityouwhom I am speaking to now? Oh, my blindness! my blindness! Oh, God, of all your creatures, the most helpless, the most miserable, is the creature who can't see!"
I never heard anything in all my life so pitiable and so dreadful as the frantic suspicion and misery which tore their way out from her, in those words. She cut me to the heart. I had spoken rashly—I had behaved badly—but had I deserved this? No! no! no! I hadnotdeserved it. I threw myself into a chair, and burst out crying. My tears scalded me; my sobs choked me. If I had had poison in my hand, I would have drunk it—I was so furious and so wretched: so hurt in my honor, so wounded at my heart.
The only voice that answered her was Nugent's. Reckless what the consequences might be—speaking, in his own proper person, from the opposite end of the room—he asked the all-important question which no human being had ever put to her yet.
"Are you sure, Lucilla, that you are blind for life?"
A dead silence followed the utterance of those words.
I brushed away the tears from my eyes, and looked up.
Oscar had been—as I supposed—holding her in his arms, silently soothing her, when his brother spoke. At the moment when I saw her, she had just detached herself from him. She advanced a step, towards the part of the room in which Nugent stood—and stopped, with her face turned towards him. Every faculty in her seemed to be suspended by the silent passage into her mind of the new idea that he had called up. Through childhood, girlhood, womanhood—never once, waking or dreaming, had the prospect of restoration to sight presented itself within her range of contemplation, until now. Not a trace was left in her countenance of the indignation which Nugent had roused in her, hardly more than a moment since. Not a sign appeared indicating a return of the nervous suffering which the sense of his presence had inflicted on her, earlier in the day. The one emotion in possession of her was astonishment—astonishment that had struck her dumb; astonishment that waited, helplessly and mechanically, to hear more.
I observed Oscar, next. His eyes were fixed on Lucilla—absorbed in watching her. He spoke to Nugent, without looking at him; animated, as it seemed, by a vague fear for Lucilla, which was slowly developing into a vague fear for himself.
"Mind what you are doing!" he said. "Look at her, Nugent—look at her."
Nugent approached his brother, circuitously, so as to place Oscar between Lucilla and himself.
"Have I offended you?" he asked.
Oscar looked at him in surprise. "Offended with you," he answered, "after what you have forgiven, and what you have suffered, for my sake?"
"Still," persisted the other, "there is something wrong."
"I am startled, Nugent."
"Startled—by what?"
"By the question you have just put to Lucilla."
"You will understand me, and she will understand me, directly."
While those words were passing between the brothers, my attention remained fixed on Lucilla. Her head had turned slowly towards the new position which Nugent occupied when he spoke to Oscar. With this exception, no other movement had escaped her. No sense of what the two men were saying to each other seemed to have entered her mind. To all appearance she had heard nothing, since Nugent had started the first doubt in her whether she was blind for life.
"Speak to her," I said. "For God's sake, don't keep her in suspense,now!"
Nugent spoke.
"You have had reason to be offended with me, Lucilla. Let me, if I can, give you reason to be grateful to me, before I have done. When I was in New York, I became acquainted with a German surgeon, who had made a reputation and a fortune in America by his skill in treating diseases of the eye. He had been especially successful in curing cases of blindness given up as hopeless by other surgeons. I mentioned your case to him. He could say nothing positively (as a matter of course) without examining you. All he could do was to place his services at my disposal, when he came to England. I for one, Lucilla, decline to consider you blind for life, until this skillful man sees no more hope for you than the English surgeons have seen. If there is the faintest chance still left of restoring your sight, his is, I firmly believe, the one hand that can do it. He is now in England. Say the word—and I will bring him to Dimchurch."
She slowly lifted her hands to her head, and held it as if she was holding her reason in its place. Her color changed from pale to red—from red to pale once more. She drew a long, deep, heavy breath—and dropped her hands again, recovering from the shock. The change that followed, held us all three breathless. It was beautiful to see her. It was awful to see her. A mute ecstasy of hope transfigured her face; a heavenly smile played serenely on her lips. She was among us, and yet apart from us. In the still light of evening, shining in on her from the window, she stood absorbed in her own rapture—the silent creature of another sphere! There was a moment when she overcame me with admiration, and another moment when she overcame me with fear. Both the men felt it. Both signed to me to speak to her first.
I advanced a few steps. I tried to consider with myself what I should say. It was useless. I could neither think nor speak. I could only look at her. I could only say, nervously—
"Lucilla!"
She came back to the world—she came back tous—with a little start, and a faint flush of color in her cheeks. She turned herself towards the place from which I had spoken, and whispered——
"Come!"
In a moment, my arms were round her. Her head sank on my bosom. We were reconciled without a word. We were friends again, sisters again, in an instant.
"Have I been fainting? have I been sleeping?" she said to me in low, bewildered tones. "Am I just awake? Is this Browndown?" She suddenly lifted her head. "Nugent! are you there?"
"Yes."
She gently withdrew herself from me, and approached Nugent.
"Did you speak to me just now? Was it you who put the doubt into my mind, whether I am really doomed to be blind for life? Surely, I have not fancied it? Surely, you said the man was coming, and the time coming?" Her voice suddenly rose. "The man who may cure me! the time when I may see!"
"I said it, Lucilla. I meant it, Lucilla."
"Oscar! Oscar!! Oscar!!!"
I stepped forward to lead her to him. Nugent touched me, and pointed to Oscar, as I took her hand. He was standing before the glass—with an expression of despair which I see again while I write these lines—he was standing close to the glass; looking in silence at the hideous reflection of his face. In sheer pity, I hesitated to take her to him. She stepped forward, and, stretching out her hand, touched his shoulder. The reflection ofhercharming face appeared behindhisface in the glass. She raised herself on tiptoe, with both hands on him, and said, "The time is coming, my darling, when I may see You!"
With a cry of joy, she drew his face to her, and kissed him on the forehead. His head fell on his breast when she released it: he covered his face with his hands, and stifled, for the moment, all outward expression of the pang that wrung him. I drew her rapidly away, before her quick sensibilities had time to warn her that something was wrong. Even as it was, she resisted me. Even as it was, she asked suspiciously, "Why do you take me away from him?"
What excuse could I make? I was at my wits' end.
She repeated the question. For once Fortune favored us. A timely knock at the door stopped her just as she was trying to release herself from me. "Somebody coming in," I said. The servant entered, as I spoke, with a letter from the rectory.