by Anthology
He shook his head; he owned he could not dispute my view. But he was not content for all that.
“Have you made any inquiries,” he asked, “about the period of her infancy before she was blind? She may be still feeling, indirectly and unconsciously, the effect of some shock to her nervous system in the time when she could see.”
“I have never thought of making inquiries.”
“Is there anybody within our reach, who was familiarly associated with her in the first year of her life? It is hardly likely, I am afraid, at this distance of time?”
“There is a person now in the house,” I said. “Her old nurse is still living.”
“Send for her directly.”
Zillah appeared. After first explaining what he wanted with her, Nugent went straight to the inquiry which he had in view.
“Was your young lady ever frightened when she was a baby by any dark person, or any dark thing, suddenly appearing before her?”
“Never, sir! I took good care to let nothing come near her that could frighten her—so long, poor little thing, as she could see.”
“Are you quite sure you can depend on your memory?”
“Quite sure, sir—when it’s a long time ago.”
Zillah was dismissed. Nugent—thus far, unusually grave, and unusually anxious—turned to me with an air of relief.
“When you proposed to me to join you in forcing Oscar to speak out,” he said, “I was not quite easy in my mind about the consequences. After what I have just heard, my fear is removed.”
“What fear?” I asked.
“The fear of Oscar’s confession producing an estrangement between them which might delay the marriage. I am against all delays. I am especially anxious that Oscar’s marriage should not be put off. When we began our conversation, I own to you I was of Oscar’s opinion that he would do wisely to let marriage make him sure of his position in her affections, before he risked the disclosure. Now—after what the nurse has told us—I see no risk worth considering.”
“In short,” I said, “you agree with me?”
“I agree with you—though I am the most opinionated man living. The chances now seem to me to be all in Oscar’s favour, Lucilla’s antipathy is not what I feared it was—an antipathy firmly rooted in a constitutional malady. It is nothing more serious,” said Nugent, deciding the question, at once and for ever, with the air of a man profoundly versed in physiology—“it is nothing more serious than a fanciful growth, a morbid accident, of her blindness. She may live to get over it—she would, I believe, certainly get over it, if she could see. In two words, after what I have found out this morning, I say as you say—Oscar is making a mountain out of a molehill. He ought to have put himself right with Lucilla long since. I have unbounded influence over him. It shall back your influence. Oscar shall make a clean breast of it, before the week is out.”
We shook hands on that bargain. As I looked at him—bright and dashing and resolute; Oscar, as I had always wished Oscar to be—I own to my shame I privately regretted that we had not met Nugent in the twilight, on that evening of ours which had opened to Lucilla the gates of a new life.
Having said to each other all that we had to say—our two lovers being away together at the time, for a walk on the hills—we separated, as I then supposed, for the rest of the day. Nugent went to the inn, to look at a stable which he proposed converting into a studio: no room at Browndown being half large enough, for the first prodigious picture with which the “Grand Consoler” in Art proposed to astonish the world. As for me, having nothing particular to do, I went out to see if I could meet Oscar and Lucilla on their return from their walk.
Failing to find them, I strolled back by way of Browndown. Nugent was sitting alone on the low wall in front of the house, smoking a cigar. He rose and came to meet me, with his finger placed mysteriously on his lips.
“You mustn’t come in,” he said; “you mustn’t speak loud enough to be heard.” He pointed round the corner of the house to the little room at the side, already familiar to you in these pages. “Oscar and Lucilla are shut up together there. And Oscar is making his confession to her at this moment!”
I lifted my hands and eyes in astonishment. Nugent went on.
“I see you want to know how it has all come about. You shall know.—While I was looking at the stable (it isn’t half big enough for a studio for Me!), Oscar’s servant brought me a little pencil note, entreating me, in Oscar’s name, to go to him directly at Browndown. I found him waiting out here, dreadfully agitated. He cautioned me (just as I have cautioned you) not to speak loud. For the same reason too. Lucilla was in the house——”
“I thought they had gone out for a walk,” I interposed.
“They did go out for a walk. But Lucilla complained of fatigue; and Oscar brought her back to Browndown to rest. Well! I inquired what was the matter. The answer informed me that the secret of Oscar’s complexion had forced its way out for the second time, in Lucilla’s hearing.”
“Jicks again!” I exclaimed.
“No—not Jicks. Oscar’s own man-servant, this time.”
“How did it happen?”
“It happened through one of the boys in the village. Oscar and Lucilla found the little imp howling outside the house. They asked what was the matter. The imp told them that the servant at Browndown had beaten him. Lucilla was indignant. She insisted on having the thing inquired into. Oscar left her in the drawing-room (unluckily, as it turned out, without shutting the door); called the man up into the passage, and asked what he meant by ill-using the boy. The man answered, ‘I boxed his ears, sir, as an example to the rest of them.’ ‘What did he do?’ ‘Rapped at the door, sir, with a stick (he is not the first who has done it when you are out); and asked if Blue Face was at home.’ Lucilla heard every word of it, through the open door. Need I tell you what happened next?”
It was quite needless to relate that part of the story. I remembered too well what had happened on the former occasion, in the garden. I saw too plainly that Lucilla must have connected the two occurrences in her mind, and must have had her ready suspicion roused to serious action, as the necessary result.
“I understand,” I said. “Of course, she insisted on an explanation. Of course, Oscar compromised himself by a clumsy excuse, and wanted you to help him. What did you do?”
“What I told you I should do this morning. He had counted confidently on my taking his side—it was pitiable to see him, poor fellow! Still, for his own sake, I refused to yield. I left him the choice of giving her the true explanation himself, or of leaving me to do it. There wasn’t a moment to lose; she was in no humour to be trifled with, I can tell you! Oscar behaved very well about it—he always behaves well when I drive him into a corner! In one word, he was man enough to feel that he was the right person to make a clean breast of it—not I. I gave the poor old boy a hug to encourage him, pushed him into the room, shut the door on him, and came out here. He ought to have done it by this time. He has done it! Here he comes!”
Oscar ran out, bareheaded, from the house. There were signs of disturbance in him, as he approached us, which warned me that something had gone wrong, before he opened his lips.
Nugent spoke first.
“What’s amiss now?” he asked. “Have you told her the truth?”
“I have tried to tell her the truth.”
“Tried? What do you mean?”
Oscar put his arm round his brother’s neck, and laid his head on his brother’s shoulder, without answering one word.
I put a question to him on my side.
“Did Lucilla refuse to listen to you?” I asked.
“No.”
“Has she said anything or done anything——?”
He lifted his head from his brother’s shoulder, and stopped me before I could finish the sentence.
“You need feel no anxiety about Lucilla. Lucilla’s curiosity is satisfied.”
Nugent and I gazed at one another, in complete bewilderm
ent. Lucilla had heard it all; Lucilla’s curiosity was satisfied. He had that incredibly happy result to communicate to us—and he announced it with a look of humiliation, in a tone of despair! Nugent’s patience gave way.
“Let us have an end of this mystification,” he said, putting Oscar back from him, sharply, at arm’s length. “I want a plain answer to a plain question. She knows that the boy knocked at the door, and asked if Blue Face was at home. Does she know what the boy’s impudence meant? Yes? or No?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know that it is you who are Blue Face?”
“No.”
“No!!! Who else does she think it is?”
As he asked the question, Lucilla appeared at the door of the house. She moved her blind face inquiringly first one way, then the other. “Oscar!” she called out, “why have you left me alone? where are you?”
Oscar turned, trembling, to his brother.
“For God’s sake forgive me, Nugent!” he said. “She thinks it’s YOU.”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH
He proves Equal to the Occasion
AT that astounding confession, abruptly revealed in those plain words, even resolute Nugent lost all power of self-control. He burst out with a cry which reached Lucilla’s ears. She instantly turned towards us, and instantly assumed that the cry had come from Oscar’s lips.
“Ah! there you are!” she exclaimed. “Oscar! Oscar! what is the matter with you to-day?”
Oscar was incapable of answering her. He had cast one glance of entreaty at his brother as Lucilla came nearer to us. The mute reproach which had answered him, in Nugent’s eyes, had broken down his last reserves of endurance. He was crying silently on Nugent’s breast.
It was necessary that one of us should make his, or her, voice heard. I spoke first.
“Nothing is the matter, my dear,” I said, advancing to meet Lucilla. “We were passing the house, and Oscar ran out to stop us and bring us in.”
My excuses roused a new alarm in her.
“Us?” she repeated. “Who is with you?”
“Nugent is with me.”
The result of the deplorable misunderstanding which had taken place, instantly declared itself. She turned deadly pale under the horror of feeling that she was in the presence of the man with the blue face.
“Take me near enough to speak to him, but not to touch him,” she whispered. “I have heard what he is like. (Oh, if you saw him, as I see him, in the dark!) I must control myself. I must speak to Oscar’s brother, for Oscar’s sake.”
She seized my arm and held me close to her. What ought I to have said? What ought I to have done? I neither knew what to say or what to do. I looked from Lucilla to the twin brothers. There was Oscar the Weak, overwhelmed by the humiliating position in which he had placed himself towards the woman whom he was to marry, towards the brother whom he loved! And there was Nugent the Strong, master of himself; with his arm round his brother, with his head erect, with his hand signing to me to keep silence. He was right. I had only to look back at Lucilla’s face to see that the delicate and perilous work of undeceiving her, was not work to be done at a moment’s notice, on the spot.
“You are not yourself to-day,” I said to her. “Let us go home.”
“No!” she answered. “I must accustom myself to speak to him. I will begin to-day. Take me to him—but don’t let him touch me!”
Nugent disengaged himself from Oscar—whose unfitness to help us through our difficulties was too manifest to be mistaken—as he saw us approaching. He pointed to the low wall in front of the house, and motioned to his brother to wait there out of the way before Lucilla could speak to him again. The wisdom of this proceeding was not long in asserting itself. Lucilla asked for Oscar the moment after he had left us. Nugent answered that Oscar had gone back to the house to get his hat.
The sound of Nugent’s voice helped her to calculate her distance from him without assistance from me. Still holding my arm, she stopped and spoke to him.
“Nugent,” she said, “I have made Oscar tell me—what he ought to have told me long since.” (She paused between each sentence; painfully controlling herself, painfully catching her breath.) “He has discovered a foolish antipathy of mine. I don’t know how; I tried to keep it a secret from him. I need not tell you what it is.”
She made a longer pause at those words, holding me closer and closer to her; struggling more and more painfully against the irresistible nervous loathing that had got possession of her.
He listened, on his side, with the constraint which always fell upon him in her presence more marked than ever. His eyes were on the ground. He seemed reluctant even to look at her.
“I think I understand,” she went on, “why Oscar was unwilling to tell me——” she stopped, at a loss how to express herself without running the risk of hurting his feelings—“to tell me,” she resumed, “what it is in you which is not like other people. He was afraid my stupid weakness might prejudice me against you. I wish to say that I won’t let it do that. I never was more ashamed of it than now. I, too, have my misfortune. I ought to sympathize with you, instead of——”
Her voice had been growing fainter and fainter as she proceeded. She leaned against me heavily. One glance at her told me that if I let it go on any longer she would fall into a swoon. “Tell your brother that we have gone back to the rectory,” I said to Nugent. He looked up at Lucilla for the first time.
“You are right,” he answered. “Take her home.” He repeated the sign by which he had already hinted to me to be silent—and joined Oscar at the wall in front of the house.
“Has he gone?” she asked.
“He has gone.”
The moisture stood thick on her forehead. I passed my handkerchief over her face, and turned her towards the wind.
“Are you better now?”
“Yes.”
“Can you walk home?”
“Easily.”
I put her arm in mine. After advancing with me a few steps, she suddenly stopped—with a blind apprehension, as it seemed, of something in front of her. She lifted her little walking-cane, and moved it slowly backwards and forwards in the empty air, with the action of some one who is clearing away an encumbrance to a free advance—say the action of a person walking in a thick wood, and pushing aside the lower twigs and branches that intercept the way.
“What are you about?” I asked.
“Clearing the air,” she answered. “The air is full of him. I am in a forest of hovering figures, with faces of black-blue. Give me your arm. Come through!”
“Lucilla!”
“Don’t be angry with me. I am coming to my senses again. Nobody knows what folly, what madness it is, better than I do. I have a will of my own: suffer as I may, I promise to break myself of it this time. I can’t, and won’t let Oscar’s brother see that he is an object of horror to me.” She stopped once more, and gave me a little propitiatory kiss. “Blame my blindness, dear, don’t blame me. If I could only see—! Ah, how can I make you understand me, you who don’t live in the dark?” She went on a few paces, silent and thoughtful—and then spoke again. “You won’t laugh at me, if I say something?”
“You know I won’t.”
“Suppose yourself to be in bed at night.”
“Yes?”
“I have heard people say that they have sometimes woke in the middle of the night, on a sudden, without any noise to disturb them. And they have fancied (without anything particular to justify it) that there was something, or somebody, in the dark room. Has that ever happened to you?”
“Certainly, my love.—It has happened to most people to fancy what you say, when their nerves are a little out of order.”
“Very well. There is my fancy, and there are my nerves. When it happened to you, what did you do?”
“I struck a light, and satisfied myself that I was wrong.”
“Suppose yourself without candle or matches, in a night without end, left alone with your fa
ncy 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.”
