Afternoon Tea Mysteries Vol Three

by Anthology

  The first welcome interruption to my solitude came—not from Lucilla—but from the old nurse. Zillah appeared with a letter for me: left that moment at the rectory by the servant from Browndown. The direction was in Oscar’s handwriting. I opened the envelope, and read these words:—

  “MADAME PRATOLUNGO,—YOU have distressed and pained me more than I can say. There are faults, and serious ones, on my side, I know. I heartily beg your pardon for anything that I may have said or done to offend you. I cannot submit to your hard verdict on me. If you knew how I adore Lucilla, you would make allowances for me—you would understand me better than you do. I cannot get your last cruel words out of my ears. I cannot meet you again without some explanation of them. You stabbed me to the heart, when you said to me this evening that it would be a happier prospect for Lucilla if she had been going to marry my brother instead of marrying me. I hope you did not really mean that? Will you please write and tell me whether you did or not?

  “OSCAR.”

  Write and tell him? It was absurd enough—when we were within a few minutes’ walk of each other—that Oscar should prefer the cold formality of a letter, to the friendly ease of a personal interview. Why could he not have called, and spoken to me? We should have made it up together far more comfortably in that way—and in half the time. At any rate, I determined to go to Browndown, and be good friends again, viva^-voce, with this poor, weak, well-meaning, ill-judging boy. Was it not monstrous to have attached serious meaning to what Oscar had said when he was in a panic of nervous terror! His tone of writing so keenly distressed me that I resented his letter on that very account. It was one of the chilly evenings of an English June. A small fire was burning in the grate. I crumpled up the letter, and threw it, as I supposed, into the fire. (After-events showed that I only threw it into a corner of the fender instead.) Then, I put on my hat, without stopping to think of Lucilla, or of what she was writing for the post, and ran off to Browndown.

  Where do you think I found him? Locked up in his own room! His insane shyness—it was really nothing less—made him shrink from that very personal explanation which (with such a temperament as mine) was the only possible explanation under the circumstances. I had to threaten him with forcing his door, before I could get him to show himself, and take my hand.

  Once face to face with him, I soon set things right. I really believe he had been half mad with his own self-imposed troubles, when he had declared he would give me the lie at the door of Lucilla’s room.

  It is needless to dwell on what took place between us. I shall only say here that I had serious reason, at a later time—as you will soon see—to regret not having humoured Oscar’s request that I should reconcile myself to him by writing, instead of by word of mouth. If I had only placed on record, in pen and ink, what I actually said in the way of making atonement to him, I might have spared some suffering to myself and to others. As it was, the only proof that I had absolved myself in his estimation consisted in his cordially shaking hands with me at the door, when I left him.

  “Did you meet Nugent?” he asked, as he walked with me across the enclosure in front of the house.

  I had gone to Browndown by a short cut at the back of the garden, instead of going through the village. Having mentioned this, I asked if Nugent had returned to the rectory.

  “He went back to see you,” said Oscar.

  “Why?”

  “Only his usual kindness. He takes your views of things. He laughed when he heard I had sent a letter to you, and he ran off (dear fellow!) to see you on my behalf. You must have met him, if you had come here by the village.”

  On getting back to the rectory, I questioned Zillah. Nugent, in my absence, had run up into the sitting-room; had waited there a few minutes alone, on the chance of my return; had got tired of waiting, and had gone away again. I inquired about Lucilla next. A few minutes after Nugent had gone, she had left her room, and she too had asked for me. Hearing that I was not to be found in the house, she had given Zillah a letter to post—and had then returned to her bed-chamber.

  I happened to be standing by the hearth, looking into the dying fire, while the nurse was speaking. Not a vestige of Oscar’s letter to me (as I now well remember) was to be seen. In my position, the plain conclusion was that I had really done what I supposed myself to have done—that is to say, thrown the letter into the flames.

  Entering Lucilla’s room, soon afterwards, to make my apologies for having forgotten to wait and take her letter to the post, I found her, weary enough after the events of the day, getting ready for bed.

  “I don’t wonder at your being tired of waiting for me,” she said. “Writing is long, long work for me. But this was a letter which I felt bound to write myself, if I could. Can you guess who I am corresponding with? It is done, my dear! I have written to Herr Grosse!”

  “Already!”

  “What is there to wait for? What is there left to determine on? I have told Herr Grosse that our family consultation is over, and that I am entirely at his disposal for any length of time he may think right. And I warn him, if he attempts to put it off, that he will be only forcing on me the inconvenience of going to him in London. I have expressed that part of my letter strongly—I can tell you! He will get it tomorrow, by the afternoon post. And the next day—if he is a man of his word—he will be here.”

  “Oh, Lucilla! not to operate on your eyes?”

  “Yes—to operate on my eyes!”

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD

  The Day Between

  THE interval-day before the second appearance of Herr Grosse, and the experiment on Lucilla’s sight that was to follow it, was marked by two incidents which ought to be noticed in this place.

  The first incident was the arrival, early in the morning, of another letter addressed to me privately by Oscar Dubourg. Like many other shy people, he had a perfect mania, where any embarrassing circumstances were concerned, for explaining himself, with difficulty, by means of his pen, in preference to explaining himself, with ease, by means of his tongue.

  Oscar’s present communication informed me that he had left us for London by the first morning train, and that his object in taking this sudden journey was—to state his present position towards Lucilla to a gentleman especially conversant with the peculiarities of blind people. In plain words, he had resolved on applying to Mr. Sebright for advice.

  “I like Mr. Sebright” (Oscar wrote) “as cordially as I detest Herr Grosse. The short conversation I had with him has left me with the pleasantest impression of his delicacy and his kindness. If I freely reveal to this skilful surgeon the sad situation in which I am placed, I believe his experience will throw an entirely new light on the present state of Lucilla’s mind, and on the changes which we may expect to see produced in her, if she really does recover her sight. The result may be of incalculable benefit in teaching me how I may own the truth, most harmlessly to her, as well as to myself. Pray don’t suppose I undervalue your advice. I only want to be doubly fortified, before I risk my confession, by the advice of a scientific man.”

  All this I took to mean, in plain English, that vacillating Oscar wanted to quiet his conscience by gaining time, and that his absurd idea of consulting Mr. Sebright was nothing less than a new and plausible excuse for putting off the evil day. His letter ended by pledging me to secrecy, and by entreating me so to manage matters as to grant him a private interview on his return to Dimchurch by the evening train.

  I confess I felt some curiosity as to what would come of the proposed consultation between unready Oscar and precise Mr. Sebright—and I accordingly arranged to take my walk alone, towards eight o’clock that evening, on the road that led to the distant railway station.

  The second incident of the day may be described as a confidential conversation between Lucilla and myself, on the subject which now equally absorbed us both—the momentous subject of her restoration to the blessing of sight.

  She joined me at the breakfast-table with her ready d
istrust newly excited, poor thing, by Oscar. He had accounted to her for his journey to London by putting forward the commonplace excuse of “business.” She instantly suspected (knowing how he felt about it) that he was secretly bent on interfering with the performance of the operation by Herr Grosse. I contrived to compose the anxiety thus aroused in her mind, by informing her, on Oscar’s own authority, that he personally disliked and distrusted the German oculist. “Make your mind easy,” I said. “I answer for his not venturing near Herr Grosse.”

  A long silence between us followed those words. When Lucilla next referred to Oscar in connection with the coming operation, the depressed state of her spirits seemed to have quite altered her view of her own prospects. She, of all the people in the world, now spoke in disparagement of the blessing conferred on the blind by the recovery of their sight!

  “Do you know one thing?” she said. “If I had not been going to be married to Oscar, I doubt if I should have cared to put any oculist, native or foreign, to the trouble of coming to Dimchurch.”

  “I don’t think I understand you,” I answered. “You cannot surely mean to say that you would not have been glad, under any circumstances, to recover your sight?”

  “That is just what I do mean to say.”

  “What! you, who have written to Grosse to hurry the operation, don’t care to see?”

  “I only care to see Oscar. And, what is more, I only care to see him because I am in love with him. But for that, I really don’t feel as if it would give me any particular pleasure to use my eyes. I have been blind so long, I have learnt to do without them.”

  “And yet, you looked perfectly entranced when Nugent first set you doubting whether you were blind for life?”

  “Nugent took me by surprise,” she answered; “Nugent startled me out of my senses. I have had time to think since; I am not carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment now. You people who can see attach such an absurd importance to your eyes! I set my touch, my dear, against your eyes, as much the most trustworthy, and much the most intelligent sense of the two. If Oscar was not, as I have said, the uppermost feeling with me, shall I tell you what I should have infinitely preferred to recovering my sight—supposing it could have been done?” She shook her head with a comic resignation to circumstances. “Unfortunately, it can’t be done!”

  “What can’t be done?”

  She suddenly held out both her arms over the breakfast-table.

  “The stretching out of these to an enormous and unheard-of length. That is what I should have liked!” she answered. “I could find out better what was going on at a distance with my hands, than you could with your eyes and your telescopes. What doubts I might set at rest for instance about the planetary system, among the people who can see, if I could only stretch out far enough to touch the stars.”

  “This is talking sheer nonsense, Lucilla!”

  “Is it? Just tell me which knows best in the dark—my touch or your eyes? Who has got a sense that she can always trust to serve her equally well through the whole four-and-twenty hours? You or me? But for Oscar—to speak in sober earnest, this time—I tell you I would much rather perfect the sense in me that I have already got, than have a sense given to me that I have not got. Until I knew Oscar, I don’t think I ever honestly envied any of you the use of your eyes.”

  “You astonish me, Lucilla!”

  She rattled her teaspoon impatiently in her empty cup.

  “Can you always trust your eyes, even in broad daylight?” she burst out. “How often do they deceive you, in the simplest things? What did I hear you all disputing about the other day in the garden? You were looking at some view?”

  “Yes—at the view down the alley of trees at the other end of the churchyard wall.”

  “Some object in the alley had attracted general notice—had it not?”

  “Yes—an object at the further end of it.”

  “I heard you up here. You all differed in opinion, in spite of your wonderful eyes. My father said it moved. You said it stood still. Oscar said it was a man. Mrs. Finch said it was a calf. Nugent ran off, and examined this amazing object at close quarters. And what did it turn out to be? A stump of an old tree blown across the road in the night! Why am I to envy people the possession of a sense which plays them such tricks as that? No! no! Herr Grosse is going to ‘cut into my cataracts,’ as he calls it—because I am going to be married to a man I love; and I fancy, like a fool, I may love him better still, if I can see him. I may be quite wrong,” she added archly. “It may end in my not loving him half as well as I do now!”

  I thought of Oscar’s face, and felt a sickening fear that she might be speaking far more seriously than she suspected. I tried to change the subject. No! Her imaginative nature had found its way into a new region of speculation before I could open my lips.

  “I associate light,” she said thoughtfully, “with all that is beautiful and heavenly—and dark with all that is vile and horrible and devilish. I wonder how light and dark will look to me when I see?”

  “I believe they will astonish you,” I answered, “by being entirely unlike what you fancy them to be now.”

  She started. I had alarmed her without intending it.

  “Will Oscar’s face be utterly unlike what I fancy it to be now?” she asked, in suddenly altered tones. “Do you mean to say that I have not had the right image of him in my mind all this time?”

  I tried again to draw her off to another topic. What more could I do—with my tongue tied by the German’s warning to us not to agitate her, in the face of the operation to be performed on the next day?

  It was quite useless. She went on, as before, without heeding me.

  “Have I no means of judging rightly what Oscar is like?” she said. “I touch my own face; I know how long it is and how broad it is; I know how big the different features are, and where they are. And then I touch Oscar, and compare his face with my knowledge of my own face. Not a single detail escapes me. I see him in my mind as plainly as you see me across this table. Do you mean to say, when I see him with my eyes, that I shall discover something perfectly new to me? I don’t believe it!” She started up impatiently, and took a turn in the room. “Oh!” she exclaimed, with a stamp of her foot, “why can’t I take laudanum enough, or chloroform enough to kill me for the next six weeks—and then come to life again when the German takes the bandage off my eyes!” She sat down once more, and drifted all on a sudden into a question of pure morality. “Tell me this,” she said. “Is the greatest virtue, the virtue which it is most difficult to practice?”

  “I suppose so,” I answered.

  She drummed with both hands on the table, petulantly, viciously, as hard as she could.

  “Then, Madame Pratolungo,” she said, “the greatest of all the virtues is—Patience. Oh, my friend, how I hate the greatest of all the virtues at this moment!”

  That ended it—there the conversation found its way into other topics at last.

  Thinking afterwards of the new side of her mind which Lucilla had shown to me, I derived one consolation from what had passed at the breakfast-table. If Mr. Sebright proved to be right, and if the operation failed after all, I had Lucilla’s word for it that blindness, of itself, is not the terrible affliction to the blind which the rest of us fancy it to be—because we can see.

  Towards half-past seven in the evening, I went out alone, as I had planned, to meet Oscar on his return from London.

  At a long straight stretch of the road, I saw him advancing towards me. He was walking more rapidly than usual, and singing as he walked. Even through its livid discoloration, the poor fellow’s face looked radiant with happiness as he came nearer. He waved his walking-stick exultingly in the air. “Good news!” he called out at the top of his voice. “Mr. Sebright has made me a happy man again!” I had never before seen him so like Nugent in manner, as I now saw him when we met and he shook hands with me.

  “Tell me all about it,” I said.

  He gave
me his arm; and, talking all the way, we walked back slowly to Dimchurch.

  “In the first place,” he began, “Mr. Sebright holds to his own opinion more firmly than ever. He feels absolutely certain that the operation will fail.”

  “Is that your good news?” I asked reproachfully.

  “No,” he said. “Though, mind, I own to my shame there was a time when I almost hoped it would fail. Mr. Sebright has put me in a better frame of mind. I have little or nothing to dread from the success of the operation—if, by any extraordinary chance, it should succeed. I remind you of Mr. Sebright’s opinion merely to give you a right idea of the tone which he took with me at starting. He only consented under protest to contemplate the event which Lucilla and Herr Grosse consider to be a certainty. ‘If the statement of your position requires it,’ he said, ‘I will admit that it is barely possible she may be able to see you two months hence. Now begin.’ I began by informing him of my marriage engagement.”

  “Shall I tell you how Mr. Sebright received the information?” I said. “He held his tongue, and made you a bow.”

  Oscar laughed.

  “Quite true!” he answered. “I told him next of Lucilla’s extraordinary antipathy to dark people, and dark shades of color of all kinds. Can you guess what he said to me when I had done?”

  I owned that my observation of Mr. Sebright’s character did not extend to guessing that.

  “He said it was a common antipathy in his experience of the blind. It was one among the many strange influences exercised by blindness on the mind. ‘The physical affliction has its mysterious moral influence,’ he said. ‘We can observe it, but we can’t explain it. The special antipathy which you mention, is an incurable antipathy, except on one condition—the recovery of the sight.’ There he stopped. I entreated him to go on. No! He declined to go on until I had finished what I had to say to him first. I had my confession still to make to him—and I made it.”

  “You concealed nothing?”

  “Nothing. I laid my weakness bare before him. I told him that Lucilla was still firmly convinced that Nugent’s was the discolored face, instead of mine. And then I put the question—What am I to do?”