Afternoon Tea Mysteries [Vol Three]

by Anthology

  The wedding-day was not then actually fixed. It was only generally arranged that the marriage should take place in about six weeks.

  This interval was intended to serve a double purpose. It was to give the lawyers time to prepare the marriage settlements, and to give Oscar time to completely recover his health. Some anxiety was felt by all of us on this latter subject. His wound was well, and his mind was itself again. But still there was something wrong with him, for all that.

  Those curious contradictions in his character which I have already mentioned, showed themselves more strangely than ever. The man who had found the courage (when his blood was up) to measure himself alone and unarmed against two robbers, was now unable to enter the room in which the struggle had taken place, without trembling from head to foot. He, who had laughed at me when I begged him not to sleep in the house by himself, now had two men (a gardener and an indoor servant) domiciled at Browndown to protect him—and felt no sense of security even in that. He was constantly dreaming that the ruffian with the “life-preserver” was attacking him again, or that he was lying bleeding on the floor and coaxing Jicks to venture within reach of his hand. If any of us hinted at his occupying himself once more with his favourite art, he stopped his ears, and entreated us not to renew his horrible associations with the past. He would not even look at his box of chasing tools. The doctor—summoned to say what was the matter with him—told us that his nervous system had been shaken, and frankly acknowledged that there was nothing to be done but to wait until time set it right again.

  I am afraid I must confess that I myself took no very indulgent view of the patient’s case.

  It was his duty to exert himself—as I thought. He appeared to me to be too indolent to make a proper effort to better his own condition. Lucilla and I had more than one animated discussion about him. On a certain evening when we were at the piano gossiping, and playing in the intervals, she was downright angry with me for not sympathizing with her darling as unreservedly as she did. “I have noticed one thing, Madame Pratolungo,” she said to me, with a flushed face and a heightened tone. “You have never done Oscar justice from the first.”

  (Mark those trifling words. The time is coming when you will hear of them again.)

  The preparations for the contemplated marriage went on. The lawyers produced their sketch of the settlement; and Oscar wrote (to an address in New York, given to him by Nugent) to tell his brother of the approaching change in his life, and of the circumstances which had brought it about.

  The marriage settlement was not shown to me; but, from certain signs and tokens, I guessed that Oscar’s perfect disinterestedness on the question of money had been turned to profitable account by Oscar’s future father-in-law. Reverend Finch was reported to have shed tears when he first read the document. And Lucilla came out of the study, after an interview with her father, more thoroughly and vehemently indignant than I had ever seen her yet. “Don’t ask what is the matter!” she said to me between her teeth. “I am ashamed to tell you.” When Oscar came in, a little later, she fell on her knees—literally on her knees—before him. Some overmastering agitation was in possession of her whole being, which made her, for the moment, reckless of what she said or did. “I worship you!” she burst out hysterically, kissing his hand. “You are the noblest of living men. I can never, never be worthy of you!” The interpretation of these high-flown sayings and doings was, to my mind, briefly this: Oscar’s money in the rector’s pocket, and the rector’s daughter used as the means.

  The interval expired; the weeks succeeded each other. All had been long since ready for the marriage—and still the marriage did not take place.

  Far from becoming himself again, with time to help him—as the doctor had foretold—Oscar steadily grew worse. All the nervous symptoms (to use the medical phrase) which I have already described, strengthened instead of loosening their hold on him. He grew thinner and thinner, and paler and paler. Early in the month of November, we sent for the doctor again. The question to be put to him this time, was the question (suggested by Lucilla) of trying as a last remedy change of air.

  Something—I forget what—delayed the arrival of our medical man. Oscar had given up all idea of seeing him that day, and had come to us at the rectory—when the doctor drove into Dimchurch. He was stopped before he went on to Browndown; and he and his patient saw each other alone in Lucilla’s sitting-room.

  They were a long time together. Lucilla, waiting with me in my bed-chamber, grew impatient. She begged me to knock at the sitting-room door, and inquire when she might be permitted to assist at the consultation.

  I found doctor and patient standing together at the window, talking quietly. Evidently, nothing had passed to excite either of them in the smallest degree. Oscar looked a little pale and weary—but he, like his medical adviser, was perfectly composed.

  “There is a young lady in the next room,” I said, “who is getting anxious to hear what your consultation has ended in.”

  The doctor looked at Oscar, and smiled.

  “There is really nothing to tell Miss Finch,” he said. “Mr. Dubourg and I have gone all over the case again—and nothing new has come of it. His nervous system has not recovered its balance so soon as I expected. I am sorry—but I am not in the least alarmed. At his age, things are sure to come right in the end. He must be patient, and the young lady must be patient. I can say no more.”

  “Do you see any objection to his trying change of air?” I inquired.

  “None, whatever! Let him go where he likes, and amuse himself as he likes. You are all of you a little disposed to take Mr. Dubourg’s case too seriously. Except the nervous derangement (unpleasant enough in itself, I grant), there is really nothing the matter with him. He has not a trace of organic disease anywhere. The pulse,” continued the doctor, laying his fingers lightly on Oscar’s wrist, “is perfectly satisfactory. I never felt a quieter pulse in my life.”

  As the words passed his lips, a frightful contortion fastened itself on Oscar’s face.

  His eyes turned up hideously.

  From head to foot his whole body was wrenched round, as if giant hands had twisted it, towards the right.

  Before I could speak, he was in convulsions on the floor at his doctor’s feet.

  “Good God, what is this!” I cried out.

  The doctor loosened his cravat, and moved away the furniture that was near him. That done, he waited—looking at the writhing figure on the floor.

  “Can you do nothing more?” I asked.

  He shook his head gravely. “Nothing more.”

  “What is it?”

  “An epileptic fit.”

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH

  The Doctor’s Opinion

  BEFORE another word had been exchanged between us, Lucilla entered the room. We looked at each other. If we could have spoken at that moment, I believe we should both have said, “Thank God, she is blind!”

  “Have you all forgotten me?” she asked. “Oscar! where are you? What does the doctor say?”

  She advanced into the room. In a moment more, she would have stumbled against the prostrate man still writhing on the floor. I laid my hand on her arm, and stopped her.

  She suddenly caught my hand in hers. “Why did you tremble,” she asked, “when you took me by the arm? Why are you trembling now?” Her delicate sense of touch was not to be deceived. I vainly denied that anything had happened: my hand had betrayed me. “There is something wrong!” she exclaimed, “Oscar has not answered me.”

  The doctor came to my assistance.

  “There is nothing to be alarmed about,” he said. “Mr. Dubourg is not very well to-day.”

  She turned on the doctor, with a sudden burst of anger.

  “You are deceiving me!” she cried. “Something serious has happened to him. The truth! tell me the truth! Oh! it’s shameful, it’s heartless of both of you to deceive a wretched blind creature like me!”

  The doctor still hesitated. I told her
the truth.

  “Where is he?” she asked, seizing me by the two shoulders, and shaking me in the violence of her agitation.

  I entreated her to wait a little; I tried to place her in a chair. She pushed me contemptuously away, and went down on the floor on her hands and knees. “I shall find him,” she said to herself; “I shall find him in spite of them!” She began to crawl over the floor, feeling the empty space before her with her hand. It was horrible. I followed her, and raised her again, by main force.

  “Don’t struggle with her,” said the doctor. “Let her come here. He is quiet now.”

  I looked at Oscar. The worst of it was over. He was exhausted—he was quite still now. The doctor’s voice guided her to the place. She sat down by Oscar on the floor, and laid his head on her lap. The moment she touched him, the same effect was produced on her which would be produced (if our eyes were bandaged) on you or me when the bandage was taken off. An instant sense of relief diffused itself through her whole being. She became her gentler and sweeter self again. “I am sorry I lost my temper,” she said with the simplicity of a child. “But you don’t know how hard it is to be deceived when you are blind.” She stooped as she said those words, and passed her handkerchief lightly over his forehead. “Doctor,” she asked, “will this happen again?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Are you sure not?”

  “I can’t say that.”

  “What has brought it on?”

  “I am afraid the blow he received on the head has brought it on.”

  She asked no more questions; her eager face passed suddenly into a state of repose. Something seemed to have come into her mind—after the doctor’s answer to her own question—which absorbed her in herself. When Oscar recovered his consciousness, she left it to me to answer the first natural questions which he put. When he personally addressed her she spoke to him kindly, but briefly. Something in her, at that moment, seemed to keep her apart, even from him. When the doctor proposed taking him back to Browndown, she did not insist, as I had anticipated, on going with them. She took leave of him tenderly—but still she let him go. While he yet lingered near the door, looking back at her, she moved away slowly to the further end of the room; self-withdrawn into her own dark world—shut up in her thoughts from him and from us.

  The doctor tried to rouse her.

  “You must not think too seriously of this,” he said, following her to the window at which she stood, and dropping his voice so that Oscar could not hear him. “He has himself told you that he feels lighter and better than he felt before the fit. It has relieved instead of injuring him. There is no danger. I assure you, on my honour, there is nothing to fear.”

  “Can you assure me, on your honour, of one other thing,” she asked, lowering her voice on her side. “Can you honestly tell me that this is not the first of other fits that are to come?”

  The doctor parried the question.

  “We will have another medical opinion,” he answered, “before we decide. The next time I go to see him, a physician from Brighton shall go with me.”

  Oscar, who had thus far waited, wondering at the change in her, now opened the door. The doctor returned to him. They left us.

  She sat down on the window-seat, with her elbows on her knees and her hands grasping her forehead. A long moaning cry burst from her. She said to herself bitterly the one word—“Farewell!”

  I approached her; feeling the necessity of reminding her that I was in the room.

  “Farewell to what?” I asked, taking my place by her side.

  “To his happiness and to mine,” she answered, without lifting her head from her hands. “The dark days are coming for Oscar and for me.”

  “Why should you think that? You heard what the doctor said.”

  “The doctor doesn’t know what I know.”

  “What do you know?”

  She paused before she answered me. “Do you believe in fate?” she said, suddenly breaking the silence.

  “I believe in nothing which encourages people to despair of themselves,” I replied.

  She went on without heeding me.

  “What caused the fit which seized him in this room? The blow that struck him on the head. How did he receive the blow? In trying to defend what was his and what was mine. What had he been doing on the day when the thieves entered the house? He had been working on the casket which was meant for me. Do you see those events linked together in one chain? I believe the fit will be followed by some next event springing out of it. Something else is coming to darken his life and to darken mine. There is no wedding-day near for us. The obstacles are rising in front of him and in front of me. The next misfortune is very near us. You will see! you will see!” She shivered as she said those words; and, shrinking away from me, huddled herself up in a corner of the window-seat.

  It was useless to dispute with her; and worse than useless to sit there, and encourage her to say more. I got up on my feet.

  “There is one thing I believe in,” I said cheerfully. “I believe in the breeze on the hills. Come for a walk!”

  She shrank closer into her corner and shook her head.

  “Let me be!” she broke out impatiently. “Leave me by myself!” She rose, repenting the words the moment they were uttered—she put her arm round my neck, and kissed me. “I didn’t mean to speak so harshly,” said the gentle affectionate creature. “Sister! my heart is heavy. My life to come never looked so dark to my blind eyes as it looks now.” A tear dropped from those poor sightless eyes on my cheek. She turned her head aside abruptly. “Forgive me,” she murmured, “and let me go.” Before I could answer, she hurried away to hide herself in her room. The sweet girl! How you would have pitied her—how you would have loved her!

  I went out alone for my walk. She had not infected me with her superstitious foreboding of ill things to come. But there was one sad word that she had said, in which I could not but agree. After what I had witnessed in that room, the wedding-day did indeed look further off than ever.

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

  Family Troubles

  IN four or five days more, Lucilla’s melancholy doubts about Oscar were confirmed. He was attacked by a second fit.

  The promised consultation with the physician from Brighton took place. Our new doctor did not encourage us to hope. The second fit following so close on the first was, in his opinion, a bad sign. He gave general directions for the treatment of Oscar; and left him to decide for himself whether he would or would not try change of scene. No change, the physician appeared to think, would exert any immediate influence on the recurrence of the epileptic attacks. The patient’s general health might be benefited, and that was all. As for the question of the marriage, he declared without hesitation that we must for the present dismiss all consideration of it from our minds.

  Lucilla received the account of what passed at the visit of the doctors with a stubborn resignation which it distressed me to see. “Remember what I told you when the first attack seized him,” she said. “Our summer-time is ended; our winter is come.”

  Her manner, while she spoke, was the manner of a person who is waiting without hope—who feels deliberately that calamity is near. She only roused herself when Oscar came in. He was, naturally enough, in miserable spirits, under the sudden alteration in all his prospects. Lucilla did her best to cheer him, and succeeded. On my side, I tried vainly to persuade him to leave Browndown and amuse himself in some gayer place. He shrank from new faces and new scenes. Between these two unelastic young people, I felt even my native good spirits beginning to sink. If we had been all three down in the bottom of a dry well in a wilderness, we could hardly have surveyed a more dismal prospect than the prospect we were contemplating now. By good luck, Oscar, like Lucilla, was passionately fond of music. We turned to the piano as our best resource in those days of our adversity. Lucilla and I took it in turns to play, and Oscar listened. I have to report that we got through a great deal of music. I have also to acknowled
ge that we were very dull.

  As for Reverend Finch, he talked his way through his share of the troubles that were trying us now, at the full compass of his voice.

  If you had heard the little priest in those days, you would have supposed that nobody could feel our domestic misfortunes as he felt them, and grieve over them as he grieved. He was a sight to see, on the day of the medical consultation; strutting up and down his wife’s sitting-room, and haranguing his audience—composed of his wife and myself. Mrs. Finch sat in one corner, with the baby and the novel, and the petticoat and the shawl. I occupied the other corner; summoned to “consult with the rector.” In plain words, summoned to hear Mr. Finch declare that he was the person principally overshadowed by the cloud which hung on the household.

  “I despair, Madame Pratolungo—I assure you, I despair—of conveying any idea of how I feel under this most melancholy state of things. You have been very good; you have shown the sympathy of a true friend. But you cannot possibly understand how this blow has fallen on Me. I am crushed. Madame Pratolungo!” (he appealed to me, in my corner); “Mrs. Finch!” (he appealed to his wife, in her corner)—“I am crushed. There is no other word to express it but the word I have used. Crushed.” He stopped in the middle of the room. He looked expectantly at me—he looked expectantly at his wife. His face and manner said plainly, “If both these women faint, I shall consider it a natural and becoming proceeding on their parts, after what I have just told them.” I waited for the lead of the lady of the house. Mrs. Finch did not roll prostrate, with the baby and the novel, on the floor. Thus encouraged, I presumed to keep my seat. The rector still waited for us. I looked as miserable as I could. Mrs. Finch cast her eyes up reverentially at her husband, as if she thought him the noblest of created beings, and silently put her handkerchief to her eyes. Mr. Finch was satisfied; Mr. Finch went on. “My health has suffered—I assure you, Madame Pratolungo, MY health has suffered. Since this sad occurrence, my stomach has given way. My balance is lost—my usual regularity is gone. I am subject—entirely through this miserable business—to fits of morbid appetite. I want things at wrong times—breakfast in the middle of the night; dinner at four in the morning. I want something now!” Mr. Finch stopped, horror-struck at his condition; pondering with his eyebrows fiercely knit, and his hand pressed convulsively on the lower buttons of his rusty black waistcoat. Mrs. Finch’s watery blue eyes looked across the room at me, in a moist melancholy of conjugal distress. The rector, suddenly enlightened after his consultation with his stomach, strutted to the door, flung it wide open, and called down the kitchen stairs with a voice of thunder, “Poach me an egg!” He came back into the room—held another consultation, keeping his eyes severely fixed on me—strutted back in a furious hurry to the door—and bellowed a counter-order down the kitchen-stairs, “No egg! Do me a red herring!” He came back for the second time, with his eyes closed and his hand laid distractedly on his head. He appealed alternately to Mrs. Finch and to me. “See for yourselves—Mrs. Finch! Madame Pratolungo!—see for yourselves what a state I am in. It’s simply pitiable. I hesitate about the most trifling things. First, I think I want a poached egg—then, I think I want a red herring—now I don’t know what I want. Upon my word of honour as a clergyman and a gentleman, I don’t know what I want! Morbid appetite all day; morbid wakefulness all night—what a condition! I can’t rest. I disturb my wife at night. Mrs. Finch! I disturb you at night. How many times—since this misfortune fell upon us—do I turn in bed before I fall off to sleep? Eight times? Are you certain of it? Don’t exaggerate! Are you certain you counted! Very well: good creature! I never remember—I assure you, Madame Pratolungo, I never remember—such a complete upset as this before. The nearest approach to it was some years since, at my wife’s last confinement but four. Mrs. Finch! was it at your last confinement but four? or your last but five? Your last but four? Are you sure. Are you certain you are not misleading our friend here? Very well: good creature! Pecuniary difficulties, Madame Pratolungo, were at the bottom of it on that last occasion. I got over the pecuniary difficulties. How am I to get over this? My plans for Oscar and Lucilla were completely arranged. My relations with my wedded children were pleasantly laid out. I saw my own future; I saw the future of my family. What do I see now? All, so to speak, annihilated at a blow. Inscrutable Providence!” He paused, and lifted his eyes and hands devotionally to the ceiling. The cook appeared with the red herring. “Inscrutable Providence”—proceeded Mr. Finch, a tone lower. “Eat it, dear,” said Mrs. Finch, “while it’s hot.” The rector paused again. His unresting tongue urged him to proceed; his undisciplined stomach clamoured for the herring. The cook uncovered the dish. Mr. Finch’s nose instantly sided with Mr. Finch’s stomach. He stopped at “Inscrutable Providence”—and peppered his herring.