by Anthology
From Lucilla I turn to the twin-brothers next.
Tranquilized as to the future, after his interview with Mr. Sebright, Oscar presented himself at his best during the time of which I am now writing. Lucilla’s main reliance in her days in the darkened room, was on what her lover could do to relieve and to encourage her. He never once failed her; his patience was perfect; his devotion was inexhaustible. It is sad to say so, in view of what happened afterwards; but I only tell a necessary truth when I declare that he immensely strengthened his hold on her affections, in those last days of her blindness when his society was most precious to her. Ah, how fervently she used to talk of him when she and I were left together at night! Forgive me if I leave this part of the history of the courtship untold. I don’t like to write of it—I don’t like to think of it. Let us get on to something else.
Nugent comes next. I would give a great deal, poor as I am, to be able to leave him out. It is not to be done. I must write about that lost wretch, and you must read about him, whether we like it or not.
The days of Lucilla’s imprisonment, were also the days when my favourite disappointed me, for the first time. He and his brother seemed to change places. It was Nugent now who appeared to disadvantage by comparison with Oscar. He surprised and grieved his brother by leaving Browndown. “All I can do for you, I have done,” he said. “I can be of no further use for the present to anybody. Let me go. I am stagnating in this miserable place—I must, and will, have change.” Oscar’s entreaties, in Nugent’s present frame of mind, failed to move him. Away he went one morning, without bidding anybody goodbye. He had talked of being absent for a week—he remained away for a month. We heard of him, leading a wild life, among a vicious set of men. It was reported that a frantic restlessness possessed him which nobody could understand. He came back as suddenly as he had left us. His variable nature had swung round, in the interval, to the opposite extreme. He was full of repentance for his reckless conduct; he was in a state of depression which defied rousing; he despaired of himself and his future. Sometimes he talked of going back to America; and sometimes he threatened to close his career by enlisting as a private soldier. Would any other person, in my place, have seen which way these signs pointed? I doubt it, if that person’s mind had been absorbed, as mine was, in watching Lucilla day by day. Even if I had been a suspicious woman by nature—which, thank God, I am not—my distrust must have lain dormant, in the all-subduing atmosphere of suspense hanging heavily on me morning, noon, and night in the darkened room.
So much, briefly, for the sayings and doings of the persons principally concerned in this narrative, during the six weeks which separate Part the First from Part the Second.
I begin again on the ninth of August.
This was the memorable day chosen by Herr Grosse for risking the experiment of removing the bandage, and permitting Lucilla to try her sight for the first time. Conceive for yourselves (don’t ask me to describe) the excitement that raged in our obscure little circle, now that we were standing face to face with that grand Event in our lives which I promised to relate in the opening sentence of these pages.
I was the earliest riser at the rectory that morning. My excitable French blood was in a fever. I was irresistibly reminded of myself, at a time long past—the time when my glorious Pratolungo and I, succumbing to Fate and tyrants, fled to England for safety; martyrs to that ungrateful Republic (long live the Republic!) for which I laid down my money and my husband his life.
I opened my window, and hailed the good omen of sunrise in a clear sky. Just as I was turning away again from the view, I saw a figure steal out from the shrubbery and appear on the lawn. The figure came nearer. I recognized Oscar.
“What in the world are you doing there, at this time in the morning?” I called out.
He lifted his finger to his lips, and came close under my window before he answered.
“Hush!” he said. “Don’t let Lucilla hear you. Come down to me as soon as you can. I am waiting to speak to you.”
When I joined him in the garden, I saw directly that something had gone wrong.
“Bad news from Browndown?” I asked.
“Nugent has disappointed me,” he answered. “Do you remember the evening when you met me after my consultation with Mr. Sebright?”
“Perfectly.”
“I told you that I meant to ask Nugent to leave Dimchurch, on the day when Lucilla tried her sight for the first time.”
“Well?”
“Well—he refuses to leave Dimchurch.”
“Have you explained your motives to him?”
“Carefully—before I asked him to go. I told him how impossible it was to say what might happen. I reminded him that it might be of the utmost importance to me to preserve the impression now in Lucilla’s mind—for a certain time only—after Lucilla could see. I promised, the moment she became reconciled to the sight of me, to recall him, and in his presence to tell her the truth. All that I said to him—and how do you think he answered me?”
“Did he positively refuse?”
“No. He walked away from me to the window, and considered a little. Then he turned round suddenly and said ‘What did you tell me was Mr. Sebright’s opinion? Mr. Sebright thought she would be relieved instead of being terrified. In that case, what need is there for me to go away? You can acknowledge at once that she has seen your face, and not mine?’ He put his hands in his pockets when he had said that (you know Nugent’s downright way)—and turned back to the window as if he had settled everything.”
“What did you say, on your side?”
“I said, ‘Suppose Mr. Sebright is wrong?’ He only answered, ‘Suppose Mr. Sebright is right?’ I followed him to the window—I never heard him speak so sourly to me as he spoke at that moment. ‘What is your objection to going away for a day or two?’ I asked. ‘My objection is soon stated,’ he answered. ‘I am sick of these everlasting complications. It is useless and cruel to carry on the deception any longer. Mr. Sebright’s advice is the wise advice and the right advice. Let her see you as you are.’ With that answer, he walked out of the room. Something has upset him—I can’t imagine what it is. Do pray see what you can make of him! My only hope is in you.”
I own I felt reluctant to interfere. Suddenly and strangely as Nugent had altered his point of view, it seemed to me undeniable that Nugent was right. At the same time, Oscar looked so disappointed and distressed, that it was really impossible, on that day above all others, to pain him additionally by roundly saying No. I undertook to do what I could—and I inwardly hoped that circumstances would absolve me from the necessity of doing anything at all.
Circumstances failed to justify my selfish confidence in them.
I was out in the village, after breakfast, on a domestic errand connected with the necessary culinary preparations for the reception of Herr Grosse—when I heard my name pronounced behind me, and, turning round, found myself face to face with Nugent.
“Has my brother been bothering you this morning,” he asked, “before I was up?”
I instantly noticed a return in him, as he said that, to the same dogged ungracious manner which had perplexed and displeased me at my last confidential interview with him in the rectory garden.
“Oscar has been speaking to me this morning,” I replied.
“About me?”
“About you. You have distressed and disappointed him——”
“I know! I know! Oscar is worse than a child. I am beginning to lose all patience with him.”
“I am sorry to hear you say that, Nugent. You have borne with him so kindly thus far—surely you can make allowances for him to-day? His whole future may depend on what happens in Lucilla’s sitting-room a few hours hence.”
“He is making a mountain out of a mole-hill—and so are you.”
Those words were spoken bitterly—almost rudely. I answered sharply on my side.
“You are the last person living who has any right to say that. Oscar is in a fal
se position towards Lucilla, with your knowledge and consent. In your brother’s interests, you agreed to the fraud that has been practiced on her. In your brother’s interests, again, you are asked to leave Dimchurch. Why do you refuse?”
“I refuse, because I have come round to your way of thinking. What did you say of Oscar and of me, in the summer-house? You said we were taking a cruel advantage of Lucilla’s blindness. You were right. It was cruel not to have told her the truth. I won’t be a party to concealing the truth from her any longer! I refuse to persist in deceiving her—in meanly deceiving her—on the day when she recovers her sight!”
It is entirely beyond my power to describe the tone in which he made that reply. I can only declare that it struck me dumb for the moment. I drew a step nearer to him. With vague misgivings in me, I looked him searchingly in the face. He looked back at me, without shrinking.
“Well?” he asked—with a hard smile which defied me to put him in the wrong.
I could discover nothing in his face—I could only follow my instincts as a woman. Those instincts warned me to accept his explanation.
“I am to understand then that you have decided on staying here?” I said.
“Certainly!”
“What do you propose to do, when Herr Grosse arrives, and we assemble in Lucilla’s room?”
“I propose to be present among the rest of you, at the most interesting moment of Lucilla’s life.”
“No! you don’t propose that!”
“I do!”
“You have forgotten something, Mr. Nugent Dubourg.”
“What is it, Madame Pratolungo?”
“You have forgotten that Lucilla believes the brother with the discolored face to be You, and the brother with the fair complexion to be Oscar. You have forgotten that the surgeon has expressly forbidden us to agitate her by entering into any explanations before he allows her to use her eyes. You have forgotten that the very deception which you have just positively refused to go on with, will be nevertheless a deception continued, if you are present when Lucilla sees. Your own resolution pledges you not to enter the rectory doors until Lucilla has discovered the truth.” In those words I closed the vice on him. I had got Mr. Nugent Dubourg!
He turned deadly pale. His eyes dropped before mine for the first time.
“Thank you for reminding me,” he said. “I had forgotten.”
He pronounced those submissive words in a suddenly-lowered voice. Something in his tone, or something in the dropping of his eyes, set my heart beating quickly, with a certain vague expectation which I was unable to realize to myself.
“You agree with me,” I said, “that you cannot be one amongst us at the rectory? What will you do?”
“I will remain at Browndown,” he answered.
I felt he was lying. Don’t ask for my reasons: I have no reasons to give. When he said “I will remain at Browndown,” I felt he was lying.
“Why not do what Oscar asks of you?” I went on. “If you are absent, you may as well be in one place as in another. There is plenty of time still to leave Dimchurch.”
He looked up as suddenly as he had looked down.
“Do you and Oscar think me a stock or a stone?” he burst out angrily.
“What do you mean?”
“Who are you indebted to for what is going to happen to-day?” he went on, more and more passionately. “You are indebted to Me. Who among you all stood alone in refusing to believe that she was blind for life? I did! Who brought the man here who has given her back her sight? I brought the man! And I am the one person who is to be left in ignorance of how it ends. The others are to be present: I am to be sent away. The others are to see it: I am to hear by post (if any of you think of writing to me) what she does, what she says, how she looks, at the first heavenly moment when she opens her eyes on the world.” He flung up his hand in the air, and burst out savagely with a bitter laugh. “I astonish you, don’t I? I am claiming a position which I have no right to occupy. What interest can I feel in it? Oh God! what do I care about the woman to whom I have given a new life?” His voice broke into a sob at those last wild words. He tore at the breast of his coat as if he was suffocating—and turned, and left me.
I stood rooted to the spot. In one breathless instant, the truth broke on me like a revelation. At last I had penetrated the terrible secret. Nugent loved her.
My first impulse, when I recovered myself, hurried me at the top of my speed back to the rectory. For a moment or two, I think I must really have lost my senses. I felt a frantic suspicion that he had gone into the house, and that he was making his way to Lucilla at that moment. When I found that all was quiet—when Zillah had satisfied me that no visitor had come near our side of the rectory—I calmed down a little, and went back to the garden to compose myself before I ventured into Lucilla’s presence.
After awhile, I got over the first horror of it, and saw my own position plainly. There was not a living soul at Dimchurch in whom I could confide. Come what might of it, in this dreadful emergency, I must trust in myself alone.
I had just arrived at that startling conclusion; I had shed some bitter tears when I remembered how hardly I had judged poor Oscar on more than one occasion; I had decided that my favourite Nugent was the most hateful villain living, and that I would leave nothing undone that the craft of a woman could compass to drive him out of the place—when I was forced back to present necessities by the sound of Zillah’s voice calling to me from the house. I went to her directly. The nurse had a message for me from her young mistress. My poor Lucilla was lonely and anxious: she was surprised at my leaving her, she insisted on seeing me immediately.
I took my first precaution against a surprise from Nugent, as I crossed the threshold of the door.
“Our dear child must not be disturbed by visitors to-day,” I said to Zillah. “If Mr. Nugent Dubourg comes here and asks for her—don’t tell Lucilla; tell me.”
This said, I went up-stairs, and joined my darling in the darkened room.
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH
Lucilla tries her Sight
SHE was sitting alone in the dim light, with the bandage over her eyes, with her pretty hands crossed patiently on her lap. My heart swelled in me as I looked at her, and felt the horrid discovery that I had made still present in my mind. “Forgive me for leaving you,” I said in as steady a voice as I could command at the moment—and kissed her.
She instantly discovered my agitation, carefully as I thought I had concealed it.
“You are frightened too!” she exclaimed, taking my hands in hers.
“Frightened, my love?” I repeated. (I was perfectly stupefied; I really did not know what to say!)
“Yes. Now the time is so near, I feel my courage failing me. I forbode all sorts of horrible things. Oh! when will it be over? what will Oscar look like when I see him?”
I answered the first question. Who could answer the second?
“Herr Grosse comes to us by the morning train,” I said. “It will soon be over.”
“Where is Oscar?”
“On his way here, I have no doubt.”
“Describe him to me once more,” she said eagerly. “For the last time, before I see. His eyes, his hair, his complexion—everything!”
How I should have got through the painful task which she had innocently imposed on me, if I had attempted to perform it, I hardly like to think. To my infinite relief, I was interrupted at my first word by the opening of the door, and the sudden appearance of a family deputation in the room.
First, strutting with slow and solemn steps, with one hand laid pathetically on the breast of his clerical waistcoat, appeared Reverend Finch. After him, came his wife, shorn of all her proper accompaniments—except the baby. Without her novel, without her jacket, petticoat, or shawl, without even the handkerchief which she was always losing—clothed, for the first time in my experience, in a complete gown—the metamorphosis of damp Mrs. Finch was complete. But for the baby, I believe I shou
ld have taken her, in the dim light, for a stranger! She stood (apparently doubtful of her reception) hesitating in the doorway, and so hiding a third member of the deputation—who appealed piteously to the general notice in a small voice which I knew well, and in a form of address familiar to me from past experience.
“Jicks wants to come in.”
The rector took his hand from his waistcoat, and held it up in faint protest against the intrusion of the third member. Mrs. Finch moved mechanically into the room. Jicks appeared, hugging her disreputable doll, and showing signs of recent wandering in the white dust which dropped on the carpet from her frock and her shoes, as she advanced towards the place in which I was sitting. Arrived in front of me, she peered quaintly up at my face, through the obscurity of the room; lifted her doll by the legs; hit me a smart rap with the head of it on my knee; and said—
“Jicks will sit here.”
I rubbed my knee, and enthroned Jicks as ordered. At the same time Mr. Finch solemnly stalked up to his daughter; laid his hands on her head; raised his eyes to the ceiling; and said in bass notes that rumbled with paternal emotion, “Bless you, my child!”
At the sound of her husband’s magnificent voice, Mrs. Finch became herself again. She said meekly, “How d’ye do, Lucilla?”—and sat down in a corner, and suckled the baby.
Mr. Finch set in for one of his harangues.
“My advice has been neglected, Lucilla. My paternal influence has been repudiated. My Moral Weight has been, so to speak, set aside. I don’t complain. Understand me—I simply state sad facts.” (Here he became aware of my existence.) “Good morning, Madame Pratolungo; I hope I see you well?—There has been variance between us, Lucilla. I come, my child, with healing on my wings (healing being understood, for present purposes, as reconciliation)—I come, and bring Mrs. Finch with me—don’t speak, Mrs. Finch!—to offer my heartfelt wishes, my fervent prayers, on this the most eventful day in my daughter’s life. No vulgar curiosity has turned my steps this way. No hint shall escape my lips, touching any misgivings which I may still feel as to this purely worldly interference with the ways of an inscrutable Providence. I am here as parent and peacemaker. My wife accompanies me—don’t speak, Mrs. Finch!—as step-parent and step-peacemaker. (You understand the distinction, Madame Pratolungo? Thank you. Good creature.) Shall I preach forgiveness of injuries from the pulpit, and not practice that forgiveness at home? Can I remain, on this momentous occasion, at variance with my child? Lucilla! I forgive you. With full heart and tearful eyes, I forgive you. (You have never had any children, I believe, Madame Pratolungo? Ah! you cannot possibly understand this. Not your fault. Good creature. Not your fault.) The kiss of peace, my child; the kiss of peace.” He solemnly bent his bristly head, and deposited the kiss of peace on Lucilla’s forehead. He sighed superbly, and in a burst of magnanimity, held out his hand next to me. “My Hand, Madame Pratolungo. Compose yourself. Don’t cry. God bless you. Mrs. Finch, deeply affected by her husband’s noble conduct, began to sob hysterically. The baby, disarranged in his proceedings by the emotions of his mama, set up a sympathetic scream. Mr. Finch crossed the room to them, with domestic healing on his wings. “This does you credit, Mrs. Finch; but, under the circumstances, it must not be continued. Control yourself, in consideration of the infant. Mysterious mechanism of Nature!” cried the rector, raising his prodigious voice over the louder and louder screeching of the baby. “Marvellous and beautiful sympathy which makes the maternal sustenance the conducting medium, as it were, of disturbance between the mother and child. What problems confront us, what forces environ us, even in this mortal life! Nature! Maternity! Inscrutable Providence!”
