Afternoon Tea Mysteries [Vol Three]

by Anthology

  I could endure it no longer.

  “Open the door!” I said. “I am ashamed to be in the same room with you!”

  “I don’t wonder at it,” he answered. “You may well be ashamed of me. I am ashamed of myself.”

  There was nothing cynical in his tone, nothing insolent in his manner. The same man who had just gloried in that abominable way, in his victory over innocence and misfortune, now spoke and looked like a man who was honestly ashamed of himself. If I could only have felt convinced that he was mocking me, or playing the hypocrite with me, I should have known what to do. But I say again—impossible as it seems—he was, beyond all doubt, genuinely penitent for what he had said, the instant after he had said it! With all my experience of humanity, and all my practice in dealing with strange characters, I stopped mid-way between Nugent and the locked door, thoroughly puzzled.

  “Do you believe me?” he asked.

  “I don’t understand you,” I answered.

  He took the key of the door out of his pocket, and put it on the table—close to the chair from which I had just risen.

  “I lose my head when I talk of her, or think of her,” he went on. “I would give everything I possess not to have said what I said just now. No language you can use is too strong to condemn it. The words burst out of me: if Lucilla herself had been present, I couldn’t have controlled them. Go, if you like. I have no right to keep you here, after behaving as I have done. There is the key, at your service. Only think first, before you leave me. You had something to propose when you came in. You might influence me—you might shame me into behaving like an honourable man. Do as you please. It rests with you.”

  Which was I, a good Christian? or a contemptible fool? I went back once more to my chair, and determined to give him a last chance.

  “That’s kind,” he said. “You encourage me; you show me that I am worth trying again. I had a generous impulse in this room, yesterday. It might have been something better than an impulse—if I had not had another temptation set straight in my way.”

  “What temptation?” I asked.

  “Oscar’s letter has told you: Oscar himself put the temptation in my way. You must have seen it.”

  “I saw nothing of the sort.”

  “Doesn’t he tell you that I offered to leave Dimchurch for ever? I meant it. I saw the misery in the poor fellow’s face, when Grosse and I were leading Lucilla out of the room. With my whole heart, I meant it. If he had taken my hand, and had said Good-bye, I should have gone. He wouldn’t take my hand. He insisted on thinking it over by himself. He came back, resolved to make the sacrifice, on his side——”

  “Why did you accept the sacrifice?”

  “Because he tempted me.”

  “Tempted you?”

  “Yes! What else can you call it—when he offered to leave me free to plead my own cause with Lucilla? What else can you call it—when he showed me a future life, which was a life with Lucilla? Poor, dear, generous fellow, he tempted me to stay when he ought to have encouraged me to go. How could I resist him? Blame the passion that has got me body and soul: don’t blame me!”

  I looked at the book on the table—the book that he had been reading when I entered the room. These sophistical confidences of his were nothing but Rousseau at second hand. Good! If he talked false Rousseau, nothing was left for me but to talk genuine Pratolungo. I let myself go—I was just in the humour for it.

  “How can a clever man like you impose on yourself in that way?” I said. “Your future with Lucilla? You have no future with Lucilla which is not shocking to think of. Suppose—you shall never do it, as long as I live—suppose you married her? Good heavens, what a miserable life it would be for both of you! You love your brother. Do you think you could ever really know a moment’s peace, with one reflection perpetually forcing itself on your mind? ‘I have cheated Oscar out of the woman whom he loved; I have wasted his life; I have broken his heart.’ You couldn’t look at her, you couldn’t speak to her, you couldn’t touch her, without feeling it all embittered by that horrible reproach. And she? What sort of wife would she make you, when she knew how you had got her? I don’t know which of the two she would hate most—you or herself. Not a man would pass her in the street, who would not rouse the thought in her—’I wonder whether he has ever done anything as base as what my husband has done.’ Not a married woman of her acquaintance, but would make her sick at heart with envy and regret. ‘Whatever faults he may have, your husband hasn’t won you as my husband won me.’ You happy? Your married life endurable? Come! I have saved a few pounds, since I have been with Lucilla. I will lay you every farthing I possess, you two would be separated by mutual consent before you had been six months man and wife. Now, which will you do? Will you start for the Continent, or stay here? Will you bring Oscar back, like an honourable man? or let him go, and disgrace yourself for ever?”

  His eyes sparkled; his color rose. He sprang to his feet, and unlocked the door. What was he going to do? To start for the Continent, or to turn me out of the house?

  He called to the servant.

  “James!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Make the house fast when Madame Pratolungo and I have left it. I am not coming back again.”

  “Sir!”

  “Pack my portmanteau, and send it after me tomorrow, to Nagle’s Hotel, London.”

  He closed the door again, and came back to me.

  “You refused to take my hand when you came in,” he said. “Will you take it now? I leave Browndown when you leave it; and I won’t come back again till I bring Oscar with me.

  “Both hands!” I exclaimed—and took him by both hands. I could say nothing more. I could only wonder whether I was waking or sleeping; fit to be put into an asylum, or fit to go at large?

  “Come!” he said. “I will see you as far as the rectory gate.

  “You can’t go tonight,” I answered. “The last train has left hours since.”

  “I can! I can walk to Brighton, and get a bed there, and leave for London tomorrow morning. Nothing will induce me to pass another night at Browndown. Stop! One question before I put the lamp out.”

  “What is it?”

  “Did you do anything towards tracing Oscar, when you were in London to-day?”

  “I went to a lawyer, and made what arrangements with him I could.”

  “Here is my pocket-book. Write me down his name and address.”

  I wrote them. He extinguished the lamp, and led me into the passage. The servant was standing there bewildered. “Good night, James. I am going to bring your master back to Browndown.” With that explanation, he took up his hat and stick, and gave me his arm. The moment after, we were out in the dark valley, on our way to the village.

  On the walk back to the rectory, he talked with a feverish volubility and excitement. Avoiding the slightest reference to the subject discussed at our strange and stormy interview, he returned, with tenfold confidence in himself, to his old boastful assertion of the great things he was going to do as a painter. The mission which called him to reconcile Humanity with Nature; the superb scale on which he proposed to interpret sympathetic scenery for the benefit of suffering mankind; the prime necessity of understanding him, not as a mere painter, but as Grand Consoler in Art—I had it all over again, by way of satisfying my mind as to his prospects and occupations in his future life. It was only when we stopped at the rectory-gate that he referred to what had passed between us—and even then, he only touched on the subject in the briefest possible way.

  “Well?” he said. “Have I won back your old regard for me? Do you believe there is a fine side to be found in the nature of Nugent Dubourg? Man is a compound animal. You are a woman in ten thousand. Give me a kiss.”

  He kissed me, foreign fashion, on both cheeks.

  “Now for Oscar!” he shouted cheerfully. He waved his hat, and disappeared in the darkness. I stood at the gate till the last rapid pit-pat of his feet died away in the silence of the ni
ght.

  An indescribable depression seized on my spirits. I began to doubt him again, the instant I was alone.

  “Is there a time coming,” I asked myself, “when all that I have done tonight must be done over again?”

  I opened the rectory-gate. Mr. Finch intercepted me before I could get round to our side of the house. He held up before me, in solemn triumph, a manuscript of many pages.

  “My Letter,” he said. “A Letter of Christian remonstrance, to Nugent Dubourg.”

  “Nugent Dubourg has left Dimchurch.”

  With that reply, I told the rector in as few words as possible how my visit to Browndown had ended.

  Mr. Finch looked at his letter. All those pages of eloquence written for nothing? No! In the nature of things, that could not possibly be. “You have done very well, Madame Pratolungo,” he remarked, in his most patronizing manner. “Very well indeed, all things considered. But, I don’t think I shall act wisely if I destroy this.” He carefully locked up his manuscript, and turned to me again with a mysterious smile. “I venture to think,” said Mr. Finch with mock humility, “My Letter will be wanted. Don’t let me discourage you about Nugent Dubourg. Only let me say:—Is he to be trusted?”

  It was said by a fool: it would never have been said at all, if he had not written his wonderful letter. Still, it echoed, with a painful fidelity, the misgiving secretly present at that moment in my own mind—and, more yet, it echoed the misgiving in Nugent’s mind, the doubt of himself which his own lips had confessed to me in so many words. I wished the rector good night, and went upstairs.

  Lucilla was in bed and asleep, when I softly opened her door.

  After looking for awhile at her lovely peaceful face, I was obliged to turn away. It was time I left the bedside, when the sight of her only made my spirits sink lower and lower. As I cast my last look at her before I closed the door, Mr. Finch’s ominous question forced itself on me again. In spite of myself, I said to myself—

  “Is he to be trusted?”

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY-NINTH

  She Learns to See

  WITH the new morning, certain reflections found their way into my mind which were not of the most welcome sort. There was one serious element of embarrassment in my position towards Lucilla, which had not discovered itself to me when Nugent and I parted at the rectory gate.

  Browndown was now empty. In the absence of both the brothers, what was I to say to Lucilla when the false Oscar failed to pay her his promised visit that day?

  In what a labyrinth of lies had the first fatal suppression of the truth involved us all! One deception after another had been forced on us; one disaster after another had followed retributively as the result—and, now that I was left to deal single-handed with the hard necessities of our position, no choice seemed left to me but to go on deceiving Lucilla still! I was weary of it and ashamed of it. At breakfast-time, I evaded all further discussion of the subject, after I had first ascertained that Lucilla did not expect her visitor before the afternoon. For some time after breakfast, I kept her at the piano. When she wearied of music, and began to talk of Oscar once more, I put on my hat, and set forth on a domestic errand (of the kind usually entrusted to Zillah), solely for the purpose of keeping out of the way, and putting off to the last moment the hateful necessity of telling more lies. The weather stood my friend. It threatened to rain; and Lucilla, on that account, refrained from proposing to accompany me.

  My errand took me to a farm-house on the road which led to Brighton. After settling my business, I prolonged my walk, though the rain was already beginning to fall. I had nothing on me that would spoil; and, in my present frame of mind, a wet gown was a preferable alternative to returning to the rectory.

  After I had walked about a mile further on, the solitude of the road was enlivened by the appearance of an open carriage approaching me from the direction of Brighton. The hood was up to protect the person inside from the rain. The person looked out as I passed, and stopped the carriage in a voice which I instantly recognized as the voice of Grosse. Our gallant oculist insisted (in the state of the weather) on my instantly taking shelter by his side and returning with him to the house.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure,” I said. “I thought you had arranged not to see Lucilla again till the end of the week.”

  Grosse’s eyes glared at me through his spectacles with a dignity and gravity worthy of Mr. Finch himself.

  “Shall I tell you something?” he said. “You see sitting at your side a lost surgeon-optic. I shall die soon. Put on my tombs, if you please, The malady which killed this German mans was—Lofely Feench. When I am away from her—gif me your sympathies: I so much want it—I sweat with anxiousness for young Miss. Your damn-mess-fix about those two brodders is a sort of perpetual blisters on my mind. Instead of snoring peaceably all night in my nice big English beds, I roll wide awake on my pillows, fidgeting for Feench. I am here to-day before my time. For what? For to try her eyes—you think? Goot Madam, you think wrong! It is not her eyes which troubles me. Her eyes will do. It is You—and the odders at your rectory-place. You make me nervous-anxious about my patients. I am afraid some of you will let the mess-fix of those brodder-twins find its way to her pretty ears, and turn her poor little mind topsy-turvies when I am not near to see to it in time. Will you let her be comfortable-easy for two months more? Ach Gott! if I could only be certain-sure of that, I might leave those weak new eyes of hers to cure themselves, and go my ways back to London again.”

  I had intended to remonstrate with him pretty sharply for taking Lucilla to Browndown. After what he had now said, it was useless to attempt anything of that sort—and doubly useless to hope that he would let me extricate myself from my difficulties by letting me tell her the truth.

  “Of course you are the best judge,” I said. “But you little know what these precautions of yours cost the unfortunate people who are left to carry them out.”

  He took me up sharply at those words.

  “You shall judge for yourself,” he said, “if it is not worth the cost. If her eyes satisfy me—Feench shall learn to see to-day. You shall stand by, you obstinate womans, and judge if it is goot to add shock and agitation to the exhaustions and irritabilities and bedevilments of all sorts which our poor Miss must suffer in learning to see, after being blind for all her life. No more of it now, till we get to the rectory-place.” By way of changing the subject for the present, he put a question to me which I felt it necessary to answer with some caution. “How is my nice boys?—my bright-clever Nugent?” he asked.

  “Very well.”

  There I stopped, not feeling at all sure of the ground I was treading on.

  “Mind this!” Grosse went on. “My bright-boy-Nugent keeps her comfortable-easy. My bright-boy-Nugent is worth all the rest of you togedder. I insist on his making his visits to young Miss at the rectory-place, in spite of that windy-talky-puff-bag-Feench-father of hers. I say positively—Nugent shall come into the house.”

  There was no help for it now. I was obliged to tell him that Nugent had left Browndown, and that I was the person who had sent him away.

  For a moment, I was really in doubt whether the skilled hand of the great surgeon would not be ignobly employed in boxing my ears. No perversion of spelling can possibly report the complicated German-English jargon in which his fury poured itself out on my devoted head. Let it be enough to say that he declared Nugent’s abominable personation of his brother to be vitally important—so long as Oscar was absent—to his successful treatment of the sensitive and excitable patient whom we had placed under his care. I vainly assured him that Nugent’s object in leaving Dimchurch was to set matters right again by bringing his brother back. Grosse flatly declined to allow himself to be influenced by any speculative consideration of that sort. He said (and swore) that my meddling had raised a serious obstacle in his way, and that nothing but his own tender regard for Lucilla prevented him from “turning the coachmans back,” and leaving us henceforth to s
hift for ourselves.

  When we reached the rectory gate, he had cooled a little. As we crossed the garden, he reminded me that I stood pledged to be present when the bandage was taken off.

  “Now mind!” he said. “You are going to see, if it is goot or bad to tell her that she has had those nice white arms of hers round the wrong brodder. You are going to tell me afterwards, if you dare say to her, in plain English words, ‘Blue-Face is the man.’

  We found Lucilla in the sitting-room. Grosse briefly informed her that he had nothing particular to occupy him in London, and that he had advanced the date of his visit on that account. “You want something to do, my lofe, on this soaky-rainy day. Show Papa-Grosse what you can do with your eyes, now you have got them back again.” With those words, he unfastened the bandage, and, taking her by the chin, examined her eyes—first without his magnifying glass; then with it.

  “Am I going on well?” she asked anxiously.

  “Famous-well! You go on (as my goot friends say in America) first-class. Now use your eyes for yourself. Gif one lofing look to Grosse first. Then—see! see! see!”

  There was no mistaking the tone in which he spoke to her.

  He was not only satisfied about her eyes—he was triumphant. “Soh!” he grunted, turning to me. “Why is Mr. Sebrights not here to look at this?”