Afternoon Tea Mysteries [Vol Three]

by Anthology

  I eagerly approached Lucilla. There was still a little dimness left in her eyes. I noticed also that they moved to and fro restlessly, and (at times) wildly. But, oh, the bright change in her! the new life of beauty which the new sense had bestowed on her already! Her smile, always charming, now caught light from her lips, and spread its gentle fascination over all her face. It was impossible not to long to kiss her. I advanced to congratulate, to embrace her. Grosse stepped forward, and checked me.

  “No,” he said. “Walk your ways to the odder end of the rooms—and let us see if she can go to you.”

  Like all other people, knowing no more of the subject than I knew, I had no idea of the pitiably helpless manner in which the restored sense of sight struggles to assert itself, in persons who have been blind for life. In such cases, the effort of the eyes that are first learning to see, is like the effort of the limbs when a child is first learning to walk. But for Grosse’s odd way of taking it, the scene which I was now to witness would have been painful in the last degree. My poor Lucilla—instead of filling me with joy, as I had anticipated—would I really believe have wrung my heart, and have made me burst out crying.

  “Now!” said Grosse, laying one hand on Lucilla’s arm, while he pointed to me with the other. “There she stands. Can you go to her?”

  “Of course I can!”

  “I lay you a bet-wager you can not! Ten thausand pounds to six pennies. Done-done. Now try!”

  She answered by a little gesture of defiance, and took three hasty steps forward. Bewildered and frightened, she stopped suddenly at the third step—before she had advanced half the way from her end of the room to mine.

  “I saw her here,” she said, pointing down to the spot on which she was standing; and appealing piteously to Grosse. “I see her now—and I don’t know where she is! She is so near, I feel as if she touched my eyes—and yet” (she advanced another step, and clutched with her hands at the empty air)—“and yet, I can’t get near enough to take hold of her. Oh! what does it mean? what does it mean?”

  “It means—pay me my six pennies!” said Grosse. “The wager-bet is mine!”

  She resented his laughing at her, with an obstinate shake of her head, and an angry knitting of her pretty eyebrows.

  “Wait a little,” she said. “You shan’t win quite so easily as that. I will get to her yet!”

  She came straight to me in a moment—just as easily as I could have gone to her myself if I had tried.

  “Another wager-bet!” cried Grosse, still standing behind her, and calling to me. “Twenty thousand pounds this time to a fourpennies-bit. She has shut her eyes to get to you. Hey!”

  It was true—she had blindfolded herself! With her eyes closed, she could measure to a hair’s breadth the distance which, with her eyes opened, she was perfectly incompetent to calculate! Detected by both of us, she sat down, poor dear, with a sigh of despair. “Was it worth while,” she said to me sadly, “to go through the operation for this?”

  Grosse joined us at our end of the room.

  “All in goot time,” he said. “Patience—and these helpless eyes of yours will learn. Soh! I shall begin to teach them now. You have got your own notions—hey?—about this colors and that? When you were blind, did you think what would be your favourite colors if you could see? You did? Which colors is it? Tell me. Come!”

  “White first,” she answered. “Then scarlet.”

  Grosse paused, and considered.

  “White, I understand,” he said. “White is the fancy of a young girls. But why scarlets? Could you see scarlets when you were blind?”

  “Almost,” she answered, “if it was bright enough. I used to feel something pass before my eyes when scarlet was shown to me.”

  “In these cataracts-cases, it is constantly scarlets that they almost see,” muttered Grosse to himself. “There must be reason for this—and I must find him.” He went on with his questions to Lucilla. “And the colors you hate most—which is he?”

  “Black.”

  Grosse nodded his head approvingly. “I thought so,” he said. “It is always black that they hate. For this also there must be reason—and I must find him.”

  Having expressed that resolution, he approached the writing-table, and took a sheet of paper out of the case, and a circular pen-wiper of scarlet cloth out of the inkstand. After that, he looked about him; waddled back to the other end of the room; and fetched the black felt hat in which he had travelled from London. He ranged the hat, the paper, and the pen-wiper in a row. Before he could put his next question to her, she pointed to the hat with a gesture of disapproval.

  “Take it away,” she said. “I don’t like that.”

  Grosse stopped me before I could speak.

  “Wait a little,” he whispered in my ear. “It is not quite so wonderful as you think. These blind peoples, when they first see, have all alike the same hatred of anything what is dark.” He turned to Lucilla. “Say,” he asked. “Is your favourite colors among these things here?”

  She passed by the hat in contempt; looked at the pen-wiper, and put it down; looked at the sheet of paper, and put it down; hesitated—and again shut her eyes.

  “No!” cried Grosse. “I won’t have it! How dare you blind yourself, in the presence of Me? What! I give you back your sights, and you go shut your eyes. Open them—or I will put you in the corner like a naughty girls. Your favourite colors? Now, now, now!”

  She opened her eyes (very unwillingly), and looked once more at the pen-wiper and the paper.

  “I see nothing as bright as my favourite colors here,” she said.

  Grosse held up the sheet of paper, and pressed the question without mercy.

  “What! is white, whiter than this?”

  “Fifty thousand times whiter than that!”

  “Goot. Now mind! This paper is white,” (he snatched her handkerchief out of her apron-pocket). “This handkerchief is white, too; whitest of white, both of them. First lesson, my lofe! Here in my hands is your favourite colors, in the time when you were blind.”

  “Those!” she exclaimed, pointing to the paper and the handkerchief, with a look of blank disappointment as he dropped them on the table. She turned over the pen-wiper and the hat, and looked round at me. Grosse, waiting to try another experiment, left it to me to answer. The result, in both cases, was the same as in the cases of the sheet of paper and the handkerchief. Scarlet was not half as red—black, not one-hundredth part as black—as her imagination had figured them to her, in the days when she was blind. Still, as to this last color—as to black—she could feel some little encouragement. It had affected her disagreeably (just as poor Oscar’s face had affected her), though she had not actually known it for the color that she disliked. She made an effort, poor child, to assert herself, against her merciless surgeon-teacher. “I didn’t know it was black,” she said. “But I hated the sight of it, for all that.”

  She tried, as she spoke, to toss the hat on to a chair, standing close by her—and threw it instead, high above the back of the chair, against the wall, at least six feet away from the object at which she had aimed. “I am a helpless fool!” she burst out; her face flushing crimson with mortification. “Don’t let Oscar see me! I can’t bear the thought of making myself ridiculous before him! He is coming here,” she added, turning to me entreatingly. “Manage to make some excuse for his not seeing me till later in the day.”

  I promised to find the excuse—all the more readily, that I now saw an unexpected chance of reconciling her in some degree (so long as she was learning to see) to the blank produced in her life by Oscar’s absence.

  She addressed herself again to Grosse.

  “Go on!” she said impatiently. “Teach me to be something better than an idiot—or put the bandage on, and blind me again. My eyes are of no use to me! Do you hear?” she cried furiously, taking him by his broad shoulders and shaking him with all her might—“my eyes are of no use to me!”

  “Now! now! now!” cried
Grosse. “If you don’t keep your tempers, you little spitfire, I will teach you nothing.” He took up the sheet of paper and the pen-wiper; and, forcing her to sit down, placed them together before her, in her lap.

  “Do you know one thing?” he went on. “Do you know what is meant by an objects which is square? Do you know what is meant by an objects which is round?”

  Instead of answering him, she appealed indignantly to my opinion.

  “Is it not monstrous,” she asked, “to hear him put such a question to me as that? Do I know round from square? Oh, how cruelly humiliating! Don’t tell Oscar! don’t tell Oscar!”

  “If you know,” persisted Grosse, “you can tell me. Look at those two things in your lap. Are they both round? or both square? or is one round? and the odder square? Look now, and tell me.”

  She looked—and said nothing.

  “Well?” continued Grosse.

  “You put me out, standing there staring at me through your horrid spectacles!” she said irritably. “Don’t look at me, and I will tell you directly.”

  Grosse turned his head my way, with his diabolical grin; and signed to me to keep watch on her, in his place.

  The instant his back was turned, she shut her eyes, and ran over the paper and the pen-wiper with the tips of her fingers!

  “One is round and one is square,” she answered, cunningly opening her eyes again, just in time to bear critical inspection when Grosse turned round towards her once more.

  He took the paper and the pen-wiper out of her hands; and (thoroughly understanding the trick she had played him) changed them for a bronze saucer and a book. “Which is round? and which is square of these?” he asked, holding them up before her.

  She looked first at one, and then at the other—plainly incapable (with only her eyes to help her) of answering the question.

  “I put you out—don’t I?” said Grosse. “You can’t shut your eyes, my lofely Feench, while I am looking—can you?”

  She turned red—then pale again. I began to be afraid she would burst out crying. Grosse managed her to perfection. The tact of this rough, ugly, eccentric old man was the most perfect tact I have ever met with.

  “Shut your eyes,” he said soothingly. “It is the right ways to learn. Shut your eyes, and take them in your hands, and tell me which is round and which is square in that way first.”

  She told him directly.

  “Goot! now open your eyes, and see for yourself it is the saucers you have got in your right hand, and the books you have got in your left. You see? Goot again! Put them back on the table now. What shall we do next?”

  “May I try if I can write?” she asked eagerly. “I do so want to see if I can write with my eyes instead of my finger.”

  “No! Ten thausand times no! I forbid reading; I forbid writing, yet. Come with me to the window. How do these most troublesome eyes of yours do at a distance?”

  While we had been trying our experiment with Lucilla, the weather had brightened again. The clouds were parting; the sun was coming out; the bright gaps of blue in the sky were widening every moment; the shadows were travelling grandly over the windy slopes of the hills. Lucilla lifted her hands in speechless admiration as the German threw open the window, and placed her face to face with the view.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, “don’t speak to me! don’t touch me!—let me enjoy it! There is no disappointment here. I have never thought, I have never dreamed, of anything half so beautiful as this!”

  Grosse looked at me, and silently pointed to her. She had turned pale—she was trembling in every limb, overwhelmed by her own ecstatic sense of the glory of the sky and the beauty of the earth, as they now met her view for the first time. I penetrated the surgeon’s object in directing my attention to her. “See” (he meant to say), “what a delicately-organized creature we have to deal with! Is it possible to be too careful in handling such a sensitive temperament as that?” Understanding him only too well, I also trembled when I thought of the future. Everything now depended on Nugent. And Nugent’s own lips had told me that he could not depend on himself!

  It was a relief to me when Grosse interrupted her.

  She pleaded hard to be allowed to stay at the window a little longer. He refused to allow it. Upon that she flew instantly into the opposite extreme. “I am in my own room, and I am my own mistress,” she said angrily. “I insist on having my own way.” Grosse was ready with his answer.

  “Take your own ways; fatigue those weak new eyes of yours—and tomorrow, when you try to look out of window, you will not be able to see at all.” This reply terrified her into instant submission. She assisted in replacing the bandage with her own hands. “May I go away to my own room?” she asked, with the simplicity of a child. “I have seen such beautiful sights—and I do so want to think of them by myself.”

  The medical adviser instantly granted the patient’s request. Any proceeding which tended to compose her, was a proceeding of which he highly approved.

  “If Oscar comes,” she whispered, as she passed me on her way to the door, “mind I hear of it! and mind you don’t tell him of the mistakes I have made!” She paused for a moment, thinking. “I don’t understand myself,” she said. “I never was so happy in my life. And yet I feel almost ready to cry!” She turned towards Grosse. “Come here, papa. You have been very good to me to-day. I will give you a kiss.” She laid her hands lightly on his shoulders; kissed his lined and wrinkled cheek; gave me a little squeeze round the waist—and left us. Grosse turned sharply to the window, and used his huge silk handkerchief for a purpose to which (I suspect) it had not been put for many a long year past.

  CHAPTER THE FORTIETH

  Traces of Nugent

  “MADAME PRATOLUNGO!”

  “Herr Grosse?”

  He put his handkerchief back into his pocket, and turned round to me from the window with his face composed again, and his tea-caddy snuff-box in his hand.

  “Now you have seen for your own self,” he said, with an emphatic rap on the box, “do you dare tell that sweet girls which of them it is that has gone his ways and left her for ever?”

  It is not easy to find a limit to the obstinacy of women—when men expect them to acknowledge themselves to have been wrong. After what I had seen, I no more dared tell her than he did. I was only too obstinate to acknowledge it to him—just yet.

  “Mind this!” he went on. Whether you shake her with frights, or whether you heat her with rages, or whether you wound her with griefs—it all

  goes straight the same to those weak new eyes of hers. They are so weak and so new, that I must ask once more for my beds here tonight, for to see tomorrow if I have not already tried them too much. Now, for the last time of asking, have you got the abominable courage in you to tell her the truth?”

  He had found my limit at last. I was obliged to own (heartily as I disliked doing it) that there was, for the present, no choice left but mercifully to conceal the truth. Having gone this length I next attempted to consult him as to the safest manner in which I could account to Lucilla for Oscar’s absence. He refused (as a man) to recognize the slightest necessity for giving me (as a woman) any advice on a question of evasions and excuses. “I have not lived all my years in the world, without learning something,” he said. “When it comes to walking upon eggshells and telling fips, the womens have nothing to learn from the mens.—Will you take a little stroll-walk with me in the garden? I have one odder thing to say to you: and I am hungry and thirsty both togedder—for This.”

  He produced “This,” in the form of his pipe. We left the room at once for our stroll in the garden.

  Having solaced himself with his first mouthful of tobacco-smoke, he startled me by announcing that he meant to remove Lucilla forthwith from Dimchurch to the sea-side. In doing this, he was actuated by two motives—first, the medical motive of strengthening her constitution: second, the personal motive of preserving her from making painful discoveries by placing her out of reach of the gossip of the r
ectory and the village. Grosse had the lowest opinion of Mr. Finch and his household. His dislike and distrust of the rector, in particular, knew no bounds: he characterized the Pope of Dimchurch as an Ape with a long tongue, and a man-and-monkey capacity for doing mischief. Ramsgate was the watering-place which he had fixed on. It was at a safe distance from Dimchurch; and it was near enough to London to enable him to visit Lucilla frequently. The one thing needed was my co-operation in the new plan. If I was at liberty to take charge of Lucilla, he would speak to the Ape with the long tongue; and we might start for Ramsgate before the end of the week.

  Was there anything to prevent me from carrying out the arrangement proposed?

  There was nothing to prevent me. My one other anxiety apart from Lucilla—anxiety about good Papa—had now, for some time, been happily set at rest. Letter after letter from my sisters in France, brought me always the same cheering news. My evergreen parent had at last discovered that he was no longer in the first bloom of his youth. He had resigned to his juniors, with pathetic expressions of regret, the making of love and the fighting of duels. Ravaged by past passions, this dear innocent had now found a refuge from swords, pistols, and the sex, in collecting butterflies and playing on the guitar. I was free wholly to devote myself to Lucilla; and I honestly rejoiced in the prospect before me. Alone with her, and away from the rectory (where there was always danger off gossip reaching her ears) I could rely on myself to protect her from harm in the present, and to preserve her for Oscar in the future. With all my heart I agreed to the arrangements as Grosse proposed them. When we parted in the garden, he went round to the rector’s side of the house to announce (in his medical capacity) the decision at which he had arrived—while I, on my side, went back to Lucilla to make the best excuses that I could invent for Oscar, and to prepare her for our speedy removal from Dimchurch.

  “Gone, without coming to say good-bye! Gone, without even writing to me!”

  There was the first impression I produced on her, when I had done my best to account harmlessly for Oscar’s absence. I had, as I thought, taken the shortest and simplest way out of the difficulty, by merely inverting the truth. In other words, by telling her that Nugent had got into some serious embarrassment abroad, and that Oscar had been called away at a moment’s notice, to follow him and help him. It was in vain that I reminded her of Oscar’s well-known horror of leave-takings of all kinds; in vain that I represented the urgency of the matter as leaving him no alternative but to confide his excuses and his farewells to me; in vain that I promised for him that he would write to her at the first opportunity. She listened, without conviction. The more perseveringly I tried to account for it, the more perseveringly she dwelt on Oscar’s unaccountable disregard of her claims on his consideration for her. As for our journey to Ramsgate, it was impossible to interest her in the subject. I gave it up in despair.