Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins (page 3)

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 acknowledge 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 honor 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 clamored 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.

Having reported how the rector spoke, in the presence of the disaster which had fallen on the family, I have only to complete the picture by stating next what he did. He borrowed two hundred pounds of Oscar; and left off commanding red herrings in the day and disturbing Mrs. Finch at night, immediately afterwards.

The dull autumn days ended, and the long nights of winter began.

No change for the better appeared in our prospects. The doctors did their best for Oscar–without avail. The horrible fits came back, again and

again. Day after day, our dull lives went monotonously on. I almost began now to believe, with Lucilla, that a crisis of some sort must be at hand. “This cannot last,” I used to say to myself–generally when I was very hungry. “Something will happen before the year comes to an end.”

The month of December began; and something happened at last. The family troubles at the rectory were matched by family troubles of my own. A letter arrived for me from one of my younger sisters at Paris. It contained alarming news of a person very dear to me–already mentioned in the first of these pages as my good Papa.

Was the venerable author of my being dangerously ill of a mortal disease? Alas! he was not exactly that–but the next worst thing to it. He was dangerously in love with a disreputable young woman. At what age? At the age of seventy-five! What can we say of my surviving parent? We can only say, This is a vigorous nature; Papa has an evergreen heart.

I am grieved to trouble you with my family concerns. But they mix themselves up intimately, as you will see in due time, with the concerns of Oscar and Lucilla. It is my unhappy destiny that I cannot possibly take you through the present narrative, without sooner or later disclosing the one weakness (amiable weakness) of the gayest and brightest and best-preserved man of his time.

Ah, I am now treading on egg-shells, I know! The English specter called Propriety springs up rampant on my writing-table, and whispers furiously in my ear, “Madame Pratolungo, raise a blush on the cheek of Innocence, and it is all over from that moment with you and your story.” Oh, inflammable Cheek of Innocence, be good-natured for once, and I will rack my brains to try if I can put it to you without offense! May I picture good Papa as an elder in the Temple of Venus, burning incense inexhaustibly on the altar of love? No: Temple of Venus is Pagan; altar of love is not proper–take them out. Let me only say of my evergreen parent that his life from youth to age had been one unintermitting recognition of the charms of the sex, and that my sisters and I (being of the sex) could not find it in our hearts to abandon him on that account. So handsome, so affectionate, so sweet-tempered; with only one fault–and that a compliment to the women, who naturally adored him in return! We accepted our destiny. For years past (since the death of Mamma), we accustomed ourselves to live in perpetual dread of his marrying some one of the hundreds of unscrupulous hussies who took possession of him: and, worse if possible than that, of his fighting duels about them with men young enough to be his grandsons. Papa was so susceptible! Papa was so brave! Over and over again, I had been summoned to interfere, as the daughter who had the strongest influence over him. I had succeeded in effecting his rescue, now by one means, and now by another; ending always, however, in the same sad way, by the sacrifice of money for damages–on which damages, when the woman is shameless enough to claim them, my verdict is, “Serve her right!”

On the present occasion, it was the old story over again. My sisters had done their best to stop it, and had failed. I had no choice but to appear on the scene–to begin, perhaps, by boxing her ears: to end, certainly, by filling her pockets.

My absence at this time was something more than an annoyance–it was a downright grief to my blind Lucilla. On the morning of my departure, she clung to me as if she was determined not to let me go.

“What shall I do without you?” she said. “It is hard, in these dreary days, to lose the comfort of hearing your voice. I shall feel all my security gone, when I feel you no longer near me. How many days shall you be away?”

“A day to get to Paris,” I answered; “and a day to get back–two. Five days (if I can do it in the time) to thunder-strike the hussy, and to rescue Papa–seven. Let us say, if possible, a week.”

“You must be back, no matter what happen, before the new year.”

“Why?”

“I have my yearly visit to pay to my aunt. It has been twice put off. I must absolutely go to London on the last day of the old year, and stay there my allotted three months in Miss Batchford’s house. I had hoped to be Oscar’s wife before the time came round again—-” she waited a moment to steady her voice. “That is all over now. We must be parted. If I can’t leave you here to console him and to take care of him, come what may of it–I shall stay at Dimchurch.”

Her staying at Dimchurch, while she was still unmarried, meant (under the terms of her uncle’s will) sacrificing her fortune. If Reverend Finch had heard her, he would not even have been able to say “Inscrutable Providence”–he would have lost his senses on the spot.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said; “I shall be back, Lucilla, before you go. Besides, Oscar may get better. He may be able to follow you to London, and visit you at your aunt’s.”

She shook her head, with such a sad, sad doubt of it, that the tears came into my eyes. I gave her a last kiss–and hurried away.

My route was to Newhaven, and then across the Channel to Dieppe. I don’t think I really knew how fond I had grown of Lucilla, until I lost sight of the rectory at the turn in the road to Brighton. My natural firmness deserted me; I felt torturing presentiments that some great misfortune would happen in my absence; I astonished myself–I, the widow of the Spartan Pratolungo!–by having a good cry, like any other woman.

Sooner or later, we susceptible people pay with the heartache for the privilege of loving. No matter: heartache or not, one must have something to love in this world as long as one lives in it. I have lived in it–never mind how many years–and I have got Lucilla. Before Lucilla I had the Doctor. Before the Doctor–ah, my friends, we won’t look back beyond the Doctor!

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH

Second Result of the Robbery

THE history of my proceedings in Paris can be dismissed in a very few words. It is only necessary to dwell in detail on one among the many particulars which connect themselves in my memory with the rescue of good Papa.

The affair, this time, assumed the gravest possible aspect. The venerable victim had gone the length of renewing his youth, in respect of his teeth, his hair, his complexion, and his figure (this last involving the purchase of a pair of stays). I declare I hardly knew him again, he was so outrageously and unnaturally young. The utmost stretch of my influence was exerted over him in vain. He embraced me with the most touching fervour; he expressed the noblest sentiments–but in the matter of his contemplated marriage, he was immovable. Life was only tolerable to him on one condition. The beloved object, or death–such was the programme of this volcanic old man.

To make the prospect more hopeless still, the beloved object proved, on this occasion, to be a bold enough woman to play her trump card at starting.

I give the jade her due. She assumed a perfectly unassailable attitude: we had her full permission to break off the match–if we could. “I refer you to your father. Pray understand that I don’t wish to marry him, if his daughters object to it. He has only to say, ‘Release me.’ From that moment he is free.” There was no contending against such a system of defence as this. We knew as well as she did that our fascinated parent would not say the word. Our one chance was to spend money in investigating the antecedent indiscretions of the lady’s life, and to produce against her proof so indisputable that not even an old man’s infatuation could say, This is a lie.

We disbursed; we investigated; we secured our proof. It took a fortnight. At the end of that time, we had the necessary materials in hand for opening the eyes of good Papa.

In the course of the inquiry I was brought into contact with many strange people–among others, with a man who startled me, at our first interview, by presenting a personal deformity, which, with all my experience of the world, I now saw oddly enough for the first time.

The man’s face, instead of exhibiting any of the usual shades of complexion, was hideously distinguished by a superhuman–I had almost said a devilish–colouring of livid blackish _blue!_ He proved to be a most kind, intelligent, and serviceable person. But when we first confronted each other, his horrible color so startled me, that I could not repress a cry of alarm. He not only passed over my involuntary act of rudeness in the most indulgent manner–he explained to me the cause which had produced his peculiarity of complexion; so as to put me at my ease before we entered on the delicate private inquiry which had brought us together.

“I beg your pardon,” said this unfortunate man, “for not having warned you of my disfigurement, before I entered the room. There are hundreds of people discolored as I am, in the various parts of the civilized world; and I supposed that you had met, in the course of your experience, with other examples of my case. The blue tinge in my complexion is produced by the effect on the blood of Nitrate of Silver–taken internally. It is the only medicine which relieves sufferers like me from an otherwise incurable malady. We have no alternative but to accept the consequences for the sake of the cure.”

He did not mention what his malady had been; and I abstained, it is needless to say, from questioning him further. I got used to his disfigurement in the course of my relations with him; and I should no doubt have forgotten my blue man in attending to more absorbing matters of interest, if the effects of Nitrate of Silver as a medicine had not been once more unexpectedly forced on my attention, in another quarter, and under circumstances which surprised me in no ordinary degree.

Having saved Papa on the brink of–let us say, his twentieth precipice, it was next necessary to stay a few days longer and reconcile him to the hardship of being rescued in spite of himself. You would have been greatly shocked, if you had seen how he suffered. He gnashed his expensive teeth; he tore his beautifully manufactured hair. In the fervour of his emotions, I have no doubt he would have burst his new stays–if I had not taken them away, and sold them half-price, and made (to that small extent) a profit out of our calamity to set against the loss. Do what one may in the detestable system of modern society, the pivot on which it all turns is Money. Money, when you are saving Freedom! Money, when you are saving Papa! Is there no remedy for this? A word in your ear. Wait till the next revolution!

During the time of my absence, I had of course corresponded with Lucilla.

Her letters to me–very sad and very short–reported a melancholy state of things at Dimchurch. While I had been away, the dreadful epileptic seizures had attacked Oscar with increasing frequency and increasing severity. The moment I could see my way to getting back to England, I wrote to Lucilla to cheer her with the intimation of my return. Two days only before my departure from Paris, I received another letter from her. I was weak enough to be almost afraid to open it. Her writing to me again, when she knew that we should be re-united at such an early date, suggested that she must have some very startling news to communicate. My mind misgave me that it would prove to be news of the worst sort.

I summoned courage to open the envelope. Ah, what fools we are! For once that our presentments come right, they prove a hundred times to be wrong. Instead of distressing me, the letter delighted me. Our gloomy prospect was brightening at last.

Thus–feeling her way over the paper, in her large childish characters–Lucilla wrote:

“DEAREST FRIEND AND SISTER,–I cannot wait until we meet, to tell you my good news. The Brighton doctor has been dismissed; and a doctor from London has been tried instead. My dear! for intellect there is nothing like London. The new man sees, thinks, and makes up his mind on the spot. He has a way of his own of treating Oscar’s case; and he answers for curing him of the horrible fits. There is news for you! Come back, and let us jump for joy together. How wrong I was to doubt the future! Never, never, never will I doubt it again. This is the longest letter I have ever written.

“Your affectionate,

“LUCILLA.”

To this, a postscript was added, in Oscar’s handwriting, as follows:–

“Lucilla has told you that there is some hope for me at last. What I write in this place is written without her knowledge–for your private ear only. Take the first opportunity you can find of coming to see me at Browndown, without allowing Lucilla to hear of it. I have a great favor to ask of you. My happiness depends on your granting it. You shall know what it is, when we meet.

“OSCAR.”

This postscript puzzled me.

It was not in harmony with the implicit confidence which I had observed Oscar to place habitually in Lucilla. It jarred on my experience of his character, which presented him to me as the reverse of a reserved secretive man. His concealment of his identity, when he first came among us, had been a forced concealment–due entirely to his horror of being identified with the hero of the trial. In all the ordinary relations of life, he was open and unreserved to a fault. That he could have a secret to keep from Lucilla, and to confide to me, was something perfectly unintelligible to my mind. It highly excited my curiosity; it gave me a new reason for longing to get back.

I was able to make all my arrangements, and to bid adieu to my father and my sisters on the evening of the twenty-third. Early on the morning of the twenty-fourth, I left Paris, and reached Dimchurch in time for the final festivities in celebration of Christmas Eve.

The first hour of Christmas Day had struck on the clock in our own pretty sitting-room, before I could prevail upon Lucilla to let me rest, after my journey, in bed. She was now once more the joyous light-hearted creature of our happier time; and she had so much to say to me, that not even her father himself (on this occasion) could have talked her down. The next morning she paid the penalty of exciting herself over-night. When I went into her room, she was suffering from a nervous head-ache, and was not able to rise at her usual hour. She proposed of her own accord that I should go alone to Browndown to see Oscar on my return. It is only doing common justice to myself to say that this was a relief to me. If she had had the use of her eyes, my conscience would have been easy enough–but I shrank from deceiving my dear blind girl, even in the slightest things.

So, with Lucilla’s knowledge and approval, I went to Oscar alone.

I found him fretful and anxious–ready to flame out into one of his sudden passions, on the smallest provocation. Not the slightest reflection of Lucilla’s recovered cheerfulness appeared in Lucilla’s lover.

“Has she said anything to you about the new doctor?” were the first words he addressed to me.

“She has told me that she feels the greatest faith in him,” I answered. “She firmly believes that he speaks the truth in saying he can cure you.”

“Did she show any curiosity to know _how_ he is curing me?”

“Not the slightest curiosity that I could see. It is enough for her that you _are_ to be cured. The rest she leaves to the doctor.”

My last answer appeared to relieve him. He sighed, and leaned back in his chair. “That’s right!” he said to himself. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“Is the doctor’s treatment of you a secret?” I asked.

“It must be a secret from Lucilla,” he said, speaking very earnestly. “If she attempts to find it out, she must be kept–for the present, at least–from all knowledge of it. Nobody has any influence over her but you. I look to you to help me.”

“Is this the favor you had to ask me?”

“Yes.”

“Am I to know the secret of the medical treatment?”

“Certainly! How can I expect you to help me unless you know what a serious reason there is for keeping Lucilla in the dark.”

He laid a strong emphasis on the two words “serious reason. I began to feel a little uneasy. I had never yet taken the slightest advantage of my poor Lucilla’s blindness. And here was her promised husband–of all the people in the world–proposing to me to keep her in the dark.

“Is the new doctor’s treatment dangerous?” I inquired.

“Not in the least.”

“Is it not so certain as he has led Lucilla to believe?”

“It is quite certain.

“Did the other doctors know of it?”

“Yes.”

“Why did they not try it?”

“They were afraid.”

“Afraid? What _is_ the treatment?”

“Medicine.”

“Many medicines? or one?”

“Only one.”

“What is the name of it?”

“Nitrate of Silver.”

I started to my feet, looked at him, and dropped back into my chair.

My mind reverted, the instant I recovered myself, to the effect produced on me when the blue man in Paris first entered my presence. In informing me of the effect of the medicine, he had (you will remember) concealed from me the malady for which he had taken it. It had been left to Oscar, of all the people in the world, to enlighten me–and that by a reference to his own case! I was so shocked that I sat speechless.

With his quick sensibilities, there was no need for me to express myself in words. My face revealed to him what was passing in my mind.

“You have seen a person who has taken Nitrate of Silver!” he exclaimed.

“Have _you?_” I asked.

“I know the price I pay for being cured,” he answered quietly.

His composure staggered me. “How long have you been taking this horrible drug?” I inquired.

“A little more than a week.”

“I see no change in you yet.”

“The doctor tells me there will be no visible change for weeks and weeks to come.”

Those words roused a momentary hope in me. “There is time to alter your mind,” I said. “For heaven’s sake reconsider your resolution before it is too late!”

He smiled bitterly. “Weak as I am,” he answered, “for once, my mind is made up.”

I suppose I took a woman’s view of the matter. I lost my temper when I looked at his beautiful complexion and thought of the future.

“Are you in your right senses?” I burst out. “Do you mean to tell me that you are deliberately bent on making yourself an object of horror to everybody who sees you?”

“The one person whose opinion I care for,” he replied, “will never see me.”

I understood him at last. _That_ was the consideration which had reconciled him to it!

Lucilla’s horror of dark people and dark shades of color, of all kinds, was, it is needless to say, recalled to my memory by the turn the conversation was taking now. Had she confessed it to him, as she had confessed it to me? No! I remembered that she had expressly warned me not to admit him into our confidence in this matter. At an early period of their acquaintance, she had asked him which of his parents he resembled. This led him into telling her that his father had been a dark man. Lucilla’s delicacy had at once taken the alarm. “He speaks very tenderly of his dead father,” she said to me. “It may hurt him if he finds out the antipathy I have to dark people. Let us keep it to ourselves.” As things now were, it was on the tip of my tongue to remind him, that Lucilla would hear of his disfigurement from other people; and then to warn him of the unpleasant result that might follow. On reflection, however, I thought it wiser to wait a little and sound his motives first.

“Before you tell me how I can help you,” I said, “I want to know one thing more. Have you decided in this serious matter entirely by yourself? Have you taken no advice?”

“I don’t want advice,” he answered sharply. “My case admits of no choice. Even such a nervous undecided creature as I am, can judge for himself where there is no alternative.”

“Did the doctors tell you there was no alternative?” I asked.

“The doctors were afraid to tell me. I had to force it out of them. I said, ‘I appeal to your honor to answer a plain question plainly. Is there any certain prospect of my getting the better of the fits?’ They only said, ‘At your time of life, we may reasonably hope so.’ I pressed them closer:–‘Can you fix a date to which I may look forward as the date of my deliverance?’ They could neither of them do it. All they could say was, ‘Our experience justifies us in believing that you will grow out of it; but it does _not_ justify us in saying when.’ ‘Then, I may be years growing out of it?’ They were obliged to own that it might be so. ‘Or I may never grow out of it, at all?’ They tried to turn the conversation. I wouldn’t have it. I said, ‘Tell me honestly, is that one of the possibilities, in my case?’ The Dimchurch doctor looked at the London doctor. The London man said, ‘If you will have it, it is one of the possibilities.’ Just consider the prospect which his answer placed before me! Day after day, week after week, month after month, always in danger, go where I may, of falling down in a fit–is that a miserable position? or is it not?”

How could I answer him? What could I say?

He went on:–

“Add to that wretched state of things that I am engaged to be married. The hardest disappointment which can fall on a man, falls on me. The happiness of my life is within my reach–and I am forbidden to enjoy it. It is not only my health that is broken up, my prospects in life are ruined as well. The woman I love is a woman forbidden to me while I suffer as I suffer now. Realize that–and then fancy you see a man sitting at this table here, with pen, ink, and paper before him, who has only to scribble a line or two, and to begin the cure of you from that moment. Deliverance in a few months from the horror of the fits; marriage in a few months to the woman you love. That heavenly prospect in exchange for the hellish existence that you are enduring now. And the one price to pay for it, a discolored face for the rest of your life–which the one person who is dearest to you will never see? Would you have hesitated? When the doctor took up the pen to write the prescription–tell me, if you had been in my place, would you have said, No?”

I still sat silent. My obstinacy–women are such mules!–declined to give way, even when my conscience told me that he was right.

He sprang to his feet, in the same fever of excitement which I remembered so well, when I had irritated him at Browndown into telling me who he really was.

“Would you have said, No?” he reiterated, stooping over me, flushed and heated, as he had stooped on that first occasion, when he had whispered his name in my ear. “Would you?” he repeated, louder and louder–“would you?”

At the third reiteration of the words, the frightful contortion that I knew so well, seized on his face. The wrench to the right twisted his body. He dropped at my feet. Good God! who could have declared that he was wrong, with such an argument in his favor as I saw at that moment? Who would not have said that any disfigurement would be welcome as a refuge from this?

The servant ran in, and helped me to move the furniture to a safe distance from him, “There won’t be much more of it, ma’am,” said the man, noticing my agitation, and trying to compose me. “In a month or two, the doctor says the medicine will get hold of him.” I could say nothing on my side–I could only reproach myself bitterly for disputing with him and exciting him, and leading perhaps to the hideous seizure which had attacked him in my presence for the second time.

The fit on this occasion was a short one. Perhaps the drug was already beginning to have some influence over him? In twenty minutes, he was able to resume his chair, and to go on talking to me.

“You think I shall horrify you when my face has turned blue,” he said with a faint smile. “Don’t I horrify you now when you see me in convulsions on the floor?”

I entreated him to dwell on it no more.

“God knows,” I said, “you have convinced me–obstinate as I am. Let us try to think of nothing now but of the prospect of your being cured. What do you wish me to do?”

“You have great influence over Lucilla,” he said. “If she expresses any curiosity, in future conversations with you, about the effect of the medicine, check her at once. Keep her as ignorant of it as she is now!”

“Why?”

“Why! If she knows what you know, how will she feel? Shocked and horrified, as you felt. What will she do? She will come straight here, and try, as you have tried, to persuade me to give it up. Is that true or not?”

(Impossible to deny that it was true.)

“I am so fond of her,” he went on, “that I can refuse her nothing. She would end in making me give it up. The instant her back was turned, I should repent my own weakness, and return to the medicine. Here is a perpetual struggle in prospect, for a man who is already worn out. Is it desirable, after what you have just seen, to expose me to that?”

It would have been useless cruelty to expose him to it. How could I do otherwise than consent to make his sacrifice of himself–his _necessary_ sacrifice–as easy as I could? At the same time, I implored him to remember one thing.

“Mind,” I said, “we can never hope to keep her in ignorance of the change in you, when the change comes. Sooner or later, some one will let the secret out.”

“I only want it to be concealed from her while the disfigurement of me is in progress,” he answered. “When nothing she can say or do will alter it–I will tell her myself. She is so happy in the hope of my recovery! What good can be gained by telling her beforehand of the penalty that I pay for my deliverance? My ugly color will never terrify my poor darling. As for other persons, I shall not force myself on the view of the world. It is my one wish to live out of the world. The few people about me will soon get reconciled to my face. Lucilla will set them the example. She won’t trouble herself long about a change in me that she can neither feel nor see.

Ought I to have warned him here of Lucilla’s inveterate prejudice, and of the difficulty there might be in reconciling her to the change in him when she heard of it? I dare say I ought, I daresay I was to blame in shrinking from inflicting new anxieties and new distresses on a man who had already suffered so much. The simple truth is–I could not do it. Would you have done it? Ah, if you would, I hope I may never come in contact with you. What a horrid wretch you must be! The end of it was that I left the house–pledged to keep Lucilla in ignorance of the cost at which Oscar had determined to purchase his cure, until Oscar thought fit to enlighten her himself.

CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH

Good Papa again!

THE promise I had given did not expose me to the annoyance of being kept long on the watch against accidents. If we could pass safely over the next five days, we might feel pretty sure of the future. On the last day of the old year, Lucilla was bound by the terms of the will to go to London, and live her allotted three months under the roof of her aunt.

In the brief interval that elapsed before her departure, she twice approached the dangerous subject.

On the first occasion, she asked me if I knew what medicine Oscar was taking. I pleaded ignorance, and passed at once to other matters. On the second occasion, she advanced still further on the way to discovery of the truth. She now inquired if I had heard how the physic worked the cure. Having been already informed that the fits proceeded from a certain disordered condition of the brain, she was anxious to know whether the medical treatment was likely to affect the patient’s head. This question (which I was of course unable to answer) she put to both the doctors. Already warned by Oscar, they quieted her by declaring that the process of cure acted by general means, and did not attack the head. From that moment, her curiosity was satisfied. Her mind had other objects of interest to dwell on, before she left Dimchurch. She touched on the perilous topic no more.

It was arranged that I was to accompany Lucilla to London. Oscar was to follow us, when the state of his health permitted him to take the journey. As betrothed husband of Lucilla, he had his right of entry, during her residence in her aunt’s house. As for me, I was admitted at Lucilla’s intercession. She declined to be separated from me for three months.

Miss Batchford wrote, most politely, to offer me a hospitable welcome during the day. She had no second spare-room at her disposal–so we settled that I was to sleep at a lodging-house in the neighborhood. In this same house, Oscar was also to be accommodated, when the doctors sanctioned his removal to London. It was now thought likely–if all went well–that the marriage might be celebrated at the end of the three months, from Miss Batchford’s residence in town.

Three days before the date of Lucilla’s departure, these plans–so far as I was concerned in them–were all over-thrown.

A letter from Paris reached me, with more bad news. My absence had produced the worst possible effect on good Papa.

The moment my influence had been removed, he had become perfectly unmanageable. My sisters assured me that the abominable woman from whom I had rescued him, would most certainly end in marrying him after all, unless I reappeared immediately on the scene. What was to be done? Nothing was to be done, but to fly into a rage–to grind my teeth, and throw down all my things, in the solitude of my own room–and then to go back to Paris.

Lucilla behaved charmingly. When she saw how angry and how distressed I was, she suppressed all exhibition of disappointment on her side, with the truest and kindest consideration for my feelings. “Write to me often,” said the charming creature, “and come back to me as soon as you can.” Her father took her to London. Two days before they left, I said good-bye at the rectory and at Browndown; and started–once more by the Newhaven and Dieppe route–for Paris.

I was in no humour (as your English saying is) to mince matters, in controlling this new outbreak on the part of my evergreen parent. I insisted on instantly removing him from Paris, and taking him on a continental tour. I was proof against his paternal embraces; I was deaf to his noble sentiments. He declared he should die on the road. When I look back at it now, I am amazed at my own cruelty. I said, “En route, Papa!”–and packed him up, and took him to Italy.

He became enamored, at intervals, now of one fair traveler and now of another, all through the journey from Paris to Rome. (Wonderful old man!) Arrived at Rome–that hotbed of the enemies of mankind–I saw my way to putting a moral extinguisher on the author of my being. The Eternal City contains three hundred and sixty-five churches, and (say) three million and sixty-five pictures. I insisted on his seeing them all–at the advanced age of seventy-five years! The sedative result followed, exactly as I had anticipated. I stupefied good Papa with churches and pictures–and then I tried him with a marble woman to begin with. He fell asleep before the Venus of the Capitol. When I saw that, I said to myself, Now he will do; Don Juan is reformed at last.

Lucilla’s correspondence with me–at first cheerful–gradually assumed a desponding tone.

Six weeks had passed since her departure from Dimchurch; and still Oscar’s letters held out no hope of his being able to join her in London. His recovery was advancing, but not so rapidly as his medical adviser had anticipated. It was possible–to look the worst in the face boldly–that he might not get the doctor’s permission to leave Browndown before the time arrived for Lucilla’s return to the rectory. In this event, he could only entreat her to be patient, and to remember that though he was gaining ground but slowly, he was still getting on. Under these circumstances, Lucilla was naturally vexed and dejected. She had never (she wrote), from her girlhood upward, spent such a miserable time with her aunt as she was spending now.

On reading this letter, I instantly smelt something wrong.

I corresponded with Oscar almost as frequently as with Lucilla. His last letter to me flatly contradicted his last letter to his promised wife. In writing to my address, he declared himself to be rapidly advancing towards recovery. Under the new treatment, the fits succeeded each other at longer and longer intervals, and endured a shorter and shorter time. Here then was plainly a depressing report sent to Lucilla, and an encouraging report sent to me.

What did it mean?

Oscar’s next letter to me answered the question.

“I told you in my last” (he wrote), “that the discoloration of my skin had begun. The complexion which you were once so good as to admire, has disappeared for ever. I am now of a livid ashen color–so like death, that I sometimes startle myself when I look in the glass. In about six weeks more, as the doctor calculates, this will deepen to a blackish blue; and then, ‘the saturation’ (as he calls it) will be complete.

“So far from feeling any useless regrets at having taken the medicine which is producing these ugly effects, I am more grateful to my Nitrate of Silver than words can say. If you ask for the secret of this extraordinary exhibition of philosophy on my part, I can give it in one line. For the last ten days, I have not had a fit. In other words, for the last ten days, I have lived in Paradise. I declare I would have cheerfully lost an arm or a leg to gain the blessed peace of mind, the intoxicating confidence in the future–it is nothing less–that I feel now.

“Still there is a drawback which prevents me from enjoying perfect tranquillity even yet. When was there ever a pleasure in this world, without a lurking possibility of pain hidden away in it somewhere?

“I have lately discovered a peculiarity in Lucilla which is new to me, and which has produced a very unpleasant impression on my mind. My proposed avowal to her of the change in my personal appearance, has now become a matter of far more serious difficulty than I had anticipated when the question was discussed between you and me at Browndown.

“Have you ever found out that the strongest antipathy she has, is her purely imaginary antipathy to dark people and to dark shades of color of all kinds? This strange prejudice is the result, as I suppose, of some morbid growth of her blindness, quite as inexplicable to herself as to other people. Explicable, or not, there it is in her. Read the extract that follows from one of her letters to her father, which her father showed to me–and you will not be surprised to hear that I tremble for myself when the time comes for telling her what I have done.

“Thus she writes to Mr. Finch:–

” ‘I am sorry to say, I have had a little quarrel with my aunt. It is all made up now, but it has hardly left us such good friends as we were before. Last week, there was a dinner-party here; and, among the guests, was a Hindoo gentleman (converted to Christianity) to whom my aunt has taken a great fancy. While the maid was dressing me, I unluckily inquired if she had seen the Hindoo–and, hearing that she had, I still more unfortunately asked her to tell me what he was like. She described him as being very tall and lean, with a dark brown complexion and glittering black eyes. My mischievous fancy instantly set to work on this horrid combination of darknesses. Try as I might to resist it, my mind drew a dreadful picture of the Hindoo, as a kind of monster in human form. I would have given worlds to have been excused from going down into the drawing-room. At the last moment I was sent for, and the Hindoo was introduced to me. The instant I felt him approaching, my darkness was peopled with brown demons. He took my hand. I tried hard to control myself–but I really could not help shuddering and starting back when he touched me. To make matters worse, he sat next to me at dinner. In five minutes I had long, lean, black-eyed beings all round me; perpetually growing in numbers, and pressing closer and closer on me as they grew. It ended in my being obliged to leave the table. When the guests were all gone, my aunt was furious. I admitted my conduct was unreasonable in the last degree. At the same time, I begged her to make allowances for me. I reminded her that I was blind at a year old, and that I had really no idea of what any person was like, except by drawing pictures of them in my imagination, from description, and from my own knowledge obtained by touch. I appealed to her to remember that, situated as I am, my fancy is peculiarly liable to play me tricks, and that I have no sight to see with, and to show me–as other people’s eyes show _them_–when they have taken a false view of persons and things. It was all in vain. My aunt would admit of no excuse for me. I was so irritated by her injustice, that I reminded her of an antipathy of her own, quite as ridiculous as mine–an antipathy to cats. She, who can see that cats are harmless, shudders and turns pale, for all that, if a cat is in the same room with her. Set my senseless horror of dark people against her senseless horror of cats–and say which of us has the right to be angry with the other?’ “

Such was the quotation from Lucilla’s letter to her father. At the end of it, Oscar resumed, as follows:–

“I wonder whether you will now understand me, if I own to you that I have made the worst of my case in writing to Lucilla? It is the only excuse I can produce for not joining her in London. Weary as I am of our long separation, I cannot prevail on myself to run the risk of meeting her in the presence of strangers, who would instantly notice my frightful color, and betray it to her. Think of her shuddering and starting back from my hand when it took hers! No! no! I must choose my own opportunity, in this quiet place, of telling her what (I suppose) must be told–with time before me to prepare her mind for the disclosure (if it must come), and with nobody but you near to see the first mortifying effect of the shock which I shall inflict on her.

“I have only to add, before I release you, that I write these lines in the strictest confidence. You have promised not to mention my disfigurement to Lucilla, unless I first give you leave. I now, more than ever, hold you to that promise. The few people about me here, are all pledged to secrecy as you are. If it is really inevitable that she should know the truth–I alone must tell it; in my own way, and at my own time.”

“If it must come,” “if it is really inevitable”–these phrases in Oscar’s letter satisfied me that he was already beginning to comfort himself with an insanely delusive idea–the idea that it might be possible permanently to conceal the ugly personal change in him from Lucilla’s knowledge.

If I had been at Dimchurch, I have no doubt I should have begun to feel seriously uneasy at the turn which things appeared to be taking now.

But distance has a very strange effect in altering one’s customary way of thinking of affairs at home. Being in Italy instead of in England, I dismissed Lucilla’s antipathies and Oscar’s scruples, as both alike unworthy of serious consideration. Sooner or later, time (I considered) would bring these two troublesome young people to their senses. Their marriage would follow, and there would be an end of it! In the meanwhile, I continued to feast good Papa on Holy Families and churches. Ah, poor dear, how he yawned over Caraccis and cupolas! and how fervently he promised never to fall in love again, if I would only take him back to Paris!

We set our faces homeward a day or two after the receipt of Oscar’s letter. I left my reformed father, resting his aching old bones in his own easy-chair; capable perhaps, even yet, of contracting a Platonic attachment to a lady of his own time of life–but capable (as I firmly believed) of nothing more. “Oh, my child, let me rest!” he said, when I wished him good-bye. “And never show me a church or a picture again as long as I live!”

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST

Madame Pratolungo Returns to Dimchurch

I REACHED London in the last week of Lucilla’s residence under her aunt’s roof, and waited in town until it was time to take her back to Dimchurch.

As soon as it had become obviously too late for Oscar to risk the dreaded meeting with Lucilla before strangers, his correspondence had, as a matter of course, assumed a brighter tone. She was in high spirits once more, poor thing, when we met–and full of delight at having me near her again. We thoroughly enjoyed our few days in London–and took our fill of music at operas and concerts. I got on excellently well with the aunt until the last day, when something happened which betrayed me into an avowal of my political convictions.

The old lady’s consternation, when she discovered that I looked hopefully forward to a coming extermination of kings and priests, and a general re-distribution of property all over the civilized globe, is unutterable in words. On that occasion, I made one more aristocrat tremble. I also closed Miss Batchford’s door on me for the rest of my life. No matter! The day is coming when the Batchford branch of humanity will not possess a door to close. All Europe is drifting nearer and nearer to the Pratolungo programme. Cheer up, my brothers without land, and my sisters without money in the Funds! We will have it out with the infamous rich yet. Long live the Republic!

Early in the month of April, Lucilla and I took leave of the Metropolis, and went back to Dimchurch.

As we drew nearer and nearer to the rectory, as Lucilla began to flush and fidget in eager anticipation of her re-union with Oscar, that uneasiness of mind which I had so readily dismissed while I was in Italy, began to find its way back to me again. My imagination now set to work at drawing pictures–startling pictures of Oscar as a changed being, as a Medusa’s head too terrible to be contemplated by mortal eyes. Where would he meet us? At the entrance to the village? No. At the rectory gate? No. In the quieter part of the garden which was at the back of the house? Yes! There he stood waiting for us–alone!

Lucilla flew into his arms with a cry of delight. I stood behind and looked at them.

Ah, how vividly I remember–at the moment when she embraced him–the first shock of seeing the two faces together! The drug had done its work. I saw her fair cheek laid innocently against the livid blackish blue of _his_ discolored skin. Heavens, how cruelly that first embrace marked the contrast between what he had been when I left him, and what he had changed to when I saw him now! His eyes turned from her face to mine, in silent appeal to me while he held her in his arms. Their look told me the thought in him, as eloquently as if he had put it into words. “You, who love her, say–can we ever be cruel enough to tell her of _this?_”

I approached to take his hand. At the same moment, Lucilla suddenly drew back from him, laid her left hand on his shoulder, and passed her right hand rapidly over his face.

For an instant I felt my heart stand still. Her miraculous sensitiveness of touch had detected the dark color of my dress, on the day when we first met. Would it serve her, this time, as truly as it had served her then?

She paused, after the first passage of her fingers over his face, with the breathless attention to what she was about, which, in my own case, I remembered so well. A second time, she passed her hand over him–considered again–and turned my way next.

“What does his face tell _you?_” she asked. “It tells _me_ that he has something on his mind. What is it?”

We were safe–so far! The hateful medicine, in altering the color, had not affected the texture, of his skin. As her touch had left it on her departure, so her touch found it again, on her return.

Before I could reply to Lucilla, Oscar answered for himself.

“Nothing is wrong, my darling,” he said. “My nerves are a little out of order to-day; and the joy of seeing you again has overcome me for the moment–that is all.”

She shook her head impatiently.

“No,” she said, “it’s not all.” She touched his heart. “Why is it beating so fast?” She took his hand in hers. “Why has it turned so cold? I must know. I _will_ know! Come indoors.”

At that awkward moment, the most wearisome of living men suddenly proved himself to be the most welcome of living men. The rector appeared in the garden, to receive his daughter on her return. Enfolded in Reverend Finch’s paternal embraces; harangued by Reverend Finch’s prodigious voice, Lucilla was effectually silenced–the subject was inevitably changed. Oscar drew me aside out of hearing, while her attention was diverted from him.

“I saw you,” he said. “_You_ were horrified at the first sight of me. _You_ were relieved when you found that her touch told her nothing. Help me to keep her from suspecting it, for two months more–and you will be the best friend that ever man had.”

“Two months?” I repeated.

“Yes. If there is no return of the fits in two months, the doctor will consider my recovery complete. Lucilla and I may be married at the end of the time.”

“My friend Oscar, are you contemplating a fraud on Lucilla?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come! come! you know what I mean! Is it honorable first to entrap her into marrying you–and then to confess to her the color of your face?”

He sighed bitterly.

“I shall fill her with horror of me, if I confess it. Look at me! look at me!” he said, lifting his ghastly hands in despair to his blue face.

I was determined not to give way–even to that.

“Be a man!” I said. “Own it boldly. What is she going to marry you for? For your face that she can never see? No! For your heart that is one with her own. Trust to her natural good sense–and, better than that, to the devoted love that you have inspired in her. She will see her stupid prejudice in its true light, when she feels it trying to part her from _you._”

“No! no! no! Remember her letter to her father. I shall lose her for ever, if I tell her now!”

I took his arm, and endeavored to lead him to Lucilla. She as already trying to escape from her father; she was already longing to hear the sound of Oscar’s voice again.

He obstinately shrank back. I began to feel angry with him. In another moment, I should have said or done something that I might have repented of afterwards–if a new interruption had not happened before I could open my lips.

Another person appeared in the garden–the man-servant from Browndown; with a letter for his master in his hand.

“This has just come, sir,” said the man, “by the afternoon post. It is marked ‘Immediate.’ I thought I had better bring it to you here.”

Oscar took the letter, and looked at the address. “My brother’s writing!” he exclaimed. “A letter from Nugent!”

He opened the letter–and burst out with a cry of joy which brought Lucilla instantly to his side.

“What is it?” she asked eagerly.

“Nugent is coming back! Nugent will be here in a week! Oh, Lucilla! my brother is coming to stay with me at Browndown!”

He caught her in his arms, and kissed her, in the first rapture of receiving that welcome news. She forced herself away from him without answering a word. She turned her poor blind face round and round, in the search for me.

“Here I am!” I said.

She roughly and angrily put her arm in mine. I saw the jealous misery in her face as she dragged me away with here to the house. Never yet had Oscar’s voice, in _her_ experience of him, sounded the note of happiness that she heard in it now! Never yet had she felt Oscar’s heart on Oscar’s lips, as she felt it when he kissed her in the first joy of anticipating Nugent’s return!

“Can he hear me?” she whispered, when we had left the lawn, and she felt the gravel under her feet.

“No. What is it?”

“I hate his brother!”

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND

The Twin-Brother’s Letter

LITTLE thinking what a storm he had raised, poor innocent Oscar–paternally escorted by the rector–followed us into the house, with his open letter in his hand.

Judging by certain signs visible in my reverend friend, I concluded that the announcement of Nugent Dubourg’s coming visit to Dimchurch–regarded by the rest of us as heralding the appearance of a twin-brother–was regarded by Mr. Finch as promising the arrival of a twin-fortune. Oscar and Nugent shared the comfortable paternal inheritance. Finch smelt money.

“Compose yourself,” I whispered to Lucilla as the two gentlemen followed us into the sitting-room. “Your jealousy of his brother is a childish jealousy. There is room enough in his heart for his brother as well as for you.”

She only repeated obstinately, with a vicious pinch on my arm, “I hate his brother!”

“Come and sit down by me,” said Oscar, approaching her on the other side. “I want to run over Nugent’s letter. It’s so interesting! There is a message in it to you.” Too deeply absorbed in his subject to notice the sullen submission with which she listened to him, he placed her on a chair, and began reading. “The first lines,” he explained, “relate to Nugent’s return to England, and to his delightful idea of coming to stay with me at Browndown. Then he goes on: ‘I found all your letters waiting for me on my return to New York. Need I tell you, my dearest brother—-‘ “

Lucilla stopped him at those words by rising abruptly from her seat.

“What is the matter?” he asked.

“I don’t like this chair!”

Oscar got her another–an easy-chair this time–and returned to the letter.

” ‘Need I tell you, my dearest brother, how deeply you have interested me by the announcement of your contemplated marriage? Your happiness is my happiness. I feel with you; I congratulate you; I long to see my future sister-in-law—-‘ “

Lucilla got up again. Oscar, in astonishment, asked what was wrong now?

“I am not comfortable at this end of the room.”

She walked to the other end of the room. Patient Oscar walked after her, with his precious letter in his hand. He offered her a third chair. She petulantly declined to take it, and selected another chair for herself. Oscar returned to the letter:–

” ‘How melancholy, and yet how interesting it is, to hear that she is blind! My sketches of American scenery happened to be lying about in the room when I read your letter. The first thought that came to me, on hearing of Miss Finch’s affliction, was suggested by my sketches. I said to myself, “Sad! sad! my sister-in-law will never see my Works.” The true artist, Oscar, is always thinking of his Works. I shall bring back, let me tell you, some very remarkable studies for future pictures. They will not be so numerous, perhaps, as you may expect. I prefer to trust to my intellectual perception of beauty, rather than to mere laborious transcripts from Nature. In certain moods of mine (speaking as an artist) Nature puts me out.’ ” There Oscar paused, and appealed to me. “What writing!–eh? I always told you, Madame Pratolungo, that Nugent was a genius. You see it now. Don’t get up, Lucilla. I am going on. There is a message to you in this part of the letter. So neatly expressed!”

Lucilla persisted in getting up; the announcement of the neatly-expressed message to be read next, produced no effect on her. She walked to the window, and trifled impatiently with the flowers placed in it. Oscar looked in mild astonishment, first at me–then at the rector. Reverend Finch–listening thus far with the complimentary attention due to the correspondence of one young man of fortune with another young man of fortune–interfered in Oscar’s interests, to secure him a patient hearing.

“My dear Lucilla, endeavor to control your restlessness. You interfere with our enjoyment of this interesting letter. I could wish to see fewer changes of place, my child, and a more undivided attention to what Oscar is reading to you.”

“I am not interested in what he is reading to me.” In the nervous irritation which produced this ungracious answer, she overthrew one of the flower-pots. Oscar set it up again for her with undiminished good-temper.

“Not interested!” he exclaimed. “Wait a little. You haven’t heard Nugent’s message yet. Listen to this! ‘Present my best and kindest regards to the future Mrs. Oscar’ (dear fellow!); ‘and say that she has given me a new interest in hastening my return to England.’ There! Isn’t that prettily put? Come Lucilla! own that Nugent is worth listening to when he writes about _you!_”

She turned towards him for the first time. The charm of the tone in which he spoke those words subdued her, in spite of herself.

“I am much obliged to your brother,” she answered gently, “and very much ashamed of myself for what I said just now.” She stole her hand into his, and whispered, “You are so fond of Nugent–I begin to be almost afraid there will be no love left for me.”

Oscar was enchanted. “Wait till you see him, and you will be as fond of him as I am,” he said. “Nugent is not like me. He fascinates people the moment they come in contact with him. Nobody can resist Nugent.”

She still held his hand, with a perplexed and saddened face. The admirable absence of any jealousy on his side–his large and generous confidence in _her_ love for _him–was just the rebuke to her that she could feel; just the rebuke also (in my opinion) that she had deserved.

“Go on, Oscar,” said the rector, in his deepest notes of encouragement. “What next, dear boy? what next?”

“Another interesting bit, of quite a new kind,” Oscar replied. “There is a little mystery to stir us up on the last page of the letter. Nugent says:–‘I have become acquainted (here, in New York) with a very remarkable man, a German who has made a great deal of money in the United States. He proposes visiting England early in the present year; and he will write and let me know when he has arrived. I shall feel particular pleasure in presenting him to you and your future wife. It is quite possible that you may have special reason to congratulate yourselves on making his acquaintance. For the present, no more of my new friend until we meet at Browndown.’–‘Special reason to congratulate ourselves on making his acquaintance.’ ” repeated Oscar, folding up the letter. “Nugent never writes in that way without a reason for it. Who can the German gentleman be?”

Mr. Finch suddenly lifted his head, and looked at Oscar with a certain appearance of alarm.

“Your brother mentions that he has made his fortune in America,” said the Reverend gentleman. “I hope he is not connected with the money-market. He might infect Mr. Nugent with the spirit of reckless speculation which is, so to speak, the national sin of the United States. Your brother, having no doubt the same generous disposition as yours—-“

“A far finer disposition than mine, Mr. Finch,” interposed Oscar.

“Possessed, like you, of the gifts of fortune,” proceeded the rector, with mounting enthusiasm.

“Once possessed of them,” said Oscar. “Far from being overburdened with the gifts of fortune, now!”

“What!!!” cried Mr. Finch, with a start of consternation.

“Nugent has run through his fortune,” proceeded Oscar, quite composedly. “I lent him the money to go to America. My brother is a genius, Mr. Finch. When did you ever hear of a genius who could keep within limits? Nugent is not content to live in my humble way. He has the tastes of a prince–money is nothing to him. It doesn’t matter. He will make a new fortune Out of his pictures; and, in the meantime, you know, I can always lend him something to go on with.”

Mr. Finch rose from his seat, with the air of a man whose just anticipations have not been realized–whose innocent confidence has been scandalously betrayed. Here was a prospect! Another person in perpetual want of money, going to settle under the shadow of the rectory! Another man likely to borrow of Oscar–and that man his brother!

“I fail to take your light view of your brother’s extravagance,” said the rector, addressing Oscar with his loftiest severity of manner, at the door. “I deplore and reprehend Mr. Nugent’s misuse of the bounty bestowed on him by an all-wise Providence. You will do well to consider, before you encourage your brother’s extravagance by lending him money. What does the great poet of humanity say of lenders? The Bard of Avon tells us, that ‘loan oft loses both itself and friend.’ Lay that noble line to heart, Oscar! Lucilla, be on your guard against that restlessness which I have already had occasion to reprove. I find I must leave you, Madame Pratolungo. I had forgotten my parish duties. My parish duties are waiting for me. Good day! good day!”

He looked round on us all three, in turn, with a very sour face, and walked out. “Surely,” I thought to myself, “this brother of Oscar’s is not beginning well! First, the daughter takes offense at him, and now the father follows her example. Even on the other side of the Atlantic, Mr. Nugent Dubourg exercises a malignant influence, and disturbs the family tranquillity before he has shown his nose in the house!”

Nothing more that is worth recording happened on that day. We had a very dull evening. Lucilla was out of spirits. As for me, I had not yet had time to accustom myself to the shocking spectacle of Oscar’s discolored face. I was serious and silent. You would never have guessed me to be a Frenchwoman, if you had seen me for the first time on the occasion of my return to the rectory.

The next day a small domestic event happened, which must be chronicled in this place.

Our Dimchurch doctor, always dissatisfied with his position in an obscure country place, had obtained an appointment in India which offered great professional advantages to an ambitious man. He called to take leave of us on his departure. I found an opportunity of speaking to him about Oscar. He entirely agreed with me that the attempt to keep the change produced in his former patient by the Nitrate of Silver from Lucilla’s knowledge, was simply absurd. The truth would reach her, he said, before many days were over our heads. With that prediction, addressed to my private ear, he left us. The removal of him from the scene was, you will please to bear in mind, the removal of an important local witness to the medical treatment of Oscar, and was, as such, an incident with a bearing of its own on the future, which claims a place for it in the present narrative.

Two more days passed, and nothing happened. On the morning of the third day, the doctor’s prophecy was all but fulfilled, through the medium of the wandering Arab of the family, our funny little Jicks.

While Lucilla and I were strolling about the garden with Oscar, the child suddenly darted out on us from behind a tree, and, seizing Oscar round the legs, hailed him affectionately at the top of her voice as “The Blue Man!” Lucilla instantly stopped, and said, “Who do you call ‘The Blue Man’?” Jicks answered boldly, “Oscar.” Lucilla caught the child up in her arms. “Why do you call Oscar ‘The Blue Man’?” she asked. Jicks pointed to Oscar’s face, and then, remembering Lucilla’s blindness, appealed to me. “You tell her!” said Jicks, in high glee. Oscar seized my hand, and looked at me imploringly. I determined not to interfere. It was bad enough to remain passive, and to let her be kept in the dark. Actively, I was resolved to take no part in deceiving her. Her color rose; she put Jicks down on the ground. “Are you both dumb?” she asked. “Oscar! I insist on knowing it–how have you got the nick-name of ‘The Blue Man’?” Left helpless, Oscar (to my disgust) took refuge in a lie–and, worse still, a clumsy lie. He declared that he had got his nick-name in the nursery, at the time of Lucilla’s absence in London, by one day painting his face in the character of Bluebeard to amuse the children! If Lucilla had felt the faintest suspicion of the truth, blind as she was, she must now have discovered it. As things were, Oscar annoyed and irritated her. I could see that it cost her a struggle to suppress something like a feeling of contempt for him. “Amuse the children, the next time, in some other way,” she said. “Though I can’t see you, still I don’t like to hear of your disfiguring your face by painting it blue.” With that answer, she walked away a little by herself, evidently disappointed in her betrothed husband for the first time in her experience of him.

He cast another imploring look at me. “Did you hear what she said about my face?” he whispered.

“You have lost an excellent opportunity of speaking out,” I answered. “I believe you will bitterly regret the folly and the cruelty of deceiving her.”

He shook his head, with the immovable obstinacy of a weak man.

“Nugent doesn’t think as you do,” he said, handing me the letter. “Read that bit there–now Lucilla is out of hearing.”

I paused for a moment before I could read. The resemblance between the twins extended even to their handwritings! If I had picked Nugent’s letter up, I should have handed it to Oscar as a letter of Oscar’s own writing.

The paragraph to which he pointed, only contained these lines:–“Your last relieves my anxiety about your health. I entirely agree with you that any personal sacrifice which cures you of those horrible attacks is a sacrifice wisely made. As to your keeping the change a secret from the young lady, I can only say that I suppose you know best how to act in this emergency. I will abstain from forming any opinion of my own until we meet.”

I handed Oscar back the letter.

“There is no very warm approval there of the course you are taking,” I said. “The only difference between your brother and me is, that he suspends his opinion, and that I express mine.”

“I have no fear of my brother,” Oscar answered. “Nugent will feel for me, and understand me, when he comes to Browndown. In the meantime, this shall not happen again.”

He stooped over Jicks. The child, while we were talking, had laid herself down luxuriously on the grass, and was singing to herself little snatches of a nursery song. Oscar pulled her up on her legs rather roughly. He was out of temper with her, as well as with himself.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I am going to see Mr. Finch,” he answered, “and to have Jicks kept for the future out of Lucilla’s garden.”

“Does Mr. Finch approve of your silence?”

“Mr. Finch, Madame Pratolungo, leaves me to decide on a matter which concerns nobody but Lucilla and myself.”

After that reply, there was an end of all further remonstrance from me, as a matter of course.

Oscar walked off with his prisoner to the house. Jicks trotted along by his side, unconscious of the mischief she had done, singing another verse of the nursery song. I rejoined Lucilla, with my mind made up as to the line of conduct I should adopt in the future. If Oscar did succeed in keeping the truth concealed from her, I was positively resolved, come what might of it, to enlighten her before they were married, with my own lips. What! after pledging myself to keep the secret? Yes. Perish the promise which makes me false to a person whom I love! I despise such promises from the bottom of my heart.

Two days more slipped by–and then a telegram found its way to Browndown. Oscar came running to us, at the rectory, with his news. Nugent had landed at Liverpool. Oscar was to expect him at Dimchurch on the next day.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD

He sets us All Right

I HAVE thus far quite inadvertently omitted to mention one of the prominent virtues of Reverend Finch. He was an accomplished master of that particular form of human persecution which is called reading aloud; and he inflicted his accomplishment on his family circle at every available opportunity. Of what we suffered on these occasions, I shall say nothing. Let it be enough to mention that the rector thoroughly enjoyed the pleasure of hearing his own magnificent voice.

There was no escaping Mr. Finch when the rage for “reading” seized on him. Now on one pretense, and now on another, he descended on us unfortunate women, book in hand; seated us at one end of the room; placed himself at the other; opened his dreadful mouth; and fired words at us, like shots at a target, by the hour together. Sometimes he gave us poetical readings from Shakespeare or Milton; and sometimes Parliamentary speeches by Burke or Sheridan. Read what he might, he made such a noise and such a fuss over it; he put his own individuality so prominently in the foremost place, and he kept the poets or the orators whom he was supposed to be interpreting so far in the back ground, that they lost every trace of character of their own, and became one and all perfectly intolerable reflections of Mr. Finch. I date my first unhappy doubts of the supreme excellence of Shakespeare’s poetry from the rector’s readings; and I attribute to the same exasperating cause my implacable hostility (on every question of the time) to the policy of Mr. Burke. On the evening when Nugent Dubourg was expected at Browndown–and when we particularly wanted to be left alone to dress ourselves, and to gossip by anticipation about the expected visitor–Mr. Finch was seized with one of his periodical rages for firing off words at his family, after tea. He selected _Hamlet_ as the medium for exhibiting his voice, on this occasion; and he declared, as the principal motive for taking his elocutionary exercise, that the object he especially had in view was the benefit of poor Me!

“My good creature, I accidentally heard you reading to Lucilla, the other day. It was very nice, as far as it went–very nice indeed. But you will allow me–as a person, Madame Pratolungo, possessing considerable practice in the art of reading aloud–to observe that you might be benefited by a hint or two. I will give you a few ideas. (Mrs. Finch! I propose giving Madame Pratolungo a few ideas.) Pay particular attention, if you please, to the Pauses, and to the management of the Voice at the end of the lines. Lucilla, my child, you are interested in this. The perfecting of Madame Pratolungo is a matter of considerable importance to _you._ Don’t go away.”

Lucilla and I happened, on that evening, to be guests at the rectory table. It was one of the regular occasions on which we left our own side of the house, and joined the family at (what Mr. Finch called) “the pastor’s evening meal.” He had got his wife; he had got his eldest daughter; he had got your humble servant. A horrid smile of enjoyment overspread the reverend gentleman’s face, as he surveyed us from the opposite end of the room, and opened his vocal fire on his audience of three.

“_Hamlet:_ Act the First; Scene the First. Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle. Francisco on his post” (Mr. Finch). “Enter to him Bernardo” (Mr. Finch). “Who’s there?” “Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.” (Mrs. Finch unfolds herself–she suckles the baby, and tries to look as if she was having an intellectual treat.) “Francisco and Bernardo converse in bass–Boom-boom-boom. Enter Horatio and Marcellus” (Mr. Finch and Mr. Finch.) “Stand! Who’s there?” “Friends to this ground.” “And liegemen to the Dane.” (Madame Pratolungo begins to feel the elocutionary exposition of Shakespeare, where she always feels it, in her legs. She tries to sit still on her chair. Useless! She is suffering under the malady known to her by bitter experience of Mr. Finch, as the Hamlet-Fidgets.) Bernardo and Franciso, Horatio and Marcellus, converse–Boom-boom-boom. “Enter Ghost of Hamlet’s Father.” Mr. Finch makes an awful pause. In the supernatural silence, we can hear the baby sucking. Mrs. Finch enjoys her intellectual treat. Madame Pratolungo fidgets. Lucilla catches the infection, and fidgets too. Marcellus-Finch goes on. “Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio.” Bernardo-Finch backs him: “Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.” Lucilla-Finch inserts herself in the dialogue: “Papa, I am very sorry; I have had a nervous headache all day; please excuse me if I take a turn in the garden.” The rector makes another awful pause, and glares at his daughter. (Exit Lucilla.) Horatio looks at the Ghost, and takes up the dialogue: “Most like; it harrows me “–Boom-boom-boom. The baby is satiated. Mrs. Finch wants her handkerchief. Madame Pratolungo seizes the opportunity of moving her distracted legs, and finds the handkerchief. Mr. Finch pauses–glares—goes on again–reaches the second scene. “Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius, and Lords Attendant.” All Mr. Finch! oh, my legs! my legs! all Mr. Finch, and Boom-boom-boom. Third scene. “Enter Laertes and Ophelia.” (Both Rectors of Dimchurch; both with deep bass voices; both about five feet high, pitted with the small-pox, and adorned round the neck with dingy white cravats.) Mr. Finch goes on and on and on. Mrs. Finch and the baby simultaneously close their eyes in slumber. Madame Pratolungo suffers such tortures of restlessness in her lower limbs, that she longs for a skilled surgeon to take out his knife and deliver her from her own legs. Mr. Finch advances in deeper and deeper bass, in keener and keener enjoyment, to the Fourth Scene. (“Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.”) Mercy! what do I hear? Is relief approaching to us from the world outside? Are there footsteps in the hall? Yes! Mrs. Finch opens her eyes; Mrs. Finch hears the footsteps, and rejoices in them as I do. Reverend Hamlet hears nothing but his own voice. He begins the scene: “The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold.” The door opens. The rector feels a gust of air, dramatically appropriate, just at the right moment. He looks round. If it is a servant, let that domestic person tremble! No–not a servant. Guests–heavens be praised, guests. Welcome, gentlemen–welcome! No more Hamlet, tonight, thanks to You. Enter two Characters who must be instantly attended to:–Mr. Oscar Dubourg; introducing his twin-brother from America, Mr. Nugent Dubourg.

Astonishment at the extraordinary resemblance between them, was the one impression felt by all three of us, as the brothers entered the room.

Exactly alike in their height, in their walk, in their features, and in their voices. Both with the same colored hair and the same beardless faces. Oscar’s smile exactly reflected on Nugent’s lips. Oscar’s odd little semi-foreign tricks of gesticulation with his hands, exactly reproduced in the hands of Nugent. And, to crown it all, there was the complexion which Oscar had lost for ever (just a shade darker perhaps) found again on Nugent’s cheeks! The one difference which made it possible to distinguish between them, at the moment when they first appeared together in the room, was also the one difference which Lucilla was physically incapable of detecting–the terrible contrast of color between the brother who bore the blue disfigurement of the drug, and the brother who was left as Nature had made him.

“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Finch–I have long wished for this pleasure. Thank you, Mr. Finch, for all your kindness to my brother. Madame Pratolungo, I presume? Permit me to shake hands. It is needless to say, I have heard of your illustrious husband. Aha! here’s a baby. Yours, Mrs. Finch? Girl or boy, ma’am? A fine child–if a bachelor may be allowed to pronounce an opinion. _Tweet–tweet–tweet!_”

He chirruped to the baby, as if he had been a family man, and snapped his fingers gaily. Poor Oscar’s blue face turned in silent triumph towards me. “What did I tell you?” his look asked. “Did I not say Nugent fascinated everybody at first sight?” Most true. An irresistible man. So utterly different in his manner from Oscar–except when he was in repose–and yet so like Oscar in other respects, I can only describe him as his brother completed. He had the pleasant lively flow of spirits, the

easy winning gentleman-like confidence in himself, which Oscar wanted. And, then, what excellent taste he possessed. He liked children! he respected the memory of my glorious Pratolungo!–In half a minute from the time when he entered the room, Nugent Dubourg had won Mrs. Finch’s heart and mine.

He turned from the baby to Mr. Finch, and pointed to the open Shakespeare on the table.

“You were reading to the ladies?” he said. “I am afraid we have interrupted you.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the rector, with his lofty politeness. “Another time will do. It is a habit of mine, Mr. Nugent, to read aloud in my family circle. As a clergyman and a lover of poetry (in both capacities) I have long cultivated the art of elocution—-“

“My dear sir, excuse me, you have cultivated it all wrong!”

Mr. Finch paused, thunderstruck. A man in his presence presuming to have an opinion of his own! a man in the rectory parlor capable of interrupting the rector in the middle of a sentence! guilty of the insane audacity of telling him, as a reader–with Shakespeare open before them–that he read wrong!

“Oh, we heard you as we came in!” proceeded Nugent, with the most undiminished confidence, expressed in the most gentlemanlike manner. “You read it like this.” He took up _Hamlet_ and read the opening line of the Fourth Scene, (“The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold”) with an irresistibly-accurate imitation of Mr. Finch. “That’s nor the way Hamlet would speak. No man in his position would remark that it was very cold in that bow-wow manner. What is Shakespeare before all things? True to nature; always true to nature. What condition is Hamlet in when he is expecting to see the Ghost? He is nervous, and he feels the cold. Let him show it naturally; let him speak as any other man would speak, under the circumstances. Look here! Quick and quiet–like this. ‘The air bites shrewdly’–there Hamlet stops and shivers–pur-rer-rer! ‘it is very cold.’ That’s the way to read Shakespeare!”

Mr. Finch lifted his head into the air as high as it could possibly go, and brought the flat of his hand down with a solemn and sounding smack on the open book.

“Allow me to say, sir—-!” he began.

Nugent stopped him again, more good-humouredly than ever.

“You don’t agree with me? All right! Quite useless to dispute about it. I don’t know what you may be–I am the most opinionated man in existence. Sheer waste of time, my dear sir, to attempt convincing Me. Now, just look at that child!” Here Mr. Nugent Dubourg’s attention was suddenly attracted by the baby. He twisted round on his heel, and addressed Mrs. Finch. “I take the liberty of saying, ma’am, that a more senseless dress doesn’t exist, than the dress that is put, in this country, on infants of tender years. What are the three main functions which that child–that charming child of yours-performs? He sucks; he sleeps; and he grows. At the present moment, he isn’t sucking, he isn’t sleeping–he is growing with all his might. Under those interesting circumstances, what does he want to do? To move his limbs freely in every direction. You let him swing his arms to his heart’s content–and you deny him freedom to kick his legs. You clothe him in a dress three times as long as himself. He tries to throw his legs up in the air as he throws his arms, and he can’t do it. There is his senseless long dress entangling itself in his toes, and making an effort of what Nature intended to be a luxury. Can anything be more absurd? What are mothers about? Why don’t they think for themselves? Take my advice–short petticoats, Mrs. Finch. Liberty, glorious liberty, for my young friend’s legs! Room, heaps of room, for that infant martyr’s toes!”

Mrs. Finch listened helplessly–lifted the baby’s long petticoats, and looked at them–stared piteously at Nugent Dubourg–opened her lips to speak–and, thinking better of it, turned her watery eyes on her husband, appealing to _him_ to take the matter up. Mr. Finch made another attempt to assert his dignity–a ponderously satirical attempt, this time.

“In offering your advice to my wife, Mr. Nugent,” said the rector, “you must permit me to remark that it would have had more practical force if it had been the advice of a married man. I beg to remind you—-“

“You beg to remind me that it is the advice of a bachelor? Oh, come! that really won’t do at this time of day. Doctor Johnson settled that argument at once and for ever, a century since. ‘Sir!’ (he said to somebody of your way of thinking) ‘you may scold your carpenter, when he has made a bad table, though you can’t make a table yourself.’ I say to you–‘Mr. Finch, you may point out a defect in a baby’s petticoats, though you haven’t got a baby yourself!’ Doesn’t that satisfy you? All right! Take another illustration. Look at your room here. I can see in the twinkling of an eye, that it’s badly lit. You have only got one window–you ought to have two. Is it necessary to be a practical builder to discover that? Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What’s this printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed Taxes will do. You’re not in the House of Commons; you’re not Chancellor of the Exchequer–but haven’t you an opinion of your own about taxation, in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its last gasp—-?”

“And the vigorous young Republic drawing its first breath of life!” I burst in; introducing the Pratolungo programme (as my way is) at every available opportunity.

Nugent Dubourg instantly wheeled round in my direction; and set me right on my subject, just as he had set the rector right on reading _Hamlet,_ and Mrs. Finch right on clothing babies.

“Not a bit of it!” he pronounced positively. “The ‘young Republic’ is the ricketty child of the political family. Give him up, ma’am. You will never make a man of him.”

I tried to assert myself as the rector had tried before me–with precisely the same result. I appealed indignantly to the authority of my illustrious husband.

“Doctor Pratolungo–” I began.

“Was an honest man,” interposed Nugent Dubourg. “I am an advanced Liberal myself–I respect him. But he was quite wrong. All sincere republicans make the same mistake. They believe in the existence of public spirit in Europe. Amiable delusion! Public spirit is dead in Europe. Public spirit is the generous emotion of young nations, of new peoples. In selfish old Europe, private interest has taken its place. When your husband preached the republic, on what ground did he put it? On the ground that the republic was going to elevate the nation. Pooh! Ask me to accept the republic, on the ground that I elevate Myself–and, supposing you can prove it, I will listen to you. If you are ever to set republican institutions going, in the Old World–_there_ is the only motive power that will do it!”

I was indignant at such sentiments. “My glorious husband–” I began again.

“Would have died rather than appeal to the meanest instincts of his fellow-creatures. Just so! There was his mistake. That’s why he never could make anything of the republic. That’s why the republic is the ricketty child of the political family. _Quod erat demonstrandum,_” said Nugent Dubourg, finishing me off with a pleasant smile, and an easy indicative gesture of the hand which said, “Now I have settled these three people in succession, I am equally well satisfied with myself and with them!”

His smile was irresistible. Bent as I was on disputing the degrading conclusions at which he had arrived, I really had not fire enough in me, at the moment, to feed my own indignation. As to Reverend Finch, he sat silently swelling in a corner; digesting, as he best might, the discovery that there was another man in the world, besides the Rector of Dimchurch, with an excellent opinion of himself, and with perfectly unassailable confidence and fluency in expressing it. In the momentary silence that now followed, Oscar got his first opportunity of speaking. He had, thus far, been quite content to admire his clever brother. He now advanced to me, and asked what had become of Lucilla.

“The servant told me she was here,” he said. “I am so anxious to introduce her to Nugent.”

Nugent put his arm affectionately round his brother’s neck, and gave him a hug. “Dear old boy! I am just as anxious as you are.”

“Lucilla went out a little while since,” I said, “to take a turn in the garden.”

“I’ll go and find her,” said Oscar. “Wait here, Nugent. I’ll bring her in.”

He left the room. Before he could close the door one of the servants appeared, to claim Mrs. Finch’s private ear, on some mysterious domestic emergency. Nugent facetiously entreated her, as she passed him, to clear her mind of prejudice, and consider the question of infant petticoats on its own merits. Mr. Finch took offense at this second reference to the subject. He rose to follow his wife.

“When you are a married man, Mr. Dubourg,” said the rector severely, “you will learn to leave the management of an infant in its mother’s hands.”

“There’s another mistake!” remarked Nugent, following him with unabated good humour, to the door. “A married man’s idea of another man as a husband, always begins and ends with his idea of himself.” He turned to me, as the door closed on Mr. Finch. “Now we are alone, Madame Pratolungo,” he said, “I want to speak to you about Miss Finch. There is an opportunity, before she comes in. Oscar’s letter only told me that she was blind. I am naturally interested in everything that relates to my brother’s future wife. I am particularly interested about this affliction of hers. May I ask how long she has been blind?”

“Since she was a year old,” I replied.

“Through an accident?”

“No.”

“After a fever? or a disease of any other sort?”

I began to feel a little surprised at his entering into these medical details.

“I never heard that it was through a fever, or other illness,” I said. “So far as I know, the blindness came on unexpectedly, from some cause that did not express itself to the people about her, at the time.”

He drew his chair confidentially nearer to mine. “How old is she?” he asked.

I began to feel more than a little surprised; and I showed it, I suppose, on telling him Lucilla’s age.

“As things are now,” he explained, “there are reasons which make me hesitate to enter on the question of Miss Finch’s blindness either with my brother, or with any members of the family. I must wait to speak about it to _them,_ until I can speak to good practical purpose. There is no harm in my starting the subject with _you._ When she first lost her sight, no means of restoring it were left untried, of course?”

“I should suppose not,” I replied. “It’s so long since, I have never asked.”

“So long since,” he repeated–and then considered for a moment.

His reflections ended in a last question.

“She is resigned, I suppose–and everybody about her is resigned–to the idea of her being hopelessly blind for life.”

Instead of answering him, I put a question on my side. My heart was beginning to beat rapidly–without my knowing why.

“Mr. Nugent Dubourg,” I said, “what have you got in your mind about Lucilla?”

“Madame Pratolungo,” he replied, “I have got something in my mind which was put into it by a friend of mine whom I met in America.”

“The friend you mentioned in your letter to your brother?”

“The same.”

“The German gentleman whom you propose to introduce to Oscar and Lucilla?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask who he is?”

Nugent Dubourg looked at me attentively; considered with himself for the second time; and answered in these words:

“He is the greatest living authority, and the greatest living operator, in diseases of the eye.”

The idea in his mind burst its way into my mind in a moment.

“Gracious God!” I exclaimed, “are you mad enough to suppose that Lucilla’s sight can be restored, after a blindness of one-and-twenty years?”

He suddenly held up his hand, in sign to me to be silent.

At the same moment the door opened; and Lucilla (followed by Oscar) entered the room.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH

He sees Lucilla

THE first impression which poor Miss Finch produced on Nugent Dubourg, was precisely the same as the first impression which she had produced on me.

“Good Heavens!” he cried. “The Dresden Madonna! The Virgin of San Sisto!”

Lucilla had already heard from me of her extraordinary resemblance to the chief figure in Raphael’s renowned picture. Nugent’s blunt outburst of recognition passed unnoticed by her. She stopped short, in the middle of the room–startled, the instant he spoke, by the extraordinary similarity of his tone and accent to the tone and accent of his brother’s voice.

“Oscar,” she asked nervously, “are you behind me? or in front of me?” Oscar laughed, and answered “Here!”–speaking behind her. She turned her head towards the place in front of her, from which Nugent had spoken. “Your voice is wonderfully like Oscar’s,” she said, addressing him timidly. “Is your face exactly like his face, too? May I judge for myself of the likeness between you? I can only do it in one way–by my touch.”

Oscar advanced, and placed a chair for his brother by Lucilla’s side.

“She has eyes in the tips of her fingers,” he said. “Sit down, Nugent, and let her pass her hand over your face.”

Nugent obeyed him in silence. Now that the first impression of surprise had passed away, I observed that a marked change was beginning to assert itself in his manner.

Little by little, an unnatural constraint got possession of him. His fluent tongue found nothing to talk about. His easy movements altered in the strangest way, until they almost became the movements of a slow awkward man. He was more like his brother than ever, as he sat down in the chair to submit himself to Lucilla’s investigation. She had produced, at first sight–as well as I could judge–some impression on him for which he had not been prepared; causing some mental disturbance in him which he was for the moment quite unable to control. His eyes looked up at her, spell-bound; his color came and went; his breath quickened audibly when her fingers touched his face.

“What’s the matter?” said Oscar, looking at him in surprise.

“Nothing is the matter,” he answered, in the low absent tone of a man whose mind was secretly pursuing its own train of thought.

Oscar said no more. Once, twice, three times, Lucilla’s hand passed slowly over Nugent’s face. He submitted to it, silently, gravely, immovably–a perfect contrast to the talkative, lively young man of half an hour since. Lucilla employed a much longer time in examining him than she had occupied in examining me.

While the investigation was proceeding, I had leisure to think again over what had passed between Nugent and me on the subject of Lucilla’s blindness, before she entered the room. My mind had by this time recovered its balance. I was able to ask myself what this young fellow’s daring idea was really worth. Was it within the range of possibility that a sense so delicate as the sense of sight, lost for one-and-twenty years, could be restored by any means short of a miracle? It was monstrous to suppose it: the thing could not be. If there had been the faintest chance of giving my poor dear back the blessing of sight, that chance would have been tried by competent persons years and years since. I was ashamed of myself for having been violently excited at the moment by the new thought which Nugent had started in my mind; I was honestly indignant at his uselessly disturbing me with the vainest of all vain hopes. The one wise thing to do in the future, was to caution this flighty and inconsequent young man to keep his mad notion about Lucilla to himself–and to dismiss it from my own thoughts, at once and for ever.

Just as I arrived at that sensible resolution, I was recalled to what was going on in the room, by Lucilla’s voice, addressing me by my name.

“The likeness is wonderful,” she said. “Still, I think I can find a difference between them.”

(The only difference between them was in the contrast of complexion and in the contrast of manner–both these being dissimilarities which appealed more or less directly to the eye.)

“What difference do you find?” I asked.

She slowly came towards me, with an anxious perplexed face; pondering as she advanced.

“I can’t explain it,” she answered–after a long silence.

When Lucilla left him, Nugent rose from his chair. He abruptly–almost roughly–took his brother’s hand. He spoke to his brother in a strangely excited, feverish, headlong way.

“My dear fellow, now I have seen her, I congratulate you more heartily than ever. She is charming; she is unique. Oscar! I could almost envy you, if you were anyone else!”

Oscar was radiant with delight. His brother’s opinion ranked above all human opinions in his estimation. Before he could say a word in return, Nugent left him as abruptly as he had approached him; walking away by himself to the window–and standing there, looking out.

Lucilla had not heard him. She was still pondering, with the same perplexed face. The likeness between the twins was apparently weighing on her mind–an unsolved problem that vexed and irritated it. Without anything said by me to lead to resuming the subject, she returned obstinately to the assertion that she had just made.

“I tell you again I am sensible of a difference between them,” she repeated–“though you don’t seem to believe me.”

I interpreted this uneasy reiteration as meaning that she was rather trying to convince herself than to convince me. In her blind condition, it was doubly and trebly embarrassing not to know one brother from the other. I understood her unwillingness to acknowledge this–I felt (in her position) how it would have irritated me. She was waiting–impatiently waiting–for me to say something on my side. I am, as you know already, an indiscreet woman. I innocently said one of my rash things.

“I believe whatever you tell me, my dear,” I answered. “You can find out a difference between them, I have no doubt. Still, I own I should like to see it put to the proof.”

Her color rose. “How?” she asked abruptly.

“Try your touch alternately on both their faces,” I suggested, “without knowing beforehand which position they each of them occupy. Make three trials–leaving them to change their places or not, between each trial, just as they please. If you guess which is which correctly three times following, there will be the proof that you can really lay your hand on a difference between them.”

Lucilla shrank from accepting the challenge. She drew back a step, and silently shook her head. Nugent, who had overheard me, turned round suddenly from the window, and supported my proposal.

“A capital notion!” he burst out. “Let’s try it! You don’t object, Oscar–do you?”

“_I_ object?” cried Oscar–amazed at the bare idea of his opposing any assertion of his will to the assertion of his brother’s will. “If Lucilla is willing, I say Yes, with all my heart.”

The two brothers approached us, arm in arm. Lucilla, very reluctantly, allowed herself to be persuaded into trying the experiment. Two chairs, exactly alike, were placed in front of her. At a sign from Nugent, Oscar silently took the chair on her right. By this arrangement, the hand which she had used in touching Nugent’s face, would be now the hand that she would employ in touching Oscar’s face. When they were both seated, I announced that we were ready. Lucilla placed her hands on their faces, right and left, without the faintest idea in her mind of the positions which the two relatively occupied.

After first touching them with both hands, and both together, she tried them separately next, beginning with Oscar, and using her right hand only. She left him for Nugent; again using her right hand–then came back to him again–then returned to Nugent–hesitated—decided–tapped Nugent lightly on the head.

“Oscar!” she said.

Nugent burst out laughing. The laugh told her, before any of us could speak, that she had made a mistake at the first attempt.

“Try again, Lucilla,” said Oscar kindly.

“Never!” she answered, angrily stepping back from both of them. “One mystification is enough.”

Nugent tried next to persuade her to renew the experiment. She checked him sternly at the first word.

“Do you think if I won’t do it for Oscar,” she said, “that I would do it for you? You laughed at me. What was there to laugh at? Your brother’s features are your features; your brother’s hair is your hair; your brother’s height is your height. What is there so very ridiculous–with such a resemblance as that–in a poor blind girl like me mistaking you one for the other? I wish to preserve a good opinion of you, for Oscar’s sake. Don’t turn me into ridicule again–or I shall be forced to think that your brother’s good heart is not yours also!”

Nugent and Oscar looked at each other, petrified by this sudden outbreak; Nugent, of the two, being the most completely overwhelmed by it.

I attempted to interfere and put things right. My easy philosophy and my volatile French nature, failed to see any adequate cause for this vehement exhibition of resentment on Lucilla’s part. Something in my tone, as I suppose, only added to her irritation. I, in my turn, was checked sternly at the first word. “You proposed it,” she said; “You are the most to blame.” I hastened to make my apologies (inwardly remarking that the habit of raising a storm in a tea-cup is a growing habit with the rising generation in England). Nugent followed me with more apologies on his side. Oscar supported us with his superior influence. He took Lucilla’s hand–kissed it–and whispered something in her ear. The kiss and the whisper acted like a charm. She held out her hand to Nugent, she put her arm round my neck and embraced me, with all her own grace and sweetness. “Forgive me,” she said to us gently. “I wish I could learn to be patient. But, oh, Mr. Nugent, it is sometimes so hard to be blind!” I can repeat the words; but I can give no idea of the touching simplicity with which they were spoken–of her innocently earnest anxiety to win her pardon. She so affected Nugent that he too–after a look at Oscar which said, “May I?”–kissed the hand that she offered to him. As his lips touched her, she started. The bright flush which always indicated the sudden rising of a thought in her mind, flew over her face. She unconsciously held Nugent’s hand in her own, absorbed in the interest of realizing the new thought. For a moment, she stood, still as a statue, consulting with herself. The moment passed, she dropped Nugent’s hand, and turned gaily to me.

“Will you think me very obstinate?” she asked.

“Why, my love?”

“I am not satisfied yet. I want to try again.”

“No! no! At any rate not to-day.”

“I want to try again,” she repeated. “Not in your way. In a way of my own that has just come into my head.” She turned to Oscar. “Will you humour me in this?” It is needless to set down Oscar’s reply. She turned to Nugent. “Will you?”

“Only say what you wish me to do!” he answered.

“Go with your brother,” she said, “to the other end of the room. I know where you are each of you standing, at this end. Madame Pratolungo will lead me to the place, and will put me just within reach of both your hands. I want each of you in turn (arrange by a sign between yourselves which is to begin) to take my hand, and hold it for a moment, and then drop it. I have an idea that I can distinguish between you, in that way–and I want very much to try it.”

The brothers went silently to the other end of the room. I led Lucilla, after them, to the place in which they stood. At my suggestion, Nugent was the first to take her hand, as she had requested; to hold it for a moment, and then to drop it.

“Nugent!” she said, without the slightest hesitation.