THE rectory resembled, in one respect, this narrative that I am now
writing. It was in Two Parts. Part the First, in front, composed of the
everlasting flint and mortar of the neighborhood, failed to interest me.
Part the Second, running back at a right angle, asserted itself as
ancient. It had been, in its time, as I afterwards heard, a convent of
nuns. Here were snug little Gothic windows, and dark ivy-covered walls of
venerable stone: repaired in places, at some past period, with quaint red
bricks. I had hoped that I should enter the house by this side of it. But
no. The boy--after appearing to be at a loss what to do with me--led the
way to a door on the modern side of the building, and rang the bell.
A slovenly young maid-servant admitted me to the house.
Possibly, this person was new to the duty of receiving visitors.
Possibly, she was bewildered by a sudden invasion of children in dirty
frocks, darting out on us in the hall, and then darting away again into
invisible back regions, screeching at the sight of a stranger. At any
rate, she too appeared to be at a loss what to do with me. After staring
hard at my foreign face, she suddenly opened a door in the wall of the
passage, and admitted me into a small room. Two more children in dirty
frocks darted, screaming, out of the asylum thus offered to me. I
mentioned my name, as soon as I could make myself heard. The maid
appeared to be terrified at the length of it. I gave her my card. The
maid took it between a dirty finger and thumb--looked at it as if it was
some extraordinary natural curiosity--turned it round, exhibiting correct
black impressions in various parts of it of her finger and thumb--gave up
understanding it in despair, and left the room. She was stopped outside
(as I gathered from the sounds) by a returning invasion of children in
the hall. There was whispering; there was giggling; there was, every now
and then, a loud thump on the door. Prompted by the children, as I
suppose--pushed in by them, certainly--the maid suddenly reappeared with
a jerk, "Oh, if you please, come this way," she said. The invasion of
children retreated again up the stairs--one of them in possession of my
card, and waving it in triumph on the first landing. We penetrated to the
other end of the passage. Again, a door was opened. Unannounced, I
entered another, and a larger room. What did I see?
Fortune had favored me at last. My lucky star had led me to the mistress
of the house.
I made my best curtsey, and found myself confronting a large,
light-haired, languid, lymphatic lady--who had evidently been amusing
herself by walking up and down the room, at the moment when I appeared.
If there can be such a thing as a _damp woman_--this was one. There was a
humid shine on her colorless white face, and an overflow of water in her
pale blue eyes. Her hair was not dressed; and her lace cap was all on one
side. The upper part of her was clothed in a loose jacket of blue merino;
the lower part was robed in a dimity dressing gown of doubtful white. In
one hand, she held a dirty dogs'-eared book, which I at once detected to
be a Circulating Library novel. Her other hand supported a baby enveloped
in flannel, sucking at her breast. Such was my first experience of
Reverend Finch's Wife--destined to be also the experience of all
aftertime. Never completely dressed; never completely dry; always with a
baby in one hand and a novel in the other--such was Finch's wife.
"Oh! Madame Pratolungo? Yes. I hope somebody has told Miss Finch you are
here. She has her own establishment, and manages everything herself. Have
you had a pleasant journey?" (These words were spoken vacantly, as if her
mind was occupied with something else. My first impression of her
suggested that she was a weak, good-natured woman, and that she must have
originally occupied a station in the humbler ranks of life.)
"Thank you, Mrs. Finch," I said. "I have enjoyed most heartily my journey
among your beautiful hills."
"Oh! you like the hills? Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this
morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you never can pick it
up again, try how you may." (I soon discovered that Mrs. Finch was always
losing half an hour out of her day, and that she never, by any chance,
succeeded in ending it again, as she had just told me.)
"I understand, madam. The cares of a numerous family--"
"Ah! that's just where it is." (This was a favorite phrase with Mrs.
Finch). "There's Finch, he gets up in the morning and goes and works in
the garden. Then there's the washing of the children; and the dreadful
waste that goes on in the kitchen. And Finch, he comes in without any
notice, and wants his breakfast. And of course I can't leave the baby.
And half an hour does slip away so easily, that how to overtake it again,
I do assure you I really don't know." Here the baby began to exhibit
symptoms of having taken more maternal nourishment than his infant
stomach could comfortably contain. I held the novel, while Mrs. Finch
searched for her handkerchief--first in her bedgown pocket; secondly,
here, there, and everywhere in the room.
At this interesting moment there was a knock at the door. An elderly
woman appeared--who offered a most refreshing contrast to the members of
the household with whom I had made acquaintance thus far. She was neatly
dressed, and she saluted me with the polite composure of a civilized
being.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. My young lady has only this moment heard of
your arrival. Will you be so kind as to follow me?"
I turned to Mrs. Finch. She had found her handkerchief, and had put her
overflowing baby to rights again. I respectfully handed back the novel.
"Thank you," said Mrs. Finch. "I find novels compose my mind. Do you read
novels too? Remind me--and I'll lend you this one to-morrow." I expressed
my acknowledgments, and withdrew. At the door, I look round, saluting the
lady of the house. Mrs. Finch was promenading the room, with the baby in
one hand and the novel in the other, and the dimity bedgown trailing
behind her.
We ascended the stairs, and entered a bare white-washed passage, with
drab-colored doors in it, leading, as I presumed, into the sleeping
chambers of the house.
Every door opened as we passed; children peeped out at me, screamed at
me, and banged the door to again. "What family has the present Mrs.
Finch?" I asked. The decent elderly woman was obliged to stop, and
consider. "Including the baby, ma'am, and two sets of twins, and one
seven months' child of deficient intellect--fourteen in all." Hearing
this, I began--though I consider priests, kings, and capitalists to be
the enemies of the human race--to feel a certain exceptional interest in
Reverend Finch. Did he never wish that he had been a priest of the Roman
Catholic Church, mercifully forbidden to marry at all? While the question
passed through my mind, my guide took out a key, and opened a heavy oaken
door at the further end of the passage.
"We are obliged to keep the door locked, ma'am," she explained, "or the
children would be in and out of our part of the house all day long."
After my experience of the children, I own I looked at the oaken door
with mingled sentiments of gratitude and respect.
We turned a corner, and found ourselves in the vaulted corridor of the
ancient portion of the house.
The casement windows, on one side--sunk deep in recesses--looked into the
garden. Each recess was filled with groups of flowers in pots. On the
other side, the old wall was gaily decorated with hangings of bright
chintz. The doors were colored of a creamy white, with gilt moldings. The
brightly ornamented matting under our feet I at once recognized as of
South American origin. The ceiling above was decorated in delicate pale
blue, with borderings of flowers. Nowhere down the whole extent of the
place was so much as a single morsel of dark color to be seen anywhere.
At the lower end of the corridor, a solitary figure in a pure white robe
was bending over the flowers in the window. This was the blind girl whose
dark hours I had come to cheer. In the scattered villages of the South
Downs, the simple people added their word of pity to her name, and called
her compassionately--"Poor Miss Finch." As for me, I can only think of
her by her pretty Christian name. She is "Lucilla" when my memory dwells
on her. Let me call her "Lucilla" here.
When my eyes first rested on her, she was picking off the dead leaves
from her flowers. Her delicate ear detected the sound of my strange
footstep, long before I reached the place at which she was standing. She
lifted her head--and advanced quickly to meet me with a faint flush on
her face, which came and died away again in a moment. I happen to have
visited the picture gallery at Dresden in former years. As she approached
me, nearer and nearer, I was irresistibly reminded of the gem of that
superb collection--the matchless Virgin of Raphael, called "The Madonna
di San Sisto." The fair broad forehead; the peculiar fullness of the
flesh between the eyebrow and the eyelid; the delicate outline of the
lower face; the tender, sensitive lips; the color of the complexion and
the hair--all reflected, with a startling fidelity, the lovely creature
of the Dresden picture. The one fatal point at which the resemblance
ceased, was in the eyes. The divinely-beautiful eyes of Raphael's Virgin
were lost in the living likeness of her that confronted me now. There was
no deformity; there was nothing to recoil from, in my blind Lucilla. The
poor, dim, sightless eyes had a faded, changeless, inexpressive look--and
that was all. Above them, below them, round them, to the very edges of
her eyelids, there was beauty, movement, life. _In_ them--death! A more
charming creature--with that one sad drawback--I never saw. There was no
other personal defect in her. She had the fine height, the well-balanced
figure, and the length of the lower limbs, which make all a woman's
movements graceful of themselves. Her voice was delicious--clear,
cheerful, sympathetic. This, and her smile--which added a charm of its
own to the beauty of her mouth--won my heart, before she had got close
enough to me to put her hand in mine. "Ah, my dear!" I said, in my
headlong way, "I am so glad to see you!" The instant the words passed my
lips, I could have cut my tongue out for reminding her in that brutal
manner that she was blind.
To my relief, she showed no sign of feeling it as I did. "May I see you,
in _my_ way?" she asked gently--and held up her pretty white hand. "May I
touch your face?"
I sat down at once on the window-seat. The soft rosy tips of her fingers
seemed to cover my whole face in an instant. Three separate times she
passed her hand rapidly over me; her own face absorbed all the while in
breathless attention to what she was about. "Speak again!" she said
suddenly, holding her hand over me in suspense. I said a few words. She
stopped me by a kiss. "No more!" she exclaimed joyously. "Your voice says
to my ears, what your face says to my fingers. I know I shall like you.
Come in, and see the rooms we are going to live in together."
As I rose, she put her arm round my waist--then instantly drew it away
again, and shook her fingers impatiently, as if something had hurt them.
"A pin?" I asked.
"No! no! What colored dress have you got on?"
"Purple."
"Ah! I knew it! Pray don't wear dark colors. I have my own blind horror
of anything that is dark. Dear Madame Pratolungo, wear pretty bright
colors, to please _me!_" She put her arm caressingly round me
again--round my neck, however, this time, where her hand could rest on my
linen collar. "You will change your dress before dinner--won't you?" she
whispered. "Let me unpack for you, and choose which dress I like."
The brilliant decorations of the corridor were explained to me now!
We entered the rooms; her bed-room, my bed-room, and our sitting-room
between the two. I was prepared to find them, what they proved to be--as
bright as looking-glasses, and gilding, and gaily-colored ornaments, and
cheerful knick-knacks of all sorts could make them. They were more like
rooms in my lively native country than rooms in sober colorless England.
The one thing which I own did still astonish me, was that all this
sparkling beauty of adornment in Lucilla's habitation should have been
provided for the express gratification of a young lady who could not see.
Experience was yet to show me that the blind can live in their
imaginations, and have their favorite fancies and illusions like the rest
of us.
To satisfy Lucilla by changing my dark purple dress, it was necessary
that I should first have my boxes. So far as I knew, Finch's boy had
taken my luggage, along with the pony, to the stables. Before Lucilla
could ring the bell to make inquiries, my elderly guide (who had silently
left us while we were talking together in the corridor) re-appeared,
followed by the boy and a groom, carrying my things. These servants also
brought with them certain parcels for their young mistress, purchased in
the town, together with a bottle, wrapped in fair white paper, which
looked like a bottle of medicine--and which had a part of its own to play
in our proceedings, later in the day.
"This is my old nurse," said Lucilla, presenting her attendant to me.
"Zillah can do a little of everything--cooking included. She has had
lessons at a London Club. You must like Zillah, Madame Pratolungo, for my
sake. Are your boxes open?"
She went down on her knees before the boxes, as she asked the question.
No girl with the full use of her eyes could have enjoyed more thoroughly
than she did the trivial amusement of unpacking my clothes. This time,
however, her wonderful delicacy of touch proved to be at fault. Of two
dresses of mine which happened to be exactly the same in texture, though
widely different in color, she picked out the dark dress as being the
light one. I saw that I disappointed her sadly when I told her of her
mistake. The next guess she made, however, restored the tips of her
fingers to their place in her estimation: she discovered the stripes in a
smart pair of stockings of mine, and brightened up directly. "Don't be
long dressing," she said, on leaving me. "We shall have dinner in half an
hour. French dishes, in honor of your arrival. I like a nice dinner--I am
what you call in your country, _gourmande._ See the sad consequence!" She
put one finger to her pretty chin. "I am getting fat! I am threatened
with a double chin--at two and twenty. Shocking! shocking!"
So she left me. And such was the first impression produced on my mind by
"Poor Miss Finch."