FIVE more days passed.
During that interval, we saw our new neighbor constantly. Either Oscar
came to the rectory, or we went to Browndown. Reverend Finch waited, with
a masterly assumption of suspecting nothing, until the relations between
the two young people were ripe enough to develop into relations of
acknowledged love. They were already (under Lucilla's influence)
advancing rapidly to that point. You are not to blame my poor blind girl,
if you please, for frankly encouraging the man she loved. He was the most
backward man--viewed as a suitor--whom I ever met with. The fonder he
grew of her, the more timid and self-distrustful he became. I own I don't
like a modest man; and I cannot honestly say that Mr. Oscar Dubourg, on
closer acquaintance, advanced himself much in my estimation. However,
Lucilla understood him, and that was enough. She was determined to have
the completest possible image of him in her mind. Everybody in the house
who had seen him (the children included) she examined and cross-examined
on the subject of his personal appearance, as she had already examined
and cross-examined me. His features and his color, his height and his
breadth; his ornaments and his clothes--on all these points she collected
evidence, in every direction and in the smallest detail. It was an
especial relief and delight to her to hear, on all sides, that his
complexion was fair. There was no reasoning with her against her blind
horror of dark shades of color, whether seen in men, women, or things.
She was quite unable to account for it; she could only declare it.
"I have the strangest instincts of my own about some things," she said to
me one day. "For instance, I knew that Oscar was bright and fair--I mean
I felt it in myself--on that delightful evening when I first heard the
sound of his voice. It went straight from my ear to my heart; and it
described him, just as the rest of you have described him to me since.
Mrs. Finch tells me his complexion is lighter than mine. Do you think so
too? I am so glad to hear that he is fairer than I am! Did you ever meet
before with a person like me? I have the oddest ideas in this blind head
of mine. I associate life and beauty with light colors, and death and
crime with dark colors. If I married a man with a dark complexion, and if
I recovered my sight afterwards, I should run away from him."
This singular prejudice of hers against dark people was a little annoying
to me on personal grounds. It was a sort of reflection on my own taste.
Between ourselves, the late Doctor Pratolungo was of a fine mahogany
brown all over.
As for affairs in general at Dimchurch, my chronicle of the five days
finds little to dwell on that is worth recording.
We were not startled by any second appearance of the two ruffians at
Browndown--neither was any change made by Oscar in his domestic
establishment. He was favored with more than one visit from our little
wandering Jicks. On each occasion, the child gravely reminded him of his
rash promise to appeal to the police, and visit with corporal punishment
the two ugly strangers who had laughed at her. When were the men to be
beaten? and when was Jicks to see it? Such were the serious questions
with which this young lady regularly opened the proceedings, on each
occasion when she favored Oscar with a morning call.
On the sixth day, the gold and silver plates were returned to Browndown
from the manufactory in London.