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?