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!"