"This is the man whom I should never have loved if I had happened to meet
his brother first. Look!"
She put both arms round his neck; and gave him a shower of kisses all in
one. I indignantly withdrew. The door had been imperfectly closed when I
had entered the room: it was ajar. I pulled it open--and found myself
face to face with Nugent Dubourg, standing by the table, with his letter
from Liverpool in his hand! He must have certainly heard Lucilla cast my
own words back in my teeth--if he had heard no more.
I stopped short; looking at him in silent surprise. He smiled, and held
out the open letter to me. Before we could speak, we heard the door of
the room closed. Oscar had followed me out (shutting the door behind him)
to apologize for Lucilla's behavior to me. He explained what had happened
to his brother. Nugent nodded, and tapped his open letter smartly. "Leave
me to manage it. I shall give you something better to do than quarreling
among yourselves. You will hear what it is directly. In the meantime, I
have got a message for our friend at the inn. Gootheridge is on his way
here, to speak to me about altering the stable. Run and tell him I have
other business on hand, and I can't keep my appointment to-day. Stop!
Give him this at the same time, and ask him to leave it at the rectory."
He took one of his visiting cards out of the case, wrote a few lines on
it in pencil, and handed it to his brother. Oscar (always ready to go on
errands for Nugent) hurried out to meet the landlord. Nugent turned to
me.
"The German is in England," he said. "Now I may open my lips."
"At once!" I exclaimed.
"At once. I have put off my own business (as you heard) in favor of this.
My friend will be in London to-morrow. I mean to get my authority to
consult him to-day, and to start tomorrow for town. Prepare yourself to
meet one of the strangest characters you ever set eyes on! You saw me
write on my card. It was a message to Mr. Finch, asking him to join us
immediately (on important family business) at Browndown. As Lucilla's
father, he has a voice in the matter. When Oscar comes back, and when the
rector joins us, our domestic privy council will be complete."
He spoke with his customary spirit; he moved with his customary
briskness--he had become quite himself again, since I had seen him last.
"I am stagnating in this place," he went on, seeing that I noticed the
change in him. "It puts me in spirits again, having something to do. I am
not like Oscar--I must have action to stir my blood--action to keep me
from fretting over my anxieties. How do you think I found the witness to
my brother's innocence at the Trial? In that way. I said to myself, 'I
shall go mad if I don't do something.' I did something--and saved Oscar.
I am going to do something again. Mark my words! Now I am stirring in it,
Lucilla will recover her sight."
"This is a serious matter," I said. "Pray give it serious consideration."
"Consideration?" he repeated. "I hate the word. I always decide on the
instant. If I am wrong in my view of Lucilla's case, consideration is of
no earthly use. If I am right, every day's delay is a day of sight lost
to the blind. I'll wait for Oscar and Mr. Finch; and then I'll open the
business. Why are we talking in the hall? Come in!"
He led the way to the sitting-room. I had a new interest, now, in going
back. Still, Lucilla's behavior hung on my mind. Suppose she treated me
with renewed coldness and keener contempt? I remained standing at the
table in the hall. Nugent looked back at me, over his shoulder.
"Nonsense!" he said. "I'll set things right. It's beneath a woman like
you to take notice of what a girl says in a pet. Come in!"
I doubt if I should have yielded to please any other living man. But,
there is no denying it, some people have a magnetic attracting power over
others. Nugent had that power over me. Against my own will--for I was
really hurt and offended by her usage of me--I went back with him into
the room.
Lucilla was still sitting in the place which she had occupied when I
withdrew. On hearing the door open, and a man's footsteps entering, she
of course assumed that the man was Oscar. She had penetrated his object
in leaving her to follow me out, and it had not improved her temper.
"Oh?" she said. "You have come back at last? I thought you had offered
yourself as Madame Pratolungo's escort to the rectory." She stopped, with
a sudden frown. Her quick ears had detected my return into the room.
"Oscar!" she exclaimed, "what does this mean? Madame Pratolungo and I
have nothing more to say to each other. What has she come back for? Why
don't you answer? This is infamous! I shall leave the room!"
The utterance of that final threat was followed so rapidly by its
execution that, before Nugent (standing between her and the door) could
get out of her way, she came in violent contact with him. She instantly
caught him by the arm, and shook him angrily. "What does your silence
mean? Is it at Madame Pratolungo's instigation that you are insulting
me?"
I had just opened my lips to make one more attempt at reconciliation, by
saying some pacifying words to her--when she planted that last sting in
me. French flesh and blood (whatever English flesh and blood might have
done) could bear no more. I silently turned my back on her, in a rage.
At the same moment, Nugent's eyes brightened as if a new idea had struck
him. He gave me one significant look--and answered her in his brother's
character. Whether he was possessed at the moment by some demon of
mischief; or whether he had the idea of trying to make Oscar's peace for
him, before Oscar returned--was more than I could say at the time. I
ought to have stopped it--I know. But my temper was in a flame. I was as
spiteful as a cat and as fierce as a bear. I said to myself (in your
English idiom), She wants taking down a peg; quite right, Mr. Nugent; do
it. Shocking! shameful! no words are bad enough for me: give it me well.
Ah, Heaven! what is a human being in a rage? On my sacred word of honor,
nothing but a human beast! The next time it happens to You, look at
yourself in the glass; and you will find your soul gone out of you at
your face, and nothing left but an animal--and a bad, a villainous bad
animal too!
"You ask what my silence means?" said Nugent.
He had only to model his articulation on his brother's slower manner of
speaking as distinguished from his own, to be his brother himself. In
saying those few first words, he did it so dexterously that I could have
sworn--if I had not seen him standing before me--Oscar was in the room.
"Yes," she said, "I ask that."
"I am silent," he answered, "because I am waiting."
"What are you waiting for?"
"To hear you make your apologies to Madame Pratolungo."
She started back a step. Submissive Oscar was taking a peremptory tone
with her for the first time in his life. Submissive Oscar, instead of
giving her time to speak, sternly went on.
"Madame Pratolungo has made her excuses to _you._ You ought to receive
them; you ought to reciprocate them. It is distressing to see you and
hear you. You are behaving ungratefully to your best friend."
She raised her face, she raised her hands, in blank amazement: she looked
as if she distrusted her own ears.
"Oscar!" she exclaimed.
"Here I am," said Oscar, opening the door at the same moment.
She turned like lightning towards the place from which he had spoken. She
detected the deception which Nugent had practiced on her, with a cry of
indignation that rang through the room.
Oscar ran to her in alarm. She thrust him back violently.
"A trick!" she cried. "A mean, vile, cowardly trick played upon my
blindness! Oscar! your brother has been imitating you; your brother has
been speaking to me in your voice. And that woman who calls herself my
friend--that woman stood by and heard him, and never told me. She
encouraged it: she enjoyed it. The wretches! take me away from them. They
are capable of any deceit. She always hated you, dear, from the
first--she took up with your brother the moment he came here. When you
marry me, it mustn't be at Dimchurch; it must be in some place they don't
know of. There is a conspiracy between them against you and against me.
Beware of them! beware of them! She said I should have fallen in love
with your brother, if I had met him first. There is a deeper meaning in
that, my love, than you can see. It means that they will part us if they
can. Ha! I hear somebody moving! Has he changed places with you? Is it
_you_ whom I am speaking to now? Oh, my blindness! my blindness! Oh, God,
of all your creatures, the most helpless, the most miserable, is the
creature who can't see!"
I never heard anything in all my life so pitiable and so dreadful as the
frantic suspicion and misery which tore their way out from her, in those
words. She cut me to the heart. I had spoken rashly--I had behaved
badly--but had I deserved this? No! no! no! I had _not_ deserved it. I
threw myself into a chair, and burst out crying. My tears scalded me; my
sobs choked me. If I had had poison in my hand, I would have drunk it--I
was so furious and so wretched: so hurt in my honor, so wounded at my
heart.
The only voice that answered her was Nugent's. Reckless what the
consequences might be--speaking, in his own proper person, from the
opposite end of the room--he asked the all-important question which no
human being had ever put to her yet.
"Are you sure, Lucilla, that you are blind for life?"
A dead silence followed the utterance of those words.