This was the memorable day chosen by Herr Grosse for risking the
experiment of removing the bandage, and permitting Lucilla to try her
sight for the first time. Conceive for yourselves (don't ask me to
describe) the excitement that raged in our obscure little circle, now
that we were standing face to face with that grand Event in our lives
which I promised to relate in the opening sentence of these pages.
I was the earliest riser at the rectory that morning. My excitable French
blood was in a fever. I was irresistibly reminded of myself, at a time
long past--the time when my glorious Pratolungo and I, succumbing to Fate
and tyrants, fled to England for safety; martyrs to that ungrateful
Republic (long live the Republic!) for which I laid down my money and my
husband his life.
I opened my window, and hailed the good omen of sunrise in a clear sky.
Just as I was turning away again from the view, I saw a figure steal out
from the shrubbery and appear on the lawn. The figure came nearer. I
recognized Oscar.
"What in the world are you doing there, at this time in the morning?" I
called out.
He lifted his finger to his lips, and came close under my window before
he answered.
"Hush!" he said. "Don't let Lucilla hear you. Come down to me as soon as
you can. I am waiting to speak to you."
When I joined him in the garden, I saw directly that something had gone
wrong.
"Bad news from Browndown?" I asked.
"Nugent has disappointed me," he answered. "Do you remember the evening
when you met me after my consultation with Mr. Sebright?"
"Perfectly."
"I told you that I meant to ask Nugent to leave Dimchurch, on the day
when Lucilla tried her sight for the first time."
"Well?"
"Well--he refuses to leave Dimchurch."
"Have you explained your motives to him?"
"Carefully--before I asked him to go. I told him how impossible it was to
say what might happen. I reminded him that it might be of the utmost
importance to me to preserve the impression now in Lucilla's mind--for a
certain time only--after Lucilla could see. I promised, the moment she
became reconciled to the sight of me, to recall him, and in his presence
to tell her the truth. All that I said to him--and how do you think he
answered me?"
"Did he positively refuse?"
"No. He walked away from me to the window, and considered a little. Then
he turned round suddenly and said 'What did you tell me was Mr.
Sebright's opinion? Mr. Sebright thought she would be relieved instead of
being terrified. In that case, what need is there for me to go away? You
can acknowledge at once that she has seen your face, and not mine?' He
put his hands in his pockets when he had said that (you know Nugent's
downright way)--and turned back to the window as if he had settled
everything."
"What did you say, on your side?"
"I said, 'Suppose Mr. Sebright is wrong?' He only answered, 'Suppose Mr.
Sebright is right?' I followed him to the window--I never heard him speak
so sourly to me as he spoke at that moment. 'What is your objection to
going away for a day or two?' I asked. 'My objection is soon stated,' he
answered. 'I am sick of these everlasting complications. It is useless
and cruel to carry on the deception any longer. Mr. Sebright's advice is
the wise advice and the right advice. Let her see you as you are.' With
that answer, he walked out of the room. Something has upset him--I can't
imagine what it is. Do pray see what you can make of him! My only hope is
in you."
I own I felt reluctant to interfere. Suddenly and strangely as Nugent had
altered his point of view, it seemed to me undeniable that Nugent was
right. At the same time, Oscar looked so disappointed and distressed,
that it was really impossible, on that day above all others, to pain him
additionally by roundly saying No. I undertook to do what I could--and I
inwardly hoped that circumstances would absolve me from the necessity of
doing anything at all.
Circumstances failed to justify my selfish confidence in them.
I was out in the village, after breakfast, on a domestic errand connected
with the necessary culinary preparations for the reception of Herr
Grosse--when I heard my name pronounced behind me, and, turning round,
found myself face to face with Nugent.
"Has my brother been bothering you this morning," he asked, "before I was
up?"
I instantly noticed a return in him, as he said that, to the same dogged
ungracious manner which had perplexed and displeased me at my last
confidential interview with him in the rectory garden.
"Oscar has been speaking to me this morning," I replied.
"About me?"
"About you. You have distressed and disappointed him----"
"I know! I know! Oscar is worse than a child. I am beginning to lose all
patience with him."
"I am sorry to hear you say that, Nugent. You have borne with him so
kindly thus far--surely you can make allowances for him to-day? His whole
future may depend on what happens in Lucilla's sitting-room a few hours
hence."
"He is making a mountain out of a mole-hill--and so are you."
Those words were spoken bitterly--almost rudely. I answered sharply on my
side.
"You are the last person living who has any right to say that. Oscar is
in a false position towards Lucilla, with your knowledge and consent. In
your brother's interests, you agreed to the fraud that has been practiced
on her. In your brother's interests, again, you are asked to leave
Dimchurch. Why do you refuse?"
"I refuse, because I have come round to your way of thinking. What did
you say of Oscar and of me, in the summer-house? You said we were taking
a cruel advantage of Lucilla's blindness. You were right. It was cruel
not to have told her the truth. I won't be a party to concealing the
truth from her any longer! I refuse to persist in deceiving her--in
meanly deceiving her--on the day when she recovers her sight!"
It is entirely beyond my power to describe the tone in which he made that
reply. I can only declare that it struck me dumb for the moment. I drew a
step nearer to him. With vague misgivings in me, I looked him searchingly
in the face. He looked back at me, without shrinking.
"Well?" he asked--with a hard smile which defied me to put him in the
wrong.
I could discover nothing in his face--I could only follow my instincts as
a woman. Those instincts warned me to accept his explanation.
"I am to understand then that you have decided on staying here?" I said.
"Certainly!"
"What do you propose to do, when Herr Grosse arrives, and we assemble in
Lucilla's room?"
"I propose to be present among the rest of you, at the most interesting
moment of Lucilla's life."
"No! you don't propose that!"
"I do!"
"You have forgotten something, Mr. Nugent Dubourg."
"What is it, Madame Pratolungo?"
"You have forgotten that Lucilla believes the brother with the discolored
face to be You, and the brother with the fair complexion to be Oscar. You
have forgotten that the surgeon has expressly forbidden us to agitate her
by entering into any explanations before he allows her to use her eyes.
You have forgotten that the very deception which you have just positively
refused to go on with, will be nevertheless a deception continued, if you
are present when Lucilla sees. Your own resolution pledges you not to
enter the rectory doors until Lucilla has discovered the truth." In those
words I closed the vice on him. I had got Mr. Nugent Dubourg!
He turned deadly pale. His eyes dropped before mine for the first time.
"Thank you for reminding me," he said. "I _had_ forgotten."
He pronounced those submissive words in a suddenly-lowered voice.
Something in his tone, or something in the dropping of his eyes, set my
heart beating quickly, with a certain vague expectation which I was
unable to realize to myself.
"You agree with me," I said, "that you cannot be one amongst us at the
rectory? What will you do?"
"I will remain at Browndown," he answered.
I felt he was lying. Don't ask for my reasons: I have no reasons to give.
When he said "I will remain at Browndown," I felt he was lying.
"Why not do what Oscar asks of you?" I went on. "If you are absent, you
may as well be in one place as in another. There is plenty of time still
to leave Dimchurch."
He looked up as suddenly as he had looked down.
"Do you and Oscar think me a stock or a stone?" he burst out angrily.
"What do you mean?"
"Who are you indebted to for what is going to happen to-day?" he went on,
more and more passionately. "You are indebted to Me. Who among you all
stood alone in refusing to believe that she was blind for life? _I_ did!
Who brought the man here who has given her back her sight? _I_ brought
the man! And I am the one person who is to be left in ignorance of how it
ends. The others are to be present: I am to be sent away. The others are
to see it: I am to hear by post (if any of you think of writing to me)
what she does, what she says, how she looks, at the first heavenly moment
when she opens her eyes on the world." He flung up his hand in the air,
and burst out savagely with a bitter laugh. "I astonish you, don't I? I
am claiming a position which I have no right to occupy. What interest can
_I_ feel in it? Oh God! what do _I_ care about the woman to whom I have
given a new life?" His voice broke into a sob at those last wild words.
He tore at the breast of his coat as if he was suffocating--and turned,
and left me.
I stood rooted to the spot. In one breathless instant, the truth broke on
me like a revelation. At last I had penetrated the terrible secret.
Nugent loved her.
My first impulse, when I recovered myself, hurried me at the top of my
speed back to the rectory. For a moment or two, I think I must really
have lost my senses. I felt a frantic suspicion that he had gone into the
house, and that he was making his way to Lucilla at that moment. When I
found that all was quiet--when Zillah had satisfied me that no visitor
had come near our side of the rectory--I calmed down a little, and went
back to the garden to compose myself before I ventured into Lucilla's
presence.
After awhile, I got over the first horror of it, and saw my own position
plainly. There was not a living soul at Dimchurch in whom I could
confide. Come what might of it, in this dreadful emergency, I must trust
in myself alone.
I had just arrived at that startling conclusion; I had shed some bitter
tears when I remembered how hardly I had judged poor Oscar on more than
one occasion; I had decided that my favorite Nugent was the most hateful
villain living, and that I would leave nothing undone that the craft of a
woman could compass to drive him out of the place--when I was forced back
to present necessities by the sound of Zillah's voice calling to me from
the house. I went to her directly. The nurse had a message for me from
her young mistress. My poor Lucilla was lonely and anxious: she was
surprised at my leaving her, she insisted on seeing me immediately.
I took my first precaution against a surprise from Nugent, as I crossed
the threshold of the door.
"Our dear child must not be disturbed by visitors to-day," I said to
Zillah. "If Mr. Nugent Dubourg comes here and asks for her--don't tell
Lucilla; tell _me._"
This said, I went up-stairs, and joined my darling in the darkened room.