No tears! no flaming-up of the quick temper that I knew so well! Nothing
in his face, nothing in his voice, nothing in his manner, but a composure
miserable to see--the composure of despair.
"At least, let me accompany you to the gate," I said.
"God bless and reward you!" he answered. "Let me go."
With a gentle hand--and yet with a firmness which took me completely by
surprise--he separated himself from me, and went out.
I could stand no longer--I dropped trembling into a chair. The conviction
forced itself on me that there were worse complications, direr
misfortunes, still to come. I was almost beside myself--I broke out
vehemently with wild words spoken in my own language. Mrs. Finch recalled
me to my senses. I saw her as in a dream, drying her tears, and looking
at me in alarm. The rector approached, with profuse expressions of
sympathy and offers of assistance. I wanted no comforting. I had served a
hard apprenticeship to life; I had been well seasoned to trouble. "Thank
you, sir," I said. "Look to Mrs. Finch." There was more air in the
corridor. I went out again, to walk about, and get the better of it
there.
A small object attracted my attention, crouched up on one of the window
seats. The small object was--Jicks.
I suppose the child's instinct must have told her that something had gone
wrong. She looked furtively sideways at me, round her doll: she had grave
doubts of my intentions towards her. "Are you going to whack Jicks?"
asked the curious little creature, shrinking into her corner. I sat down
by her, and soon recovered my place in her confidence. She began to
chatter again as fast as usual. I listened to her as I could have
listened to no grown-up person at that moment. In some mysterious way
that I cannot explain, the child comforted me. Little by little, I learnt
what she had wanted with me, when she had attempted to drag me out of the
room. She had seen all that had passed in the bed-chamber; and she had
run out to take me back with her, and show me the wonderful sight of
Lucilla with the bandage off her eyes. If I had been wise enough to
listen to Jicks, I might have prevented the catastrophe that had
happened. I might have met Lucilla in the corridor, and have forced her
back into her own room and turned the key on her.
It was too late now to regret what had happened. "Jicks has been good," I
said, patting my little friend on the head with a heavy heart. The child
listened--considered with herself gravely--got off the window-seat--and
claimed her reward for being good, with that excellent brevity of speech
which so eminently distinguished her:
"Jicks will go out."
With those words, she shouldered her doll; and walked off. The last I saw
of her, she was descending the stairs as a workman descends a ladder, on
her way to the garden--and from the garden (the first time the gate was
opened) to the hills. If I could have gone out with her light heart, I
would have joined Jicks.
I had hardly lost sight of the child, before the door of Lucilla's room
opened, and Herr Grosse appeared in the corridor.
"Soh!" he muttered with a gesture of relief, "the very womans I was
looking for. A nice mess-fix we are in now! I must stop with Feench. (I
shall end in hating Feench!) Can you put me into a beds for the night?"
I assured him that he could easily sleep at the rectory. In answer to my
inquiries after his patient, he gravely acknowledged that he was anxious
about Lucilla. The varying and violent emotions which had shaken her
(acting through her nervous system) might produce results which would
imperil the recovery of her sight. Absolute repose was not simply
necessary--it was now the only chance for her. For the next
four-and-twenty hours, he must keep watch over her eyes. At the end of
that time--no earlier--he might be able to say whether the mischief done
would be fatal to her sight or not. I asked how she had contrived to get
her bandage off, and to make her fatal entrance into the sitting-room.
He shrugged his shoulders. "There are times," he said cynically, "when
every womans is a hussy, and every mans is a fool. This was one of the
times."
It appeared, on further explanation, that my poor Lucilla had pleaded so
earnestly (after the nurse had left the room) to be allowed to try her
eyes, and had shown such ungovernable disappointment when he persisted in
saying No, that he had yielded--not so much to her entreaties, as to his
own conviction that it would be less dangerous to humour her than to
thwart her, with such a sensitive and irritable temperament as hers. He
had first bargained however, on his side, that she should remain in the
bed-chamber, and be content, for that time, with using her sight on the
objects round her in the room. She had promised all that he asked--and he
had been foolish enough to trust to her promise. The bandage once off,
she had instantly set every consideration at defiance--had torn herself
out of his hands like a mad creature--and had rushed into the
sitting-room before he could stop her. The rest had followed as a matter
of course. Feeble as it was at the first trial of it, her sense of sight
was sufficiently restored to enable her to distinguish objects dimly. Of
the three persons who had offered themselves to view on the right-hand
side of the door, one (Mrs. Finch) was a woman; another (Mr. Finch) was a
short, grey-headed, elderly man; the third (Nugent), in his height--which
she could see--and in the color of his hair--which she could see-was the
only one of the three who could possibly represent Oscar. The catastrophe
that followed was (as things were) inevitable. Now that the harm was
done, the one alternative left was to check the mischief at the point
which it had already reached. Not the slightest hint at the terrible
mistake that she had made must be suffered to reach her ears. If we any
of us said one word about it before he authorized us to do so, he would
refuse to answer for the consequences, and would then and there throw up
the case.
So, in his broken English, Herr Grosse explained what had happened, and
issued his directions for our future conduct.
"No person is to go into her," he said, in conclusion, "but you and goot
Mrs. Zillahs. You two watch her, turn-about-turn-about. In a whiles, she
will sleep. For me, I go to smoke my tobaccos in the garden. Hear this,
Madame Pratolungo. When Gott made the womens, he was sorry afterwards for
the poor mens--and he made tobaccos to comfort them."
Favoring me with this peculiar view of the scheme of creation, Herr
Grosse shook his shock head, and waddled away to the garden.
I softly opened the bed-room door, and looked in--disappearing just in
time to escape the rector and Mrs. Finch returning to their own side of
the house.
Lucilla was lying on the sofa. She asked who it was in a drowsy
voice--she was happily just sinking into slumber. Zillah occupied a chair
near her. I was not wanted for the moment--and I was glad, for the first
time in my experience at Dimchurch, to get out of the room again. By some
contradiction in my character which I am not able to explain, there was a
certain hostile influence in the sympathy that I felt for Oscar, which
estranged me, for the moment, from Lucilla. It was not her fault--and yet
(I am ashamed to own it) I almost felt angry with her for reposing so
comfortably, when I thought of the poor fellow, without a creature to say
a kind word to him, alone at Browndown.
Out again in the corridor, the question faced me:--What was I to do next?
The loneliness of the house was insupportable; my anxiety about Oscar
grew more than I could endure. I put on my hat, and went out.
Having no desire to interfere with Herr Grosse's enjoyment of his pipe, I
made my way through the garden as quickly as possible, and found myself
in the village again. My uneasiness on the subject of Oscar, was matched
by my angry desire to know what Nugent would do. Now that he had worked
the very mischief which his brother had foreseen to be possible--the very
mischief which it had been Oscar's one object to prevent in asking him to
leave Dimchurch--would he take his departure? would he rid us, at once
and for ever, of the sight of him? The bare idea of the other
alternative--I mean, of his remaining in the place--shook me with such an
unutterable dread of what might happen next, that my feet refused to
support me. I was obliged, just beyond the village, to sit down by the
road-side, and wait till my giddy head steadied itself before I attempted
to move again.
After a minute or two, I heard footsteps coming along the road. My heart
gave one great leap in me. I thought it was Nugent.
A moment more brought the person in view. It was only Mr. Gootheridge of
the village inn, on his way home. He stopped, and took off his hat.
"Tired, ma'am?" he said.
The uppermost idea in my mind found its way somehow, ill as I was, to
expression on my lips--in the form of a question addressed to the
landlord.
"Do you happen to have seen anything of Mr. Nugent Dubourg?" I asked.
"I saw him not five minutes since, ma'am."
"Where?"
"Going into Browndown."
I started up, as if I had been struck or shot. Worthy Mr. Gootheridge
stared. I wished him good-day, and went on as fast as my feet would take
me, straight to Browndown. Had the brothers met in the house? I turned
cold at the bare thought of it--but I still kept on. There was an
obstinate resolution in me to part them, which served me in place of
courage. Account for it as you may, I was bold and frightened both at the
same time. At one moment, I was fool enough to say to myself, "They will
kill me." At another, just as foolishly, I found comfort in the opposite
view. "Bah! They are gentlemen; they can't hurt a woman!"
The servant was standing idling at the front door, when I arrived in
sight of the house. This, in itself, was unusual. He was a hard-working
well-trained man. On other occasions, nobody had ever seen him out of his
proper place. He advanced a few steps to meet me. I looked at him
carefully. Not the slightest appearance of disturbance was visible in his
face.
"Is Mr. Oscar at home?" I asked.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. Mr. Oscar is at home--but you can't see him.
He and Mr. Nugent are together."
I rested my hand on the low wall in front of the house, and made a
desperate effort to put a calm face on it.
"Surely Mr. Oscar will see _me?_" I said.
"I have Mr. Oscar's orders, ma'am, to wait at the door, and tell
everybody who comes to the house (without exception) that he is engaged."
The house-door was half open. I listened intently while the man was
speaking. If they had been at high words together, I must have heard them
in the silence of the lonely hills all round us. I heard nothing.
It was strange, it was inconceivable. At the same time it relieved me.
There they were together, and no harm had come of it, so far.
I left my card--and walked on a little, past the corner of the house
wall. As soon as I was out of the servant's sight, I turned back to the
side of the building, and ventured as near as I durst to the window of
the sitting-room. Their voices reached me, but not their words. On both
sides, the tones were low and confidential. Not a note of anger in either
voice--listen for it as I might! I left the house again, breathless with
amazement, and (so rapidly does a woman shift from one emotion to
another) burning with curiosity.
After half an hour of aimless wandering in the valley, I returned to the
rectory.
Lucilla was still sleeping. I took Zillah's place, and sent her into the
kitchen. The landlady of the inn was there to help us with the dinner.
But she was hardly equal, single-handed, to the superintendence of such
dishes as we had to set before Herr Grosse. It was high time I relieved
Zillah if we were to pass successfully through the ordeal of the great
surgeon's criticism, as reviewer of all the sauces.
An hour more passed before Lucilla woke. I sent a messenger to Grosse,
who appeared enveloped in a halo of tobacco, examined the patient's eyes,
felt her pulse, ordered her wine and jelly, filled his monstrous pipe,
and gruffly returned to his promenade in the garden.
The day wore on. Mr. Finch came to make inquiries, and then went back to
his wife--whom he described as "hysterically irresponsible," and in
imminent need of another warm bath. He declined, in his most pathetic
manner, to meet the German at dinner. "After what I have suffered, after
what I have seen, these banquetings--I would say, these ticklings of the
palate--are not to my taste. You mean well, Madame Pratolungo. (Good
creature!) But I am not in heart for feasting. Simple fare, by my wife's
couch; a few consoling words, in the character of pastor and husband,
when the infant is quiet. So my day is laid out. I wish you well. I don't
object to your little dinner. Good day! good day!"
A second examination of Lucilla's eyes brought us to the dinner-hour.
At the sight of the table-cloth, Herr Grosse's good humour returned. We
two dined together alone--the German sending in selections of his own
making from the dishes to Lucilla's room. So far, he said, she had
escaped any serious injury. But he still insisted on keeping his patient
perfectly quiet, and he refused to answer for anything until the night
had passed. As for me, Oscar's continued silence weighed more and more
heavily on my spirits. My past suspense in the darkened room with Lucilla
seemed to be a mere trifle by comparison with the keener anxieties which
I suffered now. I saw Grosse's eyes glaring discontentedly at me through
his spectacles. He had good reason to look at me as he did--I had never
before been so stupid and so disagreeable in all my life.
Towards the end of the dinner, there came news from Browndown at last.
The servant sent in a message by Zillah, begging me to see him for a
moment outside the sitting-room door.