"Return to your chair and your book," I said. "Our interview is at an
end. In leaving the house, I have one last word to say. You are wasting
your time in remaining at Dimchurch."
"I am the best judge of that," he answered, making way for me to go out.
"Pardon me, you are not in a position to judge at all. You don't know
what I mean to do as soon as I get back to the rectory."
He instantly changed his position; placing himself in the doorway so as
to prevent me from leaving the room.
"What do you mean to do?" he asked, keeping his eyes attentively fixed on
mine.
"I mean to force you to leave Dimchurch."
He laughed insolently. I went on as quietly as before. "You have
personated your brother to Lucilla this morning," I said. "You have done
that, Mr. Nugent Dubourg, for the last time."
"Have I? Who will prevent me from doing it again?"
"I will."
This time he took it seriously.
"You?" he said. "How are _you_ to control me, if you please?"
"I can control you through Lucilla. When I get back to the rectory, I
can, and will, tell Lucilla the truth."
He started--and instantly recovered himself.
"You forget something, Madame Pratolungo. You forget what the surgeon in
attendance on her has told us."
"I remember it perfectly. If we say or do anything to agitate his
patient, in her present state, the surgeon refuses to answer for the
consequences."
"Well?"
"Well--between the alternative of leaving you free to break both their
hearts, and the alternative of setting the surgeon's warning at
defiance--dreadful as the choice is, my choice is made. I tell you to
your face, I would rather see Lucilla blind again than see her your
wife."
His estimate of the strength of the position on his side, had been
necessarily based on one conviction--the conviction that Grosse's
professional authority would tie my tongue. I had scattered his
calculations to the winds. He turned so deadly pale that, dim as the
light was, I could see the change in his face.
"I don't believe you!" he said.
"Present yourself at the rectory tomorrow," I answered--"and you will
see. I have no more to say to you. Let me by."
You may suppose I was only trying to frighten him. I was doing nothing of
the sort. Blame me, or approve of me, as you please, I was expressing the
resolution which I had in my mind when I spoke. Whether my courage would
have held out through the walk from Browndown to the rectory--whether I
should have shrunk from it when I actually found myself in Lucilla's
presence--is more than I can venture to decide. All I say is that I did,
in my desperation, positively mean doing it, at the moment when I
threatened to do it--and that Nugent Dubourg heard something in my voice
which told him I was in earnest.
"You fiend!" he burst out, stepping close up to me with a look of fury.
The whole passionate fervour of the love that the miserable wretch felt
for her, shook him from head to foot, as his horror of me found its way
to expression in those two words.
"Spare me your opinion of my character," I said. "I don't expect _you_
to understand the motives of an honest woman. For the last time, let me
by!"
Instead of letting me by, he locked the door, and put the key in his
pocket. That done, he pointed to the chair that I had left.
"Sit down," he said, with a sudden sinking in his voice which implied a
sudden change in his temper. "Let me have a minute to myself."
I returned to my place. He took his own chair on the other side of the
table, and covered his face with his hands. We waited awhile in silence.
I looked at him, once or twice, as the minutes followed each other. The
shaded lamp-light glistened dimly on something between his fingers. I
rose softly, and stretched across the table to look closer. Tears! On my
word of honor, tears forcing their way through his fingers, as he held
them over his face! I had been on the point of speaking. I sat down again
in silence.
"Say what you want of me. Tell me what you wish me to do." Those were his
first words. He spoke them without moving his hands; so quietly, so
sadly, with such hopeless sorrow, such uncomplaining resignation in his
voice, that I, who had entered that room, hating him, rose again, and
went round to his chair. I--who a minute ago, if I had had the strength,
would have struck him down on the floor at my feet--laid my hand on his
shoulder, pitying him from the bottom of my heart. That is what women
are! There is a specimen of their sense, firmness, and self-control!
"Be just, Nugent," I said. "Be honorable. Be all that I once thought you.
I want no more."
He dropped his arms on the table: his head fell on them, and he burst
into a fit of crying. It was so like his brother, that I could almost
have fancied I, too, had mistaken one of them for the other. "Oscar over
again," I thought to myself, "on the first day when I spoke to him in
this very room!"
"Come!" I said, when he was quieter. "We shall end in understanding each
other and respecting each other after all."
He irritably shook my hand off his shoulder, and turned his face away
from the light.
"Don't talk of understanding _me,_" he said. "Your sympathy is for Oscar.
He is the victim; he is the martyr; he has all your consideration and all
your pity. I am a coward; I am a villain; I have no honor and no heart.
Tread Me under foot like a reptile. _My_ misery is only what I deserve!
Compassion is thrown away--isn't it?--on such a scoundrel as I am?"
I was sorely puzzled how to answer him. All that he had said against
himself, I had thought of him in my own mind. And why not? He _had_
behaved infamously--he _was_ a fit object for righteous indignation. And
yet--and yet--it is sometimes so very hard, however badly a man may have
behaved, for women to hold out against forgiving him, when they know that
a woman is at the bottom of it.
"Whatever I may have thought of you," I said, "it is still in your power,
Nugent, to win back my old regard for you."
"Is it?" he answered scornfully. "I know better than that. You are not
talking to Oscar now--you are talking to a man who has had some
experience of women. I know how you all hold to your opinions because
they are your opinions--without asking yourselves whether they are right
or wrong. There are men who could understand me and pity me. No woman can
do it. The best and cleverest among you don't know what love is--as a man
feels it. It isn't the frenzy with You that it is with Us. It
acknowledges restraints in a woman--it bursts through everything in a
man. It robs him of his intelligence, his honor, his self-respect--it
levels him with the brutes--it debases him into idiocy--it lashes him
into madness. I tell you I am not accountable for my own actions. The
kindest thing you could do for me would be to shut me up in a madhouse.
The best thing I could do for myself would be to cut my throat.--Oh, yes!
this is a shocking way of talking, isn't it? I ought to struggle against
it--as you say. I ought to summon my self-control. Ha! ha! ha! Here is a
clever woman--here is an experienced woman. And yet--though she has seen
me in Lucilla's company hundreds of times--she has never once discovered
the signs of a struggle in me! From the moment when I first saw that
heavenly creature, it has been one long fight against myself, one
infernal torment of shame and remorse; and this clever friend of mine has
observed so little and knows so little, that she can only view my conduct
in one light--it is the conduct of a coward and a villain!"
He got up, and took a turn in the room. I was--naturally, I think--a
little irritated by his way of putting it. A man assuming to know more
about love than a woman! Was there ever such a monstrous perversion of
the truth as that? I appeal to the women!
"You ought to be the last person to blame me," I said. "I had too high an
opinion of you to suspect what was going on. I will never make the same
mistake again--I promise you that!"
He came back, and stood still in front of me, looking me hard in the
face.
"Do you really mean to say you saw nothing to set you thinking, on the
day when I first met her?" he asked. "You were there in the room--didn't
you see that she struck me dumb? Did you notice nothing suspicious at a
later time? When I was suffering martyrdom, if I only looked at her--was
there nothing to be seen in me which told its own tale?"
"I noticed that you were never at your ease with her," I replied. "But I
liked you and trusted you--and I failed to understand it. That's all."
"Did you fail to understand everything that followed? Didn't I speak to
her father? Didn't I try to hasten Oscar's marriage?"
It was true. He _had_ tried.
"When we first talked of his telling Lucilla of the discoloration of his
face, did I not agree with you that he ought to put himself right with
her, in his own interests?"
True again. Impossible to deny that he had sided with my view.
"When she all but found it out for herself, whose influence was used to
make him own it? Mine! What did I do, when he tried to confess it, and
failed to make her understand him? what did I do when she first committed
the mistake of believing _me_ to be the disfigured man?"
The audacity of that last question fairly took away my breath. "You
cruelly helped to deceive her," I answered indignantly. "You basely
encouraged your brother in his fatal policy of silence."
He looked at me with an angry amazement on his side which more than
equaled the angry amazement on mine.
"So much for the delicate perception of a woman!" he exclaimed. "So much
for the wonderful tact which is the peculiar gift of the sex! You can see
no motive but a bad motive in my sacrificing myself for Oscar's sake?"
I began to discern faintly that there might have been another than a bad
motive for his conduct. But--well! I dare say I was wrong; I resented the
tone he was taking with me; I would have owned I had made a mistake to
anybody else in the world; I wouldn't own it to _him._ There!
"Look back for one moment," he resumed, in quieter and gentler tones.
"See how hardly you have judged me! I seized the opportunity--I swear to
you this is true--I seized the opportunity of making myself an object of
horror to her, the moment I heard of the mistake that she had made. I
felt in myself that I was growing less and less capable of avoiding her,
and I caught at the chance of making _her_ avoid _me;_ I did that--and I
did more! I entreated Oscar to let me leave Dimchurch. He appealed to me,
in the name of our love for each other, to remain. I couldn't resist him.
Where do you see signs of the conduct of a scoundrel in all this? Would a
scoundrel have betrayed himself to you a dozen times over--as I did in
that talk of ours in the summer-house? I remember saying in so many
words, I wished I had never come to Dimchurch. What reason but one could
there be for my saying that? How is it that you never even asked me what
I meant?"
"You forget," I interposed, "that I had no opportunity of asking you.
Lucilla interrupted us, and diverted my attention to other things. What
do you mean by putting me on my defence in this way?" I went on, more and
more irritated by the tone he was taking with me. "What right have you to
judge my conduct?"
He looked at me with a kind of vacant surprise.
"_Have_ I been judging your conduct?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Perhaps I was thinking, if you had seen my infatuation in time you
might have checked it in time. No!" he exclaimed, before I could answer
him. "Nothing could have checked it--nothing will cure it but my death.
Let us try to agree. I beg your pardon if I have offended you. I am
willing to take a just view of your conduct. Will you take a just view of
mine?"
I tried hard to take a just view. Though I resented his manner of
speaking to me, I nevertheless secretly felt for him, as I have
confessed. Still I could not forget that he had attempted to attract to
himself Lucilla's first look, on the day when she tried her sight--that
he had personated his brother to Lucilla that very morning--that he had
suffered his brother to go away heart-broken, a voluntary exile from all
that he held dear. No! I could feel for him, but I could _not_ take a
just view of him. I sat down, and said nothing.
He returned to the question between us; treating me with the needful
politeness, when he spoke next. For all that, he alarmed me, by what he
now said, as he had not alarmed me yet.
"I repeat what I have already told you," he proceeded. "I am no longer
accountable for what I do. If I know anything of myself, I believe it
will be useless to trust me in the future. While I am capable of speaking
the truth, let me tell it. Whatever happens at a later time--remember
this, I have honestly made a clean breast of it to-night."
"Stop!" I cried. "I don't understand your reckless way of talking. Every
man is accountable for what he does."
He checked me there by an impatient wave of his hand.
"Keep your opinion; I don't dispute it. You will see; you will
see.--Madame Pratolungo, the day when we had that private talk of ours in
the rectory summer-house, marks a memorable date in my calendar. My last
honest struggle to be true to my poor Oscar ended with that day. The
efforts I have made since then have been little better than mere
outbreaks of despair. They have done nothing to help me against the
passion that has become the one feeling and the one misery of my life.
Don't talk of resistance. All resistance stops at a certain point. Since
the time I have told you of, _my_ resistance has reached its limits. You
have heard how I struggled against temptation, as long as I could resist
it. I have only to tell you how I have yielded to it now."
The reckless, shameless composure with which he said that, began to set
me against him once more. The perpetual shifts and contradictions in him,
bewildered and irritated me. Quicksilver itself seemed to be less
slippery to lay hold of than this man.
"Do you remember the day," he asked, "when Lucilla lost her temper, and
received you so rudely at your visit to Browndown?"