Chapter 15

"I agree with you--though I _am_ the most opinionated man living. The chances now seem to me to be all in Oscar's favor, Lucilla's antipathy is not what I feared it was--an antipathy firmly rooted in a constitutional malady. It is nothing more serious," said Nugent, deciding the question, at once and for ever, with the air of a man profoundly versed in physiology--"it is nothing more serious than a fanciful growth, a morbid accident, of her blindness. She may live to get over it--she would, I believe, certainly get over it, if she could see. In two words, after what I have found out this morning, I say as you say--Oscar is making a mountain out of a molehill. He ought to have put himself right with Lucilla long since. I have unbounded influence over him. It shall back your influence. Oscar shall make a clean breast of it, before the week is out."

We shook hands on that bargain. As I looked at him--bright and dashing and resolute; Oscar, as I had always wished Oscar to be--I own to my shame I privately regretted that we had not met Nugent in the twilight, on that evening of ours which had opened to Lucilla the gates of a new life.

Having said to each other all that we had to say--our two lovers being away together at the time, for a walk on the hills--we separated, as I then supposed, for the rest of the day. Nugent went to the inn, to look at a stable which he proposed converting into a studio: no room at Browndown being half large enough, for the first prodigious picture with which the "Grand Consoler" in Art proposed to astonish the world. As for me, having nothing particular to do, I went out to see if I could meet Oscar and Lucilla on their return from their walk.

Failing to find them, I strolled back by way of Browndown. Nugent was sitting alone on the low wall in front of the house, smoking a cigar. He rose and came to meet me, with his finger placed mysteriously on his lips.

"You mustn't come in," he said; "you mustn't speak loud enough to be heard." He pointed round the corner of the house to the little room at the side, already familiar to you in these pages. "Oscar and Lucilla are shut up together there. And Oscar is making his confession to her at this moment!"

I lifted my hands and eyes in astonishment. Nugent went on.

"I see you want to know how it has all come about. You shall know.--While I was looking at the stable (it isn't half big enough for a studio for Me!), Oscar's servant brought me a little pencil note, entreating me, in Oscar's name, to go to him directly at Browndown. I found him waiting out here, dreadfully agitated. He cautioned me (just as I have cautioned you) not to speak loud. For the same reason too. Lucilla was in the house----"

"I thought they had gone out for a walk," I interposed.

"They did go out for a walk. But Lucilla complained of fatigue; and Oscar brought her back to Browndown to rest. Well! I inquired what was the matter. The answer informed me that the secret of Oscar's complexion had forced its way out for the second time, in Lucilla's hearing."

"Jicks again!" I exclaimed.

"No--not Jicks. Oscar's own man-servant, this time."

"How did it happen?"

"It happened through one of the boys in the village. Oscar and Lucilla found the little imp howling outside the house. They asked what was the matter. The imp told them that the servant at Browndown had beaten him. Lucilla was indignant. She insisted on having the thing inquired into. Oscar left her in the drawing-room (unluckily, as it turned out, without shutting the door); called the man up into the passage, and asked what he meant by ill-using the boy. The man answered, 'I boxed his ears, sir, as an example to the rest of them.' 'What did he do?' 'Rapped at the door, sir, with a stick (he is not the first who has done it when you are out); and asked if Blue Face was at home.' Lucilla heard every word of it, through the open door. Need I tell you what happened next?"

It was quite needless to relate that part of the story. I remembered too well what had happened on the former occasion, in the garden. I saw too plainly that Lucilla must have connected the two occurrences in her mind, and must have had her ready suspicion roused to serious action, as the necessary result.

"I understand," I said. "Of course, she insisted on an explanation. Of course, Oscar compromised himself by a clumsy excuse, and wanted you to help him. What did you do?"

"What I told you I should do this morning. He had counted confidently on my taking his side--it was pitiable to see him, poor fellow! Still, for his own sake, I refused to yield. I left him the choice of giving her the true explanation himself, or of leaving me to do it. There wasn't a moment to lose; she was in no humour to be trifled with, I can tell you! Oscar behaved very well about it--he always behaves well when I drive him into a corner! In one word, he was man enough to feel that he was the right person to make a clean breast of it--not I. I gave the poor old boy a hug to encourage him, pushed him into the room, shut the door on him, and came out here. He ought to have done it by this time. He _has_ done it! Here he comes!"

Oscar ran out, bareheaded, from the house. There were signs of disturbance in him, as he approached us, which warned me that something had gone wrong, before he opened his lips.

Nugent spoke first.

"What's amiss now?" he asked. "Have you told her the truth?"

"I have tried to tell her the truth."

"Tried? What do you mean?"

Oscar put his arm round his brother's neck, and laid his head on his brother's shoulder, without answering one word.

I put a question to him on my side.

"Did Lucilla refuse to listen to you?" I asked.

"No."

"Has she said anything or done anything----?"

He lifted his head from his brother's shoulder, and stopped me before I could finish the sentence.

"You need feel no anxiety about Lucilla. Lucilla's curiosity is satisfied."

Nugent and I gazed at one another, in complete bewilderment. Lucilla had heard it all; Lucilla's curiosity was satisfied. He had that incredibly happy result to communicate to us--and he announced it with a look of humiliation, in a tone of despair! Nugent's patience gave way.

"Let us have an end of this mystification," he said, putting Oscar back from him, sharply, at arm's length. "I want a plain answer to a plain question. She knows that the boy knocked at the door, and asked if Blue Face was at home. Does she know what the boy's impudence meant? Yes? or No?"

"Yes."

"Does she know that it is you who are Blue Face?"

"No."

"No!!! Who else does she think it is?"

As he asked the question, Lucilla appeared at the door of the house. She moved her blind face inquiringly first one way, then the other. "Oscar!" she called out, "why have you left me alone? where are you?"

Oscar turned, trembling, to his brother.

"For God's sake forgive me, Nugent!" he said. "She thinks it's YOU."

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH

He proves Equal to the Occasion

AT that astounding confession, abruptly revealed in those plain words, even resolute Nugent lost all power of self-control. He burst out with a cry which reached Lucilla's ears. She instantly turned towards us, and instantly assumed that the cry had come from Oscar's lips.

"Ah! there you are!" she exclaimed. "Oscar! Oscar! what is the matter with you to-day?"

Oscar was incapable of answering her. He had cast one glance of entreaty at his brother as Lucilla came nearer to us. The mute reproach which had answered him, in Nugent's eyes, had broken down his last reserves of endurance. He was crying silently on Nugent's breast.

It was necessary that one of us should make his, or her, voice heard. I spoke first.

"Nothing is the matter, my dear," I said, advancing to meet Lucilla. "We were passing the house, and Oscar ran out to stop us and bring us in."

My excuses roused a new alarm in her.

"Us?" she repeated. "Who is with you?"

"Nugent is with me."

The result of the deplorable misunderstanding which had taken place, instantly declared itself. She turned deadly pale under the horror of feeling that she was in the presence of the man with the blue face.

"Take me near enough to speak to him, but not to touch him," she whispered. "I have heard what he is like. (Oh, if you saw him, as I see him, _in the dark!_) I must control myself. I must speak to Oscar's brother, for Oscar's sake."

She seized my arm and held me close to her. What ought I to have said? What ought I to have done? I neither knew what to say or what to do. I looked from Lucilla to the twin brothers. There was Oscar the Weak, overwhelmed by the humiliating position in which he had placed himself towards the woman whom he was to marry, towards the brother whom he loved! And there was Nugent the Strong, master of himself; with his arm round his brother, with his head erect, with his hand signing to me to keep silence. He was right. I had only to look back at Lucilla's face to see that the delicate and perilous work of undeceiving her, was not work to be done at a moment's notice, on the spot.

"You are not yourself to-day," I said to her. "Let us go home."

"No!" she answered. "I must accustom myself to speak to him. I will begin to-day. Take me to him--but don't let him touch me!"

Nugent disengaged himself from Oscar--whose unfitness to help us through our difficulties was too manifest to be mistaken--as he saw us approaching. He pointed to the low wall in front of the house, and motioned to his brother to wait there out of the way before Lucilla could speak to him again. The wisdom of this proceeding was not long in asserting itself. Lucilla asked for Oscar the moment after he had left us. Nugent answered that Oscar had gone back to the house to get his hat.

The sound of Nugent's voice helped her to calculate her distance from him without assistance from me. Still holding my arm, she stopped and spoke to him.

"Nugent," she said, "I have made Oscar tell me--what he ought to have told me long since." (She paused between each sentence; painfully controlling herself, painfully catching her breath.) "He has discovered a foolish antipathy of mine. I don't know how; I tried to keep it a secret from him. I need not tell you what it is."

She made a longer pause at those words, holding me closer and closer to her; struggling more and more painfully against the irresistible nervous loathing that had got possession of her.

He listened, on his side, with the constraint which always fell upon him in her presence more marked than ever. His eyes were on the ground. He seemed reluctant even to look at her.

"I think I understand," she went on, "why Oscar was unwilling to tell me----" she stopped, at a loss how to express herself without running the risk of hurting his feelings--"to tell me," she resumed, "what it is in you which is not like other people. He was afraid my stupid weakness might prejudice me against you. I wish to say that I won't let it do that. I never was more ashamed of it than now. I, too, have my misfortune. I ought to sympathize with you, instead of----"

Her voice had been growing fainter and fainter as she proceeded. She leaned against me heavily. One glance at her told me that if I let it go on any longer she would fall into a swoon. "Tell your brother that we have gone back to the rectory," I said to Nugent. He looked up at Lucilla for the first time.

"You are right," he answered. "Take her home." He repeated the sign by which he had already hinted to me to be silent--and joined Oscar at the wall in front of the house.

"Has he gone?" she asked.

"He has gone."

The moisture stood thick on her forehead. I passed my handkerchief over her face, and turned her towards the wind.

"Are you better now?"

"Yes."

"Can you walk home?"

"Easily."

I put her arm in mine. After advancing with me a few steps, she suddenly stopped--with a blind apprehension, as it seemed, of something in front of her. She lifted her little walking-cane, and moved it slowly backwards and forwards in the empty air, with the action of some one who is clearing away an encumbrance to a free advance--say the action of a person walking in a thick wood, and pushing aside the lower twigs and branches that intercept the way.

"What are you about?" I asked.

"Clearing the air," she answered. "The air is full of him. I am in a forest of hovering figures, with faces of black-blue. Give me your arm. Come through!"

"Lucilla!"

"Don't be angry with me. I am coming to my senses again. Nobody knows what folly, what madness it is, better than I do. I have a will of my own: suffer as I may, I promise to break myself of it this time. I can't, and won't let Oscar's brother see that he is an object of horror to me." She stopped once more, and gave me a little propitiatory kiss. "Blame my blindness, dear, don't blame _me._ If I could only see--! Ah, how can I make you understand me, you who don't live in the dark?" She went on a few paces, silent and thoughtful--and then spoke again. "You won't laugh at me, if I say something?"

"You know I won't."

"Suppose yourself to be in bed at night."

"Yes?"

"I have heard people say that they have sometimes woke in the middle of the night, on a sudden, without any noise to disturb them. And they have fancied (without anything particular to justify it) that there was something, or somebody, in the dark room. Has that ever happened to you?"

"Certainly, my love.--It has happened to most people to fancy what you say, when their nerves are a little out of order."

"Very well. There is _my_ fancy, and there are _my_ nerves. When it happened to you, what did you do?"

"I struck a light, and satisfied myself that I was wrong."

"Suppose yourself without candle or matches, in a night without end, left alone with your fancy in the dark. There you have Me! It would not be easy, would it, to satisfy yourself; if you were in that helpless condition? You might suffer under it--very unreasonably--and yet very keenly for all that." She lifted her little cane, with a sad smile. "You might be almost as great a fool as poor Lucilla, and clear the air before you with this!"

The charm of her voice and her manner, added to the touching simplicity, the pathetic truth of those words. She made me realize, as I had never realized before, what it is to have, at one and the same time, the blessing of imagination, and the curse of blindness. For a moment, I was absorbed in my admiration and my love for her. For a moment, I forgot the terrible position in which we were all placed. She unconsciously recalled it to me when she spoke next.

"Perhaps I was wrong to force the truth out of Oscar?" she said, putting her arm again in mine, and walking on. "I might have reconciled myself to his brother, if I had never known what his brother was like. And yet I felt there was something strange in him, without being told, and without knowing what it was. There must have been a reason in me for the dislike that I felt for him from the first."

Those words appeared to me to indicate the state of mind which had led to Lucilla's deplorable mistake. I cautiously put some questions to her to test the correctness of my own idea.

"You spoke just now of forcing the truth out of Oscar," I said, "What made you suspect that he was concealing the truth from you?"

"He was so strangely embarrassed and confused," she answered. "Anybody in my place would have suspected him of concealing the truth."

So far the answer was conclusive.

"And how came you to find out what the truth really was?" I asked next.

"I guessed at it," she replied, "from something he said in referring to his brother. You know that I took a fanciful dislike to Nugent Dubourg before he came to Dimchurch?"

"Yes."

"And you remember that my prejudice against him was confirmed, on the first day when I passed my hand over his face to compare it with his brother's."

"I remember."

"Well--while Oscar was rambling and contradicting himself--he said something (a mere trifle) which suggested to me that the person with the blue face must be his brother. There was the explanation that I had sought for in vain--the explanation of my persistent dislike to Nugent! That horrid dark face of his must have produced some influence on me when I first touched it, like the influence which your horrid purple dress produced on me, when I first touched _that._ Don't you see?"

I saw but too plainly. Oscar had been indebted for his escape from discovery entirely to Lucilla's misinterpretation of his language. And Lucilla's misinterpretation now stood revealed as the natural product of her anxiety to account for her prejudice against Nugent Dubourg. Although the mischief had been done--still, for the quieting of my own conscience, I made an attempt to shake her faith in the false conclusion at which she had arrived.

"There is one thing I don't see yet," I said. "I don't understand Oscar's embarrassment in speaking to you. As you interpret him, what had he to be afraid of?"

She smiled satirically.

"What has become of your memory, my dear?" she asked. "What were you afraid of? You certainly never said a word to me of this poor man's deformity. You felt yourself, I suppose, (just as Oscar felt himself), placed between a choice of difficulties. On one side, my dislike of dark colors and dark people warned Oscar to hold his tongue. On the other, my hatred of having advantage taken of my blindness to keep things secret from me, pressed him to speak out. Isn't that enough--with his shy disposition, poor fellow--to account for his being embarrassed? Besides," she added, speaking more seriously, "perhaps he saw in my manner towards him that he had disappointed and pained me."

"How?" I asked.

"Don't you remember his once acknowledging in the garden that he had painted his face in the character of Bluebeard, to amuse the children? It was not delicate, it was not affectionate--it was not like him--to show such insensibility as that to his brother's shocking disfigurement. He ought to have remembered it, he ought to have respected it. There! we will say no more. We will go indoors and open the piano and try to forget."

Even Oscar's clumsy excuse in the garden--instead of confirming her suspicion--had lent itself to strengthen the foregone conclusion rooted in her mind! At that critical moment--before I had consulted with the twin-brothers as to what was to be done next--it was impossible to say more. I felt seriously alarmed when I thought of the future. When she was told--as told she must be--of the dreadful delusion into which she had fallen, what would be the result to Oscar? what would be the effect on herself? I own I shrank from pursuing the inquiry.

When we reached the turn in the valley, I looked back at Browndown for the last time. The twin-brothers were still in the place at which we had left them. Though the faces were indistinguishable, I could still see the figures plainly--Oscar sitting crouched up on the wall; Nugent erect at his side, with one hand laid on his shoulder. Even at that distance, the types of the two characters were expressed in the attitudes of the two men. As we entered the new winding of the valley which shut them out from view, I felt (so easy is it to comfort a woman!) that the commanding position of Nugent had produced its encouraging impression on my mind. "He will find a way out of it," I said to myself, "Nugent will help us through!"

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH

He finds a Way out of it

WE sat down at the piano, as Lucilla had proposed. She wished me to play first, and to play alone. I was teaching her, at the time, one of the _Sonatas_ of Mozart; and I now tried to go on with the lesson. Never before, or since, have I played so badly, as on that day! The divine serenity and completeness by which Mozart's music is, to my mind, raised above all other music that ever was written, can only be worthily interpreted by a player whose whole mind is given undividedly to the work. Devoured as I then was by my own anxieties, I might profane those heavenly melodies--I could not play them. Lucilla accepted my excuses, and took my place.

Half an hour passed, without news from Browndown.

Calculated by reference to itself, half an hour is no doubt a short space of time. Calculated by reference to your own suspense, while your own interests are at stake, half an hour is an eternity. Every minute that passed, leaving Lucilla still undisturbed in her delusion, was a minute that pricked me in the conscience. The longer we left her in ignorance, the more painful to all of us the hard duty of enlightening her would become. I began to get restless. Lucilla, on her side, began to complain of fatigue. After the agitation that she had gone through, the inevitable reaction had come. I recommended her to go to her room and rest. She took my advice. In the state of my mind at that time, it was an inexpressible relief to me to be left by myself.

After pacing backwards and forwards for some little time in the sitting-room, and trying vainly to see my way through the difficulties that now beset us, I made up my mind to wait no longer for the news that never came. The brothers were still at Browndown. To Browndown I determined to return.

I peeped quietly into Lucilla's room. She was asleep. After a word to Zillah, recommending her young mistress to her care, I slipped out. As I crossed the lawn, I heard the garden-gate opened. In a minute more, the man of all others whom I most wanted to see, presented himself before me, in the person of Nugent Dubourg. He had borrowed Oscar's key, and had set off alone for the rectory to tell me what had passed between his brother and himself.

"This is the first stroke of luck that has fallen to me to-day," he said. "I was wondering how I should contrive to speak to you privately. And here you are--accessible and alone. Where is Lucilla? Can we depend on having the garden to ourselves?"

I satisfied him on both those points. He looked sadly pale and worn. Before he opened his lips, I saw that he too had had his mind disturbed, and his patience tried, since I had left him. There was a summer-house at the end of the garden with a view over the breezy solitude of the Downs. Here we established ourselves; and here, in my headlong way, I opened the interview with the one formidable question:--"Who is to tell her of the mistake she has made?"

"Nobody is to tell her."

That answer staggered me at the outset. I looked at Nugent in silent astonishment.

"There is nothing to be surprised at," he said. "Let me put my point of view before you in two words. I have had a serious talk with Oscar--"

Women are proverbially bad listeners--and I am no better than the rest of them. I interrupted him, before he could get any farther.

"I suppose Oscar has told you how the mistake happened?" I said.