Afternoon Tea Mysteries [Vol Three]

by Anthology

  “Surely Oscar has left some address at which I can write to him?” she said.

  I could only answer that he was not sure enough of his movements to be able to do that before he went away.

  “It is more provoking than you think,” she went on. “I believe Oscar is afraid to bring his unfortunate brother into my presence. The blue face startled me when I saw it, I know. But I have quite got over that. I feel none of the absurd terror of the poor man which I felt when I was blind. Now that I have seen for myself what he is really like, I can feel for him. I wanted to tell Oscar this—I wanted to say that he might bring his brother to live with us if he liked—I wanted to prevent (just what has happened,) his going away from me when he wishes to see his brother. You are using me very hardly among you; and I have some reason to complain of it.”

  While she was talking in this mortifying manner, I felt some consolation nevertheless. Oscar’s disfigured complexion would not be the terrible obstacle in the way of his restoration to Lucilla that I had feared. All the comfort which this reflection could give, I wanted badly enough. There was no open hostility towards me on Lucilla’s part—but there was a coolness which I found more distressing to bear than hostility itself. I breakfasted in bed the next morning, and only rose towards noon—just in time to say good-bye to Grosse before he returned to London.

  He was in high good spirits about his patient. Her eyes were the better instead of the worse for the exertion to which he had subjected them on the previous day. The bracing air of Ramsgate was all that was wanting to complete the success of the operation. Mr. Finch had started objections, all turning on the question of expense. But with a daughter who was her own mistress, and who had her own fortune, his objections mattered nothing. By the next day, or the day after at latest, we were to start for Ramsgate. I promised to write to our good surgeon as soon as we were established; and he engaged on his side, to visit us immediately after. “Let her use her eyes for two goot hours every day,” said Grosse, at parting. “She may do what she likes with them—except that she must not peep into books, or take up pens, till I come to you at Ramsgate. It is most wonderful-beautiful to see how those new eyes of hers do get along. When I next meet goot Mr. Sebrights—hey! how I shall cock-crow over that spick-span respectable man!”

  I felt a little nervous as to how the day would pass—when the German left me alone with Lucilla.

  To my amazement, she not only met me with the needful excuses for her behaviour on the previous day, but showed herself to be perfectly resigned to the temporary loss of Oscar’s society. It was she (not I) who remarked that he could not have chosen a better time for being away from her, than the humiliating time when she was learning to distinguish between round and square. It was she (not I) who welcomed the little journey to Ramsgate as a pleasant change in her dull life, which would help to reconcile her to Oscar’s absence. In brief, if she had actually received a letter from Oscar, relieving her of all anxiety about him, her words and looks could hardly have offered a completer contrast than they now showed to her words and looks of the previous day.

  If I had noticed no other alteration in her than this welcome change for the better, my record of the day would have ended here, as the record of unmixed happiness.

  But, I grieve to say, I have something unpleasant to add. While she was making her excuses to me, and speaking in the sensible and satisfactory terms which I have just repeated, I noticed a curious underlying embarrassment in her manner, entirely unlike any previous embarrassment which had ever intruded itself between us. And, stranger still, on the first occasion when Zillah came into the room, while I was in it, I observed that Lucilla’s embarrassment was reflected (when the old woman spoke to me) in the face and manner of Lucilla’s nurse.

  But one conclusion could possibly follow from what I saw:—they were both concealing something from me; and they were both more or less ashamed of what they were doing.

  Somewhere—not very far back in these pages—I have said of myself that I am not by nature a woman who is easily ready to suspect others. On this very account, when I find suspicion absolutely forced on me—as it was now—I am apt to fly into the opposite extreme. In the present case, I fixed on the person to suspect—all the more readily from having been slow to suspect him in bygone days. “In some way or other,” I said to myself, “Nugent Dubourg is at the bottom of this.”

  Was he communicating with her privately, in the name and in the character of Oscar?

  The bare idea of it hurried me headlong into letting her know that I had noticed the change in her.

  “Lucilla!” I said. “Has anything happened?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked coldly.

  “I fancy I see some change——” I began.

  “I don’t understand you,” she answered, walking away from me as she spoke.

  I said no more. If our intimacy had been less close and less affectionate, I might have openly avowed to her what was passing in my mind. But how could I say to Lucilla, You are deceiving me? It would have been the end of our sisterhood—the end of our friendship. When confidence is withdrawn between two people who love each other—everything is withdrawn. They are on the footing of strangers from that moment, and must stand on ceremony. Delicate minds will understand why I accepted the check she had administered to me, and said no more.

  I went into the village alone. Managing matters so as to excite no surprise, I contrived to have a little gossip about Nugent with Gootheridge at the inn, and with the servant at Browndown. If Nugent had returned secretly to Dimchurch, one of those two men, in our little village, must almost certainly have seen him. Neither of them had seen him.

  I inferred from this that he had not tried to communicate with her personally. Had he attempted it (more cunningly and more safely) by letter?

  I went back to the rectory. It was close on the hour which I had appointed with Lucilla—now that the responsibility rested on my shoulders—for allowing her to use her eyes. On taking off the bandage, I noticed a circumstance which confirmed the conclusion at which I had already arrived. Her eyes deliberately avoided looking into mine. Suppressing as well as I could the pain which this new discovery caused me, I repeated Grosse’s words, prohibiting her from attempting to look into a book, or to use a pen, until he had seen her again.

  “There is no need for him to forbid me to do that,” she said.

  “Have you attempted it already?” I inquired.

  “I looked into a little book of engravings,” she answered. “But I could distinguish nothing. The lines all mingled together and swam before my eyes.”

  “Have you tried to write?” I asked next. (I was ashamed of myself for laying that trap for her—although the serious necessity of discovering whether she was privately in correspondence with Nugent, might surely have excused it?)

  “No,” she replied. “I have not tried to write.”

  She changed color when she made that answer. It is necessary to own that, in putting my question, I was too much excited to call to mind, what I should have remembered in a calmer state. There was no necessity for her trying to use her eyes—even if she was really carrying on a correspondence which she wished to keep secret from me. Zillah had been in the habit of reading her letters to her, before I appeared at the rectory; and she could write short notes (as I have already mentioned) by feeling her way on the paper with her finger. Besides, having learnt to read by touch (that is to say with raised characters), just as she had learnt to write—even if her eyes had been sufficiently recovered to enable her to distinguish small objects, nothing but practice could have taught her to use them for purposes of correspondence.

  These considerations, though they did not strike me at the time, occurred to me later in the day, and altered my opinion to a certain extent. I now interpreted the change of color which I had noticed in her as the outward sign of suspicion on her side—suspicion that I had a motive of my own in interrogating her. For the rest, my doubts of Nugent remaine
d unmoved. Try as I might, I could not divest my mind of the idea that he was playing me false, and that in one way or another he had contrived, not only to communicate with Lucilla, but to persuade her to keep me in ignorance of what he had done.

  I deferred to the next day any attempt at making further discoveries.

  The last thing at night, I had a momentary impulse to question Zillah. Reflection soon checked it. My experience of the nurse’s character told me that she would take refuge in flat denial—and would then inform her mistress of what had happened. I knew enough of Lucilla to know (after what had already passed between us) that a quarrel with me would follow. Things were bad enough already, without making them worse in that way. When the morning came, I resolved to keep a watchful eye on the village post-office, and on the movements of the nurse.

  When the morning came, there was a letter for me from abroad.

  The address was in the handwriting of one of my sisters. We usually wrote to each other at intervals of a fortnight or three weeks. This letter had followed its predecessor after an interval of less than one week. What did it mean? Good news or bad?

  I opened the letter.

  It enclosed a telegram, announcing that my poor dear father was lying dangerously wounded at Marseilles. My sisters had already gone to him: they implored me to follow them without one moment of needless delay. Is it necessary to tell the story of this horrible calamity? Of course it begins with a woman and an elopement. Of course it ends with a young man and a duel. Have I not told you already?—Papa was so susceptible; Papa was so brave. Oh, dear, dear! the old story over again. You have an English proverb: “What is bred in the bone—” etcetera, etcetera. Let us drop the veil. I mean, let us end the chapter.

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST

  A Hard Time for Madame Pratolungo

  OUGHT I to have been prepared for the calamity which had now fallen on my sisters and myself? If I had looked my own experience of my poor father fairly in the face, would it not have been plain to me that the habits of a life were not likely to be altered at the end of a life? Surely—if I had exerted my intelligence—I might have foreseen that the longer his reformation lasted, the nearer he was to a relapse, and the more obviously probable it became that he would fail to fulfil the hopeful expectations which I had cherished of his conduct in the future? I grant it all. But where are the pattern people who can exert their intelligence—when their intelligence points to one conclusion, and their interests to another? Ah, my dear ladies and gentlemen, there is such a fine strong foundation of stupidity at the bottom of our common humanity—if we only knew it!

  I could feel no hesitation—as soon as I had recovered myself—about what it was my duty to do. My duty was to leave Dimchurch in time to catch the fast mail-train from London to the Continent, at eight o’clock that night.

  And leave Lucilla?

  Yes! not even Lucilla’s interests—dearly as I loved her; alarmed as I felt about her—were as sacred as the interests which called me to my father’s bedside. I had some hours to spare before it would be necessary for me to leave her. All I could do was to employ those hours in taking the strictest precautions I could think of to protect her in my absence. I could not be long parted from her. One way or the other, the miserable doubt whether my father would live or die, would, at his age, soon be over.

  I sent for her to see me in my room, and showed her my letter.

  She was honestly grieved when she read it. For a moment—when she spoke her few words of sympathy—the painful constraint in her manner towards me passed away. It returned again, when I announced my intention of starting for France that day, and expressed the regret I felt at being obliged to defer our visit to Ramsgate for the present. She not only answered restrainedly (forming, as I fancied, some thought at the moment in her own mind)—she left me, with a commonplace excuse. “You must have much to think of in this sad affliction: I won’t intrude on you any longer. If you want me, you know where to find me.” With no more than those words, she walked out of the room.

  I never remember, at any other time, such a sense of helplessness and confusion as came over me when she had closed the door. I set to work to pack up the few things I wanted for the journey; feeling instinctively that if I did not occupy myself in doing something, I should break down altogether. Accustomed in all the other emergencies of my life, to decide rapidly, I was not even clear enough in my mind to see the facts as they were. As to resolving on anything, I was about as capable of doing that as the baby in Mrs. Finch’s arms.

  The effort of packing aided me to rally a little—but did no more towards restoring me to my customary tone of mind.

  I sat down helplessly, when I had done; feeling the serious necessity of clearing matters up between Lucilla and myself, before I went away, and still as ignorant as ever how to do it. To my own indescribable disgust, I actually felt tears beginning to find their way into my eyes! I had just enough of Pratolungo’s widow left in me to feel heartily ashamed of myself. Past vicissitudes and dangers, in the days of my republican life with my husband, had made me a sturdy walker—with a gypsy relish (like my little Jicks) for the open air. I snatched up my hat, and went out, to see what exercise would do for me.

  I tried the garden. No! the garden was (for some inscrutable reason) not big enough. I had still some hours to spare. I tried the hills next.

  Turning towards the left, and passing the church, I heard through the open windows the boom-boom of Reverend Finch’s voice, catechizing the village children. Thank Heaven, he was out of my way at any rate! I mounted the hills, hurrying on as fast as I could. The air and the movement cleared my mind. After more than an hour of hard walking, I returned to the rectory, feeling like my old self again.

  Perhaps, there were some dregs of irresolution still left in me. Or, perhaps, there was some enervating influence in my affliction, which made me feel more sensitively than ever the change in the relations between Lucilla and myself. Having, by this time, resolved to come to a plain explanation, before I left her unprotected at the rectory, I shrank, even yet, from confronting a possible repulse, by speaking to her personally. Taking a leaf out of poor Oscar’s book, I wrote what I wanted to say to her in a note.

  I rang the bell—once, twice. Nobody answered it.

  I went to the kitchen. Zillah was not there. I knocked at the door of her bed-room. There was no answer: the bed-room was empty when I looked in. Awkward as it would be, I found myself obliged, either to give my note to Lucilla with my own hand, or to decide on speaking to her, after all.

  I could not prevail on myself to speak to her. So I went to her room with my note, and knocked at the door.

  Here again there was no reply. I knocked once more—with the same result. I looked in. There was no one in the room. On the little table at the foot of the bed, there lay a letter addressed to me. The writing was in Zillah’s hand. But Lucilla had written her name in the corner in the usual way, to show that she had dictated the letter to her nurse. A load was lifted off my heart as I took it up. The same idea (I concluded) had occurred to her which had occurred to me. She too had shrunk from the embarrassment of a personal explanation. She too had written—and was keeping out of the way until her letter had spoken for her, and had united us again as friends before I left the house.

  With these pleasant anticipations, I opened the letter. Judge what I felt when I found what it really contained.

  “DEAR MADAME PRATOLUNGO,—You will agree with me, that it is very important, after what Herr Grosse has said about the recovery of my sight, that my visit to Ramsgate should not be delayed. As you are unable, through circumstances which I sincerely regret, to accompany me to the sea-side, I have determined to go to London to my aunt, Miss Batchford, and to ask her to be my companion instead of you. I have had experience enough of her sincere affection for me to be quite sure that she will gladly take the charge of me off your hands. As no time is to be lost, I start for London without waiting for your return from your walk to
wish you good-bye. You so thoroughly understand the necessity of dispensing with formal farewells, in cases of emergency, that I am sure you will not feel offended at my taking leave of you in this way. With best wishes for your father’s recovery, believe me,

  “Yours very truly,

  “LUCILLA.

  “P. S.—You need be under no apprehension about me. Zillah goes with me as far as London; and I shall communicate with Herr Grosse when I arrive at my aunt’s house.”

  But for one sentence in it, I should most assuredly have answered this cruel letter by instantly resigning my situation as Lucilla’s companion.

  The sentence to which I refer, contained the words which cast in my teeth the excuses that I had made for Oscar’s absence. The sarcastic reference to my recent connection with a case of emergency, and to my experience of the necessity of dispensing with formal farewells, removed my last lingering doubts of Nugent’s treachery. I now felt, not suspicion only, but positive conviction that he had communicated with her in his brother’s name, and that he had contrived (by some means at which it was impossible for me to guess) so to work on Lucilla’s mind—so to excite that indwelling distrust which her blindness had rooted in her character—as to destroy her confidence in me for the time being.