Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (838 page)

“Of course I believe you!” I answered. “It is useless to dispute the surgeon’s orders at such a time as this.”

With that, I left him; showing just as much annoyance as an unsuspecting woman, in my position, might have naturally betrayed — and no more. Knowing, as I did, what was going on under the surface, I understood only too plainly what had happened. Nugent had caught at the opportunity which the surgeon had innocently offered to him, as a means of misleading Lucilla at the moment, and (possibly) of taking some base advantage of her afterwards. I trembled inwardly with rage and fear, as I turned my back on him. Our one chance was to make sure of his absence, at the critical moment — and, cudgel my brains as I might, how to reach that end successfully was more than I could see.

When I returned to the other persons in the room, Oscar and Lucilla were still occupying the same positions. Mr. Finch had presented himself (at full length) to Herr Grosse. And Jicks was established on a stool in a corner: devouring a rampant horse, carved in bilious-yellow German gingerbread, with a voracious relish wonderful and terrible to see.

“Ah, my goot Madame Pratolungo!” said Herr Grosse, stopping on his way to Lucilla to shake hands with me. “Have you made anodder lofely Mayonnaise? I have come on purpose with an empty-stomachs, and a wolf’s-appetite in fine order. Look at that little Imps,” he went on, pointing to Jicks. “Ach Gott! I believe I am in lofe with her. I have sent all the ways to Germany for gingerbreads for Jick. Aha, you Jick! does it stick in your tooths? Is it nice-clammy-sweet?” He glared benevolently at the child through his spectacles; and tucked my hand sentimentally into the breast of his waistcoat. “Promise me a child like adorable Jick,” he said solemnly, “I will marry the first wife you bring me — nice womans, nasty womans, I don’t care which. Soh! there is my domestic sentiments laid bare before you. Enough of that. Now for my pretty-Feench! Come-begin-begin!”

He crossed the room to Lucilla, and called to Nugent to follow him.

“Open the shutters,” he said. “Light-light-light, and plenty of him, for my lofely Feench!”

Nugent opened the shutters, beginning with the lower window, and ending with the window at which Lucilla was sitting. Acting on this plan, he had only to wait where he was, to place himself close by her — to be the first object she saw. He did it. The villain did it. I stepped forward, determined to interfere — and stopped, not knowing what to say or do. I could have beaten my own stupid brains out against the wall. There stood Nugent right before her, as the surgeon turned his patient towards the window. And not the ghost of an idea came to me!

The German stretched out his hairy hands, and took hold of the knot of the bandage to undo it.

Lucilla trembled from head to foot.

Herr Grosse hesitated — looked at her — let go of the bandage-and lifting one of her hands, laid his fingers on her pulse.

In the moment of silence that followed, I had one of my inspirations. The missing idea turned up in my brains at last.

“Soh!” cried Grosse, dropping her hand with a sudden outbreak of annoyance and surprise. “Who has been frightening my pretty Feench? Why these cold trembles? these sinking pulses? Some of you tell me — what does it mean?”

Here was my opportunity! I tried my idea on the spot.

“It means,” I said, “that there are too many people in this room. We confuse her, and frighten her. Take her into her bedroom, Herr Grosse; and only let the rest of us in, when you think right — one at a time.”

Our excellent surgeon instantly seized on my idea, and made it his own.

“You are a phenix among womens,” he said, paternally patting me on the shoulder. “Which is most perfectest, your advice or your Mayonnaise, I am at a loss to know.” He turned to Lucilla, and raised her gently from her chair. “Come into your own rooms with me, my poor little Feench. I shall see if I dare take off your bandages to-day.”

Lucilla clasped her hands entreatingly.

“You promised!” she said. “Oh, Herr Grosse, you promised to let me use my eyes to-day!”

“Answer me this!” retorted the German. “Did I know, when I promised, that I should find you all shaky-pale, as white as my shirts when he comes back from the wash?”

“I am quite myself again,” she pleaded faintly. “I am quite fit to have the bandage taken off.”

“What! you know better than I do? Which of us is surgeon-optic — you or me? No more of this. Come under my arms! Come into the odder rooms!”

He put her arm in his, and walked with her to the door. There, her variable humour suddenly changed. She rallied on the instant. Her face flushed; her courage came back. To my horror, she snatched her arm away from the surgeon, and refused to leave the room.

“No!” she said. “I am quite composed again; I claim your promise. Examine me here. I must and will have my first look at Oscar in this room.”

(I was afraid — literally afraid — to turn my eyes Oscar’s way. I glanced at Nugent instead. There was a devilish smile on his face that it nearly drove me mad to see.)

“You must and weel?” repeated Grosse. “Now, mind!” He took out his watch. “I give you one little minutes, to think in. If you don’t come with me in that time, you shall find it is I who must and weel. Now!”

“Why do you object to go into your room?” I asked.

“Because I want everybody to see me,” she answered. “How many of you are there here?”

“There are five of us. Mr. and Mrs. Finch; Mr. Nugent Dubourg; Oscar, and myself.”

“I wish there were five hundred of you, instead of five?” she burst out.

“Why?”

“Because you would see me pick out Oscar from all the rest, the instant the bandage was off my eyes!”

Still holding to her own fatal conviction that the image in her mind of Oscar was the right one! For the second time, though I felt the longing in me to look at him, I shrank from doing it.

Herr Grosse put his watch back in his pocket.

“The minutes is passed,” he said. “Will you come into the odder rooms? Will you understand that I cannot properly examine you before all these peoples? Say, my lofely Feench — Yes? or No?”

“No!” she cried obstinately, with a childish stamp of her foot. “I insist on showing everybody that I can pick out Oscar, the moment I open my eyes.”

Herr Grosse buttoned his coat, settled his owlish spectacles firmly on his nose, and took up his hat. “Goot morning,” he said. “I have nothing more to do with you or your eyes. Cure yourself, you little-spitfire-Feench. I am going back to London.”

He opened the door. Even Lucilla was obliged to yield, when the surgeon in attendance on her threatened to throw up the case.

“You brute!” she said indignantly — and took his arm again.

Grosse indulged himself in his diabolical grin. “Wait till you are able to use your eyes, my lofe. Then you will see what a brutes I am!” With those words he took her out.

We were left in the sitting-room, to wait until the surgeon had decided whether he would, or would not, let Lucilla try her sight on that day.

While the others were, in their various ways, all suffering the same uneasy sense of expectation, I was as quiet in my mind as the baby now sleeping in his mother’s arms. Thanks to Grosse’s resolution to act on the hint that I had given to him, I had now made it impossible — even if the bandage was removed on that day — for Nugent to catch Lucilla’s first look when she opened her eyes. Her betrothed husband might certainly, on such a special occasion as this, be admitted into her bed-chamber, in company with her father or with me. But the commonest sense of propriety would dictate the closing of the door on Nugent. In the sitting-room he must wait (if he still persisted in remaining at the rectory) until she was allowed to join him there. I privately resolved, having the control of the matter in my own hands, that this should not happen until Lucilla knew which of the twins was Nugent, and which was Oscar. A delicious inward glow of triumph diffused itself all through me. I resisted the strong temptation that I felt to discover how Nugent bore his defeat. If I had yielded to it, he would have seen in my face that I gloried in having outwitted him. I sat down, the picture of innocence, in the nearest chair, and crossed my hands on my lap, a composed and ladylike person, edifying to see.

The slow minutes followed each other — and still we waited the event in silence. Even Mr. Finch’s tongue was, on this solitary occasion, a tongue incapable of pronouncing a single word. He sat by his wife at one end of the room. Oscar and I were at the other. Nugent stood by himself at one of the windows, deep in his own thoughts, plotting how he could pay me out.

Oscar was the first of the party who broke the silence. After looking all round the room, he suddenly addressed himself to me.

“Madame Pratolungo!” he exclaimed. “What has become of Jicks?”

I had completely forgotten the child. I too looked round the room, and satisfied myself that she had really disappeared. Mrs. Finch, observing our astonishment, timidly enlightened us. The maternal eye had seen Jicks slip out cunningly at Herr Grosse’s heels. The child’s object was plain enough. While there was any probability of the presence of more gingerbread in the surgeon’s pocket, the wandering Arab of the family (as stealthy and as quick as a cat) was certain to keep within reach of her friend. Nobody who knew her could doubt that she had stolen into Lucilla’s bed-chamber, under cover of Herr Grosse’s ample coat-tails.

We had just accounted in this way for the mysterious absence of Jicks, when we heard the bed-chamber door opened, and the surgeon’s voice calling for Zillah. In a minute more the nurse appeared, the bearer of a message from the next room.

We all surrounded her, with one and the same question to ask. What had Herr Grosse decided to do? The answer informed us that he had decided on forbidding Lucilla to try her eyes that day.

“Is she very much disappointed?” Oscar inquired anxiously.

“I can hardly say, sir. She isn’t like herself. I never knew Miss Lucilla so quiet when she was crossed in her wishes, before. When the doctor called me into the room, she said: ‘Go in, Zillah, and tell them.’ Those words, sir, and no more.”

“Did she express no wish to see me?” I inquired.

“No, ma’am. I took the liberty of asking her if she wished to see you. Miss Lucilla shook her head, and sat herself down on the sofa, and made the doctor sit by her. ‘Leave us by ourselves.’ Those were the last words she said to me, before I came in here.”

Reverend Finch put the next question. The Pope of Dimchurch was himself again: the man of many words saw his chance of speaking once more.

“Good woman,” said the rector with ponderous politeness, “step this way. I wish to address an inquiry to you. Did Miss Finch make any remark, in your hearing, indicating a desire to be comforted by My Ministrations — as one bearing the double relation towards her of pastor and parent?”

“I didn’t hear Miss Lucilla say anything to that effect, sir.”

Mr. Finch waved his hand with a look of disgust, intimating that Zillah’s audience was over. Nugent, upon that, came forward, and stopped her as she was leaving the room.

“Have you nothing more to tell us?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Why don’t they come back here? What are they doing in the other room?”

“They were doing what I mentioned just now, sir — they were sitting side by side on the sofa. Miss Lucilla was talking, and the doctor was listening to her. And Jicks,” added Zillah, addressing herself confidentially to me, “was behind them, picking the doctor’s pocket.”

Oscar put in a word there — by no means in his most gracious manner.

“What was Miss Lucilla saying to the doctor?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t know?”

“I couldn’t hear, sir. Miss Lucilla was speaking to him in a whisper.”