Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (846 page)

He took me up sharply at those words.

“You shall judge for yourself,” he said, “if it is not worth the cost. If her eyes satisfy me — Feench shall learn to see to-day. You shall stand by, you obstinate womans, and judge if it is goot to add shock and agitation to the exhaustions and irritabilities and bedevilments of all sorts which our poor Miss must suffer in learning to see, after being blind for all her life. No more of it now, till we get to the rectory-place.” By way of changing the subject for the present, he put a question to me which I felt it necessary to answer with some caution. “How is my nice boys? — my bright-clever Nugent?” he asked.

“Very well.”

There I stopped, not feeling at all sure of the ground I was treading on.

“Mind this!” Grosse went on. “My bright-boy-Nugent keeps her comfortable-easy. My bright-boy-Nugent is worth all the rest of you togedder. I insist on his making his visits to young Miss at the rectory-place, in spite of that windy-talky-puff-bag-Feench-father of hers. I say positively — Nugent shall come into the house.”

There was no help for it now. I was obliged to tell him that Nugent had left Browndown, and that I was the person who had sent him away.

For a moment, I was really in doubt whether the skilled hand of the great surgeon would not be ignobly employed in boxing my ears. No perversion of spelling can possibly report the complicated German-English jargon in which his fury poured itself out on my devoted head. Let it be enough to say that he declared Nugent’s abominable personation of his brother to be vitally important — so long as Oscar was absent — to his successful treatment of the sensitive and excitable patient whom we had placed under his care. I vainly assured him that Nugent’s object in leaving Dimchurch was to set matters right again by bringing his brother back. Grosse flatly declined to allow himself to be influenced by any speculative consideration of that sort. He said (and swore) that my meddling had raised a serious obstacle in his way, and that nothing but his own tender regard for Lucilla prevented him from “turning the coachmans back,” and leaving us henceforth to shift for ourselves.

When we reached the rectory gate, he had cooled a little. As we crossed the garden, he reminded me that I stood pledged to be present when the bandage was taken off.

“Now mind!” he said. “You are going to see, if it is goot or bad to tell her that she has had those nice white arms of hers round the wrong brodder. You are going to tell me afterwards, if you dare say to her, in plain English words, ‘Blue-Face is the man.’“

We found Lucilla in the sitting-room. Grosse briefly informed her that he had nothing particular to occupy him in London, and that he had advanced the date of his visit on that account. “You want something to do, my lofe, on this soaky-rainy day. Show Papa-Grosse what you can do with your eyes, now you have got them back again.” With those words, he unfastened the bandage, and, taking her by the chin, examined her eyes — first without his magnifying glass; then with it.

“Am I going on well?” she asked anxiously.

“Famous-well! You go on (as my goot friends say in America) first-class. Now use your eyes for yourself. Gif one lofing look to Grosse first. Then — see! see! see!”

There was no mistaking the tone in which he spoke to her.

He was not only satisfied about her eyes — he was triumphant. “Soh!” he grunted, turning to me. “Why is Mr. Sebrights not here to look at this?”

I eagerly approached Lucilla. There was still a little dimness left in her eyes. I noticed also that they moved to and fro restlessly, and (at times) wildly. But, oh, the bright change in her! the new life of beauty which the new sense had bestowed on her already! Her smile, always charming, now caught light from her lips, and spread its gentle fascination over all her face. It was impossible not to long to kiss her. I advanced to congratulate, to embrace her. Grosse stepped forward, and checked me.

“No,” he said. “Walk your ways to the odder end of the rooms — and let us see if
she
can go to
you.
”

Like all other people, knowing no more of the subject than I knew, I had no idea of the pitiably helpless manner in which the restored sense of sight struggles to assert itself, in persons who have been blind for life. In such cases, the effort of the eyes that are first learning to see, is like the effort of the limbs when a child is first learning to walk. But for Grosse’s odd way of taking it, the scene which I was now to witness would have been painful in the last degree. My poor Lucilla — instead of filling me with joy, as I had anticipated — would I really believe have wrung my heart, and have made me burst out crying.

“Now!” said Grosse, laying one hand on Lucilla’s arm, while he pointed to me with the other. “There she stands. Can you go to her?”

“Of course I can!”

“I lay you a bet-wager you can
not!
Ten thausand pounds to six pennies. Done-done. Now try!”

She answered by a little gesture of defiance, and took three hasty steps forward. Bewildered and frightened, she stopped suddenly at the third step — before she had advanced half the way from her end of the room to mine.

“I saw her here,” she said, pointing down to the spot on which she was standing; and appealing piteously to Grosse. “I see her now — and I don’t know where she is! She is so near, I feel as if she touched my eyes — and yet” (she advanced another step, and clutched with her hands at the empty air) — ”and yet, I can’t get near enough to take hold of her. Oh! what does it mean? what does it mean?”

“It means — pay me my six pennies!” said Grosse. “The wager-bet is mine!”

She resented his laughing at her, with an obstinate shake of her head, and an angry knitting of her pretty eyebrows.

“Wait a little,” she said. “You shan’t win quite so easily as that. I will get to her yet!”

She came straight to me in a moment — just as easily as I could have gone to her myself if I had tried.

“Another wager-bet!” cried Grosse, still standing behind her, and calling to me. “Twenty thousand pounds this time to a fourpennies-bit.
She has shut her eyes to get to you.
Hey!”

It was true — she had blindfolded herself! With her eyes closed, she could measure to a hair’s breadth the distance which, with her eyes opened, she was perfectly incompetent to calculate! Detected by both of us, she sat down, poor dear, with a sigh of despair. “Was it worth while,” she said to me sadly, “to go through the operation for
this?
”

Grosse joined us at our end of the room.

“All in goot time,” he said. “Patience — and these helpless eyes of yours will learn. Soh! I shall begin to teach them now. You have got your own notions — hey? — about this colours and that? When you were blind, did you think what would be your favorite colours if you could see? You did? Which colours is it? Tell me. Come!”

“White first,” she answered. “Then scarlet.”

Grosse paused, and considered.

“White, I understand,” he said. “White is the fancy of a young girls. But why scarlets? Could you see scarlets when you were blind?”

“Almost,” she answered, “if it was bright enough. I used to feel something pass before my eyes when scarlet was shown to me.”

“In these cataracts-cases, it is constantly scarlets that they almost see,” muttered Grosse to himself. “There must be reason for this — and I must find him.” He went on with his questions to Lucilla. “And the colours you hate most — which is
he?
”

“Black.”

Grosse nodded his head approvingly. “I thought so,” he said. “It is always black that they hate. For this also there must be reason — and I must find
him.
”

Having expressed that resolution, he approached the writing-table, and took a sheet of paper out of the case, and a circular pen-wiper of scarlet cloth out of the inkstand. After that, he looked about him; waddled back to the other end of the room; and fetched the black felt hat in which he had traveled from London. He ranged the hat, the paper, and the pen-wiper in a row. Before he could put his next question to her, she pointed to the hat with a gesture of disapproval.

“Take it away,” she said. “I don’t like that.”

Grosse stopped me before I could speak.

“Wait a little,” he whispered in my ear. “It is not quite so wonderful as you think. These blind peoples, when they first see, have all alike the same hatred of anything what is dark.” He turned to Lucilla. “Say,” he asked. “Is your favorite colours among these things here?”

She passed by the hat in contempt; looked at the pen-wiper, and put it down; looked at the sheet of paper, and put it down; hesitated — and again shut her eyes.

“No!” cried Grosse. “I won’t have it! How dare you blind yourself, in the presence of Me? What! I give you back your sights, and you go shut your eyes. Open them — or I will put you in the corner like a naughty girls. Your favorite colours? Now, now, now!”

She opened her eyes (very unwillingly), and looked once more at the pen-wiper and the paper.

“I see nothing as bright as my favorite colours here,” she said.

Grosse held up the sheet of paper, and pressed the question without mercy.

“What! is white, whiter than this?”

“Fifty thousand times whiter than that!”

“Goot. Now mind! This paper is white,” (he snatched her handkerchief out of her apron-pocket). “This handkerchief is white, too; whitest of white, both of them. First lesson, my lofe! Here in my hands is your favorite colours, in the time when you were blind.”

“
Those!
” she exclaimed, pointing to the paper and the handkerchief, with a look of blank disappointment as he dropped them on the table. She turned over the pen-wiper and the hat, and looked round at me. Grosse, waiting to try another experiment, left it to me to answer. The result, in both cases, was the same as in the cases of the sheet of paper and the handkerchief. Scarlet was not half as red — black, not one-hundredth part as black — as her imagination had figured them to her, in the days when she was blind. Still, as to this last colour — as to black — she could feel some little encouragement. It had affected her disagreeably (just as poor Oscar’s face had affected her), though she had not actually known it for the colour that she disliked. She made an effort, poor child, to assert herself, against her merciless surgeon-teacher. “I didn’t know it was black,” she said. “But I hated the sight of it, for all that.”

She tried, as she spoke, to toss the hat on to a chair, standing close by her — and threw it instead, high above the back of the chair, against the wall, at least six feet away from the object at which she had aimed. “I am a helpless fool!” she burst out; her face flushing crimson with mortification. “Don’t let Oscar see me! I can’t bear the thought of making myself ridiculous before
him!
He is coming here,” she added, turning to me entreatingly. “Manage to make some excuse for his not seeing me till later in the day.”

I promised to find the excuse — all the more readily, that I now saw an unexpected chance of reconciling her in some degree (so long as she was learning to see) to the blank produced in her life by Oscar’s absence.

She addressed herself again to Grosse.

“Go on!” she said impatiently. “Teach me to be something better than an idiot — or put the bandage on, and blind me again. My eyes are of no use to me! Do you hear?” she cried furiously, taking him by his broad shoulders and shaking him with all her might — ”my eyes are of no use to me!”

“Now! now! now!” cried Grosse. “If you don’t keep your tempers, you little spitfire, I will teach you nothing.” He took up the sheet of paper and the pen-wiper; and, forcing her to sit down, placed them together before her, in her lap.

“Do you know one thing?” he went on. “Do you know what is meant by an objects which is square? Do you know what is meant by an objects which is round?”

Instead of answering him, she appealed indignantly to my opinion.

“Is it not monstrous,” she asked, “to hear him put such a question to me as that? Do I know round from square? Oh, how cruelly humiliating! Don’t tell Oscar! don’t tell Oscar!”