CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
Blind Love
LUCILLA was at the piano when I entered the sitting-room.
"I wanted you of all things," she said. "I have sent all over the housein search of you. Where have you been?"
I told her.
She sprang to her feet with a cry of delight.
"You have persuaded him to trust you--you have discovered everything. Youonly said 'I have been at Browndown'--and I heard it in your voice. Outwith it! out with it!"
She never moved--she seemed hardly to breathe--while I was telling herall that had passed at the interview between Oscar and me. As soon as Ihad done, she got up in a violent hurry--flushed and eager--and madestraight for her bedroom door.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I want my hat and my stick," she answered.
"You are going out?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Can you ask the question? To Browndown of course!"
I begged her to wait a moment, and hear a word or two that I had to say.It is, I suppose, almost needless to add that my object in speaking toher was to protest against the glaring impropriety of her paying a secondvisit, in one day, to a man who was a stranger to her. I declared, in theplainest terms, that such a proceeding would be sufficient, in theestimation of any civilized community, to put her reputation in peril.The result of my interference was curious and interesting in the extreme.It showed me that the virtue called Modesty (I am not speaking ofDecency, mind) is a virtue of purely artificial growth; and that thesuccessful cultivation of it depends in the first instance, not on theinfluence of the tongue, but on the influence of the eye.
Suppose the case of an average young lady (conscious of feeling a firstlove) to whom I might have spoken in the sense that I have justmentioned--what would she have done?
She would assuredly have shown some natural and pretty confusion, andwould, in all human probability, have changed color more or less whileshe was listening to me. Lucilla's charming face revealed but oneexpression--an expression of disappointment, slightly mixed perhaps withsurprise. I believed her to be then, what I knew her to be afterwards, aspure a creature as ever walked the earth. And yet, of the natural andbecoming confusion, of the little inevitable feminine changes of colorwhich I had expected to see, not so much as a vestige appeared--and this,remember, in the case of a person of unusually sensitive and impulsivenature: quick, on the most trifling occasions, to feel and to express itsfeeling in no ordinary degree.
What did it mean?
It meant that here was one strange side shown to me of the terribleaffliction that darkened her life. It meant that modesty is essentiallythe growth of our own consciousness of the eyes of others judging us--andthat blindness is never bashful, for the one simple reason that blindnesscannot see. The most modest girl in existence is bolder with her lover inthe dark than in the light. The female model who "sits" for the firsttime in a drawing academy, and who shrinks from the ordeal, is persuaded,in the last resort, to enter the students' room by having a bandage boundover her eyes. My poor Lucilla had always the bandage over her eyes. Mypoor Lucilla was never to meet her lover in the light. She had grown upwith the passions of a woman--and yet, she had never advanced beyond thefearless and primitive innocence of a child. Ah, if ever there was asacred charge confided to any mortal creature, here surely was a sacredcharge confided to Me! I could not endure to see the poor pretty blindface turned so insensibly towards mine, after such words as I had justsaid to her. She was standing within my reach. I took her by the arm, andmade her sit on my knee. "My dear!" I said, very earnestly, "you must notgo to him again to-day."
"I have got so much to say to him," she answered impatiently, "I want totell him how deeply I feel for him, and how anxious I am to make his lifea happier one if I can."
"My dear Lucilla! you can't say this to a young man. It is as good astelling him, in plain words, that you are fond of him!"
"I _am_ fond of him."
"Hush! hush! Keep it to yourself, until you are sure that _he_ is fond of_you._ It is the man's place, my love--not the woman's--to own the truthfirst in matters of this sort."
"That is very hard on the women. If they feel it first, they ought to ownit first." She paused for a moment, considering with herself--andabruptly got off my knee. "I _must_ speak to him!" she burst out. "I_must_ tell him that I have heard his story, and that I think all thebetter of him after it, instead of the worse!"
She was again on her way to get her hat. My only chance of stopping herwas to invent a compromise.
"Write him a note," I said--and then suddenly remembered that she wasblind. "You shall dictate," I added; "and I will hold the pen. Be contentwith that for to-day. For my sake, Lucilla!"
She yielded--not very willingly, poor thing. But she jealously declinedto let me hold the pen.
"My first note to him must be all written by me," she said. "I canwrite--in my own roundabout way. It's long and tiresome; but still I cando it. Come and see."
She led the way to a writing-table in a corner of the room, and sat forawhile with the pen in her hand, thinking. Her irresistible smile brokesuddenly like a glow of light over her "Ah!" she exclaimed, "I know howto tell him what I think."
Guiding the pen in her right hand with the fingers of her left she wroteslowly, in large childish characters, these words:--"DEAR MR. OSCAR,--Ihave heard all about you. Please send the little gold vase.--Your friend,LUCILLA."
She enclosed and directed the letter, and clapped her hands for joy. "Hewill know what _that_ means!" she said gaily.
It was useless to attempt making a second remonstrance. I rang the bell,under protest (imagine her receiving a present from a gentleman to whomshe had spoken for the first time that morning!)--and the groom was sentoff to Browndown with the letter. In making this concession, I privatelysaid to myself, "I shall keep a tight hand over Oscar; he is themanageable person of the two!"
The interval before the return of the groom was not an easy interval tofill up. I proposed some music. Lucilla was still too full of her newinterest to be able to give her attention to anything else. She suddenlyremembered that her father and her step-mother ought both to be informedthat Mr. Dubourg was a perfectly presentable person at the rectory: shedecided on writing to her father.
On this occasion, she made no difficulty about permitting me to hold thepen, while she told me what to write. We produced between us rather aflighty, enthusiastic, high-flown sort of letter. I felt by no means surethat we should raise a favorable impression of our new neighbor in themind of Reverend Finch. That was, however, not my affair. I appeared toexcellent advantage in the matter, as the judicious foreign lady who hadinsisted on making inquiries. For the rest, it was a point of honor withme--writing for a person who was blind--not to change a single word inthe sentences which Lucilla dictated to me. The letter completed, I wrotethe address of the house in Brighton at which Mr. Finch then happened tobe staying; and I was next about to close the envelope in duecourse--when Lucilla stopped me.
"Wait a little," she said. "Don't close the letter yet."
I wondered why the envelope was to be left open, and why Lucilla looked alittle confused when she forbade me to close it. Another unexpectedrevelation of the influence of their affliction on the natures of theblind, was waiting to enlighten me on those two points.
After consultation between us, it had been decided, at Lucilla's expressrequest, that I should inform Mrs. Finch that the mystery at Browndownwas now cleared up. Lucilla openly owned to having no great relish forthe society of her step-mother, or for the duty invariably devolving onanybody who was long in the company of that fertile lady, of eitherfinding her handkerchief or holding her baby. A duplicate key of the doorof communication between the two sides of the house was given to me; andI left the room.
Before performing my errand, I went for a minute into my bedchamber toput away my hat and parasol. Returning into the corridor, and passing thedoor of the sitting-room,
I found that it had been left ajar by some onewho had entered after I had left; and I heard Lucilla's voice say, "Takethat letter out of the envelope, and read it to me."
I pursued my way along the passage--very slowly, I own--and I heard thefirst sentences of the letter which I had written under Lucilla'sdictation, read aloud to her in the old nurse's voice. The incurablesuspicion of the blind--always abandoned to the same melancholy distrustof the persons about them; always doubting whether some deceit is notbeing practiced on them by the happy people who can see--had urgedLucilla, even in the trifling matter of the letter, to put me to thetest, behind my back. She was using Zillah's eyes to make sure that I hadreally written all that she had dictated to me--exactly as, on many anafter occasion, she used my eyes to make sure of Zillah's completeperformance of tasks allotted to her in the house. No experience of thefaithful devotion of those who live with them ever thoroughly satisfiesthe blind. Ah, poor things, always in the dark! always in the dark!
In opening the door of communication, it appeared as if I had also openedall the doors of all the bedchambers in the rectory. The moment I steppedinto the passage, out popped the children from one room after another,like rabbits out of their burrows.
"Where is your mamma?" I asked.
The rabbits answered by one universal shriek, and popped back again intotheir burrows.
I went down the stairs to try my luck on the ground floor. The window onthe landing had a view over the front garden. I looked out, and saw theirrepressible Arab of the family, our small chubby Jicks, wandering inthe garden, all by herself; evidently on the watch for her nextopportunity of escaping from the house. This curious little creaturecared nothing for the society of the other children. Indoors, she satgravely retired in corners, taking her meals (whenever she could) on thefloor. Out of doors, she roamed till she could walk no longer, and thenlay down anywhere, like a little animal, to sleep. She happened to lookup as I stood at the window. Seeing me, she waved her hand indicativelyin the direction of the rectory gate. "What is it?" I asked. The Arabanswered, "Jicks wants to get out."
At the same moment, the screaming of a baby below, informed me that I wasin the near neighborhood of Mrs. Finch.
I advanced towards the noise, and found myself standing before the opendoor of a large store-room at the extreme end of the passage. In themiddle of the room (issuing household commodities to the cook) sat Mrs.Finch. She was robed this time in a petticoat and a shawl; and she hadthe baby and the novel laid together flat on their backs in her lap.
"Eight pounds of soap? Where does it all go to I wonder!" groaned Mrs.Finch to the accompaniment of the baby's screams. "Five pounds of sodafor the laundry? One would think we did the washing for the wholevillage. Six pounds of candles? You must eat candles, like the Russians:who ever heard of burning six pounds of candles in a week? Ten pounds ofsugar? Who gets it all? I never taste sugar from one year's end toanother. Waste, nothing but waste." Here Mrs. Finch looked my way, andsaw me at the door. "Oh? Madame Pratolungo? How d'ye do? Don't goaway--I've just done. A bottle of blacking? My shoes are a disgrace tothe house. Five pounds of rice? If I had Indian servants, five pounds ofrice would last them for a year. There! take the things away into thekitchen. Excuse my dress, Madame Pratolungo. How _am_ I to dress, withall I have got to do? What do you say? My time must indeed be fullyoccupied? Ah, that's just where it is! When you have lost half an hour inthe morning, and can't pick it up again--to say nothing of having thestore-room on your mind, and the children's dinner late, and the babyfractious--one slips on a petticoat and a shawl, and gives it up indespair. What _can_ I have done with my handkerchief? Would you mindlooking among those bottles behind you? Oh, here it is, under the baby.Might I trouble you to hold my book for one moment? I think the baby willbe quieter if I put him the other way." Here Mrs. Finch turned the babyover on his stomach, and patted him briskly on the back. At this changein his circumstances, the unappeasable infant only roared louder thanever. His mother appeared to be perfectly unaffected by the noise. Thisresigned domestic martyr looked placidly up at me, as I stood before her,bewildered, with the novel in my hand. "Ah, that's a very interestingstory," she went on. "Plenty of love in it, you know. You have come forit, haven't you? I remember I promised to lend it to you yesterday."Before I could answer the cook appeared again, in search of morehousehold commodities. Mrs. Finch repeated the woman's demands, one byone as she made them, in tones of despair. "Another bottle of vinegar? Ibelieve you water the garden with vinegar! More starch? The Queen'swashing, I'm firmly persuaded, doesn't come to so much as ours.Sandpaper? Sandpaper means wastepaper in this profligate house. I shalltell your master. I really _can_ NOT make the housekeeping money last atthis rate. Don't go, Madame Pratolungo! I shall have done directly. What!You must go! Oh, then, put the book back on my lap, please--and lookbehind that sack of flour. The first volume slipped down there thismorning, and I haven't had time to pick it up since. (Sandpaper! Do youthink I'm made of sandpaper!) Have you found the first volume? Ah, that'sit. All over flour! there's a hole in the sack I suppose. Twelve sheetsof sandpaper used in a week! What for? I defy any of you to tell me whatfor. Waste! waste! shameful sinful waste!" At this point in Mrs. Finch'slamentations, I made my escape with the book, and left the subject ofOscar Dubourg to be introduced at a fitter opportunity. The last words Iheard, through the screams of the baby, as I ascended the stairs, werewords still relating to the week's prodigal consumption of sandpaper. Letus drop a tear, if you please, over the woes of Mrs. Finch, and leave theBritish matron apostrophizing domestic economy in the odorous seclusionof her own storeroom.
I had just related to Lucilla the failure of my expedition to the otherside of the house, when the groom returned, bringing with him the goldvase, and a letter.
Oscar's answer was judiciously modeled to imitate the brevity ofLucilla's note. "You have made me a happy man again. When may I followthe vase?" There, in two sentences, was the whole letter.
I had another discussion with Lucilla, relating to the propriety of ourreceiving Oscar in Reverend Finch's absence. It was only possible topersuade her to wait until she had at least heard from her father, byconsenting to take another walk towards Browndown the next morning. Thisnew concession satisfied her. She had received his present; she hadexchanged letters with him--that was enough to content her for the time.
"Do you think he is getting fond of me?" she asked, the last thing atnight; taking her gold vase to bed with her, poor dear--exactly as shemight have taken a new toy to bed with her when she was a child. "Givehim time, my love," I answered. "It isn't everybody who can travel atyour pace in such a serious matter as this." My banter had no effect uponher. "Go away with your candle," she said. "The darkness makes nodifference to _me._ I can see him in my thoughts." She nestled her headcomfortably on the pillows, and tapped me saucily on the cheek, as I bentover her. "Own the advantage I have over you now," she said. "_You_ can'tsee at night without your candle. _I_ could go all over the house, atthis moment, without making a false step anywhere."
When I left her that night, I sincerely believe "poor Miss Finch" was thehappiest woman in England.