Chapter THE TENTH: First Appearance of Jicks (4)

At that awkward moment, the most wearisome of living men suddenly proved himself to be the most welcome of living men. The rector appeared in the garden, to receive his daughter on her return. Enfolded in Reverend Finch's paternal embraces; harangued by Reverend Finch's prodigious voice, Lucilla was effectually silenced--the subject was inevitably changed. Oscar drew me aside out of hearing, while her attention was diverted from him.

"I saw you," he said. "_You_ were horrified at the first sight of me. _You_ were relieved when you found that her touch told her nothing. Help me to keep her from suspecting it, for two months more--and you will be the best friend that ever man had."

"Two months?" I repeated.

"Yes. If there is no return of the fits in two months, the doctor will consider my recovery complete. Lucilla and I may be married at the end of the time."

"My friend Oscar, are you contemplating a fraud on Lucilla?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come! come! you know what I mean! Is it honorable first to entrap her into marrying you--and then to confess to her the color of your face?"

He sighed bitterly.

"I shall fill her with horror of me, if I confess it. Look at me! look at me!" he said, lifting his ghastly hands in despair to his blue face.

I was determined not to give way--even to that.

"Be a man!" I said. "Own it boldly. What is she going to marry you for? For your face that she can never see? No! For your heart that is one with her own. Trust to her natural good sense--and, better than that, to the devoted love that you have inspired in her. She will see her stupid prejudice in its true light, when she feels it trying to part her from _you._"

"No! no! no! Remember her letter to her father. I shall lose her for ever, if I tell her now!"

I took his arm, and endeavored to lead him to Lucilla. She as already trying to escape from her father; she was already longing to hear the sound of Oscar's voice again.

He obstinately shrank back. I began to feel angry with him. In another moment, I should have said or done something that I might have repented of afterwards--if a new interruption had not happened before I could open my lips.

Another person appeared in the garden--the man-servant from Browndown; with a letter for his master in his hand.

"This has just come, sir," said the man, "by the afternoon post. It is marked 'Immediate.' I thought I had better bring it to you here."

Oscar took the letter, and looked at the address. "My brother's writing!" he exclaimed. "A letter from Nugent!"

He opened the letter--and burst out with a cry of joy which brought Lucilla instantly to his side.

"What is it?" she asked eagerly.

"Nugent is coming back! Nugent will be here in a week! Oh, Lucilla! my brother is coming to stay with me at Browndown!"

He caught her in his arms, and kissed her, in the first rapture of receiving that welcome news. She forced herself away from him without answering a word. She turned her poor blind face round and round, in the search for me.

"Here I am!" I said.

She roughly and angrily put her arm in mine. I saw the jealous misery in her face as she dragged me away with here to the house. Never yet had Oscar's voice, in _her_ experience of him, sounded the note of happiness that she heard in it now! Never yet had she felt Oscar's heart on Oscar's lips, as she felt it when he kissed her in the first joy of anticipating Nugent's return!

"Can he hear me?" she whispered, when we had left the lawn, and she felt the gravel under her feet.

"No. What is it?"

"I hate his brother!"

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND

The Twin-Brother's Letter

LITTLE thinking what a storm he had raised, poor innocent Oscar--paternally escorted by the rector--followed us into the house, with his open letter in his hand.

Judging by certain signs visible in my reverend friend, I concluded that the announcement of Nugent Dubourg's coming visit to Dimchurch--regarded by the rest of us as heralding the appearance of a twin-brother--was regarded by Mr. Finch as promising the arrival of a twin-fortune. Oscar and Nugent shared the comfortable paternal inheritance. Finch smelt money.

"Compose yourself," I whispered to Lucilla as the two gentlemen followed us into the sitting-room. "Your jealousy of his brother is a childish jealousy. There is room enough in his heart for his brother as well as for you."

She only repeated obstinately, with a vicious pinch on my arm, "I hate his brother!"

"Come and sit down by me," said Oscar, approaching her on the other side. "I want to run over Nugent's letter. It's so interesting! There is a message in it to you." Too deeply absorbed in his subject to notice the sullen submission with which she listened to him, he placed her on a chair, and began reading. "The first lines," he explained, "relate to Nugent's return to England, and to his delightful idea of coming to stay with me at Browndown. Then he goes on: 'I found all your letters waiting for me on my return to New York. Need I tell you, my dearest brother----'"

Lucilla stopped him at those words by rising abruptly from her seat.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"I don't like this chair!"

Oscar got her another--an easy-chair this time--and returned to the letter.

"'Need I tell you, my dearest brother, how deeply you have interested me by the announcement of your contemplated marriage? Your happiness is my happiness. I feel with you; I congratulate you; I long to see my future sister-in-law----'"

Lucilla got up again. Oscar, in astonishment, asked what was wrong now?

"I am not comfortable at this end of the room."

She walked to the other end of the room. Patient Oscar walked after her, with his precious letter in his hand. He offered her a third chair. She petulantly declined to take it, and selected another chair for herself. Oscar returned to the letter:--

"'How melancholy, and yet how interesting it is, to hear that she is blind! My sketches of American scenery happened to be lying about in the room when I read your letter. The first thought that came to me, on hearing of Miss Finch's affliction, was suggested by my sketches. I said to myself, "Sad! sad! my sister-in-law will never see my Works." The true artist, Oscar, is always thinking of his Works. I shall bring back, let me tell you, some very remarkable studies for future pictures. They will not be so numerous, perhaps, as you may expect. I prefer to trust to my intellectual perception of beauty, rather than to mere laborious transcripts from Nature. In certain moods of mine (speaking as an artist) Nature puts me out.'" There Oscar paused, and appealed to me. "What writing!--eh? I always told you, Madame Pratolungo, that Nugent was a genius. You see it now. Don't get up, Lucilla. I am going on. There is a message to you in this part of the letter. So neatly expressed!"

Lucilla persisted in getting up; the announcement of the neatly-expressed message to be read next, produced no effect on her. She walked to the window, and trifled impatiently with the flowers placed in it. Oscar looked in mild astonishment, first at me--then at the rector. Reverend Finch--listening thus far with the complimentary attention due to the correspondence of one young man of fortune with another young man of fortune--interfered in Oscar's interests, to secure him a patient hearing.

"My dear Lucilla, endeavor to control your restlessness. You interfere with our enjoyment of this interesting letter. I could wish to see fewer changes of place, my child, and a more undivided attention to what Oscar is reading to you."

"I am not interested in what he is reading to me." In the nervous irritation which produced this ungracious answer, she overthrew one of the flower-pots. Oscar set it up again for her with undiminished good-temper.

"Not interested!" he exclaimed. "Wait a little. You haven't heard Nugent's message yet. Listen to this! 'Present my best and kindest regards to the future Mrs. Oscar' (dear fellow!); 'and say that she has given me a new interest in hastening my return to England.' There! Isn't that prettily put? Come Lucilla! own that Nugent is worth listening to when he writes about _you!_"

She turned towards him for the first time. The charm of the tone in which he spoke those words subdued her, in spite of herself.

"I am much obliged to your brother," she answered gently, "and very much ashamed of myself for what I said just now." She stole her hand into his, and whispered, "You are so fond of Nugent--I begin to be almost afraid there will be no love left for me."

Oscar was enchanted. "Wait till you see him, and you will be as fond of him as I am," he said. "Nugent is not like me. He fascinates people the moment they come in contact with him. Nobody can resist Nugent."

She still held his hand, with a perplexed and saddened face. The admirable absence of any jealousy on his side--his large and generous confidence in _her_ love for _him_--was just the rebuke to her that she could feel; just the rebuke also (in my opinion) that she had deserved.

"Go on, Oscar," said the rector, in his deepest notes of encouragement. "What next, dear boy? what next?"

"Another interesting bit, of quite a new kind," Oscar replied. "There is a little mystery to stir us up on the last page of the letter. Nugent says:--'I have become acquainted (here, in New York) with a very remarkable man, a German who has made a great deal of money in the United States. He proposes visiting England early in the present year; and he will write and let me know when he has arrived. I shall feel particular pleasure in presenting him to you and your future wife. It is quite possible that you may have special reason to congratulate yourselves on making his acquaintance. For the present, no more of my new friend until we meet at Browndown.'--'Special reason to congratulate ourselves on making his acquaintance.'" repeated Oscar, folding up the letter. "Nugent never writes in that way without a reason for it. Who can the German gentleman be?"

Mr. Finch suddenly lifted his head, and looked at Oscar with a certain appearance of alarm.

"Your brother mentions that he has made his fortune in America," said the Reverend gentleman. "I hope he is not connected with the money-market. He might infect Mr. Nugent with the spirit of reckless speculation which is, so to speak, the national sin of the United States. Your brother, having no doubt the same generous disposition as yours----"

"A far finer disposition than mine, Mr. Finch," interposed Oscar.

"Possessed, like you, of the gifts of fortune," proceeded the rector, with mounting enthusiasm.

"Once possessed of them," said Oscar. "Far from being overburdened with the gifts of fortune, now!"

"What!!!" cried Mr. Finch, with a start of consternation.

"Nugent has run through his fortune," proceeded Oscar, quite composedly. "I lent him the money to go to America. My brother is a genius, Mr. Finch. When did you ever hear of a genius who could keep within limits? Nugent is not content to live in my humble way. He has the tastes of a prince--money is nothing to him. It doesn't matter. He will make a new fortune Out of his pictures; and, in the meantime, you know, I can always lend him something to go on with."

Mr. Finch rose from his seat, with the air of a man whose just anticipations have not been realized--whose innocent confidence has been scandalously betrayed. Here was a prospect! Another person in perpetual want of money, going to settle under the shadow of the rectory! Another man likely to borrow of Oscar--and that man his brother!

"I fail to take your light view of your brother's extravagance," said the rector, addressing Oscar with his loftiest severity of manner, at the door. "I deplore and reprehend Mr. Nugent's misuse of the bounty bestowed on him by an all-wise Providence. You will do well to consider, before you encourage your brother's extravagance by lending him money. What does the great poet of humanity say of lenders? The Bard of Avon tells us, that 'loan oft loses both itself and friend.' Lay that noble line to heart, Oscar! Lucilla, be on your guard against that restlessness which I have already had occasion to reprove. I find I must leave you, Madame Pratolungo. I had forgotten my parish duties. My parish duties are waiting for me. Good day! good day!"

He looked round on us all three, in turn, with a very sour face, and walked out. "Surely," I thought to myself, "this brother of Oscar's is not beginning well! First, the daughter takes offense at him, and now the father follows her example. Even on the other side of the Atlantic, Mr. Nugent Dubourg exercises a malignant influence, and disturbs the family tranquillity before he has shown his nose in the house!"

Nothing more that is worth recording happened on that day. We had a very dull evening. Lucilla was out of spirits. As for me, I had not yet had time to accustom myself to the shocking spectacle of Oscar's discolored face. I was serious and silent. You would never have guessed me to be a Frenchwoman, if you had seen me for the first time on the occasion of my return to the rectory.

The next day a small domestic event happened, which must be chronicled in this place.

Our Dimchurch doctor, always dissatisfied with his position in an obscure country place, had obtained an appointment in India which offered great professional advantages to an ambitious man. He called to take leave of us on his departure. I found an opportunity of speaking to him about Oscar. He entirely agreed with me that the attempt to keep the change produced in his former patient by the Nitrate of Silver from Lucilla's knowledge, was simply absurd. The truth would reach her, he said, before many days were over our heads. With that prediction, addressed to my private ear, he left us. The removal of him from the scene was, you will please to bear in mind, the removal of an important local witness to the medical treatment of Oscar, and was, as such, an incident with a bearing of its own on the future, which claims a place for it in the present narrative.

Two more days passed, and nothing happened. On the morning of the third day, the doctor's prophecy was all but fulfilled, through the medium of the wandering Arab of the family, our funny little Jicks.

While Lucilla and I were strolling about the garden with Oscar, the child suddenly darted out on us from behind a tree, and, seizing Oscar round the legs, hailed him affectionately at the top of her voice as "The Blue Man!" Lucilla instantly stopped, and said, "Who do you call 'The Blue Man'?" Jicks answered boldly, "Oscar." Lucilla caught the child up in her arms. "Why do you call Oscar 'The Blue Man'?" she asked. Jicks pointed to Oscar's face, and then, remembering Lucilla's blindness, appealed to me. "You tell her!" said Jicks, in high glee. Oscar seized my hand, and looked at me imploringly. I determined not to interfere. It was bad enough to remain passive, and to let her be kept in the dark. Actively, I was resolved to take no part in deceiving her. Her color rose; she put Jicks down on the ground. "Are you both dumb?" she asked. "Oscar! I insist on knowing it--how have you got the nick-name of 'The Blue Man'?" Left helpless, Oscar (to my disgust) took refuge in a lie--and, worse still, a clumsy lie. He declared that he had got his nick-name in the nursery, at the time of Lucilla's absence in London, by one day painting his face in the character of Bluebeard to amuse the children! If Lucilla had felt the faintest suspicion of the truth, blind as she was, she must now have discovered it. As things were, Oscar annoyed and irritated her. I could see that it cost her a struggle to suppress something like a feeling of contempt for him. "Amuse the children, the next time, in some other way," she said. "Though I can't see you, still I don't like to hear of your disfiguring your face by painting it blue." With that answer, she walked away a little by herself, evidently disappointed in her betrothed husband for the first time in her experience of him.

He cast another imploring look at me. "Did you hear what she said about my face?" he whispered.

"You have lost an excellent opportunity of speaking out," I answered. "I believe you will bitterly regret the folly and the cruelty of deceiving her."

He shook his head, with the immovable obstinacy of a weak man.

"Nugent doesn't think as you do," he said, handing me the letter. "Read that bit there--now Lucilla is out of hearing."

I paused for a moment before I could read. The resemblance between the twins extended even to their handwritings! If I had picked Nugent's letter up, I should have handed it to Oscar as a letter of Oscar's own writing.

The paragraph to which he pointed, only contained these lines:--"Your last relieves my anxiety about your health. I entirely agree with you that any personal sacrifice which cures you of those horrible attacks is a sacrifice wisely made. As to your keeping the change a secret from the young lady, I can only say that I suppose you know best how to act in this emergency. I will abstain from forming any opinion of my own until we meet."

I handed Oscar back the letter.

"There is no very warm approval there of the course you are taking," I said. "The only difference between your brother and me is, that he suspends his opinion, and that I express mine."

"I have no fear of my brother," Oscar answered. "Nugent will feel for me, and understand me, when he comes to Browndown. In the meantime, this shall not happen again."

He stooped over Jicks. The child, while we were talking, had laid herself down luxuriously on the grass, and was singing to herself little snatches of a nursery song. Oscar pulled her up on her legs rather roughly. He was out of temper with her, as well as with himself.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"I am going to see Mr. Finch," he answered, "and to have Jicks kept for the future out of Lucilla's garden."

"Does Mr. Finch approve of your silence?"

"Mr. Finch, Madame Pratolungo, leaves me to decide on a matter which concerns nobody but Lucilla and myself."

After that reply, there was an end of all further remonstrance from me, as a matter of course.

Oscar walked off with his prisoner to the house. Jicks trotted along by his side, unconscious of the mischief she had done, singing another verse of the nursery song. I rejoined Lucilla, with my mind made up as to the line of conduct I should adopt in the future. If Oscar did succeed in keeping the truth concealed from her, I was positively resolved, come what might of it, to enlighten her before they were married, with my own lips. What! after pledging myself to keep the secret? Yes. Perish the promise which makes me false to a person whom I love! I despise such promises from the bottom of my heart.

Two days more slipped by--and then a telegram found its way to Browndown. Oscar came running to us, at the rectory, with his news. Nugent had landed at Liverpool. Oscar was to expect him at Dimchurch on the next day.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD

He sets us All Right

I HAVE thus far quite inadvertently omitted to mention one of the prominent virtues of Reverend Finch. He was an accomplished master of that particular form of human persecution which is called reading aloud; and he inflicted his accomplishment on his family circle at every available opportunity. Of what we suffered on these occasions, I shall say nothing. Let it be enough to mention that the rector thoroughly enjoyed the pleasure of hearing his own magnificent voice.

There was no escaping Mr. Finch when the rage for "reading" seized on him. Now on one pretense, and now on another, he descended on us unfortunate women, book in hand; seated us at one end of the room; placed himself at the other; opened his dreadful mouth; and fired words at us, like shots at a target, by the hour together. Sometimes he gave us poetical readings from Shakespeare or Milton; and sometimes Parliamentary speeches by Burke or Sheridan. Read what he might, he made such a noise and such a fuss over it; he put his own individuality so prominently in the foremost place, and he kept the poets or the orators whom he was supposed to be interpreting so far in the back ground, that they lost every trace of character of their own, and became one and all perfectly intolerable reflections of Mr. Finch. I date my first unhappy doubts of the supreme excellence of Shakespeare's poetry from the rector's readings; and I attribute to the same exasperating cause my implacable hostility (on every question of the time) to the policy of Mr. Burke. On the evening when Nugent Dubourg was expected at Browndown--and when we particularly wanted to be left alone to dress ourselves, and to gossip by anticipation about the expected visitor--Mr. Finch was seized with one of his periodical rages for firing off words at his family, after tea. He selected _Hamlet_ as the medium for exhibiting his voice, on this occasion; and he declared, as the principal motive for taking his elocutionary exercise, that the object he especially had in view was the benefit of poor Me!

"My good creature, I accidentally heard you reading to Lucilla, the other day. It was very nice, as far as it went--very nice indeed. But you will allow me--as a person, Madame Pratolungo, possessing considerable practice in the art of reading aloud--to observe that you might be benefited by a hint or two. I will give you a few ideas. (Mrs. Finch! I propose giving Madame Pratolungo a few ideas.) Pay particular attention, if you please, to the Pauses, and to the management of the Voice at the end of the lines. Lucilla, my child, you are interested in this. The perfecting of Madame Pratolungo is a matter of considerable importance to _you._ Don't go away."

Lucilla and I happened, on that evening, to be guests at the rectory table. It was one of the regular occasions on which we left our own side of the house, and joined the family at (what Mr. Finch called) "the pastor's evening meal." He had got his wife; he had got his eldest daughter; he had got your humble servant. A horrid smile of enjoyment overspread the reverend gentleman's face, as he surveyed us from the opposite end of the room, and opened his vocal fire on his audience of three.

"_Hamlet:_ Act the First; Scene the First. Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle. Francisco on his post" (Mr. Finch). "Enter to him Bernardo" (Mr. Finch). "Who's there?" "Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself." (Mrs. Finch unfolds herself--she suckles the baby, and tries to look as if she was having an intellectual treat.) "Francisco and Bernardo converse in bass--Boom-boom-boom. Enter Horatio and Marcellus" (Mr. Finch and Mr. Finch.) "Stand! Who's there?" "Friends to this ground." "And liegemen to the Dane." (Madame Pratolungo begins to feel the elocutionary exposition of Shakespeare, where she always feels it, in her legs. She tries to sit still on her chair. Useless! She is suffering under the malady known to her by bitter experience of Mr. Finch, as the Hamlet-Fidgets.) Bernardo and Franciso, Horatio and Marcellus, converse--Boom-boom-boom. "Enter Ghost of Hamlet's Father." Mr. Finch makes an awful pause. In the supernatural silence, we can hear the baby sucking. Mrs. Finch enjoys her intellectual treat. Madame Pratolungo fidgets. Lucilla catches the infection, and fidgets too. Marcellus-Finch goes on. "Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio." Bernardo-Finch backs him: "Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio." Lucilla-Finch inserts herself in the dialogue: "Papa, I am very sorry; I have had a nervous headache all day; please excuse me if I take a turn in the garden." The rector makes another awful pause, and glares at his daughter. (Exit Lucilla.) Horatio looks at the Ghost, and takes up the dialogue: "Most like; it harrows me "--Boom-boom-boom. The baby is satiated. Mrs. Finch wants her handkerchief. Madame Pratolungo seizes the opportunity of moving her distracted legs, and finds the handkerchief. Mr. Finch pauses--glares---goes on again--reaches the second scene. "Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius, and Lords Attendant." All Mr. Finch! oh, my legs! my legs! all Mr. Finch, and Boom-boom-boom. Third scene. "Enter Laertes and Ophelia." (Both Rectors of Dimchurch; both with deep bass voices; both about five feet high, pitted with the small-pox, and adorned round the neck with dingy white cravats.) Mr. Finch goes on and on and on. Mrs. Finch and the baby simultaneously close their eyes in slumber. Madame Pratolungo suffers such tortures of restlessness in her lower limbs, that she longs for a skilled surgeon to take out his knife and deliver her from her own legs. Mr. Finch advances in deeper and deeper bass, in keener and keener enjoyment, to the Fourth Scene. ("Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.") Mercy! what do I hear? Is relief approaching to us from the world outside? Are there footsteps in the hall? Yes! Mrs. Finch opens her eyes; Mrs. Finch hears the footsteps, and rejoices in them as I do. Reverend Hamlet hears nothing but his own voice. He begins the scene: "The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold." The door opens. The rector feels a gust of air, dramatically appropriate, just at the right moment. He looks round. If it is a servant, let that domestic person tremble! No--not a servant. Guests--heavens be praised, guests. Welcome, gentlemen--welcome! No more Hamlet, tonight, thanks to You. Enter two Characters who must be instantly attended to:--Mr. Oscar Dubourg; introducing his twin-brother from America, Mr. Nugent Dubourg.

Astonishment at the extraordinary resemblance between them, was the one impression felt by all three of us, as the brothers entered the room.

Exactly alike in their height, in their walk, in their features, and in their voices. Both with the same colored hair and the same beardless faces. Oscar's smile exactly reflected on Nugent's lips. Oscar's odd little semi-foreign tricks of gesticulation with his hands, exactly reproduced in the hands of Nugent. And, to crown it all, there was the complexion which Oscar had lost for ever (just a shade darker perhaps) found again on Nugent's cheeks! The one difference which made it possible to distinguish between them, at the moment when they first appeared together in the room, was also the one difference which Lucilla was physically incapable of detecting--the terrible contrast of color between the brother who bore the blue disfigurement of the drug, and the brother who was left as Nature had made him.

"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Finch--I have long wished for this pleasure. Thank you, Mr. Finch, for all your kindness to my brother. Madame Pratolungo, I presume? Permit me to shake hands. It is needless to say, I have heard of your illustrious husband. Aha! here's a baby. Yours, Mrs. Finch? Girl or boy, ma'am? A fine child--if a bachelor may be allowed to pronounce an opinion. _Tweet--tweet--tweet!_"

He chirruped to the baby, as if he had been a family man, and snapped his fingers gaily. Poor Oscar's blue face turned in silent triumph towards me. "What did I tell you?" his look asked. "Did I not say Nugent fascinated everybody at first sight?" Most true. An irresistible man. So utterly different in his manner from Oscar--except when he was in repose--and yet so like Oscar in other respects, I can only describe him as his brother completed. He had the pleasant lively flow of spirits, the easy winning gentleman-like confidence in himself, which Oscar wanted. And, then, what excellent taste he possessed. He liked children! he respected the memory of my glorious Pratolungo!--In half a minute from the time when he entered the room, Nugent Dubourg had won Mrs. Finch's heart and mine.

He turned from the baby to Mr. Finch, and pointed to the open Shakespeare on the table.

"You were reading to the ladies?" he said. "I am afraid we have interrupted you."

"Don't mention it," said the rector, with his lofty politeness. "Another time will do. It is a habit of mine, Mr. Nugent, to read aloud in my family circle. As a clergyman and a lover of poetry (in both capacities) I have long cultivated the art of elocution----"

"My dear sir, excuse me, you have cultivated it all wrong!"

Mr. Finch paused, thunderstruck. A man in his presence presuming to have an opinion of his own! a man in the rectory parlor capable of interrupting the rector in the middle of a sentence! guilty of the insane audacity of telling him, as a reader--with Shakespeare open before them--that he read wrong!

"Oh, we heard you as we came in!" proceeded Nugent, with the most undiminished confidence, expressed in the most gentlemanlike manner. "You read it like this." He took up _Hamlet_ and read the opening line of the Fourth Scene, ("The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold") with an irresistibly-accurate imitation of Mr. Finch. "That's nor the way Hamlet would speak. No man in his position would remark that it was very cold in that bow-wow manner. What is Shakespeare before all things? True to nature; always true to nature. What condition is Hamlet in when he is expecting to see the Ghost? He is nervous, and he feels the cold. Let him show it naturally; let him speak as any other man would speak, under the circumstances. Look here! Quick and quiet--like this. 'The air bites shrewdly'--there Hamlet stops and shivers--pur-rer-rer! 'it is very cold.' That's the way to read Shakespeare!"

Mr. Finch lifted his head into the air as high as it could possibly go, and brought the flat of his hand down with a solemn and sounding smack on the open book.

"Allow me to say, sir----!" he began.

Nugent stopped him again, more good-humouredly than ever.

"You don't agree with me? All right! Quite useless to dispute about it. I don't know what you may be--I am the most opinionated man in existence. Sheer waste of time, my dear sir, to attempt convincing Me. Now, just look at that child!" Here Mr. Nugent Dubourg's attention was suddenly attracted by the baby. He twisted round on his heel, and addressed Mrs. Finch. "I take the liberty of saying, ma'am, that a more senseless dress doesn't exist, than the dress that is put, in this country, on infants of tender years. What are the three main functions which that child--that charming child of yours-performs? He sucks; he sleeps; and he grows. At the present moment, he isn't sucking, he isn't sleeping--he is growing with all his might. Under those interesting circumstances, what does he want to do? To move his limbs freely in every direction. You let him swing his arms to his heart's content--and you deny him freedom to kick his legs. You clothe him in a dress three times as long as himself. He tries to throw his legs up in the air as he throws his arms, and he can't do it. There is his senseless long dress entangling itself in his toes, and making an effort of what Nature intended to be a luxury. Can anything be more absurd? What are mothers about? Why don't they think for themselves? Take my advice--short petticoats, Mrs. Finch. Liberty, glorious liberty, for my young friend's legs! Room, heaps of room, for that infant martyr's toes!"

Mrs. Finch listened helplessly--lifted the baby's long petticoats, and looked at them--stared piteously at Nugent Dubourg--opened her lips to speak--and, thinking better of it, turned her watery eyes on her husband, appealing to _him_ to take the matter up. Mr. Finch made another attempt to assert his dignity--a ponderously satirical attempt, this time.

"In offering your advice to my wife, Mr. Nugent," said the rector, "you must permit me to remark that it would have had more practical force if it had been the advice of a married man. I beg to remind you----"

"You beg to remind me that it is the advice of a bachelor? Oh, come! that really won't do at this time of day. Doctor Johnson settled that argument at once and for ever, a century since. 'Sir!' (he said to somebody of your way of thinking) 'you may scold your carpenter, when he has made a bad table, though you can't make a table yourself.' I say to you--'Mr. Finch, you may point out a defect in a baby's petticoats, though you haven't got a baby yourself!' Doesn't that satisfy you? All right! Take another illustration. Look at your room here. I can see in the twinkling of an eye, that it's badly lit. You have only got one window--you ought to have two. Is it necessary to be a practical builder to discover that? Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What's this printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed Taxes will do. You're not in the House of Commons; you're not Chancellor of the Exchequer--but haven't you an opinion of your own about taxation, in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its last gasp----?"

"And the vigorous young Republic drawing its first breath of life!" I burst in; introducing the Pratolungo programme (as my way is) at every available opportunity.

Nugent Dubourg instantly wheeled round in my direction; and set me right on my subject, just as he had set the rector right on reading _Hamlet,_ and Mrs. Finch right on clothing babies.

"Not a bit of it!" he pronounced positively. "The 'young Republic' is the ricketty child of the political family. Give him up, ma'am. You will never make a man of him."

I tried to assert myself as the rector had tried before me--with precisely the same result. I appealed indignantly to the authority of my illustrious husband.

"Doctor Pratolungo--" I began.

"Was an honest man," interposed Nugent Dubourg. "I am an advanced Liberal myself--I respect him. But he was quite wrong. All sincere republicans make the same mistake. They believe in the existence of public spirit in Europe. Amiable delusion! Public spirit is dead in Europe. Public spirit is the generous emotion of young nations, of new peoples. In selfish old Europe, private interest has taken its place. When your husband preached the republic, on what ground did he put it? On the ground that the republic was going to elevate the nation. Pooh! Ask me to accept the republic, on the ground that I elevate Myself--and, supposing you can prove it, I will listen to you. If you are ever to set republican institutions going, in the Old World--_there_ is the only motive power that will do it!"

I was indignant at such sentiments. "My glorious husband--" I began again.

"Would have died rather than appeal to the meanest instincts of his fellow-creatures. Just so! There was his mistake. That's why he never could make anything of the republic. That's why the republic is the ricketty child of the political family. _Quod erat demonstrandum,_" said Nugent Dubourg, finishing me off with a pleasant smile, and an easy indicative gesture of the hand which said, "Now I have settled these three people in succession, I am equally well satisfied with myself and with them!"

His smile was irresistible. Bent as I was on disputing the degrading conclusions at which he had arrived, I really had not fire enough in me, at the moment, to feed my own indignation. As to Reverend Finch, he sat silently swelling in a corner; digesting, as he best might, the discovery that there was another man in the world, besides the Rector of Dimchurch, with an excellent opinion of himself, and with perfectly unassailable confidence and fluency in expressing it. In the momentary silence that now followed, Oscar got his first opportunity of speaking. He had, thus far, been quite content to admire his clever brother. He now advanced to me, and asked what had become of Lucilla.

"The servant told me she was here," he said. "I am so anxious to introduce her to Nugent."

Nugent put his arm affectionately round his brother's neck, and gave him a hug. "Dear old boy! I am just as anxious as you are."

"Lucilla went out a little while since," I said, "to take a turn in the garden."

"I'll go and find her," said Oscar. "Wait here, Nugent. I'll bring her in."

He left the room. Before he could close the door one of the servants appeared, to claim Mrs. Finch's private ear, on some mysterious domestic emergency. Nugent facetiously entreated her, as she passed him, to clear her mind of prejudice, and consider the question of infant petticoats on its own merits. Mr. Finch took offense at this second reference to the subject. He rose to follow his wife.

"When you are a married man, Mr. Dubourg," said the rector severely, "you will learn to leave the management of an infant in its mother's hands."

"There's another mistake!" remarked Nugent, following him with unabated good humour, to the door. "A married man's idea of another man as a husband, always begins and ends with his idea of himself." He turned to me, as the door closed on Mr. Finch. "Now we are alone, Madame Pratolungo," he said, "I want to speak to you about Miss Finch. There is an opportunity, before she comes in. Oscar's letter only told me that she was blind. I am naturally interested in everything that relates to my brother's future wife. I am particularly interested about this affliction of hers. May I ask how long she has been blind?"

"Since she was a year old," I replied.

"Through an accident?"

"No."

"After a fever? or a disease of any other sort?"

I began to feel a little surprised at his entering into these medical details.

"I never heard that it was through a fever, or other illness," I said. "So far as I know, the blindness came on unexpectedly, from some cause that did not express itself to the people about her, at the time."

He drew his chair confidentially nearer to mine. "How old is she?" he asked.

I began to feel more than a little surprised; and I showed it, I suppose, on telling him Lucilla's age.

"As things are now," he explained, "there are reasons which make me hesitate to enter on the question of Miss Finch's blindness either with my brother, or with any members of the family. I must wait to speak about it to _them,_ until I can speak to good practical purpose. There is no harm in my starting the subject with _you._ When she first lost her sight, no means of restoring it were left untried, of course?"

"I should suppose not," I replied. "It's so long since, I have never asked."

"So long since," he repeated--and then considered for a moment.

His reflections ended in a last question.

"She is resigned, I suppose--and everybody about her is resigned--to the idea of her being hopelessly blind for life."

Instead of answering him, I put a question on my side. My heart was beginning to beat rapidly--without my knowing why.

"Mr. Nugent Dubourg," I said, "what have you got in your mind about Lucilla?"

"Madame Pratolungo," he replied, "I have got something in my mind which was put into it by a friend of mine whom I met in America."

"The friend you mentioned in your letter to your brother?"

"The same."

"The German gentleman whom you propose to introduce to Oscar and Lucilla?"

"Yes."

"May I ask who he is?"

Nugent Dubourg looked at me attentively; considered with himself for the second time; and answered in these words:

"He is the greatest living authority, and the greatest living operator, in diseases of the eye."

The idea in his mind burst its way into my mind in a moment.

"Gracious God!" I exclaimed, "are you mad enough to suppose that Lucilla's sight can be restored, after a blindness of one-and-twenty years?"

He suddenly held up his hand, in sign to me to be silent.

At the same moment the door opened; and Lucilla (followed by Oscar) entered the room.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH

He sees Lucilla

THE first impression which poor Miss Finch produced on Nugent Dubourg, was precisely the same as the first impression which she had produced on me.

"Good Heavens!" he cried. "The Dresden Madonna! The Virgin of San Sisto!"

Lucilla had already heard from me of her extraordinary resemblance to the chief figure in Raphael's renowned picture. Nugent's blunt outburst of recognition passed unnoticed by her. She stopped short, in the middle of the room--startled, the instant he spoke, by the extraordinary similarity of his tone and accent to the tone and accent of his brother's voice.

"Oscar," she asked nervously, "are you behind me? or in front of me?" Oscar laughed, and answered "Here!"--speaking behind her. She turned her head towards the place in front of her, from which Nugent had spoken. "Your voice is wonderfully like Oscar's," she said, addressing him timidly. "Is your face exactly like his face, too? May I judge for myself of the likeness between you? I can only do it in one way--by my touch."

Oscar advanced, and placed a chair for his brother by Lucilla's side.

"She has eyes in the tips of her fingers," he said. "Sit down, Nugent, and let her pass her hand over your face."

Nugent obeyed him in silence. Now that the first impression of surprise had passed away, I observed that a marked change was beginning to assert itself in his manner.

Little by little, an unnatural constraint got possession of him. His fluent tongue found nothing to talk about. His easy movements altered in the strangest way, until they almost became the movements of a slow awkward man. He was more like his brother than ever, as he sat down in the chair to submit himself to Lucilla's investigation. She had produced, at first sight--as well as I could judge--some impression on him for which he had not been prepared; causing some mental disturbance in him which he was for the moment quite unable to control. His eyes looked up at her, spell-bound; his color came and went; his breath quickened audibly when her fingers touched his face.

"What's the matter?" said Oscar, looking at him in surprise.

"Nothing is the matter," he answered, in the low absent tone of a man whose mind was secretly pursuing its own train of thought.

Oscar said no more. Once, twice, three times, Lucilla's hand passed slowly over Nugent's face. He submitted to it, silently, gravely, immovably--a perfect contrast to the talkative, lively young man of half an hour since. Lucilla employed a much longer time in examining him than she had occupied in examining me.

While the investigation was proceeding, I had leisure to think again over what had passed between Nugent and me on the subject of Lucilla's blindness, before she entered the room. My mind had by this time recovered its balance. I was able to ask myself what this young fellow's daring idea was really worth. Was it within the range of possibility that a sense so delicate as the sense of sight, lost for one-and-twenty years, could be restored by any means short of a miracle? It was monstrous to suppose it: the thing could not be. If there had been the faintest chance of giving my poor dear back the blessing of sight, that chance would have been tried by competent persons years and years since. I was ashamed of myself for having been violently excited at the moment by the new thought which Nugent had started in my mind; I was honestly indignant at his uselessly disturbing me with the vainest of all vain hopes. The one wise thing to do in the future, was to caution this flighty and inconsequent young man to keep his mad notion about Lucilla to himself--and to dismiss it from my own thoughts, at once and for ever.

Just as I arrived at that sensible resolution, I was recalled to what was going on in the room, by Lucilla's voice, addressing me by my name.

"The likeness is wonderful," she said. "Still, I think I can find a difference between them."

(The only difference between them was in the contrast of complexion and in the contrast of manner--both these being dissimilarities which appealed more or less directly to the eye.)

"What difference do you find?" I asked.

She slowly came towards me, with an anxious perplexed face; pondering as she advanced.

"I can't explain it," she answered--after a long silence.

When Lucilla left him, Nugent rose from his chair. He abruptly--almost roughly--took his brother's hand. He spoke to his brother in a strangely excited, feverish, headlong way.

"My dear fellow, now I have seen her, I congratulate you more heartily than ever. She is charming; she is unique. Oscar! I could almost envy you, if you were anyone else!"

Oscar was radiant with delight. His brother's opinion ranked above all human opinions in his estimation. Before he could say a word in return, Nugent left him as abruptly as he had approached him; walking away by himself to the window--and standing there, looking out.

Lucilla had not heard him. She was still pondering, with the same perplexed face. The likeness between the twins was apparently weighing on her mind--an unsolved problem that vexed and irritated it. Without anything said by me to lead to resuming the subject, she returned obstinately to the assertion that she had just made.

"I tell you again I am sensible of a difference between them," she repeated--"though you don't seem to believe me."

I interpreted this uneasy reiteration as meaning that she was rather trying to convince herself than to convince me. In her blind condition, it was doubly and trebly embarrassing not to know one brother from the other. I understood her unwillingness to acknowledge this--I felt (in her position) how it would have irritated me. She was waiting--impatiently waiting--for me to say something on my side. I am, as you know already, an indiscreet woman. I innocently said one of my rash things.

"I believe whatever you tell me, my dear," I answered. "You can find out a difference between them, I have no doubt. Still, I own I should like to see it put to the proof."

Her color rose. "How?" she asked abruptly.

"Try your touch alternately on both their faces," I suggested, "without knowing beforehand which position they each of them occupy. Make three trials--leaving them to change their places or not, between each trial, just as they please. If you guess which is which correctly three times following, there will be the proof that you can really lay your hand on a difference between them."

Lucilla shrank from accepting the challenge. She drew back a step, and silently shook her head. Nugent, who had overheard me, turned round suddenly from the window, and supported my proposal.

"A capital notion!" he burst out. "Let's try it! You don't object, Oscar--do you?"

"_I_ object?" cried Oscar--amazed at the bare idea of his opposing any assertion of his will to the assertion of his brother's will. "If Lucilla is willing, I say Yes, with all my heart."

The two brothers approached us, arm in arm. Lucilla, very reluctantly, allowed herself to be persuaded into trying the experiment. Two chairs, exactly alike, were placed in front of her. At a sign from Nugent, Oscar silently took the chair on her right. By this arrangement, the hand which she had used in touching Nugent's face, would be now the hand that she would employ in touching Oscar's face. When they were both seated, I announced that we were ready. Lucilla placed her hands on their faces, right and left, without the faintest idea in her mind of the positions which the two relatively occupied.

After first touching them with both hands, and both together, she tried them separately next, beginning with Oscar, and using her right hand only. She left him for Nugent; again using her right hand--then came back to him again--then returned to Nugent--hesitated---decided--tapped Nugent lightly on the head.

"Oscar!" she said.

Nugent burst out laughing. The laugh told her, before any of us could speak, that she had made a mistake at the first attempt.

"Try again, Lucilla," said Oscar kindly.

"Never!" she answered, angrily stepping back from both of them. "One mystification is enough."

Nugent tried next to persuade her to renew the experiment. She checked him sternly at the first word.

"Do you think if I won't do it for Oscar," she said, "that I would do it for you? You laughed at me. What was there to laugh at? Your brother's features are your features; your brother's hair is your hair; your brother's height is your height. What is there so very ridiculous--with such a resemblance as that--in a poor blind girl like me mistaking you one for the other? I wish to preserve a good opinion of you, for Oscar's sake. Don't turn me into ridicule again--or I shall be forced to think that your brother's good heart is not yours also!"

Nugent and Oscar looked at each other, petrified by this sudden outbreak; Nugent, of the two, being the most completely overwhelmed by it.

I attempted to interfere and put things right. My easy philosophy and my volatile French nature, failed to see any adequate cause for this vehement exhibition of resentment on Lucilla's part. Something in my tone, as I suppose, only added to her irritation. I, in my turn, was checked sternly at the first word. "You proposed it," she said; "You are the most to blame." I hastened to make my apologies (inwardly remarking that the habit of raising a storm in a tea-cup is a growing habit with the rising generation in England). Nugent followed me with more apologies on his side. Oscar supported us with his superior influence. He took Lucilla's hand--kissed it--and whispered something in her ear. The kiss and the whisper acted like a charm. She held out her hand to Nugent, she put her arm round my neck and embraced me, with all her own grace and sweetness. "Forgive me," she said to us gently. "I wish I could learn to be patient. But, oh, Mr. Nugent, it is sometimes so hard to be blind!" I can repeat the words; but I can give no idea of the touching simplicity with which they were spoken--of her innocently earnest anxiety to win her pardon. She so affected Nugent that he too--after a look at Oscar which said, "May I?"--kissed the hand that she offered to him. As his lips touched her, she started. The bright flush which always indicated the sudden rising of a thought in her mind, flew over her face. She unconsciously held Nugent's hand in her own, absorbed in the interest of realizing the new thought. For a moment, she stood, still as a statue, consulting with herself. The moment passed, she dropped Nugent's hand, and turned gaily to me.

"Will you think me very obstinate?" she asked.

"Why, my love?"

"I am not satisfied yet. I want to try again."

"No! no! At any rate not to-day."

"I want to try again," she repeated. "Not in your way. In a way of my own that has just come into my head." She turned to Oscar. "Will you humour me in this?" It is needless to set down Oscar's reply. She turned to Nugent. "Will you?"

"Only say what you wish me to do!" he answered.

"Go with your brother," she said, "to the other end of the room. I know where you are each of you standing, at this end. Madame Pratolungo will lead me to the place, and will put me just within reach of both your hands. I want each of you in turn (arrange by a sign between yourselves which is to begin) to take my hand, and hold it for a moment, and then drop it. I have an idea that I can distinguish between you, in that way--and I want very much to try it."

The brothers went silently to the other end of the room. I led Lucilla, after them, to the place in which they stood. At my suggestion, Nugent was the first to take her hand, as she had requested; to hold it for a moment, and then to drop it.

"Nugent!" she said, without the slightest hesitation.