Poor Miss Finch Part 14

I am afraid I must confess that I myself took no very indulgent view of the patient's case.

It was his duty to exert himself--as I thought. He appeared to me to be too indolent to make a proper effort to better his own condition. Lucilla and I had more than one animated discussion about him. On a certain evening when we were at the piano gossiping, and playing in the intervals, she was downright angry with me for not sympathizing with her darling as unreservedly as she did. "I have noticed one thing, Madame Pratolungo," she said to me, with a flushed face and a heightened tone.

"You have never done Oscar justice from the first."

(Mark those trifling words. The time is coming when you will hear of them again.)

The preparations for the contemplated marriage went on. The lawyers produced their sketch of the settlement; and Oscar wrote (to an address in New York, given to him by Nugent) to tell his brother of the approaching change in his life, and of the circ.u.mstances which had brought it about.

The marriage settlement was not shown to me; but, from certain signs and tokens, I guessed that Oscar's perfect disinterestedness on the question of money had been turned to profitable account by Oscar's future father-in-law. Reverend Finch was reported to have shed tears when he first read the doc.u.ment. And Lucilla came out of the study, after an interview with her father, more thoroughly and vehemently indignant than I had ever seen her yet. "Don't ask what is the matter!" she said to me between her teeth. "I am ashamed to tell you." When Oscar came in, a little later, she fell on her knees--literally on her knees--before him.

Some overmastering agitation was in possession of her whole being, which made her, for the moment, reckless of what she said or did. "I worship you!" she burst out hysterically, kissing his hand. "You are the n.o.blest of living men. I can never, never be worthy of you!" The interpretation of these high-flown sayings and doings was, to my mind, briefly this: Oscar's money in the rector's pocket, and the rector's daughter used as the means.

The interval expired; the weeks succeeded each other. All had been long since ready for the marriage--and still the marriage did not take place.

Far from becoming himself again, with time to help him--as the doctor had foretold--Oscar steadily grew worse. All the nervous symptoms (to use the medical phrase) which I have already described, strengthened instead of loosening their hold on him. He grew thinner and thinner, and paler and paler. Early in the month of November, we sent for the doctor again. The question to be put to him this time, was the question (suggested by Lucilla) of trying as a last remedy change of air.

Something--I forget what--delayed the arrival of our medical man. Oscar had given up all idea of seeing him that day, and had come to us at the rectory--when the doctor drove into Dimchurch. He was stopped before he went on to Browndown; and he and his patient saw each other alone in Lucilla's sitting-room.

They were a long time together. Lucilla, waiting with me in my bed-chamber, grew impatient. She begged me to knock at the sitting-room door, and inquire when she might be permitted to a.s.sist at the consultation.

I found doctor and patient standing together at the window, talking quietly. Evidently, nothing had pa.s.sed to excite either of them in the smallest degree. Oscar looked a little pale and weary--but he, like his medical adviser, was perfectly composed.

"There is a young lady in the next room," I said, "who is getting anxious to hear what your consultation has ended in."

The doctor looked at Oscar, and smiled.

"There is really nothing to tell Miss Finch," he said. "Mr. Dubourg and I have gone all over the case again--and nothing new has come of it. His nervous system has not recovered its balance so soon as I expected. I am sorry--but I am not in the least alarmed. At his age, things are sure to come right in the end. He must be patient, and the young lady must be patient. I can say no more."

"Do you see any objection to his trying change of air?" I inquired.

"None, whatever! Let him go where he likes, and amuse himself as he likes. You are all of you a little disposed to take Mr. Dubourg's case too seriously. Except the nervous derangement (unpleasant enough in itself, I grant), there is really nothing the matter with him. He has not a trace of organic disease anywhere. The pulse," continued the doctor, laying his fingers lightly on Oscar's wrist, "is perfectly satisfactory.

I never felt a quieter pulse in my life."

As the words pa.s.sed his lips, a frightful contortion fastened itself on Oscar's face.

His eyes turned up hideously.

From head to foot his whole body was wrenched round, as if giant hands had twisted it, towards the right.

Before I could speak, he was in convulsions on the floor at his doctor's feet.

"Good G.o.d, what is this!" I cried out.

The doctor loosened his cravat, and moved away the furniture that was near him. That done, he waited--looking at the writhing figure on the floor.

"Can you do nothing more?" I asked.

He shook his head gravely. "Nothing more."

"What is it?"

"An epileptic fit."

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH

The Doctor's Opinion

BEFORE another word had been exchanged between us, Lucilla entered the room. We looked at each other. If we could have spoken at that moment, I believe we should both have said, "Thank G.o.d, she is blind!"

"Have you all forgotten me?" she asked. "Oscar! where are you? What does the doctor say?"

She advanced into the room. In a moment more, she would have stumbled against the prostrate man still writhing on the floor. I laid my hand on her arm, and stopped her.

She suddenly caught my hand in hers. "Why did you tremble," she asked, "when you took me by the arm? Why are you trembling now?" Her delicate sense of touch was not to be deceived. I vainly denied that anything had happened: my hand had betrayed me. "There is something wrong!" she exclaimed, "Oscar has not answered me."

The doctor came to my a.s.sistance.

"There is nothing to be alarmed about," he said. "Mr. Dubourg is not very well to-day."

She turned on the doctor, with a sudden burst of anger.

"You are deceiving me!" she cried. "Something serious has happened to him. The truth! tell me the truth! Oh! it's shameful, it's heartless of both of you to deceive a wretched blind creature like me!"

The doctor still hesitated. I told her the truth.

"Where is he?" she asked, seizing me by the two shoulders, and shaking me in the violence of her agitation.

I entreated her to wait a little; I tried to place her in a chair. She pushed me contemptuously away, and went down on the floor on her hands and knees. "I shall find him," she said to herself; "I shall find him in spite of them!" She began to crawl over the floor, feeling the empty s.p.a.ce before her with her hand. It was horrible. I followed her, and raised her again, by main force.

"Don't struggle with her," said the doctor. "Let her come here. He is quiet now."

I looked at Oscar. The worst of it was over. He was exhausted--he was quite still now. The doctor's voice guided her to the place. She sat down by Oscar on the floor, and laid his head on her lap. The moment she touched him, the same effect was produced on her which would be produced (if our eyes were bandaged) on you or me when the bandage was taken off.

An instant sense of relief diffused itself through her whole being. She became her gentler and sweeter self again. "I am sorry I lost my temper,"

she said with the simplicity of a child. "But you don't know how hard it is to be deceived when you are blind." She stooped as she said those words, and pa.s.sed her handkerchief lightly over his forehead. "Doctor,"

she asked, "will this happen again?"

"I hope not."

"Are you sure not?"

"I can't say that."

"What has brought it on?"

"I am afraid the blow he received on the head has brought it on."

She asked no more questions; her eager face pa.s.sed suddenly into a state of repose. Something seemed to have come into her mind--after the doctor's answer to her own question--which absorbed her in herself. When Oscar recovered his consciousness, she left it to me to answer the first natural questions which he put. When he personally addressed her she spoke to him kindly, but briefly. Something in her, at that moment, seemed to keep her apart, even from _him._ When the doctor proposed taking him back to Browndown, she did not insist, as I had antic.i.p.ated, on going with them. She took leave of him tenderly--but still she let him go. While he yet lingered near the door, looking back at her, she moved away slowly to the further end of the room; self-withdrawn into her own dark world--shut up in her thoughts from him and from us.