"How goot of Gott," he remarked, "when he invented the worlds to invent eatings and drinkings too! Ah!" sighed Herr Grosse, gently laying his outspread fingers on the pit of his stomach, "what immense happiness there is in This!"
Mr. Sebright looked at his watch.
"If there is anything more to be said on the question of the operation," he announced, "it must be said at once. We have barely five minutes more to spare. You have heard my opinion. I hold to it."
Herr Grosse took a pinch of snuff. "I also," he said, "hold to mine."
Lucilla turned towards the place from which Mr. Sebright had spoken.
"I am obliged to you, sir, for your opinion," she said, very quietly and firmly. "I am determined to try the operation. If it does fail, it will only leave me what I am now. If it succeeds, it gives me a new life. I will bear anything, and risk anything, on the chance that I may see."
So, she announced her decision. In those memorable words, she cleared the way for the coming Event in her life and in our lives, which it is the purpose of these pages to record.
Mr. Sebright answered her, in Mr. Sebright's discreet way.
"I cannot affect to be surprised at your decision," he said. "However sincerely I may regret it, I admit that it is the natural decision, in your case."
Lucilla addressed herself next to Herr Grosse.
"Choose your own day," she said. "The sooner, the better. To-morrow, if you can."
"Answer me one little thing, Miss," rejoined the German, with a sudden gravity of tone and manner which was quite new in our experience of him. "Do you mean what you say?"
She answered him gravely on her side. "I mean what I say."
"Goot. There is times, my lofe, to be funny. There is also times to be grave. It is grave-times now. I have my last word to say to you before I go."
With his wild black eyes staring through his owlish spectacles at Lucilla's face, speaking earnestly in his strange broken English, he now impressed on his patient the necessity of gravely considering, and preparing for, the operation which he had undertaken to perform.
I was greatly relieved by the tone he took with her. He spoke with authority: she would be obliged to listen to him.
In the first place, he warned Lucilla, if the operation failed, that there would be no possibility of returning to it, and trying it again. Once done, be the results what they might, it was done for good.
In the second place, before he would consent to operate, he must insist on certain conditions, essential to success, being rigidly complied with, on the part of the patient and her friends. Mr. Sebright had by no means exaggerated the length of the time of trial which would follow the operation, in the darkened room. Under no circumstances could she hope to have her eyes uncovered, even for a few moments, to the light, after a shorter interval than six weeks. During the whole of that time, and probably during another six weeks to follow, it was absolutely necessary that she should be kept in such a state of health as would assist her, constitutionally, in her gradual progress towards complete restoration of sight. If body and mind both were not preserved in their best and steadiest condition, all that his skill could do might be done in vain. Nothing to excite or to agitate her, must be allowed to find its way into the quiet daily routine of her life, until her medical attendant was satisfied that her sight was safe. The success of Herr Grosse's professional career had been due, in no small degree, to his rigid enforcement of these rules: founded on his own experience of the influence which a patient's general health, moral as well as physical, exercised on that patient's chance of profiting under an operation--more especially under an operation on an organ so delicate as the organ of sight.
Having spoken to this effect, he appealed to Lucilla's own good sense to recognize the necessity of taking time to consider her decision, and to consult on it with relatives and friends. In plain words, for at least three months the family arrangements must be so shaped, as to enable the surgeon in attendance on her to hold the absolute power of regulating her life, and of deciding on any changes introduced into it. When she and the members of her family circle were sure of being able to comply with these conditions, Lucilla had only to write to him at his hotel in London. On the next day he would undertake to be at Dimchurch. And then and there (if he was satisfied with the state of her health at the time), he would perform the operation.
After pledging himself in those terms, Herr Grosse puffed out his remaining breath in one deep guttural "Hah!"--and got briskly on his short legs. At the same moment, Zillah knocked at the door, and announced that the chaise was waiting for the two gentlemen at the rectory-gate.
Mr. Sebright rose--in some doubt, apparently, whether his colleague had done talking. "Don't let me hurry you," he said. "I have business in London; and I must positively catch the next train."
"Soh! I have my business in London, too," answered his brother-oculist--"the business of pleasure." (Mr. Sebright looked scandalized at the frankness of this confession, coming from a professional man). "I am so passion-fond of musics," Herr Grosse went on--"I want to be in goot times for the opera. Ach Gott! musics is expensive in England! I climb to the gallery, and pay my five silver shillingses even there. For five copper pences, in my own country, I can get the same thing--only better done. From the deep bottoms of my heart," proceeded this curious man, taking a cordial leave of me, "I thank you, dear madam, for the Mayonnaise. When I come again, I pray you more of that lofely dish." He turned to Lucilla, and popped his thumb on her eyelids for the last time at parting. "My sweet-Feench, remember what your surgeon-optic has said to you. I shall let the light in here--but in my own way, at my own time. Pretty lofe! Ah, how infinitely much prettier she will be, when she can see!" He took Lucilla's hand, and put it sentimentally inside the collar of his waistcoat, over the region of the heart; laying his other hand upon it as if he was keeping it warm. In this tender attitude, he blew a prodigious sigh; recovered himself, with a shake of his shock-head; winked at me through his spectacles, and waddled out after Mr. Sebright, who was already at the bottom of the stairs. Who would have guessed that this man held the key which was to open for my blind Lucilla the gates of a new life!
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SECOND
Alas for the Marriage!
WE were left together; Nugent having accompanied the two oculists to the garden-gate.
Now that we were alone, Oscar's absence could hardly fail to attract Lucilla's attention. Just as she was referring to him in terms which made it no easy task for me to quiet her successfully, we were interrupted by the screams of the baby, ascending from the garden below. I ran to the window, and looked out.
Mrs. Finch had actually effected her desperate purpose of waylaying the two surgeons in the interests of "baby's eyes." There she was, in a skirt and a shawl--with her novel dropped in one part of the lawn, and her handkerchief in the other--pursuing the oculists on their way to the chaise.