Mrs. Finch recalled me to my senses. I saw her as in a dream, drying her tears, and looking at me in alarm. The rector approached, with profuse expressions of sympathy and offers of assistance. I wanted no comforting. I had served a hard apprenticeship to life; I had been well seasoned to trouble. "Thank you, sir," I said. "Look to Mrs. Finch." There was more air in the corridor. I went out again, to walk about, and get the better of it there.
A small object attracted my attention, crouched up on one of the window seats. The small object was--Jicks.
I suppose the child's instinct must have told her that something had gone wrong. She looked furtively sideways at me, round her doll: she had grave doubts of my intentions towards her. "Are you going to whack Jicks?" asked the curious little creature, shrinking into her corner. I sat down by her, and soon recovered my place in her confidence. She began to chatter again as fast as usual. I listened to her as I could have listened to no grown-up person at that moment. In some mysterious way that I cannot explain, the child comforted me. Little by little, I learnt what she had wanted with me, when she had attempted to drag me out of the room. She had seen all that had passed in the bed-chamber; and she had run out to take me back with her, and show me the wonderful sight of Lucilla with the bandage off her eyes. If I had been wise enough to listen to Jicks, I might have prevented the catastrophe that had happened. I might have met Lucilla in the corridor, and have forced her back into her own room and turned the key on her.
It was too late now to regret what had happened. "Jicks has been good," I said, patting my little friend on the head with a heavy heart. The child listened--considered with herself gravely--got off the window-seat--and claimed her reward for being good, with that excellent brevity of speech which so eminently distinguished her:
"Jicks will go out."
With those words, she shouldered her doll; and walked off. The last I saw of her, she was descending the stairs as a workman descends a ladder, on her way to the garden--and from the garden (the first time the gate was opened) to the hills. If I could have gone out with her light heart, I would have joined Jicks.
I had hardly lost sight of the child, before the door of Lucilla's room opened, and Herr Grosse appeared in the corridor.
"Soh!" he muttered with a gesture of relief, "the very womans I was looking for. A nice mess-fix we are in now! I must stop with Feench. (I shall end in hating Feench!) Can you put me into a beds for the night?"
I assured him that he could easily sleep at the rectory. In answer to my inquiries after his patient, he gravely acknowledged that he was anxious about Lucilla. The varying and violent emotions which had shaken her (acting through her nervous system) might produce results which would imperil the recovery of her sight. Absolute repose was not simply necessary--it was now the only chance for her. For the next four-and-twenty hours, he must keep watch over her eyes. At the end of that time--no earlier--he might be able to say whether the mischief done would be fatal to her sight or not. I asked how she had contrived to get her bandage off, and to make her fatal entrance into the sitting-room.
He shrugged his shoulders. "There are times," he said cynically, "when every womans is a hussy, and every mans is a fool. This was one of the times."
It appeared, on further explanation, that my poor Lucilla had pleaded so earnestly (after the nurse had left the room) to be allowed to try her eyes, and had shown such ungovernable disappointment when he persisted in saying No, that he had yielded--not so much to her entreaties, as to his own conviction that it would be less dangerous to humour her than to thwart her, with such a sensitive and irritable temperament as hers. He had first bargained however, on his side, that she should remain in the bed-chamber, and be content, for that time, with using her sight on the objects round her in the room. She had promised all that he asked--and he had been foolish enough to trust to her promise. The bandage once off, she had instantly set every consideration at defiance--had torn herself out of his hands like a mad creature--and had rushed into the sitting-room before he could stop her. The rest had followed as a matter of course. Feeble as it was at the first trial of it, her sense of sight was sufficiently restored to enable her to distinguish objects dimly. Of the three persons who had offered themselves to view on the right-hand side of the door, one (Mrs. Finch) was a woman; another (Mr. Finch) was a short, grey-headed, elderly man; the third (Nugent), in his height--which she could see--and in the color of his hair--which she could see-was the only one of the three who could possibly represent Oscar. The catastrophe that followed was (as things were) inevitable. Now that the harm was done, the one alternative left was to check the mischief at the point which it had already reached. Not the slightest hint at the terrible mistake that she had made must be suffered to reach her ears. If we any of us said one word about it before he authorized us to do so, he would refuse to answer for the consequences, and would then and there throw up the case.
So, in his broken English, Herr Grosse explained what had happened, and issued his directions for our future conduct.
"No person is to go into her," he said, in conclusion, "but you and goot Mrs. Zillahs. You two watch her, turn-about-turn-about. In a whiles, she will sleep. For me, I go to smoke my tobaccos in the garden. Hear this, Madame Pratolungo. When Gott made the womens, he was sorry afterwards for the poor mens--and he made tobaccos to comfort them."
Favoring me with this peculiar view of the scheme of creation, Herr Grosse shook his shock head, and waddled away to the garden.
I softly opened the bed-room door, and looked in--disappearing just in time to escape the rector and Mrs. Finch returning to their own side of the house.
Lucilla was lying on the sofa. She asked who it was in a drowsy voice--she was happily just sinking into slumber. Zillah occupied a chair near her. I was not wanted for the moment--and I was glad, for the first time in my experience at Dimchurch, to get out of the room again. By some contradiction in my character which I am not able to explain, there was a certain hostile influence in the sympathy that I felt for Oscar, which estranged me, for the moment, from Lucilla. It was not her fault--and yet (I am ashamed to own it) I almost felt angry with her for reposing so comfortably, when I thought of the poor fellow, without a creature to say a kind word to him, alone at Browndown.
Out again in the corridor, the question faced me:--What was I to do next?
The loneliness of the house was insupportable; my anxiety about Oscar grew more than I could endure. I put on my hat, and went out.
Having no desire to interfere with Herr Grosse's enjoyment of his pipe, I made my way through the garden as quickly as possible, and found myself in the village again.