"You forget something, Madame Pratolungo. You forget what the surgeon in attendance on her has told us."
"I remember it perfectly. If we say or do anything to agitate his patient, in her present state, the surgeon refuses to answer for the consequences."
"Well?"
"Well--between the alternative of leaving you free to break both their hearts, and the alternative of setting the surgeon's warning at defiance--dreadful as the choice is, my choice is made. I tell you to your face, I would rather see Lucilla blind again than see her your wife."
His estimate of the strength of the position on his side, had been necessarily based on one conviction--the conviction that Grosse's professional authority would tie my tongue. I had scattered his calculations to the winds. He turned so deadly pale that, dim as the light was, I could see the change in his face.
"I don't believe you!" he said.
"Present yourself at the rectory tomorrow," I answered--"and you will see. I have no more to say to you. Let me by."
You may suppose I was only trying to frighten him. I was doing nothing of the sort. Blame me, or approve of me, as you please, I was expressing the resolution which I had in my mind when I spoke. Whether my courage would have held out through the walk from Browndown to the rectory--whether I should have shrunk from it when I actually found myself in Lucilla's presence--is more than I can venture to decide. All I say is that I did, in my desperation, positively mean doing it, at the moment when I threatened to do it--and that Nugent Dubourg heard something in my voice which told him I was in earnest.
"You fiend!" he burst out, stepping close up to me with a look of fury.
The whole passionate fervour of the love that the miserable wretch felt for her, shook him from head to foot, as his horror of me found its way to expression in those two words.
"Spare me your opinion of my character," I said. "I don't expect _you_ to understand the motives of an honest woman. For the last time, let me by!"
Instead of letting me by, he locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. That done, he pointed to the chair that I had left.
"Sit down," he said, with a sudden sinking in his voice which implied a sudden change in his temper. "Let me have a minute to myself."
I returned to my place. He took his own chair on the other side of the table, and covered his face with his hands. We waited awhile in silence.
I looked at him, once or twice, as the minutes followed each other. The shaded lamp-light glistened dimly on something between his fingers. I rose softly, and stretched across the table to look closer. Tears! On my word of honor, tears forcing their way through his fingers, as he held them over his face! I had been on the point of speaking. I sat down again in silence.
"Say what you want of me. Tell me what you wish me to do." Those were his first words. He spoke them without moving his hands; so quietly, so sadly, with such hopeless sorrow, such uncomplaining resignation in his voice, that I, who had entered that room, hating him, rose again, and went round to his chair. I--who a minute ago, if I had had the strength, would have struck him down on the floor at my feet--laid my hand on his shoulder, pitying him from the bottom of my heart. That is what women are! There is a specimen of their sense, firmness, and self-control!
"Be just, Nugent," I said. "Be honorable. Be all that I once thought you.
I want no more."
He dropped his arms on the table: his head fell on them, and he burst into a fit of crying. It was so like his brother, that I could almost have fancied I, too, had mistaken one of them for the other. "Oscar over again," I thought to myself, "on the first day when I spoke to him in this very room!"
"Come!" I said, when he was quieter. We shall end in understanding each other and respecting each other after all."
He irritably shook my hand off his shoulder, and turned his face away from the light.
"Don't talk of understanding _me,_" he said. "Your sympathy is for Oscar.
He is the victim; he is the martyr; he has all your consideration and all your pity. I am a coward; I am a villain; I have no honor and no heart.
Tread Me under foot like a reptile. _My_ misery is only what I deserve!
Compassion is thrown away--isn't it?--on such a scoundrel as I am?"
I was sorely puzzled how to answer him. All that he had said against himself, I had thought of him in my own mind. And why not? He _had_ behaved infamously--he _was_ a fit object for righteous indignation. And yet--and yet--it is sometimes so very hard, however badly a man may have behaved, for women to hold out against forgiving him, when they know that a woman is at the bottom of it.
"Whatever I may have thought of you," I said, "it is still in your power, Nugent, to win back my old regard for you."
"Is it?" he answered scornfully. "I know better than that. You are not talking to Oscar now--you are talking to a man who has had some experience of women. I know how you all hold to your opinions because they are your opinions--without asking yourselves whether they are right or wrong. There are men who could understand me and pity me. No woman can do it. The best and cleverest among you don't know what love is--as a man feels it. It isn't the frenzy with You that it is with Us. It acknowledges restraints in a woman--it bursts through everything in a man. It robs him of his intelligence, his honor, his self-respect--it levels him with the brutes--it debases him into idiocy--it lashes him into madness. I tell you I am not accountable for my own actions. The kindest thing you could do for me would be to shut me up in a madhouse.