For a moment, I was really in doubt whether the skilled hand of the great surgeon would not be ignobly employed in boxing my ears. No perversion of spelling can possibly report the complicated German-English jargon in which his fury poured itself out on my devoted head. Let it be enough to say that he declared Nugent's abominable personation of his brother to be vitally important--so long as Oscar was absent--to his successful treatment of the sensitive and excitable patient whom we had placed under his care. I vainly assured him that Nugent's object in leaving Dimchurch was to set matters right again by bringing his brother back. Grosse flatly declined to allow himself to be influenced by any speculative consideration of that sort. He said (and swore) that my meddling had raised a serious obstacle in his way, and that nothing but his own tender regard for Lucilla prevented him from "turning the coachmans back," and leaving us henceforth to shift for ourselves.
When we reached the rectory gate, he had cooled a little. As we crossed the garden, he reminded me that I stood pledged to be present when the bandage was taken off.
"Now mind!" he said. "You are going to see, if it is goot or bad to tell her that she has had those nice white arms of hers round the wrong brodder. You are going to tell me afterwards, if you dare say to her, in plain English words, 'Blue-Face is the man.'
We found Lucilla in the sitting-room. Grosse briefly informed her that he had nothing particular to occupy him in London, and that he had advanced the date of his visit on that account. "You want something to do, my lofe, on this soaky-rainy day. Show Papa-Grosse what you can do with your eyes, now you have got them back again." With those words, he unfastened the bandage, and, taking her by the chin, examined her eyes--first without his magnifying glass; then with it.
"Am I going on well?" she asked anxiously.
"Famous-well! You go on (as my goot friends say in America) first-class.
Now use your eyes for yourself. Gif one lofing look to Grosse first.
Then--see! see! see!"
There was no mistaking the tone in which he spoke to her.
He was not only satisfied about her eyes--he was triumphant. "Soh!" he grunted, turning to me. "Why is Mr. Sebrights not here to look at this?"
I eagerly approached Lucilla. There was still a little dimness left in her eyes. I noticed also that they moved to and fro restlessly, and (at times) wildly. But, oh, the bright change in her! the new life of beauty which the new sense had bestowed on her already! Her smile, always charming, now caught light from her lips, and spread its gentle fascination over all her face. It was impossible not to long to kiss her.
I advanced to congratulate, to embrace her. Grosse stepped forward, and checked me.
"No," he said. "Walk your ways to the odder end of the rooms--and let us see if _she_ can go to _you._"
Like all other people, knowing no more of the subject than I knew, I had no idea of the pitiably helpless manner in which the restored sense of sight struggles to assert itself, in persons who have been blind for life. In such cases, the effort of the eyes that are first learning to see, is like the effort of the limbs when a child is first learning to walk. But for Grosse's odd way of taking it, the scene which I was now to witness would have been painful in the last degree. My poor Lucilla--instead of filling me with joy, as I had anticipated--would I really believe have wrung my heart, and have made me burst out crying.
"Now!" said Grosse, laying one hand on Lucilla's arm, while he pointed to me with the other. "There she stands. Can you go to her?"
"Of course I can!"
"I lay you a bet-wager you can _not!_ Ten thausand pounds to six pennies.
Done-done. Now try!"
She answered by a little gesture of defiance, and took three hasty steps forward. Bewildered and frightened, she stopped suddenly at the third step--before she had advanced half the way from her end of the room to mine.
"I saw her here," she said, pointing down to the spot on which she was standing; and appealing piteously to Grosse. "I see her now--and I don't know where she is! She is so near, I feel as if she touched my eyes--and yet" (she advanced another step, and clutched with her hands at the empty air)--"and yet, I can't get near enough to take hold of her. Oh! what does it mean? what does it mean?"
"It means--pay me my six pennies!" said Grosse. "The wager-bet is mine!"
She resented his laughing at her, with an obstinate shake of her head, and an angry knitting of her pretty eyebrows.
"Wait a little," she said. "You shan't win quite so easily as that. I will get to her yet!"
She came straight to me in a moment--just as easily as I could have gone to her myself if I had tried.
"Another wager-bet!" cried Grosse, still standing behind her, and calling to me. "Twenty thousand pounds this time to a fourpennies-bit.
_She has shut her eyes to get to you._ Hey!"
It was true--she had blindfolded herself! With her eyes closed, she could measure to a hair's breadth the distance which, with her eyes opened, she was perfectly incompetent to calculate! Detected by both of us, she sat down, poor dear, with a sigh of despair. "Was it worth while," she said to me sadly, "to go through the operation for _this?_"
Grosse joined us at our end of the room.
"All in goot time," he said. "Patience--and these helpless eyes of yours will learn. Soh! I shall begin to teach them now. You have got your own notions--hey?--about this colors and that? When you were blind, did you think what would be your favorite colors if you could see? You did? Which colors is it? Tell me. Come!"
"White first," she answered. "Then scarlet."
Grosse paused, and considered.
"White, I understand," he said. "White is the fancy of a young girls. But why scarlets? Could you see scarlets when you were blind?"
"Almost," she answered, "if it was bright enough. I used to feel something pass before my eyes when scarlet was shown to me."