The moment my aunt begins to question me about distances, she makes a toil of my pleasure. It is worse still when I am asked about the relative sizes of ships and boats. When I see nothing but a boat, I fancy it larger than it is. When I see the boat in comparison with a ship, and then look back at the boat, I instantly go to the other extreme, and fancy it smaller than it is. The setting this right still vexes me almost as keenly as my stupidity vexed me some time since, when I saw my first horse and cart from an upper window, and took it for a dog drawing a wheelbarrow! Let me add in my own defence that both horse and cart were figured at least five times their proper size in my blind fancy, which makes my mistake, I think, not so very stupid after all.
Well, I amused my aunt. And what effect did I produce on Oscar?
If I could trust my eyes, I should say I produced exactly the contrary effect on _him_--I made him melancholy. But I don't trust my eyes. They must be deceiving me when they tell me that he looked, in my company, a moping, anxious, miserable man.
Or is it, that he sees and feels something changed in Me? I could scream with vexation and rage against myself. Here is my Oscar--and yet he is not the Oscar I knew when I was blind. Contradictory as it seems, I used to understand how he looked at me, when I was unable to see it. Now that I can see it, I ask myself, Is this really love that is looking at me in his eyes? or is it something else? How should I know? I knew when I had only my own fancy to tell me. But now, try as I may, I cannot make the old fancy and the new sight serve me in harmony both together. I am afraid he sees that I don't understand him. Oh, dear! dear! why did I not meet my good old Grosse, and become the new creature that he has made me, before I met Oscar? I should have had no blind memories and prepossessions to get over then. I shall become used to my new self, I hope and believe, with time--and that will accustom me to my new impressions of Oscar--and so it may all come right in the end. It is all wrong enough now. He put his arm round me, and gave me a little tender squeeze, while we were following Miss Batchford down to the dining-room this afternoon. Nothing in me answered to it. I should have felt it all over me a few months since.
Here is a tear on the paper. What a fool I am! Why can't I write about something else?
I sent my second letter to my father to-day; telling him of Oscar's return from abroad, and taking no notice of his not having replied to my first letter. The only way to manage my father is not to take notice, and to let him come right by himself. I showed Oscar my letter--with a space left at the end for his postscript. While he was writing it, he asked me to get something which happened to be up-stairs in my room. When I came back, he had sealed the envelope--forgetting to show me his postscript.
It was not worth while to open the letter again; he told me what he had written, and that did just as well.
[Note.--I must trouble you with a copy of what Nugent really did write.
It shows why he sent her out of the room, and closed the envelope before she could come back. The postscript is also worthy of notice, in this respect--that it plays a part in a page of my narrative which is still to come.
Thus Nugent writes, in Oscar's name and character, to the rector of Dimchurch. (I have already mentioned, as you will see in the twenty-second chapter, that a close similarity of handwriting was one among the other striking points of resemblance between the twins.)
"DEAR MR. FINCH, "Lucilla's letter will have told you that I have come to my senses, and that I am again paying my addresses to her as her affianced husband. My principal object in adding these lines is to propose that we should forget the past, and go on again as if nothing had happened.
"Nugent has behaved nobly. He absolves me from the engagements towards him into which I so rashly entered, at our last interview before I left Browndown. Most generously and amply he has redeemed his pledge to Madame Pratolungo to discover the place of my retreat and to restore me to Lucilla. For the present he remains abroad.
"If you favor me with a reply to this, I must warn you to be careful how you write; for Lucilla is sure to ask to see your letter. Remember that she only supposes me to have returned to her after a brief absence from England, caused by a necessity for joining my brother on the Continent.
It will be also desirable to say nothing on the subject of my unfortunate peculiarity of complexion. I have made it all right with Lucilla, and she is getting accustomed to me. Still, the subject is a sore one; and the less it is referred to the better.
Truly yours, "OSCAR."
Unless I add a word of explanation here, you will hardly appreciate the extraordinary skillfulness with which the deception is continued by means of this postscript.
Written in Oscar's character (and representing Nugent as having done all that he had promised me to do) it designedly omits the customary courtesy of Oscar's style. The object of this is to offend Mr. Finch--with what end in view you will presently see. The rector was the last man in existence to dispense with the necessary apologies and expressions of regret from a man engaged to his daughter, who had left her as Oscar had left her--no matter how the circumstances might appear to excuse him. The curt, off-hand postscript signed "Oscar" was the very thing to exasperate the wound already inflicted on Mr. Finch's self-esteem, and to render it at least probable that he would reconsider his intention of himself performing the marriage ceremony. In the event of his refusal, what would happen? A stranger, entirely ignorant of which was Nugent and which was Oscar, would officiate in his place. Do you see it now?
But even the cleverest people are not always capable of providing for every emergency. The completest plot generally has its weak place.