But, the instant I discover that this domestic conspiracy of yours--this personation of your brother which once quieted and comforted her--is unfavorably affecting her health of body and her peace of mind, I interfere between you in the character of her medical attendant, and stop it on medical grounds. You are producing in my patient a conflict of feeling, which--in a nervous temperament like hers--cannot go on without serious injury to her health. And serious injury to her health means serious injury to her eyes. I won't have that--I tell you plainly to pack up and go. I meddle with nothing else. After what you have yourself seen, I leave you to decide whether you will restore your brother to Miss Finch, or not. All I say is, Go. Make any excuse you like, but go before you have done more mischief. You shake your head! Is that a sign that you refuse? Take a day to think, before you make up your mind. I have patients in London to whom I am obliged to go back. But the day after to-morrow, I shall return to Ramsgate. If I find you still here, I shall tell Miss Finch you are no more Oscar Dubourg than I am. In her present state, I see less danger in giving her even that serious shock than in leaving her to the slow torment of mind which you are inflicting by your continued presence in this place. My last word is said. I go back by the next train, in an hour's time. Good morning, Mr. Nugent. If you are a wise man, you will meet me at the station."
After this, the accounts vary. Nugent's statement asserts that he accompanied Grosse on his way back to Miss Batchford's lodging, arguing the matter with him, and only leaving him at the door of the house.
Grosse's statement, on the other hand, makes no allusion to this. The disagreement between them is, however, of no consequence here. It is admitted, on either side, that the result of the interview was the same.
When Grosse took the train for London, Nugent Dubourg was not at the station. The next entry in the Journal shows that he remained that day and night, at least, at Ramsgate.
You now know, from the narrative of the surgeon's own proceedings, how seriously he thought of his patient's case, and how firmly he did his duty as a professional man. Having given you this necessary information, I again retire, and leave Lucilla to take up the next link in the chain of events.--P.]
_September_ 5th. _Six o'clock in the morning._--A few hours of restless, broken sleep--disturbed by horrid dreams, and waking over and over again with startings that seemed to shake me from head to foot. I can bear it no longer. The sun is rising. I have got up--and here I am at the writing-table, trying to finish the long story of yesterday still uncompleted in my Journal.
I have just been looking at the view from my window--and I notice one thing which has struck me. The mist this morning is the thickest mist I have yet seen here.
The sea-view is almost invisible, it is so dim and dull. Even the objects about me in my room are nothing like so plain as usual. The mist is stealing in no doubt through my open window. It gets between me and my paper, and obliges me to bend down close over the page to see what I am about. When the sun is higher, things will be clear again. In the meantime, I must do as well as I can.
Grosse came back after his walk as mysterious as ever.
He was quite peremptory in ordering me not to overtask my eyes--forbidding reading and writing, as I have already mentioned. But, when I asked for his reasons, he had, for the first time in my experience of him, no reasons to give. I have the less scruple about disobeying him, on that account. Still I am a little uneasy, I confess, when I think of his strange behavior yesterday. He looked at me, in the oddest way--as if he saw something in my face which he had never seen before. Twice he took his leave; and twice he returned, doubtful whether he would not remain at Ramsgate, and let his patients in London take care of themselves. His extraordinary indecision was put an end to at last by the arrival of a telegram which had followed him from London. An urgent message, I suppose, from one of the patients. He went away in a bad temper and a violent hurry; and told me, at the door, to expect him back on the sixth.
When Oscar came later, there was another surprise for me.
Like Grosse, he was not himself--he too behaved strangely! First, he was so cold and so silent, that I thought he was offended. Then he went straight to the other extreme, and became so loudly talkative, so obstreperously cheerful, that my aunt asked me privately whether I did not suspect (as she did) that he had been taking too much wine. It ended in his trying to sing to my accompaniment on the piano, and in his breaking down. He walked away to the other end of the room without explanation or apology. When I followed him there a little while after, he had a look that indescribably distressed me--a look as if he had been crying. Towards the end of the evening, my aunt fell asleep over her book, and gave us a chance of speaking to each other in a little second room which opens out of the drawing-room in this house. It was I who took the chance--not he. He was so incomprehensibly unwilling to go into the room and speak to me, that I had to do a very unladylike thing. I mean that I had to take his arm, and lead him in myself, and entreat him (in a whisper) to tell me what was the matter with him.
"Only the old complaint," he answered.
I made him sit down by me on a little couch that just held two.
"What do you mean by the old complaint?" I asked.
"Oh! you know!"
"I _don't_ know."
"You would know if you really loved me."
"Oscar! it is a shame to say that. It is a shame to doubt that I love you!"
"Is it? Ever since I have been here, I have doubted that you love me. It is getting to be an old complaint of mine now. I still suffer a little sometimes. Don't notice it!"