When my eyes first rested on her, she was picking off the dead leaves from her flowers. Her delicate ear detected the sound of my strange footstep, long before I reached the place at which she was standing. She lifted her head--and advanced quickly to meet me with a faint flush on her face, which came and died away again in a moment. I happen to have visited the picture gallery at Dresden in former years. As she approached me, nearer and nearer, I was irresistibly reminded of the gem of that superb collection--the matchless Virgin of Raphael, called "The Madonna di San Sisto." The fair broad forehead; the peculiar fullness of the flesh between the eyebrow and the eyelid; the delicate outline of the lower face; the tender, sensitive lips; the color of the complexion and the hair--all reflected, with a startling fidelity, the lovely creature of the Dresden picture. The one fatal point at which the resemblance ceased, was in the eyes. The divinely-beautiful eyes of Raphael's Virgin were lost in the living likeness of her that confronted me now. There was no deformity; there was nothing to recoil from, in my blind Lucilla. The poor, dim, sightless eyes had a faded, changeless, inexpressive look--and that was all. Above them, below them, round them, to the very edges of her eyelids, there was beauty, movement, life. _In_ them--death! A more charming creature--with that one sad drawback--I never saw. There was no other personal defect in her. She had the fine height, the well-balanced figure, and the length of the lower limbs, which make all a woman's movements graceful of themselves. Her voice was delicious--clear, cheerful, sympathetic. This, and her smile--which added a charm of its own to the beauty of her mouth--won my heart, before she had got close enough to me to put her hand in mine. "Ah, my dear!" I said, in my headlong way, "I am so glad to see you!" The instant the words passed my lips, I could have cut my tongue out for reminding her in that brutal manner that she was blind.
To my relief, she showed no sign of feeling it as I did. "May I see you, in _my_ way?" she asked gently--and held up her pretty white hand. "May I touch your face?"
I sat down at once on the window-seat. The soft rosy tips of her fingers seemed to cover my whole face in an instant. Three separate times she passed her hand rapidly over me; her own face absorbed all the while in breathless attention to what she was about. "Speak again!" she said suddenly, holding her hand over me in suspense. I said a few words. She stopped me by a kiss. "No more!" she exclaimed joyously. "Your voice says to my ears, what your face says to my fingers. I know I shall like you.
Come in, and see the rooms we are going to live in together."
As I rose, she put her arm round my waist--then instantly drew it away again, and shook her fingers impatiently, as if something had hurt them.
"A pin?" I asked.
"No! no! What colored dress have you got on?"
"Purple."
"Ah! I knew it! Pray don't wear dark colors. I have my own blind horror of anything that is dark. Dear Madame Pratolungo, wear pretty bright colors, to please _me!_" She put her arm caressingly round me again--round my neck, however, this time, where her hand could rest on my linen collar. "You will change your dress before dinner--won't you?" she whispered. "Let me unpack for you, and choose which dress I like."
The brilliant decorations of the corridor were explained to me now!
We entered the rooms; her bed-room, my bed-room, and our sitting-room between the two. I was prepared to find them, what they proved to be--as bright as looking-glasses, and gilding, and gaily-colored ornaments, and cheerful knick-knacks of all sorts could make them. They were more like rooms in my lively native country than rooms in sober colorless England.
The one thing which I own did still astonish me, was that all this sparkling beauty of adornment in Lucilla's habitation should have been provided for the express gratification of a young lady who could not see.
Experience was yet to show me that the blind can live in their imaginations, and have their favorite fancies and illusions like the rest of us.
To satisfy Lucilla by changing my dark purple dress, it was necessary that I should first have my boxes. So far as I knew, Finch's boy had taken my luggage, along with the pony, to the stables. Before Lucilla could ring the bell to make inquiries, my elderly guide (who had silently left us while we were talking together in the corridor) re-appeared, followed by the boy and a groom, carrying my things. These servants also brought with them certain parcels for their young mistress, purchased in the town, together with a bottle, wrapped in fair white paper, which looked like a bottle of medicine--and which had a part of its own to play in our proceedings, later in the day.
"This is my old nurse," said Lucilla, presenting her attendant to me.
"Zillah can do a little of everything--cooking included. She has had lessons at a London Club. You must like Zillah, Madame Pratolungo, for my sake. Are your boxes open?"
She went down on her knees before the boxes, as she asked the question.
No girl with the full use of her eyes could have enjoyed more thoroughly than she did the trivial amusement of unpacking my clothes. This time, however, her wonderful delicacy of touch proved to be at fault. Of two dresses of mine which happened to be exactly the same in texture, though widely different in color, she picked out the dark dress as being the light one. I saw that I disappointed her sadly when I told her of her mistake. The next guess she made, however, restored the tips of her fingers to their place in her estimation: she discovered the stripes in a smart pair of stockings of mine, and brightened up directly. "Don't be long dressing," she said, on leaving me. "We shall have dinner in half an hour. French dishes, in honor of your arrival. I like a nice dinner--I am what you call in your country, _gourmande._ See the sad consequence!" She put one finger to her pretty chin. "I am getting fat! I am threatened with a double chin--at two and twenty. Shocking! shocking!"
So she left me. And such was the first impression produced on my mind by "Poor Miss Finch."