"I have brought Oscar back with me," he said to Lucilla; "and I have told him how widely the two oculists differ in opinion on your case. He knows also that you have decided on being guided by the more favorable view taken by Herr Grosse--and he knows no more."
There he stopped abruptly and seated himself apart from us, at the lower end of the room.
Lucilla instantly appealed to Oscar to explain his conduct.
"Why have you kept out of the way?" she asked. "Why have you not been with me, at the most important moment of my life?"
"Because I felt your anxious position too keenly," Oscar answered. "Don't think me inconsiderate towards you, Lucilla. If I had not kept away, I might not have been able to control myself."
I thought that reply far too dexterous to have come from Oscar on the spur of the moment. Besides, he looked at his brother when he said the last words. It seemed more than likely--short as the interval had been before they appeared in the sitting-room--that Nugent had been advising Oscar, and had been telling him what to say.
Lucilla received his excuses with the readiest grace and kindness.
"Mr. Sebright tells me, Oscar, that my sight is hopelessly gone," she said. "Herr Grosse answers for it that an operation will make me see.
Need I tell you which of the two I believe in? If I could have had my own way, Herr Grosse should have operated on my eyes, before he went back to London."
"Did he refuse?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Lucilla told him of the reasons which the German oculist had stated as unanswerable reasons for delay. Oscar listened attentively, and looked at his brother again, before he replied.
"As I understand it," he said, "if you decide on risking the operation at once, you decide on undergoing six weeks' imprisonment in a darkened room, and on placing yourself entirely at the surgeon's disposal for six weeks more, after that. Have you considered, Lucilla, that this means putting off our marriage again, for at least three months?"
"If you were in my place, Oscar, you would let nothing, not even your marriage, stand in the way of your restoration to sight. Don't ask me to consider, love. I can consider nothing but the prospect of seeing You!"
That fearlessly frank confession silenced him. He happened to be sitting opposite to the glass, so that he could see his face. The poor wretch abruptly moved his chair, so as to turn his back on it.
I looked at Nugent, and surprised him trying to catch his brother's eye.
Prompted by him, as I could now no longer doubt, Oscar had laid his finger on a certain domestic difficulty which I had had in my mind, from the moment when the question of the operation had been first agitated among us.
(The marriage of Oscar and Lucilla--it is here necessary to explain--had encountered another obstacle, and undergone a new delay, in consequence of the dangerous illness of Lucilla's aunt. Miss Batchford, formally invited to the ceremony as a matter of course, had most considerately sent a message begging that the marriage might not be deferred on her account. Lucilla, however, had refused to allow her wedding to be celebrated, while the woman who had been a second mother to her, lay at the point of death. The rector having an eye to rich Miss Batchford's money--not for himself (Miss B. detested him), but for Lucilla--had supported his daughter's decision; and Oscar had been compelled to submit. These domestic events had taken place about three weeks since; and we were now in receipt of news which not only assured us of the old lady's recovery, but informed us also that she would be well enough to make one of the wedding party in a fortnight's time. The bride's dress was in the house; the bride's father was ready to officiate--and here, like a fatality, was the question of the operation unexpectedly starting up, and threatening another delay yet, for a period which could not possibly be shorter than a period of three months! Add to this, if you please, a new element of embarrassment as follows. Supposing Lucilla to persist in her resolution, and Oscar to persist in concealing from her the personal change in him produced by the medical treatment of the fits, what would happen? Nothing less than this. Lucilla, if the operation succeeded, would find out for herself--before instead of after her marriage--the deception that had been practiced on her. And how she might resent that deception, thus discovered, the cleverest person among us could not pretend to foresee. There was our situation, as we sat in domestic parliament assembled, when the surgeons had left us!)
Finding it impossible to attract his brother's attention, Nugent had no alternative but to interfere actively for the first time.
"Let me suggest, Lucilla," he said, "that it is your duty to look at the other side of the question, before you make up your mind. In the first place, it is surely hard on Oscar to postpone the wedding-day again. In the second place, clever as he is, Herr Grosse is not infallible. It is just possible that the operation may fail, and that you may find you have put off your marriage for three months, to no purpose. Do think of it! If you defer the operation on your eyes till after your marriage, you conciliate all interests, and you only delay by a month or so the time when you may see."
Lucilla impatiently shook her head.
"If you were blind," she answered, "you would not willingly delay by a single hour the time when you might see. You ask me to think of it. I ask _you_ to think of the years I have lost. I ask _you_ to think of the exquisite happiness I shall feel, when Oscar and I are standing at the altar, if I can _see_ the husband to whom I am giving myself for life!
Put it off for a month? You might as well ask me to die for a month. It is like death to be sitting here blind, and to know that a man is within a few hours' reach of me who can give me my sight! I tell you all plainly, if you go on opposing me in this, I don't answer for myself. If Herr Grosse is not recalled to Dimchurch before the end of the week--I am my own mistress; I will go to him in London!"