Sebright's--and the more I thought of the future, the less inclined I felt to share Oscar's hopeful view. She was just the person to say something or do something, at the critical moment of the experiment, which would take the wisest previous calculation by surprise. Oscar's prospects never had looked darker to me than they looked at that moment.
It would have been useless and cruel to have said to him what I have just said here. I put as bright a face on it as I could, and asked if he proposed to follow Mr. Sebright's advice.
"Yes," he said. "With a certain reservation of my own, which occurred to me after I had left his house."
"May I ask what it is?"
"Certainly. I mean to beg Nugent to leave Dimchurch, before Lucilla tries her sight for the first time. He will do that, I know, to please me."
"And when he has done it, what then?"
"Then I mean to be present--as Mr. Sebright suggested--when the bandage is taken off."
"Previously telling Lucilla," I interposed, "that it is you who are in the room?"
"No. There I take the precaution that I alluded to just now. I propose to leave Lucilla under the impression that it is I who have left Dimchurch, and that Nugent's face is the face she sees. If Mr. Sebright proves to be right, and if her first sensation is a sensation of relief, I will own the truth to her the same day. If not, I will wait to make my confession until she has become reconciled to the sight of me. That plan meets every possible emergency. It is one of the few good ideas that my stupid head has hit on since I have been at Dimchurch."
He said those last words with such an innocent air of triumph, that I really could not find it in my heart to damp his ardor by telling him what I thought of his idea. All I said was, "Don't forget, Oscar, that the cleverest plans are at the mercy of circumstances. At the last moment, an accident may happen which will force you to speak out."
We came in sight of the rectory as I gave him that final warning. Nugent was strolling up and down the road on the look-out for us. I left Oscar to tell his story over again to his brother, and went into the house.
Lucilla was at her piano when I entered the sitting-room. She was not only playing--but (a rare thing with her) singing too. The song was, poetry and music both, of her own composing. "I shall see him! I shall see him!" In those four words the composition began and ended. She adapted them to all the happy melodies in her memory. She accompanied them with hands that seemed to be mad for joy--hands that threatened every moment to snap the chords of the instrument. Never, since my first day at the rectory, had I heard such a noise in our quiet sitting-room as I heard now. She was in a fever of exhilaration which, in my foreboding frame of mind at that moment, it pained and shocked me to see. I lifted her off the music-stool, and shut up the piano by main force.
"Compose yourself for heaven's sake," I said. "Do you want to be completely exhausted when the German comes tomorrow?"
That consideration instantly checked her. She suddenly became quiet, with the abrupt facility of a child.
"I forgot that," she said, sitting down in a corner, with a face of dismay. "He might refuse to perform the operation! Oh, my dear, quiet me down somehow. Get a book, and read to me."
I got the book. Ah, the poor author! Neither she nor I paid the slightest attention to him. Worse still, we abused him for not interesting us--and then shut him up with a bang, and pushed him rudely into his place on the book-shelf, and left him upside down and went to bed.
She was standing at her window when I went in to wish her good night. The mellow moonlight fell tenderly on her lovely face.
"Moon that I have never seen," she murmured softly, "I feel you looking at me! Is the time coming when I shall look at You?" She turned from the window, and eagerly put my fingers on her pulse. "Am I quite composed again?" she asked. "Will he find me well to-morrow? Feel it! feel it! Is it quiet now?"
I felt it--throbbing faster and faster.
"Sleep will quiet it," I said--and kissed her, and left her.
She slept well. As for me, I passed such a wretched night, and got up so completely worn out, that I had to go back to my room after breakfast, and lie down again. Lucilla persuaded me to do it. "Herr Grosse won't be here till the afternoon," she said. "Rest till he comes."
We had reckoned without allowing for the eccentric character of our German surgeon. Excepting the business of his profession, Herr Grosse did everything by impulse, and nothing by rule. I had not long fallen into a broken unrefreshing sleep, when I felt Zillah's hand on my shoulder, and heard Zillah's voice in my ear.
"Please to get up, ma'am! He's here--he has come from London by the morning train."
I hurried into the sitting-room.
There, at the table, sat Herr Grosse with an open instrument-case before him; his wild black eyes gloating over a hideous array of scissors, probes, and knives, and his shabby hat hard by with lint and bandages huddled together anyhow inside it. And there stood Lucilla by his side, stooping over him--with one hand laid familiarly on his shoulder, and with the other deftly fingering one of his horrid instruments to find out what it was like!
THE END OF THE FIRST PART
PART THE SECOND