The Day Between

THE interval-day before the second appearance of Herr Grosse, and the experiment on Lucilla’s sight that was to follow it, was marked by two incidents which ought to be noticed in this place.

The first incident was the arrival, early in the morning, of another letter addressed to me privately by Oscar Dubourg. Like many other shy people, he had a perfect mania, where any embarrassing circumstances were concerned, for explaining himself, with difficulty, by means of his pen, in preference to explaining himself, with ease, by means of his tongue.

Oscar’s present communication informed me that he had left us for London by the first morning train, and that his object in taking this sudden journey was — to state his present position towards Lucilla to a gentleman especially conversant with the peculiarities of blind people. In plain words, he had resolved on applying to Mr. Sebright for advice.

“I like Mr. Sebright” (Oscar wrote) “as cordially as I detest Herr Grosse. The short conversation I had with him has left me with the pleasantest impression of his delicacy and his kindness. If I freely reveal to this skillful surgeon the sad situation in which I am placed, I believe his experience will throw an entirely new light on the present state of Lucilla’s mind, and on the changes which we may expect to see produced in her, if she really does recover her sight. The result may be of incalculable benefit in teaching me how I may own the truth, most harmlessly to her, as well as to myself. Pray don’t suppose I undervalue your advice. I only want to be doubly fortified, before I risk my confession, by the advice of a scientific man.”

All this I took to mean, in plain English, that vacillating Oscar wanted to quiet his conscience by gaining time, and that his absurd idea of consulting Mr. Sebright was nothing less than a new and plausible excuse for putting off the evil day. His letter ended by pledging me to secrecy, and by entreating me so to manage matters as to grant him a private interview on his return to Dimchurch by the evening train.

I confess I felt some curiosity as to what would come of the proposed consultation between unready Oscar and precise Mr. Sebright — and I accordingly arranged to take my walk alone, towards eight o’clock that evening, on the road that led to the distant railway station.

The second incident of the day may be described as a confidential conversation between Lucilla and myself, on the subject which now equally absorbed us both — the momentous subject of her restoration to the blessing of sight.

She joined me at the breakfast-table with her ready distrust newly excited, poor thing, by Oscar. He had accounted to her for his journey to London by putting forward the commonplace excuse of “business.” She instantly suspected (knowing how he felt about it) that he was secretly bent on interfering with the performance of the operation by Herr Grosse. I contrived to compose the anxiety thus aroused in her mind, by informing her, on Oscar’s own authority, that he personally disliked and distrusted the German oculist. “Make your mind easy,” I said. “I answer for his not venturing near Herr Grosse.”

A long silence between us followed those words. When Lucilla next referred to Oscar in connection with the coming operation, the depressed state of her spirits seemed to have quite altered her view of her own prospects. She, of all the people in the world, now spoke in disparagement of the blessing conferred on the blind by the recovery of their sight!

“Do you know one thing?” she said. “If I had not been going to be married to Oscar, I doubt if I should have cared to put any oculist, native or foreign, to the trouble of coming to Dimchurch.”

“I don’t think I understand you,” I answered. “You cannot surely mean to say that you would not have been glad, under any circumstances, to recover your sight?”

“That is just what I do mean to say.”

“What! you, who have written to Grosse to hurry the operation, don’t care to see?”

“I only care to see Oscar. And, what is more, I only care to see him because I am in love with him. But for that, I really don’t feel as if it would give me any particular pleasure to use my eyes. I have been blind so long, I have learnt to do without them.”

“And yet, you looked perfectly entranced when Nugent first set you doubting whether you were blind for life?”

“Nugent took me by surprise,” she answered; “Nugent startled me out of my senses. I have had time to think since; I am not carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment now. You people who can see attach such an absurd importance to your eyes! I set my touch, my dear, against your eyes, as much the most trustworthy, and much the most intelligent sense of the two. If Oscar was not, as I have said, the uppermost feeling with me, shall I tell you what I should have infinitely preferred to recovering my sight — supposing it could have been done?” She shook her head with a comic resignation to circumstances. “Unfortunately, it can’t be done!”

“What can’t be done?”

She suddenly held out both her arms over the breakfast-table.

“The stretching out of these to an enormous and unheard-of length. That is what I should have liked!” she answered. “I could find out better what was going on at a distance with my hands, than you could with your eyes and your telescopes. What doubts I might set at rest for instance about the planetary system, among the people who can see, if I could only stretch out far enough to touch the stars.”

“This is talking sheer nonsense, Lucilla!”

“Is it? Just tell me which knows best in the dark — my touch or your eyes? Who has got a sense that she can always trust to serve her equally well through the whole four-and-twenty hours? You or me? But for Oscar — to speak in sober earnest, this time — I tell you I would much rather perfect the sense in me that I have already got, than have a sense given to me that I have not got. Until I knew Oscar, I don’t think I ever honestly envied any of you the use of your eyes.”

“You astonish me, Lucilla!”

She rattled her teaspoon impatiently in her empty cup.

“Can you always trust your eyes, even in broad daylight?” she burst out. “How often do they deceive you, in the simplest things? What did I hear you all disputing about the other day in the garden? You were looking at some view?”

“Yes — at the view down the alley of trees at the other end of the churchyard wall.”

“Some object in the alley had attracted general notice — had it not?”

“Yes — an object at the further end of it.”

“I heard you up here. You all differed in opinion, in spite of your wonderful eyes. My father said it moved. You said it stood still. Oscar said it was a man. Mrs. Finch said it was a calf. Nugent ran off, and examined this amazing object at close quarters. And what did it turn out to be? A stump of an old tree blown across the road in the night! Why am I to envy people the possession of a sense which plays them such tricks as that? No! no! Herr Grosse is going to ‘cut into my cataracts,’ as he calls it — because I am going to be married to a man I love; and I fancy, like a fool, I may love him better still, if I can see him. I may be quite wrong,” she added archly. “It may end in my not loving him half as well as I do now!”

I thought of Oscar’s face, and felt a sickening fear that she might be speaking far more seriously than she suspected. I tried to change the subject. No! Her imaginative nature had found its way into a new region of speculation before I could open my lips.

“I associate light,” she said thoughtfully, “with all that is beautiful and heavenly — and dark with all that is vile and horrible and devilish. I wonder how light and dark will look to me when I see?”

“I believe they will astonish you,” I answered, “by being entirely unlike what you fancy them to be now.”

She started. I had alarmed her without intending it.

“Will Oscar’s face be utterly unlike what I fancy it to be now?” she asked, in suddenly altered tones. “Do you mean to say that I have not had the right image of him in my mind all this time?”

I tried again to draw her off to another topic. What more could I do — with my tongue tied by the German’s warning to us not to agitate her, in the face of the operation to be performed on the next day?

It was quite useless. She went on, as before, without heeding me.

“Have I no means of judging rightly what Oscar is like?” she said. “I touch my own face; I know how long it is and how broad it is; I know how big the different features are, and where they are. And then I touch Oscar, and compare his face with my knowledge of my own face. Not a single detail escapes me. I see him in my mind as plainly as you see me across this table. Do you mean to say, when I see him with my eyes, that I shall discover something perfectly new to me? I don’t believe it!” She started up impatiently, and took a turn in the room. “Oh!” she exclaimed, with a stamp of her foot, “why can’t I take laudanum enough, or chloroform enough to kill me for the next six weeks — and then come to life again when the German takes the bandage off my eyes!” She sat down once more, and drifted all on a sudden into a question of pure morality. “Tell me this,” she said. “Is the greatest virtue, the virtue which it is most difficult to practice?”

“I suppose so,” I answered.

She drummed with both hands on the table, petulantly, viciously, as hard as she could.

“Then, Madame Pratolungo,” she said, “the greatest of all the virtues is — Patience. Oh, my friend, how I hate the greatest of all the virtues at this moment!”

That ended it — there the conversation found its way into other topics at last.

Thinking afterwards of the new side of her mind which Lucilla had shown to me, I derived one consolation from what had passed at the breakfast-table. If Mr. Sebright proved to be right, and if the operation failed after all, I had Lucilla’s word for it that blindness, of itself, is not the terrible affliction to the blind which the rest of us fancy it to be — because we can see.

Towards half-past seven in the evening, I went out alone, as I had planned, to meet Oscar on his return from London.

At a long straight stretch of the road, I saw him advancing towards me. He was walking more rapidly than usual, and singing as he walked. Even through its livid discoloration, the poor fellow’s face looked radiant with happiness as he came nearer. He waved his walking-stick exultingly in the air. “Good news!” he called out at the top of his voice. “Mr. Sebright has made me a happy man again!” I had never before seen him so like Nugent in manner, as I now saw him when we met and he shook hands with me.

“Tell me all about it,” I said.

He gave me his arm; and, talking all the way, we walked back slowly to Dimchurch.

“In the first place,” he began, “Mr. Sebright holds to his own opinion more firmly than ever. He feels absolutely certain that the operation will fail.”

“Is that your good news?” I asked reproachfully.

“No,” he said. “Though, mind, I own to my shame there was a time when I almost hoped it would fail. Mr. Sebright has put me in a better frame of mind. I have little or nothing to dread from the success of the operation — if, by any extraordinary chance, it should succeed. I remind you of Mr. Sebright’s opinion merely to give you a right idea of the tone which he took with me at starting. He only consented under protest to contemplate the event which Lucilla and Herr Grosse consider to be a certainty. ‘If the statement of your position requires it,’ he said, ‘I will admit that it is barely possible she may be able to see you two months hence. Now begin.’ I began by informing him of my marriage engagement.”

“Shall I tell you how Mr. Sebright received the information?” I said. “He held his tongue, and made you a bow.”

Oscar laughed.

“Quite true!” he answered. “I told him next of Lucilla’s extraordinary antipathy to dark people, and dark shades of color of all kinds. Can you guess what he said to me when I had done?”

I owned that my observation of Mr. Sebright’s character did not extend to guessing that.

“He said it was a common antipathy in his experience of the blind. It was one among the many strange influences exercised by blindness on the mind. ‘The physical affliction has its mysterious moral influence,’ he said. ‘We can observe it, but we can’t explain it. The special antipathy which you mention, is an incurable antipathy, except on one condition — the recovery of the sight.’ There he stopped. I entreated him to go on. No! He declined to go on until I had finished what I had to say to him first. I had my confession still to make to him — and I made it.”

“You concealed nothing?”

“Nothing. I laid my weakness bare before him. I told him that Lucilla was still firmly convinced that Nugent’s was the discolored face, instead of mine. And then I put the question — What am I to do?”

“And how did he reply?”

“In these words:—‘If you ask me what you are to do, in the event of her remaining blind (which I tell you again will be the event), I decline to advise you. Your own conscience and your own sense of honor must decide the question. On the other hand, if you ask me what you are to do, in the event of her recovering her sight, I can answer you unreservedly in the plainest terms. Leave things as they are; and wait till she sees.’ Those were his own words. Oh, the load that they took off my mind! I made him repeat them — I declare I was almost afraid to trust the evidence of my own ears.”

I understood the motive of Oscar’s good spirits, better than I understood the motive of Mr. Sebright’s advice. “Did he give his reasons?” I asked.

“You shall hear his reasons directly. He insisted on first satisfying himself that I thoroughly understood my position at that moment. ‘The prime condition of success, as Herr Grosse has told you,’ he said, ‘is the perfect tranquillity of the patient. If you make your confession to the young lady when you get back to-night to Dimch............