Poor Miss Finch - Wilkie Collins (best books to read for beginners txt) 📗

THE first impression which poor Miss Finch produced on Nugent Dubourg, was precisely the same as the first impression which she had produced on me.

“Good Heavens!” he cried. “The Dresden Madonna! The Virgin of San Sisto!”

Lucilla had already heard from me of her extraordinary resemblance to the chief figure in Raphael’s renowned picture. Nugent’s blunt outburst of recognition passed unnoticed by her. She stopped short, in the middle of the room—startled, the instant he spoke, by the extraordinary similarity of his tone and accent to the tone and accent of his brother’s voice.

“Oscar,” she asked nervously, “are you behind me? or in front of me?” Oscar laughed, and answered “Here!”—speaking behind her. She turned her head towards the place in front of her, from which Nugent had spoken. “Your voice is wonderfully like Oscar’s,” she said, addressing him timidly. “Is your face exactly like his face, too? May I judge for myself of the likeness between you? I can only do it in one way—by my touch.”

Oscar advanced, and placed a chair for his brother by Lucilla’s side.

“She has eyes in the tips of her fingers,” he said. “Sit down, Nugent, and let her pass her hand over your face.”

Nugent obeyed him in silence. Now that the first impression of surprise had passed away, I observed that a marked change was beginning to assert itself in his manner.

Little by little, an unnatural constraint got possession of him. His fluent tongue found nothing to talk about. His easy movements altered in the strangest way, until they almost became the movements of a slow awkward man. He was more like his brother than ever, as he sat down in the chair to submit himself to Lucilla’s investigation. She had produced, at first sight—as well as I could judge—some impression on him for which he had not been prepared; causing some mental disturbance in him which he was for the moment quite unable to control. His eyes looked up at her, spell-bound; his color came and went; his breath quickened audibly when her fingers touched his face.

“What’s the matter?” said Oscar, looking at him in surprise.

“Nothing is the matter,” he answered, in the low absent tone of a man whose mind was secretly pursuing its own train of thought.

Oscar said no more. Once, twice, three times, Lucilla’s hand passed slowly over Nugent’s face. He submitted to it, silently, gravely, immovably—a perfect contrast to the talkative, lively young man of half an hour since. Lucilla employed a much longer time in examining him than she had occupied in examining me.

While the investigation was proceeding, I had leisure to think again over what had passed between Nugent and me on the subject of Lucilla’s blindness, before she entered the room. My mind had by this time recovered its balance. I was able to ask myself what this young fellow’s daring idea was really worth. Was it within the range of possibility that a sense so delicate as the sense of sight, lost for one-and-twenty years, could be restored by any means short of a miracle? It was monstrous to suppose it: the thing could not be. If there had been the faintest chance of giving my poor dear back the blessing of sight, that chance would have been tried by competent persons years and years since. I was ashamed of myself for having been violently excited at the moment by the new thought which Nugent had started in my mind; I was honestly indignant at his uselessly disturbing me with the vainest of all vain hopes. The one wise thing to do in the future, was to caution this flighty and inconsequent young man to keep his mad notion about Lucilla to himself—and to dismiss it from my own thoughts, at once and for ever.

Just as I arrived at that sensible resolution, I was recalled to what was going on in the room, by Lucilla’s voice, addressing me by my name.

“The likeness is wonderful,” she said. “Still, I think I can find a difference between them.”

(The only difference between them was in the contrast of complexion and in the contrast of manner—both these being dissimilarities which appealed more or less directly to the eye.)

“What difference do you find?” I asked.

She slowly came towards me, with an anxious perplexed face; pondering as she advanced.

“I can’t explain it,” she answered—after a long silence.

When Lucilla left him, Nugent rose from his chair. He abruptly—almost roughly—took his brother’s hand. He spoke to his brother in a strangely excited, feverish, headlong way.

“My dear fellow, now I have seen her, I congratulate you more heartily than ever. She is charming; she is unique. Oscar! I could almost envy you, if you were anyone else!”

Oscar was radiant with delight. His brother’s opinion ranked above all human opinions in his estimation. Before he could say a word in return, Nugent left him as abruptly as he had approached him; walking away by himself to the window—and standing there, looking out.

Lucilla had not heard him. She was still pondering, with the same perplexed face. The likeness between the twins was apparently weighing on her mind—an unsolved problem that vexed and irritated it. Without anything said by me to lead to resuming the subject, she returned obstinately to the assertion that she had just made.

“I tell you again I am sensible of a difference between them,” she repeated—“though you don’t seem to believe me.”

I interpreted this uneasy reiteration as meaning that she was rather trying to convince herself than to convince me. In her blind condition, it was doubly and trebly embarrassing not to know one brother from the other. I understood her unwillingness to acknowledge this—I felt (in her position) how it would have irritated me. She was waiting—impatiently waiting—for me to say something on my side. I am, as you know already, an indiscreet woman. I innocently said one of my rash things.

“I believe whatever you tell me, my dear,” I answered. “You can find out a difference between them, I have no doubt. Still, I own I should like to see it put to the proof.”

Her color rose. “How?” she asked abruptly.

“Try your touch alternately on both their faces,” I suggested, “without knowing beforehand which position they each of them occupy. Make three trials—leaving them to change their places or not, between each trial, just as they please. If you guess which is which correctly three times following, there will be the proof that you can really lay your hand on a difference between them.”

Lucilla shrank from accepting the challenge. She drew back a step, and silently shook her head. Nugent, who had overheard me, turned round suddenly from the window, and supported my proposal.

“A capital notion!” he burst out. “Let’s try it! You don’t object, Oscar—do you?”

“I object?” cried Oscar—amazed at the bare idea of his opposing any assertion of his will to the assertion of his brother’s will. “If Lucilla is willing, I say Yes, with all my heart.”

The two brothers approached us, arm in arm. Lucilla, very reluctantly, allowed herself to be persuaded into trying the experiment. Two chairs, exactly alike, were placed in front of her. At a sign from Nugent, Oscar silently took the chair on her right. By this arrangement, the hand which she had used in touching Nugent’s face, would be now the hand that she would employ in touching Oscar’s face. When they were both seated, I announced that we were ready. Lucilla placed her hands on their faces, right and left, without the faintest idea in her mind of the positions which the two relatively occupied.

After first touching them with both hands, and both together, she tried them separately next, beginning with Oscar, and using her right hand only. She left him for Nugent; again using her right hand—then came back to him again—then returned to Nugent—hesitated–decided—tapped Nugent lightly on the head.

“Oscar!” she said.

Nugent burst out laughing. The laugh told her, before any of us could speak, that she had made a mistake at the first attempt.

“Try again, Lucilla,” said Oscar kindly.

“Never!” she answered, angrily stepping back from both of them. “One mystification is enough.”

Nugent tried next to persuade her to renew the experiment. She checked him sternly at the first word.

“Do you think if I won’t do it for Oscar,” she said, “that I would do it for you? You laughed at me. What was there to laugh at? Your brother’s features are your features; your brother’s hair is your hair; your brother’s height is your height. What is there so very ridiculous—with such a resemblance as that—in a poor blind girl like me mistaking you one for the other? I wish to preserve a good opinion of you, for Oscar’s sake. Don’t turn me into ridicule again—or I shall be forced to think that your brother’s good heart is not yours also!”

Nugent and Oscar looked at each other, petrified by this sudden outbreak; Nugent, of the two, being the most completely overwhelmed by it.

I attempted to interfere and put things right. My easy philosophy and my volatile French nature, failed to see any adequate cause for this vehement exhibition of resentment on Lucilla’s part. Something in my tone, as I suppose, only added to her irritation. I, in my