The best thing I could do for myself would be to cut my throat.--Oh, yes! this is a shocking way of talking, isn't it? I ought to struggle against it--as you say. I ought to summon my self-control. Ha! ha! ha! Here is a clever woman--here is an experienced woman. And yet--though she has seen me in Lucilla's company hundreds of times--she has never once discovered the signs of a struggle in me! From the moment when I first saw that heavenly creature, it has been one long fight against myself, one infernal torment of shame and remorse; and this clever friend of mine has observed so little and knows so little, that she can only view my conduct in one light--it is the conduct of a coward and a villain!"
He got up, and took a turn in the room. I was--naturally, I think--a little irritated by his way of putting it. A man assuming to know more about love than a woman! Was there ever such a monstrous perversion of the truth as that? I appeal to the women!
"You ought to be the last person to blame me," I said. "I had too high an opinion of you to suspect what was going on. I will never make the same mistake again--I promise you that!"
He came back, and stood still in front of me, looking me hard in the face.
"Do you really mean to say you saw nothing to set you thinking, on the day when I first met her?" he asked. "You were there in the room--didn't you see that she struck me dumb? Did you notice nothing suspicious at a later time? When I was suffering martyrdom, if I only looked at her--was there nothing to be seen in me which told its own tale?"
"I noticed that you were never at your ease with her," I replied. "But I liked you and trusted you--and I failed to understand it. That's all."
"Did you fail to understand everything that followed? Didn't I speak to her father? Didn't I try to hasten Oscar's marriage?"
It was true. He _had_ tried.
"When we first talked of his telling Lucilla of the discoloration of his face, did I not agree with you that he ought to put himself right with her, in his own interests?"
True again. Impossible to deny that he had sided with my view.
"When she all but found it out for herself, whose influence was used to make him own it? Mine! What did I do, when he tried to confess it, and failed to make her understand him? what did I do when she first committed the mistake of believing _me_ to be the disfigured man?"
The audacity of that last question fairly took away my breath. "You cruelly helped to deceive her," I answered indignantly. "You basely encouraged your brother in his fatal policy of silence."
He looked at me with an angry amazement on his side which more than equaled the angry amazement on mine.
"So much for the delicate perception of a woman!" he exclaimed. "So much for the wonderful tact which is the peculiar gift of the sex! You can see no motive but a bad motive in my sacrificing myself for Oscar's sake?"
I began to discern faintly that there might have been another than a bad motive for his conduct. But--well! I dare say I was wrong; I resented the tone he was taking with me; I would have owned I had made a mistake to anybody else in the world; I wouldn't own it to _him._ There!
"Look back for one moment," he resumed, in quieter and gentler tones.
"See how hardly you have judged me! I seized the opportunity--I swear to you this is true--I seized the opportunity of making myself an object of horror to her, the moment I heard of the mistake that she had made. I felt in myself that I was growing less and less capable of avoiding her, and I caught at the chance of making _her_ avoid _me;_ I did that--and I did more! I entreated Oscar to let me leave Dimchurch. He appealed to me, in the name of our love for each other, to remain. I couldn't resist him.
Where do you see signs of the conduct of a scoundrel in all this? Would a scoundrel have betrayed himself to you a dozen times over--as I did in that talk of ours in the summer-house? I remember saying in so many words, I wished I had never come to Dimchurch. What reason but one could there be for my saying that? How is it that you never even asked me what I meant?"
"You forget," I interposed, "that I had no opportunity of asking you.
Lucilla interrupted us, and diverted my attention to other things. What do you mean by putting me on my defence in this way?" I went on, more and more irritated by the tone he was taking with me. "What right have you to judge my conduct?"
He looked at me with a kind of vacant surprise.
"_Have_ I been judging your conduct?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Perhaps I was thinking, if you had seen my infatuation in time you might have checked it in time. No!" he exclaimed, before I could answer him. "Nothing could have checked it--nothing will cure it but my death.
Let us try to agree. I beg your pardon if I have offended you. I am willing to take a just view of your conduct. Will you take a just view of mine?"
I tried hard to take a just view. Though I resented his manner of speaking to me, I nevertheless secretly felt for him, as I have confessed. Still I could not forget that he had attempted to attract to himself Lucilla's first look, on the day when she tried her sight--that he had personated his brother to Lucilla that very morning--that he had suffered his brother to go away heart-broken, a voluntary exile from all that he held dear. No! I could feel for him, but I could _not_ take a just view of him. I sat down, and said nothing.
He returned to the question between us; treating me with the needful politeness, when he spoke next. For all that, he alarmed me, by what he now said, as he had not alarmed me yet.
"I repeat what I have already told you," he proceeded. "I am no longer accountable for what I do. If I know anything of myself, I believe it will be useless to trust me in the future. While I am capable of speaking the truth, let me tell it. Whatever happens at a later time--remember this, I have honestly made a clean breast of it to-night."
"Stop!" I cried. "I don't understand your reckless way of talking. Every man is accountable for what he does."
He checked me there by an impatient wave of his hand.
