I could stand no longer—I dropped trembling into a chair. The conviction forced itself on me that there were worse complications, direr misfortunes, still to come. I was almost beside myself—I broke out vehemently with wild words spoken in my own language. Mrs. Finch recalled me to my senses. I saw her as in a dream, drying her tears, and looking at me in alarm. The rector approached, with profuse expressions of sympathy and offers of assistance. I wanted no comforting. I had served a hard apprenticeship to life; I had been well seasoned to trouble. "Thank you, sir," I said. "Look to Mrs. Finch." There was more air in the corridor. I went out again, to walk about, and get the better of it there.
A small object attracted my attention, crouched up on one of the window seats. The small object was—Jicks.
I suppose the child's instinct must have told her that something had gone wrong. She looked furtively sideways at me, round her doll: she had grave doubts of my intentions towards her. "Are you going to whack Jicks?" asked the curious little creature, shrinking into her corner. I sat down by her, and soon recovered my place in her confidence. She began to chatter again as fast as usual. I listened to her as I could have listened to no grown-up person at that moment. In some mysterious way that I cannot explain, the child comforted me. Little by little, I learnt what she had wanted with me, when she had attempted to drag me out of the room. She had seen all that had passed in the bed-chamber; and she had run out to take me back with her, and show me the wonderful sight of Lucilla with the bandage off her eyes. If I had been wise enough to listen to Jicks, I might have prevented the catastrophe that had happened. I might have met Lucilla in the corridor, and have forced her back into her own room and turned the key on her.
It was too late now to regret what had happened. "Jicks has been good," I said, patting my little friend on the head with a heavy heart. The child listened—considered with herself gravely—got off the window-seat—and claimed her reward for being good, with that excellent brevity of speech which so eminently distinguished her:
"Jicks will go out."
With those words, she shouldered her doll; and walked off. The last I saw of her, she was descending the stairs as a workman descends a ladder, on her way to the garden—and from the garden (the first time the gate was opened) to the hills. If I could have gone out with her light heart, I would have joined Jicks.
I had hardly lost sight of the child, before the door of Lucilla's room opened, and Herr Grosse appeared in the corridor.
"Soh!" he muttered with a gesture of relief, "the very womans I was looking for. A nice mess-fix we are in now! I must stop with Feench. (I shall end in hating Feench!) Can you put me into a beds for the night?"
I assured him that he could easily sleep at the rectory. In answer to my inquiries after his patient, he gravely acknowledged that he was anxious about Lucilla. The varying and violent emotions which had shaken her (acting through her nervous system) might produce results which would imperil the recovery of her sight. Absolute repose was not simply necessary—it was now the only chance for her. For the next four-and-twenty hours, he must keep watch over her eyes. At the end of that time—no earlier—he might be able to say whether the mischief done would be fatal to her sight or not. I asked how she had contrived to get her bandage off, and to make her fatal entrance into the sitting-room.
He shrugged his shoulders. "There are times," he said cynically, "when every womans is a hussy, and every mans is a fool. This was one of the times."