Part 24 (1/2)
”Oscar!” she said.
”Right again,” I told her.
At a sign from Nugent, Oscar took her hand for the second time. She repeated his name. At a sign from me, the brothers noiselessly placed themselves, one on either side of her--Oscar on the left; Nugent on the right. I gave them the signal; and they each took one of her hands at the same moment. This time, she waited a little longer before she spoke. When she did speak, she was right once more. She turned smiling, towards the left side, pointed to him as he stood by her, and said, ”Oscar!”
We were all three equally surprised. I examined Oscar's hand and Nugent's hand alternately. Except the fatal difference in the color, they were, to all intents and purposes, the same hands--the same size, the same shape, the same texture of skin; no scar or mark on the hand of one to distinguish it from the hand of the other. By what mysterious process of divination had she succeeded in discovering which was which?
She was unwilling, or unable, to reply to that question plainly.
”Something in me answers to one of them and not to the other,” she said.
”What is it?” I asked.
”I don't know. It answers to Oscar. It doesn't answer to Nugent--that's all.”
She stopped any further inquiries by proposing that we should finish the evening with some music, in her own sitting-room, on the other side of the house. When we were seated together at the pianoforte--with the twin-brothers established as our audience at the other end of the room--she whispered in my ear:
”I'll tell _you!_”
”Tell me what?”
”How I know which is which when they both of them take my hand. When Oscar takes it, a delicious tingle runs from his hand into mine, and steals all over me. I can't describe it any better than that.”
”I understand. And when Nugent takes your hand, what do you feel?”
”Nothing!”
”And that is how you found out the difference between them down-stairs?”
”That is how I shall always find out the difference between them. If Oscar's brother ever attempts to play tricks upon my blindness (he is quite capable of it--he laughed at my blindness!), that is how I shall find him out. I told you before I saw him that I hated him. I hate him still.”
”My dear Lucilla!”
”I hate him still!”
She struck the first chords on the piano, with an obstinate frown on her pretty brow. Our little evening concert began.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Nugent puzzles Madame Pratolungo
I WAS far from sharing Lucilla's opinion of Nugent Dubourg. His enormous self-confidence was, to my mind, too amusing to be in the least offensive. I liked the spirit and gaiety of the young fellow. He came much nearer than his brother did to my ideal of the dash and resolution which ought to distinguish a man on the right side of thirty. So far as my experience of them went, Nugent was (in the popular English phrase) good company--and Oscar was not. My nationality leads me to attach great importance to social qualities. The higher virtues of a man only show themselves occasionally on compulsion, His social qualities come familiarly in contact with us every day of our lives. I like to be cheerful: I am all for the social qualities.
There was one little obstacle in those early days, which set itself up between my sympathies and Nugent.
I was thoroughly at a loss to understand the impression which Lucilla had produced on him.
The same constraint which had, in such a marked manner, subdued him at his first interview with her, still fettered him in the time when they became better acquainted with one another. He was never in high spirits in her presence. Mr. Finch could talk him down without difficulty, if Mr.
Finch's daughter happened to be by. Even when he was vaporing about himself, and telling us of the wonderful things he meant to do in Painting, Lucilla's appearance was enough to check him, if she happened to come into the room. On the first day when he showed me his American sketches (I define them, if you ask my private opinion, as false pretenses of Art, by a das.h.i.+ng amateur)--on that day, he was in full flow; marching up and down the room, smacking his forehead, and announcing himself quite gravely as ”the coming man” in landscape painting.