第173章 CHAPTER THE FIFTIETH(2)

I followed them, eagerly watching his face. There was no fear in me now of what he might do. Lucilla's blessed influence had found, and cast out, the lurking demon that had been hidden in him. With a mind attentive but not alarmed, I waited to see how he would meet the emergency that confronted him.

"Nugent!" he said, very quietly.

Nugent's head drooped--he made no answer.

Lucilla, hearing Oscar pronounce the name, instantly understood what had happened. She shuddered with horror. Oscar gently placed her in my arms, and advanced again alone towards his brother. His face expressed the struggle in him of some subtly-mingling influences of love and anguish, of sorrow and shame. He recalled to me in the strangest manner my past experience of him, when he had first trusted me with the story of the Trial, and when he had told me that Nugent was the good angel of his life.

He went up to the place at which his brother was standing. In the simple, boyish way, so familiar to me in the bygone time, he laid his hand on his brother's arm.

"Nugent!" he said. "Are you the same dear good brother who saved me from dying on the scaffold, and who cheered my hard life afterwards? Are you the same bright, clever, noble fellow that I was always so fond of, and so proud of?"

He paused, and removed his brother's hat. With careful, caressing hand, he parted his brother's ruffled hair over the forehead. Nugent's head sank lower. His face was distorted, his hands were clenched, in the dumb agony of remembrance which that tender voice and that kind hand had set loose in him. Oscar gave him time to recover himself: Oscar spoke next to me.

"You know Nugent," he said. "You remember when we first met, my telling you that Nugent was an angel? You saw for yourself, when he came to Dimchurch, how kindly he helped me; how faithfully he kept my secrets; what a true friend he was. Look at him--and you will feel, as I do, that we have misunderstood and misinterpreted him, in some monstrous way." He turned again to Nugent. "I daren't tell you," he went on, "what I have heard about you, and what I have believed about you, and what vile unbrotherly thoughts I have had of being revenged on you. Thank God, they are gone! My dear fellow, I look back at them--now I see you--as I might look back at a horrible dream. How _can_ I see you, Nugent, and believe that you have been false to me? You, a villain who has tried to rob poor Me of the only woman in the world who cares for me! You, so handsome and so popular, who may marry any woman you like! It can't be. You have drifted innocently into some false position without knowing it. Defend yourself. No. Let me defend you. You shan't humble yourself to anybody.

Tell me how you have really acted towards Lucilla, and towards me--and leave it to your brother to set you right with everybody. Come, Nugent! lift up your head--and tell me what I shall say."

Nugent lifted his head, and looked at Oscar.

Ghastly as his face was, I saw something in his eyes, when he first fixed them on his brother, which again reminded me of past days--the days when he had joined us at Dimchurch, and when he used to talk of "poor Oscar" in the tender, light-hearted way that first won me. I thought once more of the memorable night-interview between us at Browndown, when Oscar had left England. Again, I called to mind the signs which had told of the nobler nature of the man pleading with him. Again, I remembered the remorse which had moved him to tears--the effort he had made in my presence to atone for past misdoing, and to struggle for the last time against the guilty passion that possessed him. Was the nature which could feel that remorse utterly depraved? Was the man who had made that effort--the last of many that had gone before it--irredeemably bad?

"Wait!" I whispered to Lucilla, trembling and weeping in my arms. "He will deserve our sympathy; he will win our pardon and our pity yet!"

"Come!" Oscar repeated. "Tell me what I shall say."

Nugent drew from his pocket a sheet of paper with writing on it.

"Say," he answered, "that I gave notice of your marriage at the church here-and that I went to London and got you _this._"

He handed the sheet of paper to his brother. It was the Marriage License, taken out in his brother's name.

"Be happy, Oscar," he added. "_You_ deserve it."

He threw one arm in his old easy protecting way round his brother. His hand, as he did this, touched the breast-pocket of Oscar's coat. Before it was possible to stop him, his dexterous fingers had opened the pocket, and had taken from it a little toy-pistol with a chased silver handle of Oscar's own workmanship.

"Was this for me?" he asked, with a faint smile. "My poor boy! you could never have done it, could you?" He kissed Oscar's dark cheek, and put the pistol into his own pocket. "The handle is your work," he said. "I shall take it as your present to me. Return to Browndown when you are married.

I am going to travel again. You shall hear from me before I leave England. God bless you, Oscar. Good-bye."

He put his brother back from him with a firm and gentle hand. I attempted to advance with Lucilla, and speak to him. Something in his face--looking at me out of his mournful eyes, calm, stern, and superhuman, like a look of doom--warned me back from him, and filled me with the foreboding that I should see him no more. He walked to the door, and opened it--turned--and, fixing his farewell look on Lucilla, saluted us silently with a bend of his head. The door closed on him softly. In a few minutes only from the time when he had entered the room, he had left us again--and left us for ever.

We waited, spell-bound--we could not speak. The void that he left behind him was dreary and dreadful. I was the first who moved. In silence, I led Lucilla back to our seat on the sofa, and beckoned to Oscar to go to her in my place.

This done, I left them--and went out to meet Lucilla's father, on his return to the hotel. I wished to prevent him from disturbing them. After what had happened, it was good for those two to be alone.