Poor Miss Finch Page 20

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

  Family Troubles

  IN four or five days more, Lucilla's melancholy doubts about Oscar wereconfirmed. He was attacked by a second fit.

  The promised consultation with the physician from Brighton took place.Our new doctor did not encourage us to hope. The second fit following soclose on the first was, in his opinion, a bad sign. He gave generaldirections for the treatment of Oscar; and left him to decide for himselfwhether he would or would not try change of scene. No change, thephysician appeared to think, would exert any immediate influence on therecurrence of the epileptic attacks. The patient's general health mightbe benefited, and that was all. As for the question of the marriage, hedeclared without hesitation that we must for the present dismiss allconsideration of it from our minds.

  Lucilla received the account of what passed at the visit of the doctorswith a stubborn resignation which it distressed me to see. "Remember whatI told you when the first attack seized him," she said. "Our summer-timeis ended; our winter is come."

  Her manner, while she spoke, was the manner of a person who is waitingwithout hope--who feels deliberately that calamity is near. She onlyroused herself when Oscar came in. He was, naturally enough, in miserablespirits, under the sudden alteration in all his prospects. Lucilla didher best to cheer him, and succeeded. On my side, I tried vainly topersuade him to leave Browndown and amuse himself in some gayer place. Heshrank from new faces and new scenes. Between these two unelastic youngpeople, I felt even my native good spirits beginning to sink. If we hadbeen all three down in the bottom of a dry well in a wilderness, we couldhardly have surveyed a more dismal prospect than the prospect we werecontemplating now. By good luck, Oscar, like Lucilla, was passionatelyfond of music. We turned to the piano as our best resource in those daysof our adversity. Lucilla and I took it in turns to play, and Oscarlistened. I have to report that we got through a great deal of music. Ihave also to acknowledge that we were very dull.