Poor Miss Finch, Wilkie Collins [the little red hen read aloud TXT] 📗

him—to keep out of her society, until she was married to Oscar. He had accepted the position in which Oscar had placed him, as the one means of reaching the end in view without exciting suspicion of the truth—and he had encountered, as his reward for the sacrifice, my ignorant protest, my stupid opposition, set as obstacles in his way! There were the motives—the pure, the noble motives—which animated him, as I know them now. There is the right reading of the dogged language that mystified me, of the defiant manner that offended me; interpreted by the one light that I have to guide my pen—the light of later events!

“Well?” he said. “Are we allies, or not? Are you with me or against me?”

I gave up attempting to understand him; and answered that plain question, plainly.

“I don’t deny that the consequences of undeceiving her may be serious,” I said. “But, for all that, I will have no share in the cruelty of keeping her deceived.”

Nugent held up his forefinger, warningly.

“Pause, and reflect, Madame Pratolungo! The mischief that you may do, as matters stand now, may be mischief that you can never repair. It’s useless to ask you to alter your mind. I only ask you to wait a little. There is plenty of time before the wedding-day. Something may happen which will spare you the necessity of enlightening Lucilla with your own lips.”

“What can happen?” I asked.

“Lucilla may yet see him, as we see him,” Nugent answered. “Lucilla’s own eyes may discover the truth.”

“What! have you not abandoned the mad notion of curing her blindness, yet?”

“I will abandon my notion when the German surgeon tells me it is mad. Not before.”

“Have you said anything about it to Oscar?”

“Not a word. I shall say nothing about it to anybody but you, until the German is safe on the shores of England.”

“Do you expect him to arrive before the marriage?”

“Certainly! He would have left New York with me, but for one patient who still required his care. No new patients will tempt him to stay in America. His extraordinary success has made his fortune. The ambition of his life is to see England: and he can afford to gratify it. He may be here by the next steamer that reaches Liverpool.”

“And when he does come, you mean to bring him to Dimchurch?”

“Yes—unless Lucilla objects to it.”

“Suppose Oscar objects? She is resigned to be blind for life. If you disturb that resignation with no useful result, you may make an unhappy woman of her for the rest of her days. In your brother’s place, I should object to running that risk.”

“My brother is doubly interested in running the risk. I repeat what I have already told you. The physical result will not be the only result, if her sight can be restored. There will be a new mind put into her as well as a new sense. Oscar has everything to dread from this morbid fancy of hers as long as she is blind. Only let her eyes correct her fancy—only let her see him as we see him, and get used to him, as we have got used to him; and Oscar’s future with her is safe. Will you leave things as they are for the present, on the chance that the German surgeon may get here before the wedding-day?”

I consented to that; being influenced, in spite of myself, by the remarkable coincidence between what Nugent had just said of Lucilla, and what Lucilla had said to me of herself earlier in the day. It was impossible to deny that Nugent’s theory, wild as it sounded, found its confirmation, so far, in Lucilla’s view of her own case. Having settled the difference between us in this way, for the time being, I shifted our talk next to the difficult question of Nugent’s relations towards Lucilla. “How are you to meet her again,” I said, “after the effect you produced on her at the meeting to-day?”

He spoke far more pleasantly in discussing this side of the subject. His language and his manner both improved together.

“If I could have had my own way,” he said, “Lucilla would have been relieved, by this time, of all fear of meeting with me again. She would have heard from you, or from Oscar, that business had obliged me to leave Dimchurch.”

“Does Oscar object to let you go?”

“He won’t hear of my going. I did my best to persuade him—I promised to return for the marriage. Quite useless! ‘If you leave me here by myself,’ he said, ‘to think over the mischief I have done, and the sacrifices I have forced on you—you will break my heart. You don’t know what an encouragement your presence is to me; you don’t know what a blank you will leave in my life if you go!’ I am as weak as Oscar is, when Oscar speaks to me in that way. Against my own convictions, against my own wishes, I yielded. I should have been better away—far, far better away!”

He said those closing words in a tone that startled me. It was nothing less than a tone of despair. How little I understood him then! how well I understand him now! In those melancholy accents, spoke the last of his honor, the last of his truth. Miserable, innocent Lucia! Miserable, guilty Nugent!

“And now you remain at Dimchurch,” I resumed, “what are you to do?”

“I must do my best to spare her the nervous suffering which I unwillingly inflicted on her to-day. The morbid repulsion that she feels in my presence is not to be controlled—I can see that plainly. I shall keep out of her way; gradually withdrawing myself, so as not to force my absence on her attention. I shall pay fewer and fewer visits at the rectory, and remain longer and longer at Browndown every day. After they are married–-” He suddenly stopped; the words seemed to stick in his throat. He busied himself in relighting his cigar, and took a long time to do it.

“After they are married,” I repeated. “What then?”

“When Oscar is married, Oscar will not find my presence indispensable to his happiness. I shall leave Dimchurch.”

“You will have to give a reason.”

“I shall give the true reason. I can find no studio here big enough for me—as I have told you. And, even if I could find a studio, I should be doing no good, if I remained at Dimchurch. My intellect would contract, my brains would rust, in this remote place. Let Oscar live his quiet married life here. And let me go to the atmosphere that is fitter for me—the atmosphere of London or Paris.”

He sighed, and fixed his eyes absently on the open hilly view from the summer-house door.

“It’s strange to see you depressed,” I said. “Your spirits seemed to be quite inexhaustible on that first evening when you interrupted Mr. Finch over Hamlet.”

He threw away the end of his cigar, and laughed bitterly.

“We artists are always in extremes,” he said. “What do you think I was wishing just before you spoke to me?”

“I can’t guess.”

“I was wishing I had never come to Dimchurch!”

Before I could return a word, on my side, Lucilla’s voice reached our ears, calling to me from the garden. Nugent instantly sprang to his feet.

“Have we said all we need say?” he asked.

“Yes—for to-day, at any rate.”

“For to-day, then—goodbye.”

He leapt up; caught the cross-bar of wood over the entrance to the summer-house; and, swinging himself on to the low garden-wall beyond, disappeared in the field on the other side. I answered Lucilla’s call, and hastened away to find her. We met on the lawn. She looked wild and pale, as if something had frightened her.

“Anything wrong at the rectory?” I asked.

“Nothing wrong,” she answered—“except with Me. The next time I complain of fatigue, don’t advise me to go and lie down on my bed.”

“Why not? I looked in at you, before I came out here. You were fast asleep—the picture of repose.”

“Repose? You never were more mistaken in your life. I was in the agony of a horrid dream.”

“You were perfectly quiet when I saw you.”

“It must have been after you saw me, then. Let me come and sleep with you tonight. I daren’t be by myself, if I dream of it again.”

“What did you dream of?”

“I dreamt that I was standing, in my wedding dress, before the altar of a strange church; and that a clergyman whose voice I had never heard before, was marrying me–-” She stopped, impatiently waving her hand before her in the air. “Blind as I am,” she said, “I see him again now!”

“The bridegroom?”

“Yes.”

“Oscar?”

“No.”

“Who then?”

“Oscar’s brother. Nugent Dubourg.”

(Have I mentioned before, that I am sometimes a great fool? If I have not, I beg to mention it now. I burst out laughing.)

“What is there to laugh at?” she asked angrily. “I saw his hideous, discolored face—I am never blind in my dreams! I felt his blue hand put the ring on my finger. Wait! The worst part of it is to come. I married Nugent Dubourg willingly—married him without a thought of my engagement to Oscar. Yes! yes! I know it’s only a dream. I can’t bear to think of it, for all that. I don’t like to be false to Oscar even in a dream. Let us go to him. I want to hear him tell me that he loves me. Come to Browndown. I’m so nervous, I don’t like going by myself. Come to Browndown!”

I have another humiliating confession to make—I tried to get off going to Browndown. (So like those unfeeling French people, isn’t it?)

But I had my reason too. If I disapproved of the resolution at which Nugent had arrived, I viewed far more unfavorably the selfish weakness on Oscar’s part, which had allowed his brother to sacrifice himself. Lucilla’s lover had sunk to something very like a despicable character in my estimation. I felt that I might let him see what I thought of him, if I found myself in his company at that moment.

“Considering the object that you have in view, my dear,” I said to Lucilla, “do you think you want me at Browndown?”

“Haven’t I already told you?” she asked impatiently. “I am so nervous—so completely upset—that I don’t feel equal to going out by myself. Have you no sympathy for me? Suppose you had dreamed that you were marrying Nugent instead of Oscar?”

“Ah, bah! what of that? I should only have dreamed that I was marrying the most agreeable man of the two.”

“The most agreeable man of the two! There you are again—always unjust to Oscar.”

“My love! if you could see for yourself, you would learn to appreciate Nugent’s good qualities, as I do.”

“I prefer appreciating Oscar’s good qualities.”

“You are prejudiced, Lucilla.”

“So are you!”

“You happen to have met Oscar first.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Yes! yes! If Nugent had followed us, instead of Oscar; if, of those two charming voices which are both the same, one had spoken instead of the other—”

“I won’t hear a word more!”

“Tra-la-la-la! It happens to have been Oscar. Turn it the other way—and Nugent might have been the man.

“Madame Pratolungo, I am not accustomed to be insulted! I have no more to say to you.”

With that dignified reply, and with the loveliest color in her face that you ever saw in your life, my darling Lucilla turned her pretty back on me, and set off for Browndown by herself.

Ah, my rash tongue! Ah, my nasty foreign temper! Why did I