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

her faithful instinct still tries to reveal to my poor darling the cruel deception that is being practiced on her—and still tries in vain. In spite of herself, she shrinks from the man who is tempting her to go away with him—though he pleads in the character of her betrothed husband. In spite of herself, she detects the weak places in the case which Nugent has made out against me—the absence of sufficient motive for the conduct of which he accuses me, and the utter improbability of my plotting and intriguing (without anything to gain by it) to make her marry the man who was not the man of her choice. She feels these hesitations and difficulties. But what they really signify it is morally impossible for her to guess.

Thus far, no doubt, her strange and touching position has been plainly revealed to you. But can I feel quite so sure that you understand how seriously she has been affected by the anxiety, disappointment, and suspense which have combined together to torture her at this critical interval in her life?

I doubt it, for the sufficient reason that you have only had her Journal to enlighten you, and that her Journal shows she does not understand it herself. As things are, it seems to be time for me to step on the stage, and to discover to you plainly what her surgeon really thought of her, by telling you what passed between Grosse and Nugent, when the German presented himself at the hotel.

I am writing now (as a matter of course) from information given to me, at an after-period, by the persons themselves. As to particulars, the accounts vary. As to results, they both agree.

The discovery that Nugent was at Ramsgate necessarily took Grosse by surprise. With his previous knowledge, however, of the situation of affairs at Dimchurch, he could be at no loss to understand in what character Nugent had presented himself to Lucilla; and he could certainly not fail to understand—after what he had seen and what she had herself told him—that the deception was, under present circumstances, producing the worst possible effect on her mind. Arriving at this conclusion, he was not a man to hesitate about the duty that lay before him. When he entered the room at the hotel in which Nugent was waiting, he announced the object of his visit in these four plain words, as follows:

“Pack up, and go!”

Nugent coolly offered him a chair, and asked what he meant.

Grosse refused the chair—but consented to explain himself in terms variously reported by the two parties. Combining the statements, and translating Grosse (in this grave matter) into plain English, I find that the German must have expressed himself in these, or nearly in these, words:

“As a professional man, Mr. Nugent, I invariably refuse to enter into domestic considerations connected with my patients with which I have nothing to do. In the case of Miss Finch, my business is not with your family complications. My business is to secure the recovery of the young lady’s sight. If I find her health improving, I don’t inquire how or why. No matter what private and personal frauds you may be practicing upon her, I have nothing to say to them—more, I am ready to take advantage of them myself—so long as their influence is directly beneficial in keeping her morally and physically in the condition in which I wish her to be. But, the instant I discover that this domestic conspiracy of yours—this personation of your brother which once quieted and comforted her—is unfavorably affecting her health of body and her peace of mind, I interfere between you in the character of her medical attendant, and stop it on medical grounds. You are producing in my patient a conflict of feeling, which—in a nervous temperament like hers—cannot go on without serious injury to her health. And serious injury to her health means serious injury to her eyes. I won’t have that—I tell you plainly to pack up and go. I meddle with nothing else. After what you have yourself seen, I leave you to decide whether you will restore your brother to Miss Finch, or not. All I say is, Go. Make any excuse you like, but go before you have done more mischief. You shake your head! Is that a sign that you refuse? Take a day to think, before you make up your mind. I have patients in London to whom I am obliged to go back. But the day after tomorrow, I shall return to Ramsgate. If I find you still here, I shall tell Miss Finch you are no more Oscar Dubourg than I am. In her present state, I see less danger in giving her even that serious shock than in leaving her to the slow torment of mind which you are inflicting by your continued presence in this place. My last word is said. I go back by the next train, in an hour’s time. Good morning, Mr. Nugent. If you are a wise man, you will meet me at the station.”

After this, the accounts vary. Nugent’s statement asserts that he accompanied Grosse on his way back to Miss Batchford’s lodging, arguing the matter with him, and only leaving him at the door of the house. Grosse’s statement, on the other hand, makes no allusion to this. The disagreement between them is, however, of no consequence here. It is admitted, on either side, that the result of the interview was the same. When Grosse took the train for London, Nugent Dubourg was not at the station. The next entry in the Journal shows that he remained that day and night, at least, at Ramsgate.

You now know, from the narrative of the surgeon’s own proceedings, how seriously he thought of his patient’s case, and how firmly he did his duty as a professional man. Having given you this necessary information, I again retire, and leave Lucilla to take up the next link in the chain of events.—P.]

September 5th. Six o’clock in the morning.—A few hours of restless, broken sleep—disturbed by horrid dreams, and waking over and over again with startings that seemed to shake me from head to foot. I can bear it no longer. The sun is rising. I have got up—and here I am at the writing-table, trying to finish the long story of yesterday still uncompleted in my Journal.

I have just been looking at the view from my window—and I notice one thing which has struck me. The mist this morning is the thickest mist I have yet seen here.

The sea-view is almost invisible, it is so dim and dull. Even the objects about me in my room are nothing like so plain as usual. The mist is stealing in no doubt through my open window. It gets between me and my paper, and obliges me to bend down close over the page to see what I am about. When the sun is higher, things will be clear again. In the meantime, I must do as well as I can.

Grosse came back after his walk as mysterious as ever.

He was quite peremptory in ordering me not to overtask my eyes—forbidding reading and writing, as I have already mentioned. But, when I asked for his reasons, he had, for the first time in my experience of him, no reasons to give. I have the less scruple about disobeying him, on that account. Still I am a little uneasy, I confess, when I think of his strange behavior yesterday. He looked at me, in the oddest way—as if he saw something in my face which he had never seen before. Twice he took his leave; and twice he returned, doubtful whether he would not remain at Ramsgate, and let his patients in London take care of themselves. His extraordinary indecision was put an end to at last by the arrival of a telegram which had followed him from London. An urgent message, I suppose, from one of the patients. He went away in a bad temper and a violent hurry; and told me, at the door, to expect him back on the sixth.

When Oscar came later, there was another surprise for me.

Like Grosse, he was not himself—he too behaved strangely! First, he was so cold and so silent, that I thought he was offended. Then he went straight to the other extreme, and became so loudly talkative, so obstreperously cheerful, that my aunt asked me privately whether I did not suspect (as she did) that he had been taking too much wine. It ended in his trying to sing to my accompaniment on the piano, and in his breaking down. He walked away to the other end of the room without explanation or apology. When I followed him there a little while after, he had a look that indescribably distressed me—a look as if he had been crying. Towards the end of the evening, my aunt fell asleep over her book, and gave us a chance of speaking to each other in a little second room which opens out of the drawing-room in this house. It was I who took the chance—not he. He was so incomprehensibly unwilling to go into the room and speak to me, that I had to do a very unladylike thing. I mean that I had to take his arm, and lead him in myself, and entreat him (in a whisper) to tell me what was the matter with him.

“Only the old complaint,” he answered.

I made him sit down by me on a little couch that just held two.

“What do you mean by the old complaint?” I asked.

“Oh! you know!”

“I don’t know.”

“You would know if you really loved me.”

“Oscar! it is a shame to say that. It is a shame to doubt that I love you!”

“Is it? Ever since I have been here, I have doubted that you love me. It is getting to be an old complaint of mine now. I still suffer a little sometimes. Don’t notice it!”

He was so cruel and so unjust, that I got up to leave him, without saying a word more. But, oh! he looked so forlorn and so submissive—sitting with his head down, and his hands crossed listlessly over his knees—that I could not find it in my heart to treat him harshly. Was I wrong? I don’t know! I have no idea how to manage men—and no Madame Pratolungo now to teach me. Right or wrong, it ended in my sitting down by him again in the place which I had just left.

“You ought to beg my pardon,” I said, “for thinking of me as you think, and talking to me as you talk.”

“I do beg your pardon,” he answered humbly. “I am sorry if I have offended you.”

How could I resist that? I put my hand on his shoulder, and tried to make him lift up his head and look at me.

“You will always believe in me in the future?” I went on. “Promise me that.”

“I can promise to try, Lucilla. As things are now I can promise no more.”

“As things are now? You are speaking in riddles tonight. Explain yourself.”

“I explained myself this morning on the pier.”

Surely, this was hard on me—after he had promised to give me till the end of the week to consider his proposal? I took my hand off his shoulder. He—who never used to displease or disappoint me when I was blind—had displeased and disappointed me for the second time in a few minutes!

“Do you wish to force me?” I asked, “after telling me this morning that you would give me time to reflect?”

He rose, on his side—languidly and mechanically, like a man who neither knew nor cared what he was doing.

“Force