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

my absence, I invest you with my authority, Madame Pratolungo, to detain her until my return.” With that parting charge to me, he walked out.

I looked at Oscar. He came slowly towards me from the other end of the room.

“You will wait here, of course?” he said.

“Of course. And you?”

“I shall go out for a little while.”

“For any particular purpose?”

“No. To get through the time. I am weary of waiting.”

I felt positively assured, from the manner in which he answered me, that he was going—now he had got rid of Mr. Finch—straight to his cousin’s house.

“You forget,” I said, “that Lucilla may come here while you are out. Your presence in the room, or in the room next to this, may be of the greatest importance, when I tell her what your brother has done. Suppose she refuses to believe me? What am I to do if I have not got you to appeal to? In your own interests, as well as in Lucilla’s, I request you to remain here with me till she comes.”

Putting it on that ground only, I waited to see what he would do. After a certain hesitation, he answered with a sullen assumption of indifference, “Just as you please!”—and walked away again towards the other end of the room. As he turned his back on me, I heard him say to himself, “It’s only waiting a little longer!”

“Waiting for what?” I asked.

He looked round at me over his shoulder.

“Patience for the present!” he answered. “You will hear soon enough.” For the moment, I said no more to him. The tone in which he had replied warned me that it would be useless.

After an interval—how long an interval I cannot well say—I heard the sound of women’s dresses in the passage outside.

The instant after, there was a knock at the door.

I signed to Oscar to open a second door, close by him at the lower end of the room, and (for the moment at least) to keep out of sight. Then I answered the knock, and said as steadily as I could, “Come in.”

A woman unknown to me entered, dressed like a respectable servant. She came in leading Lucilla by the hand. My first look at my darling told me the horrible truth. As I had seen her in the corridor at the rectory on the first day we met, so I now saw her once more. Again, the sightless eyes turned on me, insensibly reflecting the light that fell on them. Blind! Oh, God, after a few brief weeks of sight, blind again!

In that miserable discovery, I forgot everything else. I flew to her, and caught her in my arms. I cast one look at her pale, wasted face—and burst out crying on her bosom.

She held my head gently with one hand, and waited with the patience of an angel until that first outbreak of my grief had exhausted itself. “Don’t cry about my blindness,” said the soft, sweet voice that I knew so well. “The days when I had my sight have been the unhappiest days of my life. If I look as if I had been fretting, don’t think it is about my eyes.” She paused, and sighed bitterly. “I may tell you,” she went on in a whisper. “It’s a relief, it’s a consolation, to tell you. I am fretting about my marriage.”

Those words roused me. I lifted my head, and kissed her. “I have come back to comfort you,” I said: “and I have behaved like a fool.”

She smiled faintly. “How like you,” she exclaimed, “to say that!” She tapped my cheek with her fingers in the old familiar way. The repetition of that little trifling action almost broke my heart. I nearly choked myself in forcing back the stupid cowardly useless tears that tried to burst from me again. “Come!” she said. “No more crying! Let us sit down and talk as if we were at Dimchurch.”

I took her to the sofa: we sat side by side. She put her arm round my waist, and laid her head on my shoulder. Again the faint smile flickered like a dying light on her lovely face; wan and wasted, yet still beautiful—still the Virgin’s face in Raphael’s picture. “We are a strange pair,” she said, with a momentary flash of her old irresistible humour. “You are my bitterest enemy, and you burst out crying over me the moment we meet. I have been shockingly treated by you—and I have got my arm round your waist and my head on your shoulder, and I wouldn’t let go of you for the world!” Her face saddened again; her voice suddenly altered its tone. “Tell me,” she went on, “how is it that appearances were so terribly against you? Oscar satisfied me, at Ramsgate, that I ought to give you up, that I ought never to see you again. I took his view—there is no denying it, my dear—I agreed with him in detesting you, for a little while. But, when the blindness came back, I could keep it up no longer. Little by little, as the light died out, my heart would turn to you again. When I heard your letter read, when I knew that you were near me—it was just like the old times; I was mad to see you. And here I am—satisfied, before you explain it to me, that you have been the victim of some terrible mistake.”

I tried, in grateful acknowledgment of those generous words, to enter on my justification there and then. It was impossible. I could think of nothing, I could speak of nothing, but the dreadful discovery of her blindness.

“Give me a few minutes,” I said, “and you shall hear it all. I can’t talk of myself, yet—I can only talk of you. Oh, Lucilla, why did you keep away from Grosse? Come with me to him to-day. Let him try what he can do. At once, my love—before it is too late!”

“It is too late,” she said. “I have been to another oculist—a stranger. He said, what Mr. Sebright said: he doubted if there was ever any chance for me: he thought the operation ought never to have been performed.”

“Why did you go to a stranger?” I asked. “Why did you give up Grosse!”

“You must ask Oscar,” she answered. “It was at his desire that I kept away from Grosse.”

Hearing this, I penetrated for myself the motive which had actuated Nugent—as I afterwards found it indicated in the Journal. If he had let Lucilla go to Grosse, our good German might have noticed that her position was preying on her mind, and might have seen his reasons for exposing the deception that Nugent was practicing on her. For the rest, I still persisted in entreating Lucilla to go back with me to our old friend.

“Remember our conversation on this very subject,” she rejoined, shaking her head decisively. “I mean at the time when the operation was going to be performed. I told you I was used to being blind. I said I only wanted to recover my sight, to see Oscar. And when I did see him—what happened? The disappointment was so dreadful, I wished myself blind again. Don’t start! don’t cry out as if you were shocked! I mean what I say. You people who can see, attach such an absurd importance to your eyes! Don’t you recollect my saying that, when we last talked about it?”

I recollected perfectly. She had said those words. She had declared that she had never honestly envied any of us the use of our eyes. She had even reviled our eyes; comparing them contemptuously with her touch; deriding them as deceivers who were constantly leading us wrong. I acknowledged all this—without being in the least reconciled to the catastrophe that had happened. If she would only have listened to me, I should still have gone on obstinately pleading with her. But she flatly refused to listen. “We have very little time to spare,” she said. “Let us talk of something more interesting before I am obliged to leave you.”

“Obliged to leave me?” I repeated. “Are you not your own mistress?”

Her face clouded over; her manner became embarrassed.

“I cannot honestly tell you that I am a prisoner,” she answered. “I can only say I am watched. When Oscar is away from me, Oscar’s cousin—a sly, suspicious, false woman—always contrives to put herself in his place. I heard her say to her husband that she believed I should break my marriage engagement unless I was closely looked after. I don’t know what I should do, but for one of the servants in the house, who is an excellent creature—who sympathizes with me, and helps me.” She stopped, and lifted her head inquiringly. “Where is the servant?” she asked.

I had forgotten the woman who had brought her into the room. She must have delicately left us together after leading Lucilla in. When I looked up, she was not to be seen.

“The servant is no doubt waiting downstairs,” I said. “Go on.”

“But for that good creature,” Lucilla resumed, “I should never have got here. She brought me your letter, and read it to me, and wrote my reply. I arranged with her to slip out at the first opportunity. One chance was in our favor—we had only the cousin to keep an eye on us. Oscar was not in the house.”

She suddenly checked herself at the last word. A slight sound at the lower end of the room, which had passed unnoticed by me, had caught her delicate ear, “What is that noise?” she asked. “Anybody in the room with us?”

I looked up once more. While she was talking of the false Oscar, the true Oscar was standing listening to her, at the other end of the room.

When he discovered that I was looking at him, he entreated me by a gesture not to betray his presence. He had evidently heard what we had been saying to each other, before I detected him—for he touched his eyes, and lifted his hands pityingly in allusion to Lucilla’s blindness. Whatever his mood might be, that melancholy discovery must surely have affected him—Lucilla’s influence over him now, could only be an influence for good. I signed to him to remain—and told Lucilla that there was nothing to be alarmed about. She went on.

“Oscar left us for London early this morning,” she said. “Can you guess what he has gone for? He has gone to get the Marriage License—he has given notice of the marriage at the church. My last hope is in you. In spite of everything that I can say to him, he has fixed the day for the twenty-first—in two days more! I have done all I could to put it off; I have insisted on every possible delay. Oh, if you knew–-!” Her rising agitation stifled her utterance at the moment. “I mustn’t waste the precious minutes; I must get back before Oscar returns,” she went on, rallying again. “Oh, my old friend, you are never at a loss; you always know what to do! Find me some way of putting off my marriage. Suggest something which will take them by surprise, and force them to give me time!”

I looked towards the lower end of the room. Listening in breathless interest, Oscar had noiselessly advanced half-way towards us. At a sign from me, he checked himself and came no farther.

“Do you really mean, Lucilla, that you no longer love him?” I said.

“I can tell you nothing about it,” she answered—“except that some dreadful change has come over me. While I had my sight, I could partly account for it—I believed that the new