Poor Miss Finch Part 58

Have I acted rashly? or have I acted wisely?

There is the question which always comes to me and torments me, when I wake in the night. Let me look again (for the fiftieth time at least) at Oscar's letter.

[Note.--I copy the letter. Other eyes than hers ought to see it in this place. It is Nugent, of course, who here writes in Oscar's character and in Oscar's name. You will observe that his good resolutions, when he left me, held out as far as Paris--and then gave way as follows.--P.]

"MY OWN DEAREST,--I have reached Paris, and have found my first opportunity of writing to you since I left Browndown. Madame Pratolungo has no doubt told you that a sudden necessity has called me to my brother. I have not yet reached the place at which I am to meet him.

Before I meet him, let me tell you what the necessity which has parted us really is. Madame Pratolungo no longer possesses my confidence. When you have read on a little farther, she will no longer possess yours.

"Alas, my love, I must amaze you, shock you, grieve you--I who would lay down my life for your happiness! Let me write it in the fewest words. I have made a terrible discovery. Lucilla! you have trusted Madame Pratolungo as your friend. Trust her no longer. She is your enemy, and mine.

"I suspected her some time since. My worst suspicions have been confirmed.

"Long ere this, I ought to have told you, what I tell you now. But I shrink from distressing you. To see a sad look on your dear face breaks my heart. It is only when I am away from you--when I fear the consequences if you are not warned of your danger--that I can summon the courage to tear off the mask from that woman's false face, and show her to you as she really is. It is impossible for me to enter into details in the s.p.a.ce of a letter; I reserve all particulars until we meet again, and until I can produce, what you have a right to ask for--proof that I am speaking the truth.

"In the meanwhile, I beg you to look back into your own thoughts, to recall your own words, on the day when Madame Pratolungo offended you in the rectory garden. On that occasion, the truth escaped the Frenchwoman's lips--and she knew it!

"Do you remember what you said, after she had followed you to Browndown?

I mean, after she had declared that you would have fallen in love with my brother if you had met him first--and after Nugent (at her instigation no doubt) had taken advantage of your blindness to make you believe that you were speaking to _me._ When you were smarting under the insult, and when you had found out the trick, what did you say?

"You said these--or nearly these--words:

"'She hated you from the first, Oscar--she took up with your brother directly he came here. Don't marry me at Dimchurch! Find out some place that they don't know of! They are both in a conspiracy together against you and against me. Take care of them! take care of them!'

"Lucilla! I echo your own words to you. I return the warning--the prophetic warning--which you unconsciously gave me in that past time. I am afraid my unhappy brother loves you--and I know for certain that Madame Pratolungo feels the interest in _him_ which she has never felt in _me._ What you said, I say. They are in a conspiracy together against us.

Take care of them! take care of them!

"When we meet again, I shall be prepared to defeat the conspiracy. Till that time comes--as you value your happiness and mine, don't let Madame Pratolungo suspect that you have discovered her. It is she, I firmly believe, who is to blame. I am going to my brother--as you will now understand--with an object far different to the object which I put forward as an excuse to your false friend. Fear no dispute between Nugent and me. I know him. I firmly believe I shall find that he has been tempted and misled. I answer--now that no evil influences are at work on him--for his acting like an honorable man, and deserving your pardon and mine. The excuse I have made to Madame Pratolungo will prevent her from interfering between us. That was my one object in making it.

"Keep me correctly informed of your movements and of hers. I enclose an address to which you can write, with the certainty that your letters will be forwarded.

"On my side, I promise to write constantly. Once more, don't trust a living creature about you with the secret which this letter reveals!

Expect me back at the earliest possible moment, to free you--with a husband's authority--from the woman who has so cruelly deceived us.--Yours with the truest affection, the fondest love,

"OSCAR."

[Note.--It is quite needless for me to dwell here on the devilish cunning--I can use no other phrase--which inspired this abominable letter. Look back to the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters, and you will see how skillfully what I said in a moment of foolish irritation, and what Lucilla said when she too had lost her temper, is turned to account to poison her mind against me. We are made innocently to supply our enemy with the foundation on which he builds his plot. For the rest, the letter explains itself. Nugent still persists in personating his brother. He guesses easily at the excuse I should make to Lucilla for his absence; and he gets over the difficulty of appearing to have confided his errand to a woman whom he distrusts, by declaring that he felt it necessary to deceive me as to what the nature of that errand really was. As the Journal proceeds, you will see how dexterously he works the machinery which his letter has set in motion. All I need add here, in the way of explanation, is--that the delay in his arrival at Ramsgate of which Lucilla complains, was caused by nothing but his own hesitation. His sense of honor--as I knew, from discoveries made at a later time--was not entirely lost yet. The lower he sank, the harder his better nature struggled to raise him. Nothing, positively nothing, but his own remorse need have kept him at Paris (it is needless to say that he never stirred farther, and never discovered the place of his brother's retreat) after Lucilla had informed him by letter, that I had gone abroad, and that she was at Ramsgate with her aunt. I have done: let Lucilla go on again.--P.]

I have read Oscar's letter once more.

He is the soul of honor; he is incapable of deceiving me. I remember saying what he tells me I said, and thinking it too--for the moment only--when I was beside myself with rage. Still--may it not be possible that appearances have misled Oscar? Oh, Madame Pratolungo! I had such a high opinion of you, I loved you so dearly--can you have been unworthy of the admiration and affection that you once inspired in me?

I quite agree with Oscar that his brother is not to blame. It is sad and shocking that Mr. Nugent Dubourg should have allowed himself to fall in love with me. But I cannot help pitying him. Poor disfigured man, I hope he will get a good wife! How he must have suffered!

It is impossible to endure, any longer, my present state of suspense.

Oscar must, and shall, satisfy me about Madame Pratolungo--with his own lips. I shall write to him by this post, and insist on his coming to Ramsgate.

_August_ 29th.--I wrote to him yesterday, to the address in Paris. My letter will be delivered to-morrow. Where is he? when will he get it?

[Note.--That innocent letter did its fatal mischief. It ended the struggle against himself which had kept Nugent Dubourg in Paris. On the morning when he received it, he started for England. Here is the entry in Lucilla's journal.--P.]

_August_ 31st.--A telegram for me at breakfast-time. I am too happy to keep my hand steady--I am writing horribly. It doesn't matter: nothing matters but my telegram. (Oh, what a n.o.ble creature the man was who invented telegrams!) Oscar is on his way to Ramsgate!

CHAPTER THE FORTY-THIRD

Lucilla's Journal, continued

_September_ 1st.

I AM composed enough to return to my Journal, and to let my mind dwell a little on all that I have thought and felt since Oscar has been here.

Now that I have lost Madame Pratolungo, I have no friend with whom I can talk over my little secrets. My aunt is all that is kind and good to me; but with a person so much older than I am--who has lived in such a different world from my world, and whose ideas seem to be so far away from mine--how can I talk about my follies and extravagances, and expect sympathy in return! My one confidential friend is my Journal--I can only talk about myself to myself, in these pages. My position feels sometimes like a very lonely one. I saw two girls telling all their secrets to each other on the sands to-day--and I am afraid I envied them.

Well, my dear Journal, how did I feel--after longing for Oscar--when Oscar came to me? It is dreadful to own it; but my book locks up, and my book can be trusted with the truth. I felt ready to cry--I was so unexpectedly, so horribly, disappointed.

No. "Disappointed" is not the word. I can't find the word. There was a moment--I hardly dare write it: it seems so atrociously wicked--there was a moment when I actually wished myself blind again.

He took me in his arms; he held my hand in his. In the time when I was blind, how I should have felt it! how the delicious _tingle_ would have run through me when he touched me! Nothing of the kind happened now. He might have been Oscar's brother for all the effect he produced on me. I have myself taken his hand since, and shut my eyes to try and renew my blindness, and put myself back completely as I was in the old time. The same result still. Nothing, nothing, nothing!

Is it that he is a little restrained with me on his side? He certainly is! I felt it the moment he came into the room--I have felt it ever since.

No: it is not that. In the old time, when we were only beginning to love each other, he was restrained with me. But it made no difference then. I was not the insensible creature in those days that I have become since.

I can only account for it in one way. The restoration of my sight has made a new creature of me. I have gained a sense--I am no longer the same woman. This great change must have had some influence over me that I never suspected until Oscar came here. Can the loss of my sense of feeling be the price that I have paid for the recovery of my sense of sight?

When Grosse comes next, I shall put that question to him.

In the meanwhile, I have had a second disappointment. He is not nearly so beautiful as I thought he was when I was blind.

On the day when my bandage was taken off for the first time, I could only see indistinctly. When I ran into the room at the rectory, I guessed it was Oscar rather than knew it was Oscar. My father's grey head, and Mrs.

Finch's woman's dress, would no doubt have helped anybody in my place to fix as I did on the right man. But this is all different now. I can see his features in detail--and the result is (though I won't own it to any of them) that I find my idea of him in the days of my blindness--oh, so unlike the reality! The one thing that is not a disappointment to me, is his voice. When he cannot see me, I close my eyes, and let my ears feel the old charm again--so far.

And this is what I have gained, by submitting to the operation, and enduring my imprisonment in the darkened room!

What am I writing? I ought to be ashamed of myself! Is it nothing to have had all the beauty of land and sea, all the glory of cloud and sunshine, revealed to me? Is it nothing to be able to look at my fellow-creatures--to see the bright faces of children smile at me when I speak to them? Enough of myself! I am unhappy and ungrateful when I think of myself.

Let me write about Oscar.

My aunt approves of him. She thinks him handsome, and says he has the manners of a gentleman. This last is high praise from Miss Batchford. She despises the present generation of young men. "In my time," she said the other day, "I used to see young gentlemen. I only see young animals now; well-fed, well-washed, well-dressed; riding animals, rowing animals, betting animals--nothing more."

Oscar, on his side, seems to like Miss Batchford on better acquaintance.

When I first presented him to her, he rather surprised me by changing color and looking very uneasy. He is almost distressingly nervous, on certain occasions. I suppose my aunt's grand manner daunted him.

[Note.--I really must break in here. Her aunt's "grand manner" makes me sick. It is nothing (between ourselves) but a hook-nose and a stiff pair of stays. What daunted Nugent Dubourg, when he first found himself in the old lady's presence, was the fear of discovery. He would no doubt have learnt from his brother that Oscar and Miss Batchford had never met. You will see, if you look back, that it was, in the nature of things, impossible they should have met. But is it equally clear that Nugent could find out beforehand that Miss Batchford had been left in ignorance of what had happened at Dimchurch? He could do nothing of the sort--he could feel no a.s.surance of his security from exposure, until he had tried the ground in his own proper person first. The risk here was certainly serious enough to make even Nugent Dubourg feel uneasy. And Lucilla talks of her aunt's "grand manner!" Poor innocent! I leave her to go on.--P.]

As soon as my aunt left us together, the first words I said to Oscar, referred (of course) to his letter about Madame Pratolungo.

He made a little sign of entreaty, and looked distressed.