Poor Miss Finch

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER THE NINTH

  The Hero of the Trial

  "You have forced it out of me. Now you have had your way, never mind myfeelings--Go!"

  Those were the first words the Hero of the Trial said to me, when he wasable to speak again! He withdrew with a curious sullen resignation to thefarther end of the room. There he stood looking at me, as a man mighthave looked who carried some contagion about him, and who wished topreserve a healthy fellow-creature from the peril of touching him.

  "Why should I go?" I asked.

  "You are a bold woman," he said, "to remain in the same room with a manwho has been pointed at as a murderer, and who has been tried for hislife."

  The same unhealthy state of mind which had brought him to Dimchurch, andwhich had led him to speak to me as he had spoken on the previousevening, was, as I understood it, now irritating him against me as aperson who had made his own quick temper the means of entrapping him intoletting out the truth. How was I to deal with a man in this condition? Idecided to perform the feat which you call in England, "taking the bullby the horns."

  "I see but one man here," I said. "A man honorably acquitted of a crimewhich he was incapable of committing. A man who deserves my interest, andclaims my sympathy. Shake hands, Mr. Dubourg."

  I spoke to him in a good hearty voice, and I gave him a good heartysqueeze. The poor, weak, lonely, persecuted young fellow dropped his headon my shoulder like a child, and burst out crying.

  "Don't despise me!" he said, as soon as he had got his breath again. "Itbreaks a man down to have stood in the dock, and to have had hundreds ofhard-hearted people staring at him in horror--without his deserving it.Besides, I have been very lonely, ma'am, since my brother left me."

  We sat down again, side by side. He was the strangest compound ofanomalies I had ever met with. Throw him into one of those passions inwhich he flamed out so easily--and you would have said, This is a tiger.Wait till he had cooled down again to his customary mild temperature--andyou would have said with equal truth, This is a lamb.

  "One thing rather surprises me, Mr. Dubourg," I went on. "I can't quiteunderstand----"

  "Don't call me Mr. Dubourg," he interposed. "You remind me of thedisgrace which has forced me to change my name. Call me by my Christianname. It's a foreign name. You are a foreigner by your accent--you willlike me all the better for having a foreign name. I was christened'Oscar'--after my mother's brother: my mother was a Jersey woman. Call me'Oscar.'--What is it you don't understand?"

  "In your present situation," I resumed, "I don't understand your brotherleaving you here all by yourself."

  He was on the point of flaming out again at that.

  "Not a word against my brother!" he exclaimed fiercely. "My brother isthe noblest creature that God ever created! You must own thatyourself--you know what he did at the trial. I should have died on thescaffold but for that angel. I insist on it that he is not a man. He isan angel!"

  (I admitted that his brother was an angel. The concession instantlypacified him.)

  "People say there is no difference between us," he went on, drawing hischair companionably close to mine. "Ah, people are so shallow!Personally, I grant you, we are exactly alike. (You have heard that weare twins?) But there it ends, unfortunately for _me._ Nugent--(mybrother was christened Nugent after my father)--Nugent is a hero! Nugentis a genius. I should have died if he hadn't taken care of me after thetrial. I had nobody but him. We are orphans; we have no brothers orsisters. Nugent felt the disgrace even more than I felt it--but _he_could control himself. It fell more heavily on him than it did on me.I'll tell you why. Nugent was in a fair way to make our family name--thename that we have been obliged to drop--famous all over the world. He isa painter--a landscape painter. Have you never heard of him? Ah, you soonwill! Where do you think he has gone to? He has gone to the wilds ofAmerica, in search of new subjects. He is going to found a school oflandscape painting. On an immense scale. A scale that has never beenattempted yet. Dear fellow! Shall I tell you what he said when he left mehere? Noble words--I call them noble words. 'Oscar, I go to make ourassumed name famous. You shall be honorably known--you shall beillustrious, as the brother of Nugent Dubourg.' Do you think I couldstand in the way of such a career as that? After what he has sacrificedfor _me,_ could I let Such a Man stagnate here--for no better purposethan to keep me company? What does it matter about _my_ feeling lonely?Who am I? Oh, if you had seen how he bore with the horrible notorietythat followed us, after the trial! He was constantly stared at andpointed at, for _me._ Not a word of complaint escaped him. He snapped hisfingers at it. 'That for public opinion!' he said. What strength ofmind--eh? From one place after another we moved and moved, and stillthere were the photographs, and the newspapers, and the whole infamousstory ('romance in real life,' they called it), known beforehand toeverybody. _He_ never lost heart. 'We shall find a place yet' (that wasthe cheerful way he put it); 'you have nothing to do with it, Oscar; youare safe in my hands; I promise you exactly the place of refuge youwant.' It was he who got all the information, and found out this lonelypart of England where you live. _I_ thought it pretty as we wanderedabout the hills--it wasn't half grand enough for _him._ We lostourselves. I began to feel nervous. He didn't mind it a bit. 'You have Mewith you,' he said; 'My luck is always to be depended on. Mark what Isay! We shall stumble on a village!' You will hardly believe me--in tenminutes more, we stumbled, exactly as he had foretold, on this place. Hedidn't leave me--when I had prevailed on him to go--without arecommendation. He recommended me to the landlord of the inn here. Hesaid, 'My brother is delicate; my brother wishes to live in retirement;you will oblige me by looking after my brother.' Wasn't it kind? Thelandlord seemed to be quite affected by it. Nugent cried when he tookleave of me. Ah, what would I not give to have a heart like his and amind like his! It's something--isn't it?--to have a face like him. Ioften say that to myself when I look in the glass. Excuse my running onin this way. When I once begin to talk of Nugent, I don't know when toleave off."

  One thing, at any rate, was plainly discernible in this otherwiseinscrutable young man. He adored his twin-brother.

  It would have been equally clear to me that Mr. Nugent Dubourg deservedto be worshipped, if I could have reconciled to my mind his leaving hisbrother to shift for himself in such a place as Dimchurch. I was obligedto remind myself of the admirable service which he had rendered at thetrial, before I could decide to do him the justice of suspending myopinion of him, in his absence. Having accomplished this act ofmagnanimity, I took advantage of the first opportunity to change thesubject. The most tiresome information that I am acquainted with, is theinformation which tells us of the virtues of an absent person--when thatabsent person happens to be a stranger.

  "Is it true that you have taken Browndown for six months?" I asked. "Areyou really going to settle at Dimchurch?"

  "Yes--if you keep my secret," he answered. "The people here know nothingabout me. Don't, pray don't, tell them who I am! You will drive me away,if you do."

  "I must tell Miss Finch who you are," I said.

  "No! no! no!" he exclaimed eagerly. "I can't bear the idea of her knowingit. I have been so horribly degraded. What will she think of me?" Heburst into another explosion of rhapsodies on the subject ofLucilla--mixed up with renewed petitions to me to keep his storyconcealed from everybody. I lost all patience with his want of commonfortitude and common sense.

  "Young Oscar, I should like to box your ears!" I said. "You are in avillainously unwholesome state about this matter. Have you nothing elseto think of? Have you no profession? Are you not obliged to work for yourliving?"

  I spoke, as you perceive, with some force of expression--aided by acorresponding asperity of voice and manner.

  Mr. Oscar Dubourg looked at me with the puzzled air of a man who feels anoverflow of new ideas forcing itself into his mind. He modestly admittedthe degrading truth. From his childhood upwards, he had only to put hishand in his pocket, and to find the money there, without any prelimina
rynecessity of earning it first. His father had been a fashionableportrait-painter, and had married one of his sitters--an heiress. Oscarand Nugent had been left in the detestable position of independentgentlemen. The dignity of labor was a dignity unknown to these degradedyoung men. "I despise a wealthy idler," I said to Oscar, with myrepublican severity. "You want the ennobling influence of labor to make aman of you. Nobody has a right to be idle--nobody has a right to be rich.You would be in a more wholesome state of mind about yourself, my younggentleman, if you had to earn your bread and cheese before you ate it."

  He stared at me piteously. The noble sentiments which I had inheritedfrom Doctor Pratolungo, completely bewildered Mr. Oscar Dubourg.

  "Don't be angry with me," he said, in his innocent way. "I couldn't eatmy cheese, if I did earn it. I can't digest cheese. Besides, I employmyself as much as I can." He took his little golden vase from the tablebehind him, and told me what I had already heard him tell Lucilla while Iwas listening at the window. "You would have found me at work thismorning," he went on, "if the stupid people who send me my metal plateshad not made a mistake. The alloy, in the gold and silver both, is allwrong this time. I must return the plates to be melted again before I cando anything with them. They are all ready to go back to-day, when thecart comes. If there are any laboring people here who want money, I'msure I will give them some of mine with the greatest pleasure. It isn'tmy fault, ma'am, that my father married my mother. And how could I helpit if he left two thousand a year each to my brother and me?"

  Two thousand a year each to his brother and him! And the illustriousPratolungo had never known what it was to have five pounds sterling athis disposal before his union with Me!

  I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. In my righteous indignation, I forgotLucilla and her curiosity about Oscar--I forgot Oscar and his horror ofLucilla discovering who he was. I opened my lips to speak. In anothermoment I should have launched my thunderbolts against the whole infamoussystem of modern society, when I was silenced by the most extraordinaryand unexpected interruption that ever closed a woman's lips.