Poor Miss Finch

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-FOURTH

  Lucilla's Journal, continued

  _September_ 4th.

  I MARK this day as one of the saddest days of my life. Oscar has shownMadame Pratolungo to me, in her true colors. He has reasoned out thismiserable matter with a plainness which it is impossible for me toresist. I have thrown away my love and my confidence on a false woman:there is no sense of honor, no feeling of gratitude or of delicacy in hernature. And I once thought her--it sickens me to recall it! I will seeher no more.

  [Note.--Did it ever occur to you to be obliged to copy out, with your ownhand, this sort of opinion of your own character? I can recommend thesensation produced as something quite new, and the temptation to add aline or two on your own account to be as nearly as possible beyond mortalresistance.--P.]

  Oscar and I met at the stairs, at eleven o'clock, as we had arranged.

  He took me to the west pier. At that hour of the morning (excepting a fewsailors who paid no heed to us) the place was a solitude. It was one ofthe loveliest days of the season. When we were tired of pacing to andfro, we could sit down under the mellow sunshine, and enjoy the balmy seaair. In that pure light, with all those lovely colors about us, there wassomething, to my mind, horribly and shamefully out of place in the talkthat engrossed us--talk that still turned, hour after hour, on nothingbut plots and lies, cruelty, ingratitude, and deceit!

  I managed to ask my first question so as to make him enter on the subjectat once--without wasting time in phrases to prepare me for what was tocome.

  "When my aunt mentioned that letter at dinner yesterday," I said, "Ifancied that you knew something about it. Was I right?"

  "Very nearly right," he answered. "I can't say I knew anything about it.I only suspected that it was the production of an enemy of yours andmine."

  "Not Madame Pratolungo?"

  "Yes! Madame Pratolungo."

  I disagreed with him at the outset. Madame Pratolungo and my aunt hadquarreled about politics. Any correspondence between them--a confidentialcorrespondence especially--seemed to be one of the most unlikely thingsthat could take place. I asked Oscar if he could guess what the lettercontained, and why it was not to be given to me until Grosse reportedthat I was quite cured.

  "I can't guess at the contents--I can only guess at the object of theletter," he said.

  "What is it?"

  "The object which she has had in view from the first--to place everypossible obstacle in the way of my marrying you."

  "What interest can she have in doing that?"

  "My brother's interest."

  "Forgive me, Oscar. I cannot believe it of her."

  We were walking, while these words were passing between us. When I saidthat, he stopped, and looked at me very earnestly.

  "You believed it of her, when you answered my letter," he said.

  I admitted that.

  "I believed your letter," I replied; "and I shared your opinion of her aslong as she was in the same house with me. Her presence fed my anger andmy horror of her in some way that I can't account for. Now she has leftme--now I have had time to think--there is something in her absence thatpleads for her, and tortures me with doubts if I have done right. I can'texplain it--I don't understand it. I only know that so it is."

  He still looked at me more and more attentively. "Your good opinion ofher must have been very firmly rooted to assert itself in this obstinatemanner," he said. "What can she have done to deserve it?"

  If I had looked back through all my old recollections of her, and hadrecalled them one by one, it would only have ended in making me cry. Andyet, I felt that I ought to stand up for her as long as I could. Imanaged to meet the difficulty in this way.

  "I will tell you what she did," I said, "after I received your letter.Fortunately for me, she was not very well that morning; and shebreakfasted in bed. I had plenty of time to compose myself, and tocaution Zillah (who read your letter to me), before we met for the firsttime that day. On the previous day, I had felt hurt and offended with herfor the manner in which she accounted for your absence from Browndown. Ithought she was not treating me with the same confidence which I shouldhave placed in her, if our positions had been reversed. When I next sawher, having your warning in my mind, I made my excuses, and said what Ithought she would expect me to say, under the circumstances. In myexcitement and my wretchedness, I daresay I over-acted my part. At anyrate, I roused the suspicion in her that something was wrong. She notonly asked me if anything had happened, she went the length of saying, inso many words, that she thought she saw a change in me. I stopped itthere, by declaring that I did not understand her. She must have seenthat I was not telling the truth: she must have known as well as I knewthat I was concealing something from her. For all that, not one word moreescaped her lips. A proud delicacy--I saw it as plainly in her face, as Inow see you--a proud delicacy silenced her; she looked wounded and hurt.I have been thinking of that look, since I have been here. I have askedmyself (what did not occur to me at the time) if a false woman, who knewherself to be guilty, would have behaved in that way? Surely a falsewoman would have set her wits against mine, and have tried to lead meinto betraying to her what discoveries I had really made? Oscar! thatdelicate silence, that wounded look, _will_ plead for her when I think ofher in her absence! I can _not_ feel as satisfied as I once did, that sheis the abominable creature you declare her to be. I know you areincapable of deceiving me--I know you believe what you say. But is it notpossible that appearances have misled you? Can you really be sure thatyou have not made some dreadful mistake?"

  Without answering me, he suddenly stopped at a seat under the stoneparapet of the pier, and signed to me to sit down by him. I obeyed.Instead of looking at me, he kept his head turned away; looking out overthe sea. I could not make him out. He perplexed--he almost alarmed me.

  "Have I offended you?" I asked.

  He turned towards me again, as abruptly as he had turned away. His eyeswandered; his face was pale.

  "You are a good generous creature," he said, in a confused hasty way."Let us talk of something else."

  "No!" I answered. "I am too deeply interested in knowing the truth totalk of anything else."

  His color changed again at that. His face flushed; he gave a heavy sighas one does sometimes, when one is making a great effort.

  "You _will_ have it?" he said.

  "I _will_ have it?"

  He rose again. The nearer he was to telling me all that he had keptconcealed from me thus far, the harder it seemed to be to him to say thefirst words.

  "Do you mind walking on again?" he asked.

  I silently rose on my side, and put my arm in his. We walked on slowlytowards the end of the pier. Arrived there, he stood still, and spokethose hard first words--looking out over the broad blue waters: notlooking at me.

  "I won't ask you to take anything for granted, on my assertion only," hebegan. "The woman's own words, the woman's own actions, shall prove herguilty."

  I interrupted him by a question.

  "Tell me one thing," I said. "What first made you suspect her?"

  "You first made me suspect her, by what you said of her at Browndown," heanswered. "Now carry your memory back to the time I have alreadymentioned in my letter--when she betrayed herself to you in the rectorygarden. Is it true that she said you would have fallen in love withNugent, if you had met him first instead of me?"

  "It is true that she said it," I answered. "At a moment," I added, "whenher temper had got the better of her--and when mine had got the better ofme."

  "Advance the hour a little," he went on, "to the time when she followedyou to Browndown. Was she still out of temper, when she made her excusesto you?"

  "No."

  "Did she interfere, when Nugent took advantage of your blindness to makeyou believe you were talking to me?"

  "No."

  "Was she out of temper then?"

  I still defended her. "She might well have been angry," I said. "She hadmade her excuses to me
in the kindest manner; and I had received themwith the most unpardonable rudeness."

  My defence produced no effect on him. He summed it up coolly so far. "Shecompared me disadvantageously with Nugent; and she allowed Nugent topersonate me in speaking to you, without interfering to stop it. In boththese cases, her temper excuses and accounts for her conduct. Very good.We may, or may not, differ so far. Before we go farther, let us--if wecan--agree on one unanswerable fact. Which of us two brothers was herfavorite, from the first?"

  About _that,_ there could be no doubt. I admitted at once that Nugent washer favorite. And more than this, I remembered accusing her myself ofnever having done justice to Oscar from the first.

  [Note.--See the sixteenth chapter, and Madame Pratolungo's remark,warning you that you would hear of this circumstance again.--P.]

  Oscar went on.

  "Bear that in mind," he said. "And now let us get to the time when wewere assembled in your sitting-room, to discuss the subject of theoperation on your eyes. The question before us, as I remember it, wasthis. Were you to marry me, before the operation? Or were you to keep mewaiting until the operation had been performed, and the cure wascomplete? How did Madame Pratolungo decide on that occasion? She decidedagainst my interests; she encouraged you to delay our marriage."

  I persisted in defending her. "She did that out of sympathy with me," Isaid.

  He surprised me by again accepting my view of the matter, withoutattempting to dispute it.

  "We will say she did it out of sympathy with you," he proceeded."Whatever her motives might be, the result was the same. My marriage toyou was indefinitely put off; and Madame Pratolungo voted for thatdelay."

  "And your brother," I added, "took the other side, and tried to persuademe to marry you first. How can you reconcile that with what you have toldme----"

  He interposed before I could say more. "Don't bring my brother into theinquiry," he said. "My brother, at that time, could still behave like anhonorable man, and sacrifice his own feelings to his duty to me. Let usstrictly confine ourselves, for the present, to what Madame Pratolungosaid and did. And let us advance again to a few minutes later on the sameday, when our little domestic debate had ended. My brother was the firstto go. Then, you retired, and left Madame Pratolungo and me alone in theroom. Do you remember?"

  I remembered perfectly.

  "You had bitterly disappointed me," I said. "You had shown no sympathywith my eagerness to be restored to the blessing of sight. You madeobjections and started difficulties. I recollect speaking to you withsome of the bitterness that I felt--blaming you for not believing in myfuture as I believed in it, and hoping as I hoped--and then leaving you,and locking myself up in my own room."

  In those terms, I satisfied him that my memory of the events of that daywas as clear as his own. He listened without making any remark, and wenton when I had done.

  "Madame Pratolungo shared your hard opinion of me, on that occasion," heproceeded; "and expressed it in infinitely stronger terms. She betrayedherself to _you_ in the rectory garden. She betrayed herself to _me,_after you had left us together in the sitting-room. Her hasty temperagain, beyond all doubt! I quite agree with you. What she said to me inyour absence, she would never have said if she had been mistress ofherself."

  I began to feel a little startled. "How is it that you now tell me ofthis for the first time?" I said. "Were you afraid of distressing me?"

  "I was afraid of losing you," he answered.

  Hitherto, I had kept my arm in his. I drew it out now. If his reply meantanything, it meant that he had once thought me capable of breaking faithwith him. He saw that I was hurt.

  "Remember," he said, "that I had unhappily offended you that day, andthat you have not heard yet what Madame Pratolungo had the audacity tosay to me under those circumstances."

  "What did she say to you?"

  "This:--'It would have been a happier prospect for Lucilla, if she hadbeen going to marry your brother, instead of marrying you.' I repeatliterally: those were the words."

  I could no more believe it of her than I could have believed it ofmyself.

  "Are you really sure?" I asked him. "_Can_ she have said anything socruel to you as that?"

  Instead of answering me, he took his pocket-book from the breast-pocketof his coat--searched in it--and produced a morsel of folded and crumpledpaper. He opened the paper, and showed me some writing inside.

  "Is that my writing?" he asked.

  It was his writing. I had seen enough of his letters, since the recoveryof my sight, to feel sure of that.

  "Read it!" he said; "and judge for yourself."

  [Note.--You have made your acquaintance with this letter already, in mythirty-second chapter. I had said those foolish words to Oscar (as youwill find in my record of the time), under the influence of a naturalindignation, which any other woman with a spark of spirit in her wouldhave felt in my place. Instead of personally remonstrating with me, Oscarhad (as usual) gone home, and written me a letter of expostulation.Having, on my side, had time to cool--and feeling the absurdity of ourexchanging letters when we were within a few minutes' walk of eachother--I had gone straight to Browndown, on receiving the letter: firstcrumpling it up, and (as I supposed) throwing it into the fire. Afterpersonally setting myself right with Oscar, I had returned to therectory; and had there heard that Nugent had been to see me in myabsence, had waited a little while alone in the sitting-room, and hadgone away again. When I tell you that the letter which he was now showingto Lucilla, was that same letter of Oscar's, which I had (as I believed)destroyed, you will understand that I had thrown it into the fenderinstead of into the fire; and that I failed to see it in the fender on myreturn, simply because Nugent had seen it first, and had taken it awaywith him. These particulars are described in greater detail in thechapter to which I have referred; the letter itself being there insertedat full length. However, I will save you the trouble of looking back--Iknow how you hate trouble!--by transcribing literally what I find beforeme in the Journal. The original letter is pasted on the page: I will copyit from the page for the second time. Am I not good to you? What authorby profession would do as much for you as this? I am afraid I am praisingmyself! Let Lucilla proceed.--P.]

  I took the letter from him and read it. At my request, he has permittedme to keep it. The letter is my justification for thinking of MadamePratolungo as I now think of her. I place it here, before I write anotherline in my Journal.