Poor Miss Finch

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-EIGHTH

  On the Way to the End. Second Stage

  EARLY riser as I was, I found that Oscar had risen earlier still. He hadleft the rectory and had disturbed Mr. Gootheridge's morning slumbers byan application at the inn for the key of Browndown.

  On his return to the rectory, he merely said that he had been to seeafter various things belonging to him, which were still left in the emptyhouse. His look and manner as he gave us this brief explanation were, tomy mind, more unsatisfactory than ever. I made no remark; and, observingthat his loose traveling coat was buttoned awry over the breast, I set itright for him. My hand, as I did this, touched his breast-pocket. Hestarted back directly--as if there was something in the pocket which hedid not wish me to feel. Was it something he had brought from Browndown?

  We got away--encumbered by Mr. Finch, who insisted on attaching himselfto Oscar--by the first express train, which took us straight to London.Comparison of time-tables, on reaching the terminus, showed that I hadleisure to spare for a brief visit to Grosse, before we again took therailway back to Sydenham. Having decided not to mention the bad newsabout Lucilla's sight to Oscar, until I had seen the German first, I madethe best excuse that suggested itself, and drove away--leaving the twogentlemen in the waiting-room at the station.

  I found Grosse confined to his easy-chair, with his gouty foot envelopedin cool cabbage-leaves. Between pain and anxiety, his eyes were wilder,his broken English was more grotesque than ever. When I appeared at thedoor of his room and said good morning--in the frenzy of his impatiencehe shook his fist at me.

  "Good morning go-damn!" he roared out, "Where? where? where is Feench?"

  I told him where we believed Lucilla to be. Grosse turned his head, andshook his fist at a bottle on the chimney-piece next.

  "Get that bottles on the chimney," he said. "And the eye-baths by theside of him. Don't stop with your talky-talky-chatterations here. Go!Save her eyes. Look! You do this. You throw her head back--soh!" Heillustrated the position so forcibly with his own head that he shook hisgouty foot, and screamed with the pain of it. He went on nevertheless,glaring frightfully through his spectacles; gnashing his mustachefiercely between his teeth. "Throw her head back. Fill the eye-baths;turn him upsides-down over her open eyes. Drown them turn-turn-about inmy mixtures. Drown them, I say, one-down-todder-come-on, and if shescreech never mind it. Then bring her to me. For the lofe of Gott, bringher to me. If you tie her hands and foots, bring her to me. What is thewomans stopping for? Go! go! go!"

  "I want to ask you a question about Oscar," I said, "before I go."

  He seized the pillow which supported his head--evidently intending toexpedite my departure by throwing it at me. I produced the railwaytime-table as the best defensive weapon at my command. "Look at it foryourself," I said; "and you will see that I must wait at the station, ifI don't wait here."

  With some difficulty, I satisfied him that it was impossible to leaveLondon for Sydenham before a certain hour, and that I had at least tenminutes to spare which might be just as well passed in consulting him. Heclosed his glaring eyes, and laid his head back on the chair, thoroughlyexhausted with his own outbreak of excitement. "No matter how thingsgoes," he said, "a womans must wag her tongue. Goot. Wag yours."

  "I am placed in a very difficult position," I began. "Oscar is going withme to Lucilla. I shall of course take care, in the first place, that heand Nugent do not meet, unless I am present at the interview. But I amnot equally sure of what I ought to do in the case of Lucilla. Must Ikeep them apart until I have first prepared her to see Oscar?"

  "Let her see the devil himself if you like," growled Grosse, "so long asyou bring her here afterwards-directly to me. You will do the bettermostthing, if you prepare Oscar. _She_ wants no preparations! She is enoughdisappointed in him as it is!"

  "Disappointed in him!" I repeated. "I don't understand you."

  He settled himself wearily in his chair, and referred, in a softened andsaddened tone, to that private conversation of his with Lucilla, atRamsgate, which has already been reported in the Journal. I was nowinformed, for the first time, of those changes in her sensations and inher ways of thinking which had so keenly vexed and mortified her. I heardof the ominous absence of the old thrill of pleasure, when Nugent tookher hand on meeting her at the seaside--I heard how bitterly his personalappearance had disappointed her (when she had seen his features indetail) by comparison with the charming ideal picture which she hadformed of her lover in the days of her blindness: those happier days, asshe had called them, when she was Poor Miss Finch.

  "Surely," I said, "all the old feelings will come back to her when shesees Oscar?"

  "They will never come back to her--no, not if she sees fifty Oscars!"

  He was beginning to frighten me, or to irritate me--I can hardly saywhich. I only know that I persisted in disputing with him. "When she seesthe true man," I went on, "do you mean to say she will feel the samedisappointment----?"

  I could get no farther than that. He cut me short there, withoutceremony.

  "You foolish womans!" he interposed, "she will feel more than the same. Ihave told you already it was one enormous disappointments to her when shesaw the handsome brodder with the fair complexions. Ask your own selfwhat it will be when she sees the ugly brodder with the blue face. I tellyou this!--she will think your true man the worst impostor of the two."

  There I indignantly contradicted him.

  "His face _may_ be a disappointment to her," I said--"I own that. Butthere it will end. Her hand will tell her, when he takes it, that thereis no impostor deceiving her this time."

  "Her hand will tell her nothing--no more than yours. I had not so muchhard hearts in me as to say that to _her,_ when she asked me. I say it to_you._ Hold your tongue and listen. All those thrill-tingles that sheonce had when he touched her, belong to anodder time--the time gone-bywhen her sight was in her fingers and not in her eyes. With thosefine-superfine-feelings of the days when she was blind, she pays now forher grand new privilege of opening her eyes on the world. (And worth theprice too!) Do you understand yet? It is a sort of swop-bargain betweenNature and this poor girls of ours. I take away your eyes--I give youyour fine touch. I give you your eyes--I take away your fine touch. Soh!that is plain. You see now."

  I was too mortified and too miserable to answer him. Through all ourlater troubles, I had looked forward so confidently to Oscar'sre-appearance as the one sufficient condition on which Lucilla'shappiness would be certainly restored! What had become of myanticipations now? I sat silent; staring in stupid depression at thepattern of the carpet. Grosse took out his watch.

  "Your ten-minutes-time has counted himself out," he said.

  I neither moved nor heeded him. His ferocious eyes began to flame againbehind his monstrous spectacles.

  "Go-be-off-with-you!" he shouted at me as if I was deaf. "Her eyes! hereyes! While you stop chatterboxing here, her eyes are in danger. Whatwith her frettings and her cryings and her damn-nonsense-lofe-business, Iswear you my solemn oath her sight was in danger when I saw her a wholefortnight gone-by. Do you want my big pillow to fly bang at your head?You don't want him? Be-off-away with you then, or you will have him inone-two-three time! Be-off-away--and bring her back to me before night!"

  I returned to the railway. Of all the women whom I passed in the crowdedstreets, I doubt if one had a heavier heart in her bosom that morningthan mine.

  To make matters worse still, my traveling companions (one in therefreshment-room, and one pacing the platform) received my account of myinterview with Grosse in a manner which seriously disappointed anddiscouraged me. Mr. Finch's inhuman conceit treated my melancholy news ofhis daughter as a species of complimentary tribute to his own foresight.

  "You remember, Madame Pratolungo, I took high ground in this matter fromthe first. I protested against the proceedings of the man Grosse, asinvolving a purely worldly interference with the ways of an inscrutableProvidence. With what effect? My paternal influe
nce was repudiated; myMoral Weight was, so to speak, set aside. And now you see the result.Take it to heart, dear friend. May it be a warning to you!" He sighedwith ponderous complacency, and turned from me to the girl behind thecounter. "I will take another cup of tea."

  Oscar's reception of me, when I found him on the platform, and told himnext of Lucilla's critical state, was more than discouraging. It is noexaggeration to say that he alarmed me. "Another item in the debt I oweto Nugent!" he said. Not a word of sympathy, not a word of sorrow. Thatvindictive answer, and nothing more.

  We started for Sydenham.

  From time to time, I looked at Oscar sitting opposite to me, to see ifany change appeared in him as we drew nearer and nearer to the place inwhich Lucilla was now living. No! Still the same ominous silence, thesame unnatural self-repression possessed him.

  Except the momentary outbreak, when Mr. Finch had placed Nugent's letterin his hand on the previous evening, not the faintest token of what wasreally going on in his mind had escaped him since we had left Marseilles.He, who could weep over all his other griefs as easily and asspontaneously as a woman, had not shed a tear since the fatal day when hehad discovered that his brother had played him false--that brother whohad been the god of his idolatry, the sacred object of his gratitude andhis love! When a man of Oscar's temperament becomes frozen up for daystogether in his own thoughts--when he keeps his own counsel; when he asksfor no sympathy, and utters no complaint--the sign is a serious one.There are hidden forces gathering in him which will burst their way tothe surface--for good or for evil--with an irresistible result. WatchingOscar attentively behind my veil, I felt the certain assurance that thepart he would take in the terrible conflict of interests now awaiting us,would be a part which I should remember to the latest day of my life.

  We reached Sydenham, and went to the nearest hotel.

  On the railway--with other travelers in the carriage-it had beenimpossible to consult on the safest method of approaching Lucilla, in thefirst instance. That serious question now pressed for instant decision.We sat down to discuss it, in the room which we had hired at the hotel.