Poor Miss Finch

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER THE FIFTIETH

  The End of the Journey

  A LITTLE interval of time elapsed.

  Her first exquisite sense of the recognition by touch had passed away.Her mind had recovered its balance. She separated herself from Oscar, andturned to me, with the one inevitable question which I knew must followthe joining of their hands.

  "What does it mean?"

  The exposure of Nugent's perfidy; the revelation of the fatal secret ofOscar's face; and, last not least, the defence of my own conduct towardsher, were all comprehended in the answer for which that question called.As carefully, as delicately, as mercifully as I could, I disclosed to herthe whole truth. How the shock affected her, she did not tell me at thetime, and has never told me since. With her hand in Oscar's hand, withher face hidden on Oscar's breast, she listened; not once interruptingme, from first to last, by so much as a single word. Now and then, I sawher tremble; now and then I heard her sigh heavily. That was all. It wasonly when I had ended--it was only after a long interval during whichOscar and I watched her in speechless anxiety--that she slowly lifted herhead and broke the silence.

  "Thank God," we heard her say to herself fervently--"Thank God, I amblind."

  Those were her first words. They filled me with horror. I cried out toher to recall them.

  She quietly laid her head back on Oscar's breast.

  "Why should I recall them?" she asked. "Do you think I wish to see himdisfigured as he is now? No! I wish to see him--and I _do_ see him!--asmy fancy drew his picture in the first days of our love. My blindness ismy blessing. It has given me back my old delightful sensation when Itouch him; it keeps my own beloved image of him--the one image I carefor--unchanged and unchangeable. You _will_ persist in thinking that myhappiness depends on my sight. I look back with horror at what I sufferedwhen I had my sight--my one effort is to forget that miserable time. Oh,how little you know of me! Oh, what a shock it would be to me, if I sawhim as you see him! Try to understand me, and you won't talk of myloss--you will talk of my gain."

  "Your gain?" I repeated. "What have you gained?"

  "Happiness," she answered. "My life lives in my love. And my love livesin my blindness."

  There was the story of her whole existence--told in two words!

  If you had seen her radiant face as she raised it again in the excitementof speaking; if you had remembered (as I remembered) what her surgeon hadsaid of the penalty which she must inevitably pay for the recovery of hersight--how would you have answered her? It is barely possible, perhaps,that you might have done what I did. That is to say: You might havemodestly admitted that she knew what the conditions of her happiness werebetter than you--and you might not have answered her at all!

  I left them to talk together, and took a turn in the room, consideringwith myself what we were to do next.

  It was not easy to say. The barren information which I had received frommy darling was all the information that I possessed. Nugent hadunflinchingly carried his cruel deception to its end. He had falselygiven notice of his marriage at the church, in his brother's name; and hewas now in London, falsely obtaining his Marriage License, in hisbrother's name also. So much I knew of his proceedings--and no more.

  While I was still pondering, Lucilla cut the Gordian knot.

  "Why are we stopping here?" she asked. "Let us go--and never return tothis hateful place again!"

  As she rose to her feet, we were startled by a soft knock at the door.

  I answered the knock. The woman who had brought Lucilla to the hotelappeared once more. She seemed to be afraid to venture far from the door.Standing just inside the room, she looked nervously at Lucilla, and said,"Can I speak to you, Miss?"

  "You can say anything you like, before this lady and gentleman," Lucillaanswered. "What is it?"

  "I'm afraid we have been followed, Miss."

  "Followed? By whom?"

  "By the lady's maid. I saw her, a little while since, looking up at thehotel--and then she went back in a hurry on the way to the house--andthat's not the worse of it, Miss."

  "What else has happened?"

  "We have made a mistake about the railway," said the woman. "There's atrain from London that we didn't notice in the timetable. They tell medown-stairs it came in more than a quarter of an hour ago. Please to comeback, Miss--or I fear we shall be found out."

  "You can go back at once, Jane," said Lucilla.

  "By myself?"

  "Yes. Thank you for bringing me here--here I remain."

  She had barely taken her seat again between Oscar and me, before the doorwas softly opened from the outside. A long thin nervous hand stole inthrough the opening; took the servant by the arm; and drew her out intothe passage. In her place, a man entered the room with his hat on. Theman was Nugent Dubourg.

  He stopped where the servant had stopped. He looked at Lucilla; he lookedat his brother; he looked at me.

  Not a word fell from him. There he stood, fronting the friend whom he hadcalumniated and the brother whom he had betrayed. There he stood--withhis eyes fixed on Lucilla, sitting between us--knowing that it was allover; knowing that the woman for whom he had degraded himself, was awoman parted from him for ever. There he stood, in the hell of his ownmaking--and devoured his torture in silence.

  On his brother's appearance, Oscar had risen, and had raised Lucilla withhim. He now advanced a step towards Nugent, still holding to him hisbetrothed wife.

  I followed them, eagerly watching his face. There was no fear in me nowof what he might do. Lucilla's blessed influence had found, and cast out,the lurking demon that had been hidden in him. With a mind attentive butnot alarmed, I waited to see how he would meet the emergency thatconfronted him.

  "Nugent!" he said, very quietly.

  Nugent's head drooped--he made no answer.

  Lucilla, hearing Oscar pronounce the name, instantly understood what hadhappened. She shuddered with horror. Oscar gently placed her in my arms,and advanced again alone towards his brother. His face expressed thestruggle in him of some subtly-mingling influences of love and anguish,of sorrow and shame. He recalled to me in the strangest manner my pastexperience of him, when he had first trusted me with the story of theTrial, and when he had told me that Nugent was the good angel of hislife.

  He went up to the place at which his brother was standing. In the simple,boyish way, so familiar to me in the bygone time, he laid his hand on hisbrother's arm.

  "Nugent!" he said. "Are you the same dear good brother who saved me fromdying on the scaffold, and who cheered my hard life afterwards? Are youthe same bright, clever, noble fellow that I was always so fond of, andso proud of?"

  He paused, and removed his brother's hat. With careful, caressing hand,he parted his brother's ruffled hair over the forehead. Nugent's headsank lower. His face was distorted, his hands were clenched, in the dumbagony of remembrance which that tender voice and that kind hand had setloose in him. Oscar gave him time to recover himself: Oscar spoke next tome.

  "You know Nugent," he said. "You remember when we first met, my tellingyou that Nugent was an angel? You saw for yourself, when he came toDimchurch, how kindly he helped me; how faithfully he kept my secrets;what a true friend he was. Look at him--and you will feel, as I do, thatwe have misunderstood and misinterpreted him, in some monstrous way." Heturned again to Nugent. "I daren't tell you," he went on, "what I haveheard about you, and what I have believed about you, and what vileunbrotherly thoughts I have had of being revenged on you. Thank God, theyare gone! My dear fellow, I look back at them--now I see you--as I mightlook back at a horrible dream. How _can_ I see you, Nugent, and believethat you have been false to me? You, a villain who has tried to rob poorMe of the only woman in the world who cares for me! You, so handsome andso popular, who may marry any woman you like! It can't be. You havedrifted innocently into some false position without knowing it. Defendyourself. No. Let me defend you. You shan't humble yourself to anybody.Tell me how you have really acted towards Lucilla, and towards
me--andleave it to your brother to set you right with everybody. Come, Nugent!lift up your head--and tell me what I shall say."

  Nugent lifted his head, and looked at Oscar.

  Ghastly as his face was, I saw something in his eyes, when he first fixedthem on his brother, which again reminded me of past days--the days whenhe had joined us at Dimchurch, and when he used to talk of "poor Oscar"in the tender, light-hearted way that first won me. I thought once moreof the memorable night-interview between us at Browndown, when Oscar hadleft England. Again, I called to mind the signs which had told of thenobler nature of the man pleading with him. Again, I remembered theremorse which had moved him to tears--the effort he had made in mypresence to atone for past misdoing, and to struggle for the last timeagainst the guilty passion that possessed him. Was the nature which couldfeel that remorse utterly depraved? Was the man who had made thateffort--the last of many that had gone before it--irredeemably bad?

  "Wait!" I whispered to Lucilla, trembling and weeping in my arms. "Hewill deserve our sympathy; he will win our pardon and our pity yet!"

  "Come!" Oscar repeated. "Tell me what I shall say."

  Nugent drew from his pocket a sheet of paper with writing on it.

  "Say," he answered, "that I gave notice of your marriage at the churchhere-and that I went to London and got you _this._"

  He handed the sheet of paper to his brother. It was the Marriage License,taken out in his brother's name.

  "Be happy, Oscar," he added. "_You_ deserve it."

  He threw one arm in his old easy protecting way round his brother. Hishand, as he did this, touched the breast-pocket of Oscar's coat. Beforeit was possible to stop him, his dexterous fingers had opened the pocket,and had taken from it a little toy-pistol with a chased silver handle ofOscar's own workmanship.

  "Was this for me?" he asked, with a faint smile. "My poor boy! you couldnever have done it, could you?" He kissed Oscar's dark cheek, and put thepistol into his own pocket. "The handle is your work," he said. "I shalltake it as your present to me. Return to Browndown when you are married.I am going to travel again. You shall hear from me before I leaveEngland. God bless you, Oscar. Good-bye."

  He put his brother back from him with a firm and gentle hand. I attemptedto advance with Lucilla, and speak to him. Something in his face--lookingat me out of his mournful eyes, calm, stern, and superhuman, like a lookof doom--warned me back from him, and filled me with the foreboding thatI should see him no more. He walked to the door, and openedit--turned--and, fixing his farewell look on Lucilla, saluted us silentlywith a bend of his head. The door closed on him softly. In a few minutesonly from the time when he had entered the room, he had left usagain--and left us for ever.

  We waited, spell-bound--we could not speak. The void that he left behindhim was dreary and dreadful. I was the first who moved. In silence, I ledLucilla back to our seat on the sofa, and beckoned to Oscar to go to herin my place.

  This done, I left them--and went out to meet Lucilla's father, on hisreturn to the hotel. I wished to prevent him from disturbing them. Afterwhat had happened, it was good for those two to be alone.