Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (862 page)

How long the fit lasted, I don’t know. I only remember that I was disturbed by a knock at my door.

I flung open the door in a fury — and confronted Oscar on the threshold.

There was a look in his face that instantly quieted me. There was a tone in his voice that brought the tears suddenly into my eyes.

“I must leave for England in two hours,” he said. “Will you forgive me, Madame Pratolungo, before I go?”

Only those words! And yet — if you had seen him, if you had heard him, as he spoke them — you would have been ready as I was — not only to forgive him — but to go to the ends of the earth with him; and you would have told him so, as I did.

In two hours more, we were in the train, on our way to England.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-SEVENTH

On the Way to the End. First Stage

You will perhaps expect me to give some account of how Oscar bore the discovery of his brother’s conduct.

I find it by no means easy to do this. Oscar baffled me.

The first words of any importance which he addressed to me were spoken on our way to the station. Rousing himself from his own thoughts, he said very earnestly —
 
—

“I want to know what conclusion you have drawn from Mrs. Finch’s letter.”

Naturally enough, under the circumstances, I tried to avoid answering him. He was not to be put off in that way.

“You will do me a favor,” he went on, “if you will reply to my question. The letter has bred in me such a vile suspicion of my dear good brother, who never deceived me in his life, that I would rather believe I am out of my mind than believe in my own interpretation of it. Do
you
infer from what Mrs. Finch writes, that Nugent has presented himself to Lucilla under my name? Do
you
believe that he has persuaded her to leave her friends, under the impression that she has yielded to My entreaties, and trusted herself to My care?”

I answered in the fewest and plainest words, “That is what your brother has done.”

A sudden change passed over him. My reply seemed to have set his last doubts at rest in an instant.

“That is what my brother has done,” he repeated. “After all that I sacrificed to him — after all that I trusted to his honour — when I left England.” He paused, and considered a little. “What does such a man deserve?” he went on; speaking to himself, in a low threatening tone that startled me.

“He deserves,” I said, “what he will get when we reach England. You have only to show yourself to make him repent his wickedness to the last day of his life. Are exposure and defeat not punishment enough for such a man as Nugent?” I stopped, and waited for his answer.

He turned his face away from me, and said no more until we arrived at the station. There, he drew me aside for a moment out of hearing of the strangers about us.

“Why should I take you away from your father?” he asked abruptly. “I am behaving very selfishly — and I only see it now.”

“Make your mind easy,” I said. “If I had not met you to-day, I should have gone to England to-morrow for Lucilla’s sake.”

“But now you
have
met me,” he persisted, “why shouldn’t I spare you the journey? I could write and tell you every thing — without putting you to this fatigue and expense.”

“If you say a word more,” I answered, “I shall think you have some reason of your own for wishing to go to England by yourself.”

He cast one quick suspicious look at me — and led the way back to the booking-office without uttering another word. I was not at all satisfied with him. I thought his conduct very strange.

In silence we took our tickets; in silence, we got into the railway-carriage. I attempted to say something encouraging, when we started. “Don’t notice me,” was all he replied. “You will be doing me a kindness, if you will let me bear it by myself.” In my former experience of him, he had talked his way out of all his other troubles — he had clamorously demanded the expression of my sympathy with him. In this greatest trouble, he was like another being; I hardly knew him again! Were the hidden reserves in his nature (stirred up by another serious call on them) showing themselves once more on the surface as they had shown themselves already, on the fatal first day when Lucilla tried her sight? In that way I accounted for the mere superficial change in him, at the time. What was actually going on below the surface it defied my ingenuity even to guess. Perhaps I shall best describe the sort of vague apprehension which he aroused in me — after what had passed between us at the station — by saying that I would not for worlds have allowed him to go to England by himself.

Left as I now was to my own resources, I occupied the first hours of the journey, in considering what course it would be safest and best for us to take, on reaching England.

I decided, in the first place, that we ought to go straight to Dimchurch. If any tidings had been obtained of Lucilla, they would be sure to have received them at the rectory. Our route, after reaching Paris, must be therefore by way of Dieppe; thence across the Channel to Newhaven, near Brighton — and so to Dimchurch.

In the second place — assuming it to be always possible that we might see Lucilla at the rectory — the risk of abruptly presenting Oscar to her in his own proper person might, for all I knew to the contrary, be a very serious one. It would relieve us, as I thought, of a grave responsibility, if we warned Grosse of our arrival, and so enabled him to be present, if he thought it necessary, in the interests of Lucilla’s health. I put this view (as also my plan for returning by way of Dieppe) to Oscar. He briefly consented to everything — he ungraciously left it all to me.

Accordingly, on our arrival at Lyons, having some time for refreshment at our disposal before we went on, I telegraphed to Mr. Finch at the rectory, and to Grosse in London; informing them (as well as I could calculate it) that, if we were lucky in catching trains and steamboats, Oscar and I might be in Dimchurch in good time, on the next night — that is to say, on the night of the eighteenth. In any case, they were to expect us at the earliest possible moment.

These difficulties disposed of, and a little store of refreshment for the night packed in my basket, we re-entered the train, for our long journey to Paris.

Among the new passengers who joined us at Lyons was a gentleman whose face was English, and whose dress was the dress of a clergyman. For the first time in my life, I hailed the appearance of a priest with a feeling of relief. The reason was this. From the moment when I had read Mrs. Finch’s letter until now, a horrid doubt, which a priest was just the man to solve, had laid its leaden weight on my mind — and, I firmly believe, on Oscar’s mind as well. Had time enough passed, since Lucilla had left Ramsgate, to allow of Nugent’s marrying her, under his brother’s name?

As the train rolled out of the station, I, the enemy of priests, began to make myself agreeable to
this
priest. He was young and shy — but I conquered him. Just as the other travelers were beginning (with the exception of Oscar) to compose themselves to sleep, I put my case to the clergyman. “A and B, sir, lady and gentleman, both of age, leave one place in England, and go to live in another place, on the fifth of this month — how soon, if you please, can they be lawfully married after that?”

“I presume you mean in church?” said the young clergyman.

“In church, of course.” (To that extent I believed I might answer for Lucilla, without any fear of making a mistake.)

“They may be married by License,” said the clergyman — ”provided one of them continues to reside in that other place to which they traveled on the fifth — on the twenty-first, or (possibly) even the twentieth of this month.”

“Not before?”

“Certainly not before.”

It was then the night of the seventeenth. I gave my companion’s hand a little squeeze in the dark. Here was a glimpse of encouragement to cheer us on the journey. Before the marriage could take place, we should be in England. “We have time before us,” I whispered to Oscar. “We will save Lucilla yet.”

“Shall we find Lucilla?” was all he whispered back.

I had forgotten that serious difficulty. No answer to Oscar’s question could possibly present itself until we reached the rectory. Between this and then, there was nothing for it but to keep patience and to keep hope.

I refrain from encumbering this part of my narrative with any detailed account of the little accidents, lucky and unlucky, which alternately hastened or retarded our journey home. Let me only say that, before midnight on the eighteenth, Oscar and I drove up to the rectory gate.

Mr. Finch himself came out to receive us, with a lamp in his hand. He lifted his eyes (and his lamp) devotionally to the sky when he saw Oscar. The two first words he said, were: —

“Inscrutable Providence!”

“Have you found Lucilla?” I asked.

Mr. Finch — with his whole attention fixed on Oscar — wrung my hand mechanically, and said I was a “good creature;” much as he might have patted, and spoken to, Oscar’s companion, if the companion had been a dog. I almost wished myself that animal for the moment — I should have had the privilege of biting Mr. Finch. Oscar impatiently repeated my question; the rector, at the time, officiously assisting him to descend from the carriage, and leaving me to get out as I could.

“Did you hear Madame Pratolungo?” Oscar asked. “Is Lucilla found?”

“Dear Oscar, we hope to find her, now you have come.”

That answer revealed to me the secret of Mr. Finch’s extraordinary politeness to his young friend. The last chance, as things were, of preventing Lucilla’s marriage to a man who had squandered away every farthing of his money, was the chance of Oscar’s arrival in England before the ceremony could take place. The measure of Oscar’s importance to Mr. Finch was now, more literally than ever, the measure of Oscar’s fortune.

I asked for news of Grosse as we went in. The rector actually found some comparatively high notes in his prodigious voice, to express his amazement at my audacity in speaking to him of anybody but Oscar.

“Oh, dear, dear me!” cried Mr. Finch, impatiently conceding to me one precious moment of his attention. “Don’t bother about Grosse! Grosse is ill in London. There is a note for you from Grosse. — Take care of the door-step, dear Oscar,” he went on, in his deepest and gravest bass notes. “Mrs. Finch is so anxious to see you. We have both looked forward to your arrival with such eager hope — such impatient affection, so to speak. Let me put down your hat. Ah! how you must have suffered! Share my trust in an all-wise Providence, and meet this trial with cheerful submission as I do. All is not lost yet. Bear up! bear up!” He threw open the parlor door. “Mrs. Finch! compose yourself. Our dear adopted son. Our afflicted Oscar!”

Is it necessary to say what Mrs. Finch was about, and how Mrs. Finch looked?

There were the three unchangeable institutions — the novel, the baby, and the missing pocket-handkerchief There was the gaudy jacket over the long trailing dressing-gown — and the damp lady inside them, damp as ever! Receiving Oscar with a mouth drawn down at the corners, and a head that shook sadly in sympathy with him, Mrs. Finch’s face underwent a most extraordinary transformation when she turned my way next. To my astonishment, her dim eyes actually sparkled; a broad smile of irrepressible contentment showed itself cunningly to
me,
in place of the dismal expression which had welcomed Oscar. Holding up the baby in triumph, the lady of the rectory whispered these words in my ear: — ”What do you think he has done since you have been away?”

“I really don’t know,” I answered.

“He has cut two teeth! Put your finger in and feel.”

Others might bewail the family misfortune. The family triumph filled the secret mind of Mrs. Finch, to the exclusion of every other earthly consideration. I put my finger in as instructed, and got instantly bitten by the ferocious baby. But for a new outburst of the rector’s voice at the moment, Mrs. Finch (if I am any judge of physiognomy) must have certainly relieved herself by a scream of delight. As it was, she opened her mouth; and (having lost her handkerchief as already stated) retired into a corner, and gagged herself with the baby.