Poor Miss Finch
by Wilkie Collins · English · Gutenberg #3632 · 915,447 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Poor Miss Finch
Author: Wilkie Collins
Release date: January 1, 2003 [eBook #3632]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3632
Credits: Produced by James Rusk
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR MISS FINCH ***
Produced by James Rusk
POOR MISS FINCH
by
Wilkie Collins
TO MRS. ELLIOT,
(OF THE DEANERY, BRISTOL).
WILL YOU honor me by accepting the Dedication of this book, in
remembrance of an uninterrupted friendship of many years?
More than one charming blind girl, in fiction and in the drama, has
preceded "Poor Miss Finch." But, so far as I know, blindness in these
cases has been always exhibited, more or less exclusively, from the ideal
and the sentimental point of view. The attempt here made is to appeal to
an interest of another kind, by exhibiting blindness as it really is. I
have carefully gathered the information necessary to the execution of
this purpose from competent authorities of all sorts. Whenever "Lucilla"
acts or speaks in these pages, with reference to her blindness, she is
doing or saying what persons afflicted as she is have done or said before
her. Of the other features which I have added to produce and sustain
interest in this central personage of my story, it does not become me to
speak. It is for my readers to say if "Lucilla" has found her way to
their sympathies. In this character, and more especially again in the
characters of "Nugent Dubourg" and "Madame Pratolungo," I have tried to
present human nature in its inherent inconsistencies and
self-contradictions--in its intricate mixture of good and evil, of great
and small--as I see it in the world about me. But the faculty of
observing character is so rare, the curiously mistaken tendency to look
for logical consistency in human motives and human actions is so general,
that I may possibly find the execution of this part of my task
misunderstood--sometimes even resented--in certain quarters. However,
Time has stood my friend in relation to other characters of mine in other
books--and who can say that Time may not help me again here? Perhaps, one
of these days, I may be able to make use of some of the many interesting
stories of events that have really happened, which have been placed in my
hands by persons who could speak as witnesses to the truth of the
narrative. Thus far, I have not ventured to disturb the repose of these
manuscripts in the locked drawer allotted to them. The true incidents are
so "far-fetched"; and the conduct of the real people is so "grossly
improbable"!
As for the object which I have had in view in writing this story, it is,
I hope, plain enough to speak for itself. I subscribe to the article of
belief which declares, that the conditions of human happiness are
independent of bodily affliction, and that it is even possible for bodily
affliction itself to take its place among the ingredients of happiness.
These are the views which "Poor Miss Finch" is intended to advocate--and
this is the impression which I hope to leave on the mind of the reader
when the book is closed.
W. C.
January 16th, 1872.
NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
IN expressing my acknowledgments for the favorable reception accorded to
the previous editions of this story, I may take the present opportunity
of adverting to one of the characters, not alluded to in the Letter of
Dedication. The German oculist--"Herr Grosse"--has impressed himself so
strongly as a real personage on the minds of some of my readers afflicted
with blindness, or suffering from diseases of the eye, that I have
received several written applications requesting me to communicate his
present address to patients desirous of consulting him! Sincerely
appreciating the testimony thus rendered to the truth of this little
study of character, I have been obliged to acknowledge to my
correspondents--and I may as well repeat it here--that Herr Grosse has no
(individual) living prototype. Like the other Persons of the Drama, in
this book and in the books which have preceded it, he is drawn from my
general observation of humanity. I have always considered it to be a
mistake in Art to limit the delineation of character in fiction to a
literary portrait taken from any one "sitter." The result of this process
is generally (to my mind) to produce a caricature instead of a character.
November 27th, 1872
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
FIRST Madame Pratolungo presents Herself
SECOND Madame Pratolungo makes a Voyage on Land
THIRD Poor Miss Finch
FOURTH Twilight View of the Man
FIFTH Candlelight View of the Man
SIXTH A Cage of Finches
SEVENTH Daylight View of the Man
EIGHTH The Perjury of the Clock
NINTH The Hero of the Trial
TENTH First Appearance of Jicks
ELEVENTH Blind Love
TWELFTH Mr. Finch smells Money
THIRTEENTH Second Appearance of Jicks
FOURTEENTH Discoveries at Browndown
FIFTEENTH Events at the Bedside
SIXTEENTH First Result of the Robbery
SEVENTEENTH The Doctor's Opinion
EIGHTEENTH Family Troubles
NINETEENTH Second Result of the Robbery
TWENTIETH Good Papa again!
TWENTY-FIRST Madame Pratolungo Returns to Dimchurch
TWENTY-SECOND The Twin-Brother's Letter
TWENTY-THIRD He sets us All Right
TWENTY-FOURTH He sees Lucilla
TWENTY-FIFTH Nugent puzzles Madame Pratolungo
TWENTY-SIXTH He proves Equal to the Occasion
TWENTY-SEVENTH He finds a Way out of it
TWENTY-EIGHTH He crosses the Rubicon
TWENTY-NINTH Parliamentary Summary
THIRTIETH Herr Grosse
THIRTY-FIRST "Who Shall Decide when Doctors disagree?"
THIRTY-SECOND Alas for the Marriage!
THIRTY-THIRD The Day Between
THIRTY-FOURTH Nugent shows his Hand
THIRTY-FIFTH Lucilla tries her Sight
THIRTY-SIXTH The Brothers Meet
THIRTY-SEVENTH The Brothers change Places
THIRTY-EIGHTH Is there no Excuse for Him?
THIRTY-NINTH She Learns to See
FORTIETH Traces of Nugent
FORTY-FIRST A Hard Time for Madame Pratolungo
FORTY-SECOND The Story of Lucilla: told by Herself
FORTY-THIRD Lucilla's Journal, continued
FORTY-FOURTH Lucilla's Journal, continued
FORTY-FIFTH Lucilla's Journal, concluded
FORTY-SIXTH The Italian Steamer
FORTY-SEVENTH On the Way to the End. First Stage
FORTY-EIGHTH On the Way to the End. Second Stage
FORTY-NINTH On the Way to the End. Third Stage
FIFTIETH The End of the Journey
EPILOGUE Madame Pratolungo's Last Words
POOR MISS FINCH
CHAPTER THE FIRST
Madame Pratolungo presents Herself
You are here invited to read the story of an Event which occurred in an
out-of-the-way corner of England, some years since.
The persons principally concerned in the Event are:--a blind girl; two
(twin) brothers; a skilled surgeon; and a curious foreign woman. I am the
curious foreign woman. And I take it on myself--for reasons which will
presently appear--to tell the story.
So far we understand each other. Good. I may make myself known to you as
briefly as I can.
I am Madame Pratolungo--widow of that celebrated South American patriot,
Doctor Pratolungo. I am French by birth. Before I married the Doctor, I
went through many vicissitudes in my own country. They ended in leaving
me (at an age which is of no consequence to anybody) with some experience
of the world; with a cultivated musical talent on the pianoforte; and
with a comfortable little fortune unexpectedly bequeathed to me by a
relative of my dear dead mother (which fortune I shared with good Papa
and with my younger sisters). To these qualifications I added another,
the most precious of all, when I married the Doctor; namely--a strong
infusion of ultra-liberal principles. _Vive la République!_
Some people do one thing, and some do another, in the way of celebrating
the event of their marriage. Having become man and wife, Doctor
Pratolungo and I took ship to Central America--and devoted our
honey-moon, in those disturbed districts, to the sacred duty of
destroying tyrants.
Ah! the vital air of my noble husband was the air of revolutions. From
his youth upwards he had followed the glorious profession of Patriot.
Wherever the people of the Southern New World rose and declared their
independence--and, in my time, that fervent population did nothing
else--there was the Doctor self-devoted on the altar of his adopted
country. He had been fifteen times exiled, and condemned to death in his
absence, when I met with him in Paris--the picture of heroic poverty,
with a brown complexion and one lame leg. Who could avoid falling in love
with such a man? I was proud when he proposed to devote me on the altar
of his adopted country, as well as himself--me, and my money. For, alas!
everything is expensive in this world; including the destruction of
tyrants and the saving of Freedom. All my money went in helping the
sacred cause of the people. Dictators and filibusters flourished in spite
of us. Before we had been a year married, the Doctor had to fly (for the
sixteenth time) to escape being tried for his life. My husband condemned
to death in his absence; and I with my pockets empty. This is how the
Republic rewarded us. And yet, I love the Republic. Ah, you
monarchy-people, sitting fat and contented under tyrants, respect that!
This time, we took refuge in England. The affairs of Central America went
on without us.
I thought of giving lessons in music. But my glorious husband could not
spare me away from him. I suppose we should have starved, and made a sad
little paragraph in the English newspapers--if the end had not come in
another way. My poor Pratolungo was in truth worn out. He sank under his
sixteenth exile. I was left a widow--with nothing but the inheritance of
my husband's noble sentiments to console me.
I went back for awhile to good Papa and my sisters in Paris. But it was
not in my nature to remain and be a burden on them at home. I returned
again to London, with recommendations: and encountered inconceivable
disasters in the effort to earn a living honorably. Of all the wealth
about me--the prodigal, insolent, ostentatious wealth--none fell to my
share. What right has anybody to be rich? I defy you, whoever you may be,
to prove that anybody has a right to be rich.
Without dwelling on my disasters, let it be enough to say that I got up
one morning, with three pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence in my
purse; with my fervid temper, and my republican principles--and with
absolutely nothing in prospect, that is to say with not a halfpenny more
to come to me, unless I could earn it for myself.
In this sad case, what does an honest woman who is bent on winning her
own independence by her own work, do? She takes three and sixpence out of
her little humble store; and she advertises herself in a newspaper.
One always advertises the best side of oneself. (Ah, poor humanity!) My
best side was my musical side. In the days of my vicissitudes (before my
marriage) I had at one time had a share in a millinery establishment in
Lyons. At another time, I had been bedchamber-woman to a great lady in
Paris. But in my present situation, these sides of myself were, for
various reasons, not so presentable as the pianoforte side. I was not a
great player--far from it. But I had been soundly instructed; and I had,
what you call, a competent skill on the instrument. Brief, I made the
best of myself, I promise you, in my advertisement.
The next day, I borrowed the newspaper, to enjoy the pride of seeing my
composition in print.
Ah, heaven! what did I discover? I discovered what other wretched
advertising people have found out before me. Above my own advertisement,
the very thing I wanted was advertised for by somebody else! Look in any
newspaper; and you will see strangers who (if I may so express myself)
exactly fit each other, advertising for each other, without knowing it. I
had advertised myself as "accomplished musical companion for a lady. With
cheerful temper to match." And there above me was my unknown necessitous
fellow-creature, crying out in printers' types:--"Wanted, a companion for
a lady. Must be an accomplished musician, and have a cheerful temper.
Testimonials to capacity, and first-rate references required." Exactly
what I had offered! "Apply by letter only, in the first instance."
Exactly what I had said! Fie upon me, I had spent three and sixpence for
nothing. I threw down the newspaper, in a transport of anger (like a
fool)--and then took it up again (like a sensible woman), and applied by
letter for the offered place.
My letter brought me into contact with a lawyer. The lawyer enveloped
himself in mystery. It seemed to be a professional habit with him to tell
nobody anything, if he could possibly help it.
Drop by drop, this wearisome man let the circumstances out. The lady was
a young lady. She was the daughter of a clergyman. She lived in a retired
part of the country. More even than that, she lived in a retired part of
the house. Her father had married a second time. Having only the young
lady as child by his first marriage, he had (I suppose by way of a
change) a large family by his second marriage. Circumstances rendered it
necessary for the young lady to live as much apart as she could from the
tumult of a houseful of children. So he went on, until there was no
keeping it in any longer--and then he let it out. The young lady was
blind!
Young--lonely--blind. I had a sudden inspiration. I felt I should love
her.
The question of my musical capacity was, in this sad case, a serious one.
The poor young lady had one great pleasure to illumine her dark
life--Music. Her companion was wanted to play from the book, and play
worthily, the works of the great masters (whom this young creature
adored)--and she, listening, would take her place next at the piano, and
reproduce the music morsel by morsel, by ear. A professor was appointed
to pronounce sentence on me, and declare if I could be trusted not to
misinterpret Mozart, Beethoven, and the other masters who have written
for the piano. Through this ordeal I passed with success. As for my
references, they spoke for themselves. Not even the lawyer (though he
tried hard) could pick holes in them. It was arranged on both sides that
I should, in the first instance, go on a month's visit to the young lady.
If we both wished it at the end of the time, I was to stay, on terms
arranged to my perfect satisfaction. There was our treaty!
The next day I started for my visit by the railway.
My instructions directed me to travel to the town of Lewes in Sussex.
Arrived there, I was to ask for the pony-chaise of my young lady's
father--described on his card as Reverend Tertius Finch. The chaise was
to take me to the rectory-house in the village of Dimchurch. And the
village of Dimchurch was situated among the South Down Hills, three or
four miles from the coast.
When I stepped into the railway carriage, this was all I knew. After my
adventurous life--after the volcanic agitations of my republican career
in the Doctor's time--was I about to bury myself in a remote English
village, and live a life as monotonous as the life of a sheep on a hill?
Ah, with all my experience, I had yet to learn that the narrowest human
limits are wide enough to contain the grandest human emotions. I had seen
the Drama of Life amid the turmoil of tropical revolutions. I was to see
it again, with all its palpitating interest, in the breezy solitudes of
the South Down Hills.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
Madame Pratolungo makes a Voyage on Land
A WELL-FED boy, with yellow Saxon hair; a little shabby green chaise; and
a rough brown pony--these objects confronted me at the Lewes Station. I
said to the boy, "Are you Reverend Finch's servant?" And the boy
answered, "I be he."
We drove through the town--a hilly town of desolate clean houses. No
living creatures visible behind the jealously-shut windows. No living
creatures entering or departing through the sad-colored closed doors. No
theater; no place of amusement except an empty town-hall, with a sad
policeman meditating on its spruce white steps. No customers in the
shops, and nobody to serve them behind the counter, even if they had
turned up. Here and there on the pavements, an inhabitant with a capacity
for staring, and (apparently) a capacity for nothing else. I said to
Reverend Finch's boy, "Is this a rich place?" Reverend Finch's boy
brightened and answered, "That it be!" Good. At any rate, they don't
enjoy themselves here--the infamous rich!
Leaving this town of unamused citizens immured in domestic tombs, we got
on a fine high road--still ascending--with a spacious open country on
either side of it.
A spacious open country is a country soon exhausted by a sight-seer's
eye. I have learnt from my poor Pratolungo the habit of searching for the
political convictions of my fellow-creatures, when I find myself in
contact with them in strange places. Having nothing else to do, I
searched Finch's boy. His political programme, I found to be:--As much
meat and beer as I can contain; and as little work to do for it as
possible. In return for this, to touch my hat when I meet the Squire, and
to be content with the station to which it has pleased God to call me.
Miserable Finch's boy!
We reached the highest point of the road. On our right hand, the ground
sloped away gently into a fertile valley--with a village and a church in
it; and beyond, an abominable privileged enclosure of grass and trees
torn from the community by a tyrant, and called a Park; with the palace
in which this enemy of mankind caroused and fattened, standing in the
midst. On our left hand, spread the open country--a magnificent prospect
of grand grassy hills, rolling away to the horizon; bounded only by the
sky. To my surprise, Finch's boy descended; took the pony by the head;
and deliberately led him off the high road, and on to the wilderness of
grassy hills, on which not so much as a footpath was discernible
anywhere, far or near. The chaise began to heave and roll like a ship on
the sea. It became necessary to hold with both hands to keep my place. I
thought first of my luggage--then of myself.
"How much is there of this?" I asked.
"Three mile on't," answered Finch's boy.
I insisted on stopping the ship--I mean the chaise--and on getting out.
We tied my luggage fast with a rope; and then we went on again, the boy
at the pony's head, and I after them on foot.
Ah, what a walk it was! What air over my head; what grass under my feet!
The sweetness of the inner land, and the crisp saltness of the distant
sea, were mixed in that delicious breeze. The short turf, fragrant with
odorous herbs, rose and fell elastic, underfoot. The mountain-piles of
white cloud moved in sublime procession along the blue field of heaven,
overhead. The wild growth of prickly bushes, spread in great patches over
the grass, was in a glory of yellow bloom. On we went; now up, now down;
now bending to the right, and now turning to the left. I looked about me.
No house; no road; no paths, fences, hedges, walls; no land-marks of any
sort. All round us, turn which way we might, nothing was to be seen but
the majestic solitude of the hills. No living creatures appeared but the
white dots of sheep scattered over the soft green distance, and the
skylark singing his hymn of happiness, a speck above my head. Truly a
wonderful place! Distant not more than a morning's drive from noisy and
populous Brighton--a stranger to this neighborhood could only have found
his way by the compass, exactly as if he had been sailing on the sea! The
farther we penetrated on our land-voyage, the more wild and the more
beautiful the solitary landscape grew. The boy picked his way as he
chose--there were no barriers here. Plodding behind, I saw nothing, at
one time, but the back of the chaise, tilted up in the air, both boy and
pony being invisibly buried in the steep descent of the hill. At other
times, the pitch was all the contrary way; the whole interior of the
ascending chaise was disclosed to my view, and above the chaise the pony,
and above the pony the boy--and, ah, my luggage swaying and rocking in
the frail embraces of the rope that held it. Twenty times did I
confidently expect to see baggage, chaise, pony, boy, all rolling down
into the bottom of a valley together. But no! Not the least little
accident happened to spoil my enjoyment of the day. Politically
contemptible, Finch's boy had his merit--he was master of his subject as
guide and pony-leader among the South Down Hills.
Arrived at the top of (as it seemed to me) our fiftieth grassy summit, I
began to look about for signs of the village.
Behind me, rolled back the long undulations of the hills, with the
cloud-shadows moving over the solitudes that we had left. Before me, at a
break in the purple distance, I saw the soft white line of the sea.
Beneath me, at my feet, opened the deepest valley I had noticed yet--with
one first sign of the presence of Man scored hideously on the face of
Nature, in the shape of a square brown patch of cleared and ploughed land
on the grassy slope. I asked if we were getting near the village now.
Finch's boy winked, and answered, "Yes, we be."
Astonishing Finch's boy! Ask him what questions I might, the resources of
his vocabulary remained invariably the same. Still this youthful Oracle
answered always in three monosyllabic words!
We plunged into the valley.
Arrived at the bottom, I discovered another sign of Man. Behold the first
road I had seen yet--a rough wagon-road ploughed deep in the chalky soil!
We crossed this, and turned a corner of a hill. More signs of human life.
Two small boys started up out of a ditch--apparently posted as scouts to
give notice of our approach. They yelled, and set off running before us,
by some short cut, known only to themselves. We turned again, round
another winding of the valley, and crossed a brook. I considered it my
duty to make myself acquainted with the local names. What was the brook
called? It was called "The Cockshoot"! And the great hill, here, on my
right? It was called "The Overblow"! Five minutes more, and we saw our
first house--lonely and little--built of mortar and flint from the hills.
A name to this also? Certainly. Name of "Browndown." Another ten minutes
of walking, involving us more and more deeply in the mysterious green
windings of the valley--and the great event of the day happened at last.
Finch's boy pointed before him with his whip, and said (even at this
supreme moment, still in three monosyllabic words):--
"Here we be!"
So this is Dimchurch! I shake out the chalk-dust from the skirts of my
dress. I long (quite vainly) for the least bit of looking-glass to see
myself in. Here is the population (to the number of at least five or
six), gathered together, informed by the scouts--and it is my woman's
business to produce the best impression of myself that I can. We advance
along the little road. I smile upon the population. The population stares
at me in return. On one side, I remark three or four cottages, and a bit
of open ground; also an inn named "The Cross-Hands," and a bit more of
open ground; also a tiny, tiny butcher's shop, with sanguinary insides of
sheep on one blue pie-dish in the window, and no other meat than that,
and nothing to see beyond, but again the open ground, and again the
hills; indicating the end of the village this side. On the other side
there appears, for some distance, nothing but a long flint wall guarding
the outhouses of a farm. Beyond this, comes another little group of
cottages, with the seal of civilization set on them, in the form of a
post-office. The post-office deals in general commodities--in boots and
bacon, biscuits and flannel, crinoline petticoats and religious tracts.
Farther on, behold another flint wall, a garden, and a private
dwelling-house; proclaiming itself as the rectory. Farther yet, on rising
ground, a little desolate church, with a tiny white circular steeple,
topped by an extinguisher in red tiles. Beyond this, the hills and the
heavens once more. And there is Dimchurch!
As for the inhabitants--what am I to say? I suppose I must tell the
truth.
I remarked one born gentleman among the inhabitants, and he was a
sheep-dog. He alone did the honors of the place. He had a stump of a
tail, which he wagged at me with extreme difficulty, and a good honest
white and black face which he poked companionably into my hand. "Welcome,
Madame Pratolungo, to Dimchurch; and excuse these male and female
laborers who stand and stare at you. The good God who makes us all has
made them too, but has not succeeded so well as with you and me." I
happen to be one of the few people who can read dogs' language as written
in dogs' faces. I correctly report the language of the gentleman
sheep-dog on this occasion.
We opened the gate of the rectory, and passed in. So my Land-Voyage over
the South Down Hills came prosperously to its end.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
Poor Miss Finch
THE rectory resembled, in one respect, this narrative that I am now
writing. It was in Two Parts. Part the First, in front, composed of the
everlasting flint and mortar of the neighborhood, failed to interest me.
Part the Second, running back at a right angle, asserted itself as
ancient. It had been, in its time, as I afterwards heard, a convent of
nuns. Here were snug little Gothic windows, and dark ivy-covered walls of
venerable stone: repaired in places, at some past period, with quaint red
bricks. I had hoped that I should enter the house by this side of it. But
no. The boy--after appearing to be at a loss what to do with me--led the
way to a door on the modern side of the building, and rang the bell.
A slovenly young maid-servant admitted me to the house.
Possibly, this person was new to the duty of receiving visitors.
Possibly, she was bewildered by a sudden invasion of children in dirty
frocks, darting out on us in the hall, and then darting away again into
invisible back regions, screeching at the sight of a stranger. At any
rate, she too appeared to be at a loss what to do with me. After staring
hard at my foreign face, she suddenly opened a door in the wall of the
passage, and admitted me into a small room. Two more children in dirty
frocks darted, screaming, out of the asylum thus offered to me. I
mentioned my name, as soon as I could make myself heard. The maid
appeared to be terrified at the length of it. I gave her my card. The
maid took it between a dirty finger and thumb--looked at it as if it was
some extraordinary natural curiosity--turned it round, exhibiting correct
black impressions in various parts of it of her finger and thumb--gave up
understanding it in despair, and left the room. She was stopped outside
(as I gathered from the sounds) by a returning invasion of children in
the hall. There was whispering; there was giggling; there was, every now
and then, a loud thump on the door. Prompted by the children, as I
suppose--pushed in by them, certainly--the maid suddenly reappeared with
a jerk, "Oh, if you please, come this way," she said. The invasion of
children retreated again up the stairs--one of them in possession of my
card, and waving it in triumph on the first landing. We penetrated to the
other end of the passage. Again, a door was opened. Unannounced, I
entered another, and a larger room. What did I see?
Fortune had favored me at last. My lucky star had led me to the mistress
of the house.
I made my best curtsey, and found myself confronting a large,
light-haired, languid, lymphatic lady--who had evidently been amusing
herself by walking up and down the room, at the moment when I appeared.
If there can be such a thing as a _damp woman_--this was one. There was a
humid shine on her colorless white face, and an overflow of water in her
pale blue eyes. Her hair was not dressed; and her lace cap was all on one
side. The upper part of her was clothed in a loose jacket of blue merino;
the lower part was robed in a dimity dressing gown of doubtful white. In
one hand, she held a dirty dogs'-eared book, which I at once detected to
be a Circulating Library novel. Her other hand supported a baby enveloped
in flannel, sucking at her breast. Such was my first experience of
Reverend Finch's Wife--destined to be also the experience of all
aftertime. Never completely dressed; never completely dry; always with a
baby in one hand and a novel in the other--such was Finch's wife.
"Oh! Madame Pratolungo? Yes. I hope somebody has told Miss Finch you are
here. She has her own establishment, and manages everything herself. Have
you had a pleasant journey?" (These words were spoken vacantly, as if her
mind was occupied with something else. My first impression of her
suggested that she was a weak, good-natured woman, and that she must have
originally occupied a station in the humbler ranks of life.)
"Thank you, Mrs. Finch," I said. "I have enjoyed most heartily my journey
among your beautiful hills."
"Oh! you like the hills? Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this
morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you never can pick it
up again, try how you may." (I soon discovered that Mrs. Finch was always
losing half an hour out of her day, and that she never, by any chance,
succeeded in ending it again, as she had just told me.)
"I understand, madam. The cares of a numerous family--"
"Ah! that's just where it is." (This was a favorite phrase with Mrs.
Finch). "There's Finch, he gets up in the morning and goes and works in
the garden. Then there's the washing of the children; and the dreadful
waste that goes on in the kitchen. And Finch, he comes in without any
notice, and wants his breakfast. And of course I can't leave the baby.
And half an hour does slip away so easily, that how to overtake it again,
I do assure you I really don't know." Here the baby began to exhibit
symptoms of having taken more maternal nourishment than his infant
stomach could comfortably contain. I held the novel, while Mrs. Finch
searched for her handkerchief--first in her bedgown pocket; secondly,
here, there, and everywhere in the room.
At this interesting moment there was a knock at the door. An elderly
woman appeared--who offered a most refreshing contrast to the members of
the household with whom I had made acquaintance thus far. She was neatly
dressed, and she saluted me with the polite composure of a civilized
being.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. My young lady has only this moment heard of
your arrival. Will you be so kind as to follow me?"
I turned to Mrs. Finch. She had found her handkerchief, and had put her
overflowing baby to rights again. I respectfully handed back the novel.
"Thank you," said Mrs. Finch. "I find novels compose my mind. Do you read
novels too? Remind me--and I'll lend you this one to-morrow." I expressed
my acknowledgments, and withdrew. At the door, I look round, saluting the
lady of the house. Mrs. Finch was promenading the room, with the baby in
one hand and the novel in the other, and the dimity bedgown trailing
behind her.
We ascended the stairs, and entered a bare white-washed passage, with
drab-colored doors in it, leading, as I presumed, into the sleeping
chambers of the house.
Every door opened as we passed; children peeped out at me, screamed at
me, and banged the door to again. "What family has the present Mrs.
Finch?" I asked. The decent elderly woman was obliged to stop, and
consider. "Including the baby, ma'am, and two sets of twins, and one
seven months' child of deficient intellect--fourteen in all." Hearing
this, I began--though I consider priests, kings, and capitalists to be
the enemies of the human race--to feel a certain exceptional interest in
Reverend Finch. Did he never wish that he had been a priest of the Roman
Catholic Church, mercifully forbidden to marry at all? While the question
passed through my mind, my guide took out a key, and opened a heavy oaken
door at the further end of the passage.
"We are obliged to keep the door locked, ma'am," she explained, "or the
children would be in and out of our part of the house all day long."
After my experience of the children, I own I looked at the oaken door
with mingled sentiments of gratitude and respect.
We turned a corner, and found ourselves in the vaulted corridor of the
ancient portion of the house.
The casement windows, on one side--sunk deep in recesses--looked into the
garden. Each recess was filled with groups of flowers in pots. On the
other side, the old wall was gaily decorated with hangings of bright
chintz. The doors were colored of a creamy white, with gilt moldings. The
brightly ornamented matting under our feet I at once recognized as of
South American origin. The ceiling above was decorated in delicate pale
blue, with borderings of flowers. Nowhere down the whole extent of the
place was so much as a single morsel of dark color to be seen anywhere.
At the lower end of the corridor, a solitary figure in a pure white robe
was bending over the flowers in the window. This was the blind girl whose
dark hours I had come to cheer. In the scattered villages of the South
Downs, the simple people added their word of pity to her name, and called
her compassionately--"Poor Miss Finch." As for me, I can only think of
her by her pretty Christian name. She is "Lucilla" when my memory dwells
on her. Let me call her "Lucilla" here.
When my eyes first rested on her, she was picking off the dead leaves
from her flowers. Her delicate ear detected the sound of my strange
footstep, long before I reached the place at which she was standing. She
lifted her head--and advanced quickly to meet me with a faint flush on
her face, which came and died away again in a moment. I happen to have
visited the picture gallery at Dresden in former years. As she approached
me, nearer and nearer, I was irresistibly reminded of the gem of that
superb collection--the matchless Virgin of Raphael, called "The Madonna
di San Sisto." The fair broad forehead; the peculiar fullness of the
flesh between the eyebrow and the eyelid; the delicate outline of the
lower face; the tender, sensitive lips; the color of the complexion and
the hair--all reflected, with a startling fidelity, the lovely creature
of the Dresden picture. The one fatal point at which the resemblance
ceased, was in the eyes. The divinely-beautiful eyes of Raphael's Virgin
were lost in the living likeness of her that confronted me now. There was
no deformity; there was nothing to recoil from, in my blind Lucilla. The
poor, dim, sightless eyes had a faded, changeless, inexpressive look--and
that was all. Above them, below them, round them, to the very edges of
her eyelids, there was beauty, movement, life. _In_ them--death! A more
charming creature--with that one sad drawback--I never saw. There was no
other personal defect in her. She had the fine height, the well-balanced
figure, and the length of the lower limbs, which make all a woman's
movements graceful of themselves. Her voice was delicious--clear,
cheerful, sympathetic. This, and her smile--which added a charm of its
own to the beauty of her mouth--won my heart, before she had got close
enough to me to put her hand in mine. "Ah, my dear!" I said, in my
headlong way, "I am so glad to see you!" The instant the words passed my
lips, I could have cut my tongue out for reminding her in that brutal
manner that she was blind.
To my relief, she showed no sign of feeling it as I did. "May I see you,
in _my_ way?" she asked gently--and held up her pretty white hand. "May I
touch your face?"
I sat down at once on the window-seat. The soft rosy tips of her fingers
seemed to cover my whole face in an instant. Three separate times she
passed her hand rapidly over me; her own face absorbed all the while in
breathless attention to what she was about. "Speak again!" she said
suddenly, holding her hand over me in suspense. I said a few words. She
stopped me by a kiss. "No more!" she exclaimed joyously. "Your voice says
to my ears, what your face says to my fingers. I know I shall like you.
Come in, and see the rooms we are going to live in together."
As I rose, she put her arm round my waist--then instantly drew it away
again, and shook her fingers impatiently, as if something had hurt them.
"A pin?" I asked.
"No! no! What colored dress have you got on?"
"Purple."
"Ah! I knew it! Pray don't wear dark colors. I have my own blind horror
of anything that is dark. Dear Madame Pratolungo, wear pretty bright
colors, to please _me!_" She put her arm caressingly round me
again--round my neck, however, this time, where her hand could rest on my
linen collar. "You will change your dress before dinner--won't you?" she
whispered. "Let me unpack for you, and choose which dress I like."
The brilliant decorations of the corridor were explained to me now!
We entered the rooms; her bed-room, my bed-room, and our sitting-room
between the two. I was prepared to find them, what they proved to be--as
bright as looking-glasses, and gilding, and gaily-colored ornaments, and
cheerful knick-knacks of all sorts could make them. They were more like
rooms in my lively native country than rooms in sober colorless England.
The one thing which I own did still astonish me, was that all this
sparkling beauty of adornment in Lucilla's habitation should have been
provided for the express gratification of a young lady who could not see.
Experience was yet to show me that the blind can live in their
imaginations, and have their favorite fancies and illusions like the rest
of us.
To satisfy Lucilla by changing my dark purple dress, it was necessary
that I should first have my boxes. So far as I knew, Finch's boy had
taken my luggage, along with the pony, to the stables. Before Lucilla
could ring the bell to make inquiries, my elderly guide (who had silently
left us while we were talking together in the corridor) re-appeared,
followed by the boy and a groom, carrying my things. These servants also
brought with them certain parcels for their young mistress, purchased in
the town, together with a bottle, wrapped in fair white paper, which
looked like a bottle of medicine--and which had a part of its own to play
in our proceedings, later in the day.
"This is my old nurse," said Lucilla, presenting her attendant to me.
"Zillah can do a little of everything--cooking included. She has had
lessons at a London Club. You must like Zillah, Madame Pratolungo, for my
sake. Are your boxes open?"
She went down on her knees before the boxes, as she asked the question.
No girl with the full use of her eyes could have enjoyed more thoroughly
than she did the trivial amusement of unpacking my clothes. This time,
however, her wonderful delicacy of touch proved to be at fault. Of two
dresses of mine which happened to be exactly the same in texture, though
widely different in color, she picked out the dark dress as being the
light one. I saw that I disappointed her sadly when I told her of her
mistake. The next guess she made, however, restored the tips of her
fingers to their place in her estimation: she discovered the stripes in a
smart pair of stockings of mine, and brightened up directly. "Don't be
long dressing," she said, on leaving me. "We shall have dinner in half an
hour. French dishes, in honor of your arrival. I like a nice dinner--I am
what you call in your country, _gourmande._ See the sad consequence!" She
put one finger to her pretty chin. "I am getting fat! I am threatened
with a double chin--at two and twenty. Shocking! shocking!"
So she left me. And such was the first impression produced on my mind by
"Poor Miss Finch."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
Twilight View of the Man
OUR nice dinner had long since come to an end. We had chattered,
chattered, chattered--as usual with women--all about ourselves. The day
had declined; the setting sun was pouring its last red luster into our
pretty sitting-room--when Lucilla started as if she had suddenly
remembered something, and rang the bell.
Zillah came in. "The bottle from the chemist's," said Lucilla. "I ought
to have remembered it hours ago."
"Are you going to take it to Susan yourself, my dear?"
I was glad to hear the old nurse address her young lady in that familiar
way. It was so thoroughly un-English. Down with the devilish system of
separation between the classes in this country--that is what I say!
"Yes; I am going to take it to Susan myself."
"Shall I go with you?"
"No, no. Not the least occasion." She turned to me. "I suppose you are
too tired to go out again, after your walk on the hills?" she said.
I had dined; I had rested; I was quite ready to go out again, and I said
so.
Lucilla's face brightened. For some reason of her own, she had apparently
attached a certain importance to persuading me to go out with her.
"It's only a visit to a poor rheumatic woman in the village," she said.
"I have got an embrocation for her; and I can't very well send it. She is
old and obstinate. If I take it to her, she will believe in the remedy.
If anybody else takes it, she will throw it away. I had utterly forgotten
her, in the interest of our nice long talk. Shall we get ready?"
I had hardly closed the door of my bedroom when there was a knock at it.
Lucilla? No; the old nurse entering on tiptoe, with a face of mystery,
and a finger confidentially placed on her lips.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," she began in a whisper. "I think you ought to
know that my young lady has a purpose in taking you out with her this
evening. She is burning with curiosity--like all the rest of us for that
matter. She took me out, and used my eyes to see with, yesterday evening;
and they have not satisfied her. She is going to try your eyes, now."
"What is Miss Lucilla so curious about?" I inquired.
"It's natural enough, poor dear," pursued the old woman, following her
own train of thought, without the slightest reference to my question. "We
none of us can find out anything about him. He usually takes his walk at
twilight. You are pretty sure to meet him to-night; and you will judge
for yourself, ma'am--with an innocent young creature like Miss
Lucilla--what it may be best to do?"
This extraordinary answer set _my_ curiosity in a flame.
"My good creature!" I said, "you forget that I am a stranger! I know
nothing about it. Has this mysterious man got a name? Who is 'He'?"
As I said that, there was another knock at the door. Zillah whispered,
eagerly, "Don't tell upon me, ma'am! You will see for yourself. I only
speak for my young lady's good." She hobbled away, and opened the
door--and there was Lucilla, with her smart garden hat on, waiting for
me.
We went out by our own door into the garden, and passing through a gate
in the wall, entered the village.
After the caution which the nurse had given me, it was impossible to ask
any questions, except at the risk of making mischief in our little
household, on the first day of my joining it. I kept my eyes wide open,
and waited for events. I also committed a blunder at starting--I offered
Lucilla my hand to lead her. She burst out laughing.
"My dear Madame Pratolungo! I know my way better than you do. I roam all
over the neighborhood, with nothing to help me but this."
She held up a smart ivory walking-cane, with a bright silk tassel
attached. With her cane in one hand, and her chemical bottle in the
other--and her roguish little hat on the top of her head--she made the
quaintest and prettiest picture I had seen for many a long day. "_You_
shall guide _me_, my dear," I said--and took her arm. We went on down the
village.
Nothing in the least like a mysterious figure passed us in the twilight.
The few scattered laboring people, whom I had already seen, I saw
again--and that was all. Lucilla was silent--suspiciously silent as I
thought, after what Zillah had told me. She had, as I fancied, the look
of a person who was listening intently. Arrived at the cottage of the
rheumatic woman, she stopped and went in, while I waited outside. The
affair of the embrocation was soon over. She was out again in a
minute--and this time, she took my arm of her own accord.
"Shall we go a little farther?" she said. "It is so nice and cool at this
hour of the evening."
Her object in view, whatever it might be, was evidently an object that
lay beyond the village. In the solemn, peaceful twilight we followed the
lonely windings of the valley along which I had passed in the morning.
When we came opposite the little solitary house, which I had already
learnt to know as "Browndown," I felt her hand unconsciously tighten on
my arm. "Aha!" I said to myself. "Has Browndown anything to do with
this?"
"Does the view look very lonely to-night?" she asked, waving her cane
over the scene before us.
The true meaning of that question I took to be, "Do you see anybody
walking out to-night?" It was not my business to interpret her meaning,
before she had thought fit to confide her secret to me. "To my mind, my
dear," was all I said, "it is a very beautiful view."
She fell silent again, and absorbed herself in her own thoughts. We
turned into a new winding of the valley--and there, walking towards us
from the opposite direction, was a human figure at last--the figure of a
solitary man!
As we got nearer to each other I perceived that he was a gentleman;
dressed in a light shooting-jacket, and wearing a felt hat of the conical
Italian shape. A little nearer--and I saw that he was young. Nearer
still--and I discovered that he was handsome, though in rather an
effeminate way. At the same moment, Lucilla heard his footstep. Her color
instantly rose; and once again I felt her hand tighten involuntarily
round my arm. (Good! Here was the mysterious object of Zillah's warning
to me found at last!)
I have, and I don't mind acknowledging it, an eye for a handsome man. I
looked at him as he passed us. Now I solemnly assure you, I am not an
ugly woman. Nevertheless, as our eyes met, I saw the strange gentleman's
face suddenly contract, with an expression which told me plainly that I
had produced a disagreeable impression on him. With some difficulty--for
my companion was holding my arm, and seemed to be disposed to stop
altogether--I quickened my pace so as to get by him rapidly; showing him,
I dare say, that I thought the change in his face when I looked at him,
an impertinence on his part. However that may be, after a momentary
interval, I heard his step behind. The man had turned, and had followed
us.
He came close to me, on the opposite side to Lucilla, and took off his
hat.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he said. "You looked at me just now."
At the first sound of his voice, I felt Lucilla start. Her hand began to
tremble on my arm with some sudden agitation, inconceivable to me. In the
double surprise of discovering this, and of finding myself charged so
abruptly with the offense of looking at a gentleman, I suffered the most
exceptional of all losses (where a woman is concerned)--the loss of my
tongue.
He gave me no time to recover myself. He proceeded with what he had to
say--speaking, mind, in the tone of a perfectly well-bred man; with
nothing wild in his look, and nothing odd in his manner.
"Excuse me, if I venture on asking you a very strange question," he went
on. "Did you happen to be at Exeter, on the third of last month?"
(I must have been more or less than woman, if I had not recovered the use
of my tongue now!)
"I never was at Exeter in my life, sir," I answered. "May I ask, on my
side, why you put the question to me?"
Instead of replying, he looked at Lucilla.
"Pardon me, once more. Perhaps this young lady----?"
He was plainly on the point of inquiring next, whether Lucilla had been
at Exeter--when he checked himself. In the breathless interest which she
felt in what was going on, she had turned her full face upon him. There
was still light enough left for her eyes to tell their own sad story, in
their own mute way. As he read the truth in them, the man's face changed
from the keen look of scrutiny which it had worn thus far, to an
expression of compassion--I had almost said, of distress. He again took
off his hat, and bowed to me with the deepest respect.
"I beg your pardon," he said, very earnestly. "I beg the young lady's
pardon. Pray forgive me. My strange behavior has its excuse--if I could
bring myself to explain it. You distressed me, when you looked at me. I
can't explain why. Good evening."
He turned away hastily, like a man confused and ashamed of himself--and
left us. I can only repeat that there was nothing strange or flighty in
his manner. A perfect gentleman, in full possession of his senses--there
is the unexaggerated and the just description of him.
I looked at Lucilla. She was standing, with her blind face raised to the
sky, lost in herself, like a person wrapped in ecstasy.
"Who is that man?" I asked.
My question brought her down suddenly from heaven to earth. "Oh!" she
said reproachfully, "I had his voice still in my ears--and now I have
lost it! 'Who is he?'" she added, after a moment; repeating my question.
"Nobody knows. Tell me--what is he like. Is he beautiful? He _must_ be
beautiful, with that voice!"
"Is this the first time you have heard his voice?" I inquired.
"Yes. He passed us yesterday, when I was out with Zillah. But he never
spoke. What is he like? Do, pray tell me--what is he like?"
There was a passionate impatience in her tone which warned me not to
trifle with her. The darkness was coming. I thought it wise to propose
returning to the house. She consented to do anything I liked, as long as
I consented, on my side, to describe the unknown man.
All the way back, I was questioned and cross-questioned till I felt like
a witness under skillful examination in a court of law. Lucilla appeared
to be satisfied, so far, with the results. "Ah!" she exclaimed, letting
out the secret which her old nurse had confided to me. "_You_ can use
your eyes. Zillah could tell me nothing."
When we got home again, her curiosity took another turn. "Exeter?" she
said, considering with herself. "He mentioned Exeter. I am like you--I
never was there. What will books tell us about Exeter?" She despatched
Zillah to the other side of the house for a gazetteer. I followed the old
woman into the corridor, and set her mind at ease, in a whisper. "I have
kept what you told me a secret," I said. "The man was out in the
twilight, as you foresaw. I have spoken to him; and I am quite as curious
as the rest of you. Get the book."
Lucilla had (to confess the truth) infected me with her idea, that the
gazetteer might help us in interpreting the stranger's remarkable
question relating to the third of last month, and his extraordinary
assertion that I had distressed him when I looked at him. With the nurse
breathless on one side of me, and Lucilla breathless on the other, I
opened the book at the letter "E," and found the place, and read aloud
these lines, as follows:--
"EXETER: A city and seaport in Devonshire. Formerly the seat of the West
Saxon Kings. It has a large foreign and home commerce. Population 33,738.
The Assizes for Devonshire are held at Exeter in the spring and summer."
"Is that all?" asked Lucilla.
I shut the book, and answered, like Finch's boy, in three monosyllabic
words:
"That is all."
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
Candlelight View of the Man
THERE had been barely light enough left for me to read by. Zillah lit the
candles and drew the curtains. The silence which betokens a profound
disappointment reigned in the room.
"Who can he be?" repeated Lucilla, for the hundredth time. "And why
should your looking at him have distressed him? Guess, Madame
Pratolungo!"
The last sentence in the gazetteer's description of Exeter hung a little
on my mind--in consequence of there being one word in it which I did not
quite understand--the word "Assizes." I have, I hope, shown that I
possess a competent knowledge of the English language, by this time. But
my experience fails a little on the side of phrases consecrated to the
use of the law. I inquired into the meaning of "Assizes," and was
informed that it signified movable Courts, for trying prisoners at given
times, in various parts of England. Hearing this, I had another of my
inspirations. I guessed immediately that the interesting stranger was a
criminal escaped from the Assizes.
Worthy old Zillah started to her feet, convinced that I had hit him off
(as the English saying is) to a T. "Mercy preserve us!" cried the nurse,
"I haven't bolted the garden door!"
She hurried out of the room to defend us from robbery and murder, before
it was too late. I looked at Lucilla. She was leaning back in her chair,
with a smile of quiet contempt on her pretty face. "Madame Pratolungo,"
she remarked, "that is the first foolish thing you have said, since you
have been here."
"Wait a little, my dear," I rejoined. "You have declared that nothing is
known of this man. Now you mean by that--nothing which satisfies _you._
He has not dropped down from Heaven, I suppose? The time when he came
here, must be known. Also, whether he came alone, or not. Also, how and
where he has found a lodging in the village. Before I admit that my guess
is completely wrong, I want to hear what general observation in Dimchurch
has discovered on the subject of this gentleman. How long has he been
here?"
Lucilla did not, at first, appear to be much interested in the purely
practical view of the question which I had just placed before her.
"He has been here a week," she answered carelessly.
"Did he come, as I came, over the hills?"
"Yes."
"With a guide, of course?"
Lucilla suddenly sat up in her chair.
"With his brother," she said. "His _twin_ brother, Madame Pratolungo."
_I_ sat up in _my_ chair. The appearance of his twin-brother in the story
was a complication in itself. Two criminals escaped from the Assizes,
instead of one!
"How did they find their way here?" I asked next.
"Nobody knows."
"Where did they go to, when they got here?"
"To the Cross-Hands--the little public-house in the village. The landlord
told Zillah he was perfectly astonished at the resemblance between them.
It was impossible to know which was which--it was wonderful, even for
twins. They arrived early in the day, when the tap-room was empty; and
they had a long talk together in private. At the end of it, they rang for
the landlord, and asked if he had a bed-room to let in the house. You
must have seen for yourself that The Cross-Hands is a mere beer-shop. The
landlord had a room that he could spare--a wretched place, not fit for a
gentleman to sleep in. One of the brothers took the room for all that."
"What became of the other brother?"
"He went away the same day--very unwillingly. The parting between them
was most affecting. The brother who spoke to us to-night insisted on
it--or the other would have refused to leave him. They both shed
tears----"
"They did worse than that," said old Zillah, re-entering the room at the
moment. "I have made all the doors and windows fast, downstairs; he can't
get in now, my dear, if he tries."
"What did they do that was worse than crying?" I inquired.
"Kissed each other!" said Zillah, with a look of profound disgust. "Two
men! Foreigners, of course."
"Our man is no foreigner," I said. "Did they give themselves a name?"
"The landlord asked the one who stayed behind for his name," replied
Lucilla. "He said it was 'Dubourg.'"
This confirmed me in my belief that I had guessed right. "Dubourg" is as
common a name in my country as "Jones" or "Thompson" is in England--just
the sort of feigned name that a man in difficulties would give among
_us._ Was he a criminal countryman of mine? No! There had been nothing
foreign in his accent when he spoke. Pure English--there could be no
doubt of that. And yet he had given a French name. Had he deliberately
insulted my nation? Yes! Not content with being stained by innumerable
crimes, he had added to the list of his atrocities--he had insulted my
nation!
"Well?" I resumed. "We have left this undetected ruffian deserted in the
public-house. Is he there still?"
"Bless your heart!" cried the old nurse, "he is settled in the
neighborhood. He has taken Browndown."
I turned to Lucilla. "Browndown belongs to Somebody," I said hazarding
another guess. "Did Somebody let it without a reference?"
"Browndown belongs to a gentleman at Brighton," answered Lucilla. "And
the gentleman was referred to a well-known name in London--one of the
great City merchants. Here is the most provoking part of the whole
mystery. The merchant said, 'I have known Mr. Dubourg from his childhood.
He has reasons for wishing to live in the strictest retirement. I answer
for his being an honorable man, to whom you can safely let your house.
More than this I am not authorized to tell you.' My father knows the
landlord of Browndown; and that is what the reference said to him, word
for word. Isn't it provoking? The house was let for six months certain,
the next day. It is wretchedly furnished. Mr. Dubourg has had several
things that he wanted sent from Brighton. Besides the furniture, a
packing-case from London arrived at the house to-day. It was so strongly
nailed up that the carpenter had to be sent for to open it. He reports
that the case was full of thin plates of gold and silver; and it was
accompanied by a box of extraordinary tools, the use of which was a
mystery to the carpenter himself. Mr. Dubourg locked up these things in a
room at the back of the house, and put the key in his pocket. He seemed
to be pleased--he whistled a tune, and said, 'Now we shall do!' The
landlady at the Cross-Hands is our authority for this. She does what
little cooking he requires; and her daughter makes his bed, and so on.
They go to him in the morning, and return to the inn in the evening. He
has no servant with him. He is all by himself at night. Isn't it
interesting? A mystery in real life. It baffles everybody."
"You must be very strange people, my dear," I said, "to make a mystery of
such a plain case as this."
"Plain?" repeated Lucilla, in amazement.
"Certainly! The gold and silver plates, and the strange tools, and the
living in retirement, and the sending the servants away at night--all
point to the same conclusion. My guess is the right one. The man is an
escaped criminal; and his form of crime is coining false money. He has
been discovered at Exeter--he has escaped the officers of justice--and he
is now going to begin again here. You can do as you please. If _I_ happen
to want change, I won't get it in this neighborhood."
Lucilla laid herself back in her chair again. I could see that she gave
me up, in the matter of Mr. Dubourg, as a person willfully and
incorrigibly wrong.
"A coiner of false money, recommended as an honorable man by one of the
first merchants in London!" she exclaimed. "We do some very eccentric
things in England, occasionally--but there is a limit to our national
madness, Madame Pratolungo, and you have reached it. Shall we have some
music?"
She spoke a little sharply. Mr. Dubourg was the hero of her romance. She
resented--seriously resented--any attempt on my part to lower him in her
estimation.
I persisted in my unfavorable opinion of him, nevertheless. The question
between us (as I might have told her) was a question of believing, or not
believing, in the merchant of London. To her mind, it was a sufficient
guarantee of his integrity that he was a rich man. To my mind (speaking
as a good Socialist), that very circumstance told dead against him. A
capitalist is a robber of one sort, and a coiner is a robber of another
sort. Whether the capitalist recommends the coiner, or the coiner the
capitalist, is all one to me. In either case (to quote the language of an
excellent English play) the honest people are the soft easy cushions on
which these knaves repose and fatten. It was on the tip of my tongue to
put this large and liberal view of the subject to Lucilla. But (alas!) it
was easy to see that the poor child was infected by the narrow prejudices
of the class amid which she lived. How could I find it in my heart to run
the risk of a disagreement between us on the first day? No--it was not to
be done. I gave the nice pretty blind girl a kiss. And we went to the
piano together. And I put off making a good Socialist of Lucilla till a
more convenient opportunity.
We might as well have left the piano unopened. The music was a failure.
I played my best. From Mozart to Beethoven. From Beethoven to Schubert.
From Schubert to Chopin. She listened with all the will in the world to
be pleased. She thanked me again and again. She tried, at my invitation,
to play herself; choosing the familiar compositions which she knew by
ear. No! The abominable Dubourg, having got the uppermost place in her
mind, kept it. She tried, and tried, and tried--and could do nothing. His
voice was still in her ears--the only music which could possess itself of
her attention that night. I took her place, and began to play again. She
suddenly snatched my hands off the keys. "Is Zillah here?" she whispered.
I told her Zillah had left the room. She laid her charming head on my
shoulder, and sighed hysterically. "I can't help thinking of him," she
burst out. "I am miserable for the first time in my life--no! I am happy
for the first time in my life. Oh, what must you think of me! I don't
know what I am talking about. Why did you encourage him to speak to us? I
might never have heard his voice but for you." She lifted her head again
with a little shiver, and composed herself. One of her hands wandered
here and there over the keys of the piano, playing softly. "His charming
voice!" she whispered dreamily while she played. "Oh, his charming
voice!" She paused again. Her hand dropped from the piano, and took mine.
"Is this love?" she said, half to herself, half to me.
My duty as a respectable woman lay clearly before me--my duty was to tell
her a lie.
"It is nothing, my dear, but too much excitement and too much fatigue," I
said. "To-morrow you shall be my young lady again. To-night you must be
only my child. Come, and let me put you to bed."
She yielded with a weary sigh. Ah, how lovely she looked in her pretty
night-dress, on her knees at the bed-side--the innocent, afflicted
creature--saying her prayers!
I am, let me own, an equally headlong woman at loving and hating. When I
had left her for the night, I could hardly have felt more tenderly
interested in her if she had been really a child of my own. You have met
with people of my sort--unless you are a very forbidding person
indeed--who have talked to you in the most confidential manner of all
their private affairs, on meeting you in a railway carriage, or sitting
next to you at a table-d'hôte. For myself, I believe I shall go on
running up sudden friendships with strangers to my dying day. Infamous
Dubourg! If I could have got into Browndown that night, I should have
liked to have done to him what a Mexican maid of mine (at the Central
American period of my career) did to her drunken husband--who was a kind
of peddler, dealing in whips and sticks. She sewed him strongly up one
night in the sheet, while he lay snoring off his liquor in bed; and then
she took his whole stock-in-trade out of the corner of the room, and
broke it on him, to the last article on sale, until he was beaten to a
jelly from head to foot.
Not having this resource open to me, I sat myself down in my bedroom, to
consider--if the matter of Dubourg went any further--what it was my
business to do next.
I have already mentioned that Lucilla and I had idled away the whole
afternoon, woman-like, in talking of ourselves. You will best understand
what course my reflections took, if I here relate the chief particulars
which Lucilla communicated to me, concerning her own singular position in
her father's house.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
A Cage of Finches
LARGE families are--as my experience goes--of two sorts. We have the
families whose members all admire each other. And we have the families
whose members all detest each other. For myself, I prefer the second
sort. Their quarrels are their own affair; and they have a merit which
the first sort are never known to possess--the merit of being sometimes
able to see the good qualities of persons who do not possess the
advantage of being related to them by blood. The families whose members
all admire each other, are families saturated with insufferable conceit.
You happen to speak of Shakespeare, among these people, as a type of
supreme intellectual capacity. A female member of the family will not
fail to convey to you that you would have illustrated your meaning far
more completely if you had referred her to "dear Papa." You are out
walking with a male member of the household; and you say of a woman who
passes, "What a charming creature!" Your companion smiles at your
simplicity, and wonders whether you have ever seen his sister when she is
dressed for a ball. These are the families who cannot be separated
without corresponding with each other every day. They read you extracts
from their letters, and say, "Where is the writer by profession who can
equal this?" They talk of their private affairs, in your presence--and
appear to think that you ought to be interested too. They enjoy their own
jokes across you at table--and wonder how it is that you are not amused.
In domestic circles of this sort the sisters sit habitually on the
brothers' knees; and the husbands inquire into the wives' ailments, in
public, as unconcernedly as if they were closeted in their own room. When
we arrive at a more advanced stage of civilization, the State will supply
cages for these intolerable people; and notices will be posted at the
corners of streets, "Beware of Number Twelve: a family in a state of
mutual admiration is hung up there!"
I gathered from Lucilla that the Finches were of the second order of
large families, as mentioned above. Hardly one of the members of this
domestic group was on speaking terms with the other. And some of them had
been separated for years, without once troubling Her Majesty's Post
Office to convey even the slightest expression of sentiment from one to
the other.
The first wife of Reverend Finch was a Miss Batchford. The members of her
family (limited at the time of the marriage to her brother and her
sister) strongly disapproved of her choice of a husband. The rank of a
Finch (I laugh at these contemptible distinctions!) was decided, in this
case, to be not equal to the rank of a Batchford. Nevertheless, Miss
married. Her brother and sister declined to be present at the ceremony.
First quarrel.
Lucilla was born. Reverend Finch's elder brother (on speaking terms with
no other member of the family) interfered with a Christian
proposal--namely--to shake hands across the baby's cradle. Adopted by the
magnanimous Batchfords. First reconciliation.
Time passed. Reverend Finch--then officiating in a poor curacy near a
great manufacturing town--felt a want (the want of money); and took a
liberty (the liberty of attempting to borrow of his brother-in-law). Mr.
Batchford, being a rich man, regarded this overture, it is needless to
say, in the light of an insult. Miss Batchford sided with her brother.
Second quarrel.
Time passed, as before. Mrs. Finch the first died. Reverend Finch's elder
brother (still at daggers drawn with the other members of the family)
made a second Christian proposal--namely--to shake hands across the
wife's grave. Adopted once more by the bereaved Batchfords. Second
reconciliation.
Another lapse of time. Reverend Finch, left a widower with one daughter,
became personally acquainted with an inhabitant of the great city near
which he ministered, who was also a widower with one daughter. The status
of the parent, in this case--social-political-religious--was
Shoemaker-Radical-Baptist. Reverend Finch, still wanting money, swallowed
it all; and married the daughter, with a dowry of three thousand pounds.
This proceeding alienated from him for ever, not the Batchfords only, but
the peacemaking elder brother as well. That excellent Christian ceased to
be on speaking terms now with his brother the clergyman, as well as with
all the rest of the family. The complete isolation of Reverend Finch
followed. Regularly every year did the second Mrs. Finch afford
opportunities of shaking hands, not only over one cradle, but sometimes
over two. Vain and meritorious fertility! Nothing came of it, but a kind
of compromise. Lucilla, quite overlooked among the rector's
rapidly-increasing second family, was allowed to visit her maternal uncle
and aunt at stated periods in every year. Born, to all appearance with
the full possession of her sight, the poor child had become incurably
blind before she was a year old. In all other respects, she presented a
striking resemblance to her mother. Bachelor uncle Batchford, and his old
maiden sister, both conceived the strongest affection for the child. "Our
niece Lucilla," they said, "has justified our fondest hopes--she is a
Batchford, not a Finch!" Lucilla's father (promoted, by this time, to the
rectory of Dimchurch) let them talk. "Wait a bit, and money will come of
it," was all he said. Truly money was wanted!--with fruitful Mrs. Finch
multiplying cradles, year after year, till the doctor himself (employed
on contract) got tired of it, and said one day, "It is not true that
there is an end to everything: there is no end to the multiplying
capacity of Mrs. Finch."
Lucilla grew up from childhood to womanhood. She was twenty years old,
before her father's expectations were realized, and the money came of it
at last.
Uncle Batchford died a single man. He divided his fortune between his
maiden sister, and his niece. When she came of age, Lucilla was to have
an income of fifteen hundred pounds a year--on certain conditions, which
the will set forth at great length. The effect of these conditions was
(first) to render it absolutely impossible for Reverend Finch, under any
circumstances whatever, to legally inherit a single farthing of the
money--and (secondly), to detach Lucilla from her father's household, and
to place her under the care of her maiden aunt, so long as she remained
unmarried, for a period of three months in every year.
The will avowed the object of this last condition in the plainest words.
"I die as I have lived" (wrote uncle Batchford), "a High Churchman and a
Tory. My legacy to my niece shall only take effect on these
terms--namely--that she shall be removed at certain stated periods from
the Dissenting and Radical influences to which she is subjected under her
father's roof, and shall be placed under the care of an English
gentlewoman who unites to the advantages of birth and breeding the
possession of high and honorable principles"--etcetera, etcetera. Can you
conceive Reverend Finch's feelings, sitting, with his daughter by his
side, among the company, while the will was read, and hearing this? He
got up, like a true Englishman, and made them a speech. "Ladies and
gentlemen," he said, "I admit that I am a Liberal in politics, and that
my wife's family are Dissenters. As an example of the principles thus
engendered in my household, I beg to inform you that my daughter accepts
this legacy with my full permission, and that I forgive Mr. Batchford."
With that, he walked out, with his daughter on his arm. He had heard
enough, please to observe, to satisfy him that Lucilla (while she lived
unmarried) could do what she liked with her income. Before they had got
back to Dimchurch, Reverend Finch had completed a domestic arrangement
which permitted his daughter to occupy a perfectly independent position
in the rectory, and which placed in her father's pockets--as Miss Finch's
contribution to the housekeeping--five hundred a year.
(Do you know what I felt when I heard this? I felt the deepest regret
that Finch of the liberal principles had not made a third with my poor
Pratolungo and me in Central America. With him to advise us, we should
have saved the sacred cause of Freedom without spending a single farthing
on it!)
The old side of the rectory, hitherto uninhabited, was put in order and
furnished--of course at Lucilla's expense. On her twenty-first birthday,
the repairs were completed; the first installment of the housekeeping
money was paid; and the daughter was established, as an independent
lodger, in her own father's house!
In order to thoroughly appreciate Finch's ingenuity, it is necessary to
add here that Lucilla had shown, as she grew up, an increasing dislike of
living at home. In her blind state, the endless turmoil of the children
distracted her. She and her step-mother did not possess a single sympathy
in common. Her relations with her father were in much the same condition.
She could compassionate his poverty, and she could treat him with the
forbearance and respect due to him from his child. As to really
venerating and loving him--the less said about that the better. Her
happiest days had been the days she spent with her uncle and aunt; her
visits to the Batchfords had grown to be longer and longer visits with
every succeeding year. If the father, in appealing to the daughter's
sympathies, had not dexterously contrived to unite the preservation of
her independence with the continuance of her residence under his roof,
she would, on coming of age, either have lived altogether with her aunt,
or have set up an establishment of her own. As it was, the rector had
secured his five hundred a year, on terms acceptable to both sides--and,
more than that, he had got her safe under his own eye. For, remark, there
was one terrible possibility threatening him in the future--the
possibility of Lucilla's marriage!
Such was the strange domestic position of this interesting creature, at
the time when I entered the house.
You will now understand how completely puzzled I was when I recalled what
had happened on the evening of my arrival, and when I asked myself--in
the matter of the mysterious stranger--what course I was to take next. I
had found Lucilla a solitary being--helplessly dependent in her blindness
on others--and, in that sad condition, without a mother, without a
sister, without a friend even in whose sympathies she could take refuge,
in whose advice she could trust. I had produced a first favorable
impression on her; I had won her liking at once, as she had won mine. I
had accompanied her on an evening walk, innocent of all suspicion of what
was going on in her mind. I had by pure accident enabled a stranger to
intensify the imaginary interest which she felt in him, by provoking him
to speak in her hearing for the first time. In a moment of hysterical
agitation--and in sheer despair of knowing who else to confide in--the
poor, foolish, blind, lonely girl had opened her heart to me. What was I
to do?
If the case had been an ordinary one, the whole affair would have been
simply ridiculous.
But the case of Lucilla was not the case of girls in general.
The minds of the blind are, by cruel necessity, forced inward on
themselves. They live apart from us--ah, how hopelessly far apart!--in
their own dark sphere, of which we know nothing. What relief could come
to Lucilla from the world outside? None! It was part of her desolate
liberty to be free to dwell unremittingly on the ideal creature of her
own dream. Within the narrow limit of the one impression that it had been
possible for her to derive of this man--the impression of the beauty of
his voice--her fancy was left to work unrestrained in the changeless
darkness of her life. What a picture! I shudder as I draw it. Oh, yes, it
is easy, I know, to look at it the other way--to laugh at the folly of a
girl, who first excites her imagination about a total stranger; and then,
when she hears him speak, falls in love with his voice! But add that the
girl is blind; that the girl lives habitually in the world of her own
imagination; that the girl has nobody at home who can exercise a
wholesome influence over her. Is there nothing pitiable in such a state
of things as this? For myself, though I come of a light-hearted nation
that laughs at everything--I saw my own face looking horribly grave and
old, as I sat before the glass that night, brushing my hair.
I looked at my bed. Bah! what was the use of going to bed? She was her
own mistress. She was perfectly free to take her next walk to Browndown
alone! and to place herself, for all I knew to the contrary, at the mercy
of a dishonorable and designing man. What was I? Only her companion. I
had no right to interfere--and yet, if anything happened, I should be
blamed. It is so easy to say, "You ought to have done something." Whom
could I consult? The worthy old nurse only held the position of servant.
Could I address myself to the lymphatic lady with the baby in one hand,
and the novel in the other? Absurd! her stepmother was not to be thought
of. Her father? Judging by hearsay, I had not derived a favorable
impression of the capacity of Reverend Finch for interfering successfully
in a matter of this sort. However, he was her father; and I could feel my
way cautiously with him at first. Hearing Zillah moving about the
corridor, I went out to her. In the course of a little gossip, I
introduced the name of the master of the house. How was it I had not seen
him yet? For an excellent reason. He had gone to visit a friend at
Brighton. It was then Tuesday. He was expected back on "sermon-day"--that
is to say on Saturday in the same week.
I returned to my room, a little out of temper. In this state my mind
works with wonderful freedom. I had another of my inspirations. Mr.
Dubourg had taken the liberty of speaking to me that evening. Good. I
determined to go alone to Browndown the next morning, and take the
liberty of speaking to Mr. Dubourg.
Was this resolution solely inspired by my interest in Lucilla? Or had my
own curiosity been all the time working under the surface, and
influencing the course of my reflections unknown to myself? I went to bed
without inquiring. I recommend you to go to bed without inquiring too.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
Daylight View of the Man
WHEN I put out my candle that night, I made a mistake--I trusted entirely
to myself to wake in good time in the morning. I ought to have told
Zillah to call me.
Hours passed before I could close my eyes. It was broken rest when it
came, until the day dawned. Then I fell asleep at last in good earnest.
When I woke, and looked at my watch, I was amazed to find that it was ten
o'clock.
I jumped out of bed, and rang for the old nurse. Was Lucilla at home? No:
she had gone out for a little walk. By herself? Yes--by herself. In what
direction? Up the valley, towards Browndown.
I instantly arrived at my own conclusion.
She had got the start of me--thanks to my laziness in sleeping away the
precious hours of the morning in bed. The one thing to do, was to follow
her as speedily as possible. In half an hour more, _I_ was out for a
little walk by myself--and (what do you think?) _my_ direction also was
up the valley, towards Browndown.
A pastoral solitude reigned round the lonely little house. I went on
beyond it, into the next winding of the valley. Not a human creature was
to be seen. I returned to Browndown to reconnoiter. Ascending the rising
ground on which the house was built, I approached it from the back. The
windows were all open. I listened. (Do you suppose I felt scruples in
such an emergency as this? Oh, pooh! pooh! who but a fool would have felt
anything of the sort!) I listened with both my ears. Through a window at
the side of the house, I heard the sound of voices. Advancing noiselessly
on the turf, I heard the voice of Dubourg. He was answered by a woman.
Aha, I had caught her. Lucilla herself!
"Wonderful!" I heard him say. "I believe you have eyes in the ends of
your fingers. Take this, now--and try if you can tell me what it is."
"A little vase," she answered--speaking, I give you my word of honor, as
composedly as if she had known him for years. "Wait! what metal is it?
Silver? No. Gold. Did you really make this yourself as well as the box?"
"Yes. It is an odd taste of mine--isn't it?--to be fond of chasing in
gold and silver. Years ago I met with a man in Italy, who taught me. It
amused me, then--and it amuses me now. When I was recovering from an
illness last spring, I shaped that vase out of the plain metal, and made
the ornaments on it."
"Another mystery revealed!" she exclaimed. "Now I know what you wanted
with those gold and silver plates that came to you from London. Are you
aware of what a character you have got here? There are some of us who
suspect you of coining false money!"
They both burst out laughing as gaily as a couple of children. I declare
I wished myself one of the party! But no. I had my duty to do as a
respectable woman. My duty was to steal a little nearer, and see if any
familiarities were passing between these two merry young people. One half
of the open window was sheltered, on the outer side, by a Venetian blind.
I stood behind the blind, and peeped in. (Duty! oh, dear me, painful, but
necessary duty!) Dubourg was sitting with his back to the window. Lucilla
faced me opposite to him. Her cheeks were flushed with pleasure. She held
in her lap a pretty little golden vase. Her clever fingers were passing
over it rapidly, exactly as they had passed, the previous evening, over
my face.
"Shall I tell you what the pattern is on your vase?" she went on.
"Can you really do that?"
"You shall judge for yourself. The pattern is made of leaves, with birds
placed among them, at intervals. Stop! I think I have felt leaves like
these on the old side of the rectory, against the wall. Ivy?"
"Amazing! it _is_ ivy."
"The birds," she resumed. "I shan't be satisfied till I have told you
what the birds are. Haven't I got silver birds like them--only much
larger--for holding pepper, and mustard, and sugar, and so on. Owls!" she
exclaimed, with a cry of triumph. "Little owls, sitting in ivy-nests.
What a delightful pattern! I never heard of anything like it before."
"Keep the vase!" he said. "You will honor me, you will delight me, if you
will keep the vase."
She rose and shook her head--without giving him back the vase, however.
"I might take it, if you were not a stranger," she said. "Why don't you
tell us who you are, and what your reason is for living all by yourself
in this dull place?"
He stood before her, with his head down, and sighed bitterly.
"I know I ought to explain myself," he answered. "I can't be surprised if
people are suspicious of me." He paused, and added very earnestly, "I
can't tell it to _you._ Oh, no--not to _you!_"
"Why not?"
"Don't ask me!"
She felt for the table, with her ivory cane, and put the vase down on
it--very unwillingly.
"Good morning, Mr. Dubourg," she said.
He opened the door of the room for her in silence. Waiting close against
the side of the house, I saw them appear under the porch, and cross the
little walled enclosure in front. As she stepped out on the open turf
beyond, she turned, and spoke to him again.
"If you won't tell _me_ your secret," she said, "will you tell it to some
one else? Will you tell it to a friend of mine?"
"To what friend?" he asked.
"To the lady whom you met with me last night."
He hesitated. "I am afraid I offended the lady," he said.
"So much the more reason for your explaining yourself," she rejoined. "If
you will only satisfy _her,_ I might ask you to come and see us--I might
even take the vase." With that strong hint, she actually gave him her
hand at parting. Her perfect self-possession, her easy familiarity with
this stranger--so bold, and yet so innocent--petrified me. "I shall send
my friend to you this morning," she said imperiously, striking her cane
on the turf. "I insist on your telling her the whole truth."
With that, she signed to him that he was to follow her no farther, and
went her way back to the village.
Does it not surprise you, as it surprised me? Instead of her blindness
making her nervous in the presence of a man unknown to her, it appeared
to have exactly the contrary effect. It made her fearless.
He stood on the spot where she had left him, watching her as she receded
in the distance. His manner towards her, in the house and out of the
house, had exhibited, it is only fair to say, the utmost consideration
and respect. Whatever shyness there had been between them, was shyness
entirely on his side. I had a short stuff dress on, which made no noise
over the grass. I skirted the wall of the enclosure, and approached him
unsuspected, from behind. "The charming creature!" he said to himself,
still following her with his eyes. As the words passed his lips, I struck
him smartly on the shoulder with my parasol.
"Mr. Dubourg," I said, "I am waiting to hear the truth."
He started violently--and confronted me in speechless dismay; his color
coming and going like the color of a young girl. Anybody who understands
women will understand that this behavior on his part, far from softening
me towards him, only encouraged me to bully him.
"In your present position in this place, sir," I went on, "do you think
it honorable conduct on your part to decoy a young lady, to whom you are
a perfect stranger, into your house--a young lady who claims, in right of
her sad affliction, even more than the usual forbearance and respect
which a gentleman owes to her sex?"
His shifting color settled, for the time, into an angry red.
"You are doing me a great injustice, ma'am," he answered. "It is a shame
to say that I have failed in respect to the young lady! I feel the
sincerest admiration and compassion for her. Circumstances justify me in
what I have done; I could not have acted otherwise. I refer you to the
young lady herself."
His voice rose higher and higher--he was thoroughly offended with me.
Need I add (seeing the prospect not far off of _his_ bullying _me_), that
I unblushingly shifted my ground, and tried a little civility next?
"If I have done you an injustice, sir, I ask your pardon," I answered.
"Having said so much, I have only to add that I shall be satisfied if I
hear what the circumstances are, from yourself."
This soothed his offended dignity. His gentler manner began to show
itself again.
"The truth is," he said, "that I owe my introduction to the young lady to
an ill-tempered little dog belonging to the people at the inn. The dog
had followed the person here who attends on me: and it startled the lady
by flying out and barking at her as she passed this house. After I had
driven away the dog, I begged her to come in and sit down until she had
recovered herself. Am I to blame for doing that? I don't deny that I felt
the deepest interest in her and that I did my best to amuse her, while
she honored me by remaining in my house. May I ask if I have satisfied
you?"
With the best will in the world to maintain my unfavorable opinion of
him, I was, by this time, fairly forced to acknowledge to myself that the
opinion was wrong. His explanation was, in tone and manner as well as in
language, the explanation of a gentleman.
And, besides--though he was a little too effeminate for my taste--he
really was such a handsome young man! His hair was of a fine bright
chestnut color, with a natural curl in it. His eyes were of the lightest
brown I had ever seen--with a singularly winning gentle modest expression
in them. As for his complexion--so creamy and spotless and fair--he had
no right to it: it ought to have been a woman's complexion, or at least a
boy's. He looked indeed more like a boy than a man: his smooth face was
quite uncovered, either by beard, whisker, or mustache. If he had asked
me, I should have guessed him (though he was really three years older) to
have been younger than Lucilla.
"Our acquaintance has begun rather oddly, sir," I said. "You spoke
strangely to me last night; and I have spoken hastily to you this
morning. Accept my excuses--and let us try if we can't do each other
justice in the end. I have something more to say to you before we part.
Will you think me a very extraordinary woman, if I suggest that you may
as well invite _me_ next, to take a chair in your house?"
He laughed with the pleasantest good temper, and led the way in.
We entered the room in which he had received Lucilla; and sat down
together on the two chairs near the window--with this difference--that I
contrived to possess myself of the seat which he had occupied, and so to
place him with his face to the light.
"Mr. Dubourg," I began, "you will already have guessed that I overheard
what Miss Finch said to you at parting?"
He bowed, in silent acknowledgment that it was so--and began to toy
nervously with the gold vase which Lucilla had left on the table.
"What do you propose to do?" I went on. "You have spoken of the interest
you feel in my young friend. If it is a true interest, it will lead you
to merit her good opinion by complying with her request. Tell me plainly,
if you please. Will you come and see us, in the character of a gentleman
who has satisfied two ladies that they can receive him as a neighbor and
a friend? Or will you oblige me to warn the rector of Dimchurch that his
daughter is in danger of permitting a doubtful character to force his
acquaintance on her?"
He put the vase back on the table, and turned deadly pale.
"If you knew what I have suffered," he said; "if you had gone through
what I have been compelled to endure--" His voice failed him; his soft
brown eyes moistened; his head drooped. He said no more.
In common with all women, I like a man to _be_ a man. There was, to my
mind, something weak and womanish in the manner in which this Dubourg met
the advance which I had made to him. He not only failed to move my
pity--he was in danger of stirring up my contempt.
"I too have suffered," I answered. "I too have been compelled to endure.
But there is this difference between us. _My_ courage is not worn out. In
your place, if I knew myself to be an honorable man, I would not allow
the breath of suspicion to rest on me for an instant. Cost what it might,
I would vindicate myself. I should be ashamed to cry--I should speak."
That stung him. He started up on his feet.
"Have _you_ been stared at by hundreds of cruel eyes?" he burst out
passionately. "Have _you_ been pointed at, without mercy, wherever you
go? Have you been put in the pillory of the newspapers? Has the
photograph proclaimed _your_ infamous notoriety in all the shop-windows?"
He dropped back into his chair, and wrung his hands in a frenzy. "Oh, the
public!" he exclaimed; "the horrible public! I can't get away from
them--I can't hide myself, even here. You have had your stare at me, like
the rest," he cried, turning on me fiercely. "I knew it when you passed
me last night."
"I never saw you out of this place," I answered. "As for the portraits of
you, whoever you may be, I know nothing about them. I was far too anxious
and too wretched, to amuse myself by looking into shop-windows before I
came here. You, and your name, are equally strange to me. If you have any
respect for yourself, tell me who you are. Out with the truth, sir! You
know as well as I do that you have gone too far to stop."
I seized him by the hand. I was wrought up by the extraordinary outburst
that had escaped him to the highest pitch of excitement: I was hardly
conscious of what I said or did. At that supreme moment, we enraged, we
maddened each other. His hand closed convulsively on my hand. His eyes
looked wildly into mine.
"Do you read the newspapers?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Have you seen----?"
"I have _not_ seen the name of 'Dubourg'----"
"'My name is not 'Dubourg.'"
"What is it?"
He suddenly stooped over me; and whispered his name in my ear.
In my turn I started, thunderstruck, to my feet.
"Good God!" I cried. "You are the man who was tried for murder last
month, and who was all but hanged, on the false testimony of a clock!"
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
The Perjury of the Clock
WE looked at one another in silence. Both alike, we were obliged to wait
a little and recover ourselves.
I may occupy the interval by answering two questions which will arise in
your minds in this place. How did Dubourg come to be tried for his life?
And what was the connection between this serious matter and the false
testimony of a clock?
The reply to both these inquiries is to be found in the story which I
call the Perjury of the Clock.
In briefly relating this curious incidental narrative (which I take from
a statement of the circumstances placed in my possession) I shall speak
of our new acquaintance at Browndown--and shall continue to speak of him
throughout these pages--by his assumed name. In the first place, it was
the maiden name of his mother, and he had a right to take it if he
pleased. In the second place, the date of our domestic drama at Dimchurch
goes back as far as the years 'fifty-eight and 'fifty-nine; and real
names are (now that it is all over) of no consequence to anybody. With
"Dubourg" we have begun. With "Dubourg" let us go on to the end.
On a summer evening, some years ago, a man was found murdered in a field
near a certain town in the West of England. The name of the field was,
"Pardon's Piece."
The man was a small carpenter and builder in the town, who bore an
indifferent character. On the evening in question, a distant relative of
his, employed as farm-bailiff by a gentleman in the neighborhood,
happened to be passing a stile which led from the field into a road, and
saw a gentleman leaving the field by way of this stile, rather in a
hurry. He recognized the gentleman as Mr. Dubourg.
The two passed each other on the road in opposite directions. After a
certain lapse of time--estimated as being half an hour--the farm-bailiff
had occasion to pass back along the same road. On reaching the stile, he
heard an alarm raised, and entered the field to see what was the matter.
He found several persons running from the farther side of Pardon's Piece
towards a boy who was standing at the back of a cattle-shed, in a remote
part of the enclosure, screaming with terror. At the boy's feet lay, face
downwards, the dead body of a man, with his head horribly beaten in. His
watch was under him, hanging out of his pocket by the chain. It had
stopped--evidently in consequence of the concussion of its owner's fall
on it--at half-past eight. The body was still warm. All the other
valuables, like the watch, were left on it. The farm-bailiff instantly
recognized the man as the carpenter and builder mentioned above.
At the preliminary inquiry, the stoppage of the watch at half-past eight,
was taken as offering good circumstantial evidence that the blow which
had killed the man had been struck at that time.
The next question was--if any one had been seen near the body at
half-past eight? The farm-bailiff declared that he had met Mr. Dubourg
hastily leaving the field by the stile at that very time. Asked if he had
looked at his watch, he owned that he had not done so. Certain previous
circumstances which he mentioned as having impressed themselves on his
memory, enabled him to feel sure of the truth of his assertion, without
having consulted his watch. He was pressed on this important point; but
he held to his declaration. At half-past eight he had seen Mr. Dubourg
hurriedly leave the field. At half-past eight the watch of the murdered
man had stopped.
Had any other person been observed in or near the field at that time?
No witness could be discovered who had seen anybody else near the place.
Had the weapon turned up, with which the blow had been struck? It had not
been found. Was anyone known (robbery having plainly not been the motive
of the crime) to have entertained a grudge against the murdered man? It
was no secret that he associated with doubtful characters, male and
female; but suspicion failed to point to any one of them in particular.
In this state of things, there was no alternative but to request Mr.
Dubourg--well known in, and out of the town, as a young gentleman of
independent fortune; bearing an excellent character--to give some account
of himself.
He immediately admitted that he had passed through the field. But in
contradiction to the farm-bailiff, he declared that _he_ had looked at
his watch at the moment before he crossed the stile, and that the time by
it was exactly a quarter past eight. Five minutes later--that is to say
ten minutes before the murder had been committed, on the evidence of the
dead man's watch--he had paid a visit to a lady living near Pardon's
Piece; and had remained with her, until his watch, consulted once more on
leaving the lady's house, informed him that it was a quarter to nine.
Here was the defense called an "alibi." It entirely satisfied Mr.
Dubourg's friends. To satisfy justice also, it was necessary to call the
lady as a witness. In the meantime, another purely formal question was
put to Mr. Dubourg. Did he know anything of the murdered man?
With some appearance of confusion, Mr. Dubourg admitted that he had been
induced (by a friend) to employ the man on some work. Further
interrogation extracted from him the following statement of facts.
That the work had been very badly done--that an exorbitant price had been
charged for it--that the man, on being remonstrated with, had behaved in
a grossly impertinent manner--that an altercation had taken place between
them--that Mr. Dubourg had seized the man by the collar of his coat, and
had turned him out of the house--that he had called the man an infernal
scoundrel (being in a passion at the time), and had threatened to "thrash
him within an inch of his life" (or words to that effect) if he ever
presumed to come near the house again; that he had sincerely regretted
his own violence the moment he recovered his self-possession; and,
lastly, that, on his oath (the altercation having occurred six weeks
ago), he had never spoken to the man, or set eyes on the man since.
As the matter then stood, these circumstances were considered as being
unfortunate circumstances for Mr. Dubourg--nothing more. He had his
"alibi" to appeal to, and his character to appeal to; and nobody doubted
the result.
The lady appeared as witness.
Confronted with Mr. Dubourg on the question of time, and forced to
answer, she absolutely contradicted him, on the testimony of the clock on
her own mantelpiece. In substance, her evidence was simply this. She had
looked at her clock, when Mr. Dubourg entered the room; thinking it
rather a late hour for a visitor to call on her. The clock (regulated by
the maker, only the day before) pointed to twenty-five minutes to nine.
Practical experiment showed that the time required to walk the distance,
at a rapid pace, from the stile to the lady's house, was just five
minutes. Here then was the statement of the farm-bailiff (himself a
respectable witness) corroborated by another witness of excellent
position and character. The clock, on being examined next, was found to
be right. The evidence of the clock-maker proved that he kept the key,
and that there had been no necessity to set the clock and wind it up
again, since he had performed both those acts on the day preceding Mr.
Dubourg's visit. The accuracy of the clock thus vouched for, the
conclusion on the evidence was irresistible. Mr. Dubourg stood convicted
of having been in the field at the time when the murder was committed; of
having, by his own admission, had a quarrel with the murdered man, not
long before, terminating in an assault and a threat on his side; and,
lastly, of having attempted to set up an alibi by a false statement of
the question of time. There was no alternative but to commit him to take
his trial at the Assizes, charged with the murder of the builder in
Pardon's Piece.
The trial occupied two days.
No new facts of importance were discovered in the interval. The evidence
followed the course which it had taken at the preliminary
examinations--with this difference only, that it was more carefully
sifted. Mr. Dubourg had the double advantage of securing the services of
the leading barrister on the circuit, and of moving the irrepressible
sympathies of the jury, shocked at his position and eager for proof of
his innocence. By the end of the first day, the evidence had told against
him with such irresistible force, that his own counsel despaired of the
result. When the prisoner took his place in the dock on the second day,
there was but one conviction in the minds of the people in
court--everybody said, "The clock will hang him."
It was nearly two in the afternoon; and the proceedings were on the point
of being adjourned for half an hour, when the attorney for the prisoner
was seen to hand a paper to the counsel for the defense.
The counsel rose, showing signs of agitation which roused the curiosity
of the audience. He demanded the immediate hearing of a new witness;
whose evidence in the prisoner's favor he declared to be too important to
be delayed for a single moment. After a short colloquy between the judge
and the banisters on either side, the court decided to continue the
sitting.
The witness, appearing in the box, proved to be a young woman, in
delicate health. On the evening when the prisoner had paid his visit to
the lady, she was in that lady's service as housemaid. The day after, she
had been permitted (by previous arrangement with her mistress) to take a
week's holiday, and to go on a visit to her parents, in the west of
Cornwall. While there, she had fallen ill, and had not been strong enough
since to return to her employment. Having given this preliminary account
of herself, the housemaid then stated the following extraordinary
particulars in relation to her mistress's clock.
On the morning of the day when Mr. Dubourg had called at the house, she
had been cleaning the mantelpiece. She had rubbed the part of it which
was under the clock with her duster, had accidentally struck the
pendulum, and had stopped it. Having once before done this, she had been
severely reproved. Fearing that a repetition of the offense, only the day
after the clock had been regulated by the maker, might lead perhaps to
the withdrawal of her leave of absence, she had determined to put matters
right again, if possible, by herself.
After poking under the clock in the dark, and failing to set the pendulum
going again properly in that way, she next attempted to lift the clock,
and give it a shake. It was set in a marble case, with a bronze figure on
the top; and it was so heavy that she was obliged to hunt for something
which she could use as a lever. The thing proved to be not easy to find
on the spur of the moment. Having at last laid her hand on what she
wanted, she contrived so to lift the clock a few inches and drop it again
on the mantelpiece, as to set it going once more.
The next necessity was of course to move the hands on. Here again she was
met by an obstacle. There was a difficulty in opening the glass-case
which protected the dial. After uselessly searching for some instrument
to help her, she got from the footman (without telling him what she
wanted it for) a small chisel. With this, she opened the case--after
accidentally scratching the brass frame of it--and set the hands of the
clock by guess. She was flurried at the time; fearing that her mistress
would discover her. Later in the day, she found that she had
over-estimated the interval of time that had passed while she was trying
to put the clock right. She had, in fact, set it exactly _a quarter of an
hour too fast._
No safe opportunity of secretly putting the clock right again had
occurred, until the last thing at night. She had then moved the hands
back to the right time. At the hour of the evening when Mr. Dubourg had
called on her mistress, she positively swore that the clock was a quarter
of an hour too fast. It had pointed, as her mistress had declared, to
twenty-five minutes to nine--the right time then being, as Mr. Dubourg
had asserted, twenty minutes past eight.
Questioned why she had refrained from giving this extraordinary evidence
at the inquiry before the magistrate, she declared that in the remote
Cornish village to which she had gone the next day, and in which her
illness had detained her from that time, nobody had heard of the inquiry
or the trial. She would not have been then present to state the vitally
important circumstances to which she had just sworn, if the prisoner's
twin-brother had not found her out on the previous day--had not
questioned her if she knew anything about the clock--and had not (hearing
what she had to tell) insisted on her taking the journey with him to the
court the next morning.
This evidence virtually decided the trial. There was a great burst of
relief in the crowded assembly when the woman's statement had come to an
end.
She was closely cross-examined as a matter of course. Her character was
inquired into; corroborative evidence (relating to the chisel and the
scratches on the frame) was sought for and was obtained. The end of it
was that, at a late hour on the second evening, the jury acquitted the
prisoner, without leaving their box. It was not too much to say that his
life had been saved by his brother. His brother alone had persisted, from
first to last, in obstinately disbelieving the clock--for no better
reason than that the clock was the witness which asserted the prisoner's
guilt! He had worried everybody with incessant inquiries--he had
discovered the absence of the housemaid, after the trial had begun--and
he had started off to interrogate the girl, knowing nothing, and
suspecting nothing; simply determined to persist in the one everlasting
question with which he persecuted everybody belonging to the house: "The
clock is going to hang my brother; can you tell me anything about the
clock?"
Four months later, the mystery of the crime was cleared up. One of the
disreputable companions of the murdered man confessed on his death-bed
that he had done the deed. There was nothing interesting or remarkable in
the circumstances. Chance which had put innocence in peril, had offered
impunity to guilt. An infamous woman; a jealous quarrel; and an absence
at the moment of witnesses on the spot--these were really the commonplace
materials which had composed the tragedy of Pardon's Piece.
CHAPTER THE NINTH
The Hero of the Trial
"You have forced it out of me. Now you have had your way, never mind my
feelings--Go!"
Those were the first words the Hero of the Trial said to me, when he was
able to speak again! He withdrew with a curious sullen resignation to the
farther end of the room. There he stood looking at me, as a man might
have looked who carried some contagion about him, and who wished to
preserve 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 man
who has been pointed at as a murderer, and who has been tried for his
life."
The same unhealthy state of mind which had brought him to Dimchurch, and
which had led him to speak to me as he had spoken on the previous
evening, was, as I understood it, now irritating him against me as a
person who had made his own quick temper the means of entrapping him into
letting out the truth. How was I to deal with a man in this condition? I
decided to perform the feat which you call in England, "taking the bull
by the horns."
"I see but one man here," I said. "A man honorably acquitted of a crime
which he was incapable of committing. A man who deserves my interest, and
claims my sympathy. Shake hands, Mr. Dubourg."
I spoke to him in a good hearty voice, and I gave him a good hearty
squeeze. The poor, weak, lonely, persecuted young fellow dropped his head
on my shoulder like a child, and burst out crying.
"Don't despise me!" he said, as soon as he had got his breath again. "It
breaks a man down to have stood in the dock, and to have had hundreds of
hard-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 of
anomalies I had ever met with. Throw him into one of those passions in
which 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--and
you would have said with equal truth, This is a lamb.
"One thing rather surprises me, Mr. Dubourg," I went on. "I can't quite
understand----"
"Don't call me Mr. Dubourg," he interposed. "You remind me of the
disgrace which has forced me to change my name. Call me by my Christian
name. It's a foreign name. You are a foreigner by your accent--you will
like 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 brother
leaving 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 is
the noblest creature that God ever created! You must own that
yourself--you know what he did at the trial. I should have died on the
scaffold but for that angel. I insist on it that he is not a man. He is
an angel!"
(I admitted that his brother was an angel. The concession instantly
pacified him.)
"People say there is no difference between us," he went on, drawing his
chair companionably close to mine. "Ah, people are so shallow!
Personally, I grant you, we are exactly alike. (You have heard that we
are twins?) But there it ends, unfortunately for _me._ Nugent--(my
brother was christened Nugent after my father)--Nugent is a hero! Nugent
is a genius. I should have died if he hadn't taken care of me after the
trial. I had nobody but him. We are orphans; we have no brothers or
sisters. 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--the
name that we have been obliged to drop--famous all over the world. He is
a painter--a landscape painter. Have you never heard of him? Ah, you soon
will! Where do you think he has gone to? He has gone to the wilds of
America, in search of new subjects. He is going to found a school of
landscape painting. On an immense scale. A scale that has never been
attempted yet. Dear fellow! Shall I tell you what he said when he left me
here? Noble words--I call them noble words. 'Oscar, I go to make our
assumed name famous. You shall be honorably known--you shall be
illustrious, as the brother of Nugent Dubourg.' Do you think I could
stand in the way of such a career as that? After what he has sacrificed
for _me,_ could I let Such a Man stagnate here--for no better purpose
than 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 notoriety
that followed us, after the trial! He was constantly stared at and
pointed at, for _me._ Not a word of complaint escaped him. He snapped his
fingers at it. 'That for public opinion!' he said. What strength of
mind--eh? From one place after another we moved and moved, and still
there were the photographs, and the newspapers, and the whole infamous
story ('romance in real life,' they called it), known beforehand to
everybody. _He_ never lost heart. 'We shall find a place yet' (that was
the cheerful way he put it); 'you have nothing to do with it, Oscar; you
are safe in my hands; I promise you exactly the place of refuge you
want.' It was he who got all the information, and found out this lonely
part of England where you live. _I_ thought it pretty as we wandered
about the hills--it wasn't half grand enough for _him._ We lost
ourselves. I began to feel nervous. He didn't mind it a bit. 'You have Me
with you,' he said; 'My luck is always to be depended on. Mark what I
say! We shall stumble on a village!' You will hardly believe me--in ten
minutes more, we stumbled, exactly as he had foretold, on this place. He
didn't leave me--when I had prevailed on him to go--without a
recommendation. He recommended me to the landlord of the inn here. He
said, 'My brother is delicate; my brother wishes to live in retirement;
you will oblige me by looking after my brother.' Wasn't it kind? The
landlord seemed to be quite affected by it. Nugent cried when he took
leave of me. Ah, what would I not give to have a heart like his and a
mind like his! It's something--isn't it?--to have a face like him. I
often say that to myself when I look in the glass. Excuse my running on
in this way. When I once begin to talk of Nugent, I don't know when to
leave off."
One thing, at any rate, was plainly discernible in this otherwise
inscrutable young man. He adored his twin-brother.
It would have been equally clear to me that Mr. Nugent Dubourg deserved
to be worshipped, if I could have reconciled to my mind his leaving his
brother to shift for himself in such a place as Dimchurch. I was obliged
to remind myself of the admirable service which he had rendered at the
trial, before I could decide to do him the justice of suspending my
opinion of him, in his absence. Having accomplished this act of
magnanimity, I took advantage of the first opportunity to change the
subject. The most tiresome information that I am acquainted with, is the
information which tells us of the virtues of an absent person--when that
absent person happens to be a stranger.
"Is it true that you have taken Browndown for six months?" I asked. "Are
you really going to settle at Dimchurch?"
"Yes--if you keep my secret," he answered. "The people here know nothing
about 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 knowing
it. I have been so horribly degraded. What will she think of me?" He
burst into another explosion of rhapsodies on the subject of
Lucilla--mixed up with renewed petitions to me to keep his story
concealed from everybody. I lost all patience with his want of common
fortitude and common sense.
"Young Oscar, I should like to box your ears!" I said. "You are in a
villainously unwholesome state about this matter. Have you nothing else
to think of? Have you no profession? Are you not obliged to work for your
living?"
I spoke, as you perceive, with some force of expression--aided by a
corresponding asperity of voice and manner.
Mr. Oscar Dubourg looked at me with the puzzled air of a man who feels an
overflow of new ideas forcing itself into his mind. He modestly admitted
the degrading truth. From his childhood upwards, he had only to put his
hand in his pocket, and to find the money there, without any preliminary
necessity of earning it first. His father had been a fashionable
portrait-painter, and had married one of his sitters--an heiress. Oscar
and Nugent had been left in the detestable position of independent
gentlemen. The dignity of labor was a dignity unknown to these degraded
young men. "I despise a wealthy idler," I said to Oscar, with my
republican severity. "You want the ennobling influence of labor to make a
man 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 young
gentleman, if you had to earn your bread and cheese before you ate it."
He stared at me piteously. The noble sentiments which I had inherited
from Doctor Pratolungo, completely bewildered Mr. Oscar Dubourg.
"Don't be angry with me," he said, in his innocent way. "I couldn't eat
my cheese, if I did earn it. I can't digest cheese. Besides, I employ
myself as much as I can." He took his little golden vase from the table
behind him, and told me what I had already heard him tell Lucilla while I
was listening at the window. "You would have found me at work this
morning," he went on, "if the stupid people who send me my metal plates
had not made a mistake. The alloy, in the gold and silver both, is all
wrong this time. I must return the plates to be melted again before I can
do anything with them. They are all ready to go back to-day, when the
cart comes. If there are any laboring people here who want money, I'm
sure I will give them some of mine with the greatest pleasure. It isn't
my fault, ma'am, that my father married my mother. And how could I help
it 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 illustrious
Pratolungo had never known what it was to have five pounds sterling at
his disposal before his union with Me!
I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. In my righteous indignation, I forgot
Lucilla and her curiosity about Oscar--I forgot Oscar and his horror of
Lucilla discovering who he was. I opened my lips to speak. In another
moment I should have launched my thunderbolts against the whole infamous
system of modern society, when I was silenced by the most extraordinary
and unexpected interruption that ever closed a woman's lips.
CHAPTER THE TENTH
First Appearance of Jicks
THERE walked in, at the open door of the room--softly, suddenly, and
composedly--a chubby female child, who could not possibly have been more
than three years old. She had no hat or cap on her head. A dirty pinafore
covered her from her chin to her feet. This amazing apparition advanced
into the middle of the room, holding hugged under one arm a ragged and
disreputable-looking doll; stared hard, first at Oscar, then at me;
advanced to my knees; laid the disreputable doll on my lap; and, pointing
to a vacant chair at my side, claimed the rights of hospitality in these
words:
"Jicks will sit down."
How was it possible, under these circumstances, to attack the infamous
system of modern society? It was only possible to kiss "Jicks."
"Do you know who this is?" I inquired, as I lifted our visitor on to the
chair.
Oscar burst out laughing. Like me, he now saw this mysterious young lady
for the first time. Like me, he wondered what the extraordinary nick-name
under which she had presented herself could possibly mean.
We looked at the child. The child--with its legs stretched out straight
before it, terminating in a pair of little dusty boots with holes in
them--lifted its large round eyes, overshadowed by a penthouse of
unbrushed flaxen hair; looked gravely at us in return; and made a second
call on our hospitality, as follows:
"Jicks will have something to drink."
While Oscar ran into the kitchen for some milk, I succeeded in
discovering the identity of "Jicks."
Something--I cannot well explain what--in the manner in which the child
had drifted into the room with her doll, reminded me of the lymphatic
lady of the rectory, drifting backwards and forwards with the baby in one
hand and the novel in the other. I took the liberty of examining
"Jicks's" pinafore, and discovered the mark in one corner:--"Selina
Finch." Exactly as I had supposed, here was a member of Mrs. Finch's
numerous family. Rather a young member, as it struck me, to be wandering
hatless round the environs of Dimchurch, all by herself.
Oscar returned with the milk in a mug. The child--insisting on taking the
mug into her own hands--steadily emptied it to the last drop--recovered
her breath with a gasp--looked at me with a white mustache of milk on her
upper lip--and announced the conclusion of her visit, in these terms:
"Jicks will get down again."
I deposited our young friend on the floor. She took her doll, and stood
for a moment deep in thought. What was she going to do next? We were not
kept long in suspense. She suddenly put her little hot fat hand into
mine, and tried to pull me after her out of the room.
"What do you want?" I asked.
Jicks answered in one untranslatable compound word:
"Man-Gee-gee."
I suffered myself to be pulled out of the room--to see "Man-Gee-gee," to
play "Man-Gee-gee," or to eat "Man-Gee-gee," it was impossible to tell
which. I was pulled along the passage--I was pulled out to the front
door. There--having approached the house inaudibly to us, over the
grass--stood the horse, cart, and man, waiting to take the case of gold
and silver plates back to London. I looked at Oscar, who had followed me.
We now understood, not only the masterly compound word of Jicks
(signifying man and horse, and passing over cart as unimportant), but the
polite attention of Jicks in entering the house to inform us, after a
rest and a drink, of a circumstance which had escaped our notice. The
driver of the cart had, on his own acknowledgment, been investigated and
questioned by this extraordinary child; strolling up to the door of
Browndown to see what he was doing there. Jicks was a public character at
Dimchurch. The driver knew all about her. She had been nicknamed "Gipsy"
from her wandering habits, and had shortened the name in her own dialect,
into "Jicks." There was no keeping her in at the rectory, try how you
might: they had long since abandoned the effort in despair. Sooner or
later, she turned up again--or somebody brought her back--or one of the
sheep-dogs found her asleep under a bush, and gave the alarm. "What goes
on in that child's head," said the driver, regarding Jicks with a sort of
superstitious admiration, "the Lord only knows. She has a will of her
own, and a way of her own. She _is_ a child; and she _aint_ a child. At
three years of age, she's a riddle none of us can guess. And that's the
long and the short of what I know about her."
While this explanation was in progress, the carpenter who had nailed up
the case, and the carpenter's son, accompanying him, joined us in front
of the house. They followed Oscar in, and came out again, bearing the
heavy burden of precious metal--more than one man could conveniently
lift--between them.
The case deposited in the cart, carpenter senior and carpenter junior got
in after it, wanting "a lift" to Brighton.
Carpenter senior, a big burly man, made a joke. "It's a lonely country
between this and Brighton, sir," he said to Oscar. "Three of us will be
none too many to see your precious packing-case safe into the railway
station." Oscar took it seriously. "Are there any robbers in this
neighborhood?" he asked. "Lord love you, sir!" said the driver, "robbers
would starve in these parts; we have got nothing worth thieving here."
Jicks--still watching the proceedings with an interest which allowed no
detail to escape unnoticed--assumed the responsibility of starting the
men on their journey. The odd child waved her chubby hand imperiously to
her friend the driver, and cried in her loudest voice, "Away!" The driver
touched his hat with comic respect. "All right, miss--time's money, aint
it?" He cracked his whip, and the cart rolled off noiselessly over the
thick close turf of the South Downs.
It was time for me to go back to the rectory, and to restore the
wandering Jicks, for the time being, to the protection of home. I
returned to Oscar, to say good-bye.
"I wish I was going back with you," he said.
"You will be as free as I am to come and to go at the rectory," I
answered, "when they know what has passed this morning between you and
me. In your own interests, I am determined to tell them who you are. You
have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, by my speaking out. Clear
your mind of fancies and suspicions that are unworthy of you. By
to-morrow we shall be good neighbors; by the end of the week we shall be
good friends. For the present, as we say in France, _au revoir!_"
I turned to take Jicks by the hand. While I had been speaking to Oscar
the child had slipped away from me. Not a sign of her was to be seen.
Before we could stir a step to search for our lost Gipsy, her voice
reached our ears, raised shrill and angry in the regions behind us, at
the side of the house.
"Go away!" we heard the child cry out impatiently. "Ugly men, go away!"
We turned the corner, and discovered two shabby strangers, resting
themselves against the side wall of the house. Their cadaverous faces,
their brutish expressions, and their frowzy clothes, proclaimed them, to
my eye, as belonging to the vilest blackguard type that the civilized
earth has yet produced--the blackguard of London growth. There they
lounged, with their hands in their pockets and their backs against the
wall, as if they were airing themselves on the outer side of a
public-house--and there stood Jicks, with her legs planted wide apart on
the turf, asserting the rights of property (even at that early age!) and
ordering the rascals off.
"What are you doing there?" asked Oscar sharply.
One of the men appeared to be on the point of making an insolent answer.
The other--the younger and the viler-looking villain of the two--checked
him, and spoke first.
"We've had a longish walk, sir," said the fellow, with an impudent
assumption of humility; "and we've took the liberty of resting our backs
against your wall, and feasting our eyes on the beauty of your young lady
here."
He pointed to the child. Jicks shook her fist at him, and ordered him off
more fiercely than ever.
"There's an inn in the village," said Oscar. "Rest there, if you
please--my house is not an inn."
The elder man made a second effort to speak, beginning with an oath. The
younger checked him again.
"Shut up, Jim!" said the superior blackguard of the two. "The gentleman
recommends the tap at the inn. Come and drink the gentleman's health." He
turned to the child, and took off his hat to her with a low bow. "Wish
you good morning, Miss! You're just the style, you are, that I admire.
Please don't engage yourself to be married till I come back."
His savage companion was so tickled by this delicate pleasantry that he
burst suddenly into a roar of laughter. Arm in arm, the two ruffians
walked off together in the direction of the village. Our funny little
Jicks became a tragic and terrible Jicks, all on a sudden. The child
resented the insolence of the two men as if she really understood it. I
never saw so young a creature in such a furious passion before. She
picked up a stone, and threw it at them before I could stop her. She
screamed, and stamped her tiny feet alternately on the ground, till she
was purple in the face. She threw herself down, and rolled in fury on the
grass. Nothing pacified her but a rash promise of Oscar's (which he was
destined to hear of for many a long day afterwards) to send for the
police, and to have the two men soundly beaten for daring to laugh at
Jicks. She got up from the ground, and dried her eyes with her knuckles,
and fixed a warning look on Oscar. "Mind!" said this curious child, with
her bosom still heaving under the dirty pinafore, "the men are to be
beaten. And Jicks is to see it."
I said nothing to Oscar, at the time, but I felt some secret uneasiness
on the way home--an uneasiness inspired by the appearance of the two men
in the neighborhood of Browndown.
It was impossible to say how long they might have been lurking about the
outside of the house, before the child discovered them. They might have
heard, through the open window, what Oscar had said to me on the subject
of his plates of precious metal; and they might have seen the heavy
packing-case placed in the cart. I felt no apprehension about the safe
arrival of the case at Brighton; the three men in the cart were men
enough to take good care of it. My fears were for the future. Oscar was
living, entirely by himself, in a lonely house, more than half a mile
distant from the village. His fancy for chasing in the precious metals
might have its dangers, as well as its attractions, if it became known
beyond the pastoral limits of Dimchurch. Advancing from one suspicion to
another, I asked myself if the two men had roamed by mere accident into
our remote part of the world--or whether they had deliberately found
their way to Browndown with a purpose in view. Having this doubt in my
mind, and happening to encounter the old nurse, Zillah, in the garden as
I entered the rectory gates with my little charge, I put the question to
her plainly, "Do you see many strangers at Dimchurch?"
"Strangers?" repeated the old woman. "Excepting yourself, ma'am, we see
no strangers here, from one year's end to another."
I determined to say a warning word to Oscar before his precious metals
were sent back to Browndown.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
Blind Love
LUCILLA was at the piano when I entered the sitting-room.
"I wanted you of all things," she said. "I have sent all over the house
in search of you. Where have you been?"
I told her.
She sprang to her feet with a cry of delight.
"You have persuaded him to trust you--you have discovered everything. You
only said 'I have been at Browndown'--and I heard it in your voice. Out
with it! out with it!"
She never moved--she seemed hardly to breathe--while I was telling her
all that had passed at the interview between Oscar and me. As soon as I
had done, she got up in a violent hurry--flushed and eager--and made
straight for her bedroom door.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I want my hat and my stick," she answered.
"You are going out?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Can you ask the question? To Browndown of course!"
I begged her to wait a moment, and hear a word or two that I had to say.
It is, I suppose, almost needless to add that my object in speaking to
her was to protest against the glaring impropriety of her paying a second
visit, in one day, to a man who was a stranger to her. I declared, in the
plainest terms, that such a proceeding would be sufficient, in the
estimation of any civilized community, to put her reputation in peril.
The result of my interference was curious and interesting in the extreme.
It showed me that the virtue called Modesty (I am not speaking of
Decency, mind) is a virtue of purely artificial growth; and that the
successful cultivation of it depends in the first instance, not on the
influence of the tongue, but on the influence of the eye.
Suppose the case of an average young lady (conscious of feeling a first
love) to whom I might have spoken in the sense that I have just
mentioned--what would she have done?
She would assuredly have shown some natural and pretty confusion, and
would, in all human probability, have changed color more or less while
she was listening to me. Lucilla's charming face revealed but one
expression--an expression of disappointment, slightly mixed perhaps with
surprise. I believed her to be then, what I knew her to be afterwards, as
pure a creature as ever walked the earth. And yet, of the natural and
becoming confusion, of the little inevitable feminine changes of color
which I had expected to see, not so much as a vestige appeared--and this,
remember, in the case of a person of unusually sensitive and impulsive
nature: quick, on the most trifling occasions, to feel and to express its
feeling in no ordinary degree.
What did it mean?
It meant that here was one strange side shown to me of the terrible
affliction that darkened her life. It meant that modesty is essentially
the growth of our own consciousness of the eyes of others judging us--and
that blindness is never bashful, for the one simple reason that blindness
cannot see. The most modest girl in existence is bolder with her lover in
the dark than in the light. The female model who "sits" for the first
time in a drawing academy, and who shrinks from the ordeal, is persuaded,
in the last resort, to enter the students' room by having a bandage bound
over her eyes. My poor Lucilla had always the bandage over her eyes. My
poor Lucilla was never to meet her lover in the light. She had grown up
with the passions of a woman--and yet, she had never advanced beyond the
fearless and primitive innocence of a child. Ah, if ever there was a
sacred charge confided to any mortal creature, here surely was a sacred
charge confided to Me! I could not endure to see the poor pretty blind
face turned so insensibly towards mine, after such words as I had just
said to her. She was standing within my reach. I took her by the arm, and
made her sit on my knee. "My dear!" I said, very earnestly, "you must not
go to him again to-day."
"I have got so much to say to him," she answered impatiently, "I want to
tell him how deeply I feel for him, and how anxious I am to make his life
a happier one if I can."
"My dear Lucilla! you can't say this to a young man. It is as good as
telling him, in plain words, that you are fond of him!"
"I _am_ fond of him."
"Hush! hush! Keep it to yourself, until you are sure that _he_ is fond of
_you._ It is the man's place, my love--not the woman's--to own the truth
first in matters of this sort."
"That is very hard on the women. If they feel it first, they ought to own
it first." She paused for a moment, considering with herself--and
abruptly got off my knee. "I _must_ speak to him!" she burst out. "I
_must_ tell him that I have heard his story, and that I think all the
better of him after it, instead of the worse!"
She was again on her way to get her hat. My only chance of stopping her
was to invent a compromise.
"Write him a note," I said--and then suddenly remembered that she was
blind. "You shall dictate," I added; "and I will hold the pen. Be content
with that for to-day. For my sake, Lucilla!"
She yielded--not very willingly, poor thing. But she jealously declined
to let me hold the pen.
"My first note to him must be all written by me," she said. "I can
write--in my own roundabout way. It's long and tiresome; but still I can
do it. Come and see."
She led the way to a writing-table in a corner of the room, and sat for
awhile with the pen in her hand, thinking. Her irresistible smile broke
suddenly like a glow of light over her "Ah!" she exclaimed, "I know how
to tell him what I think."
Guiding the pen in her right hand with the fingers of her left she wrote
slowly, in large childish characters, these words:--"DEAR MR. OSCAR,--I
have heard all about you. Please send the little gold vase.--Your friend,
LUCILLA."
She enclosed and directed the letter, and clapped her hands for joy. "He
will know what _that_ means!" she said gaily.
It was useless to attempt making a second remonstrance. I rang the bell,
under protest (imagine her receiving a present from a gentleman to whom
she had spoken for the first time that morning!)--and the groom was sent
off to Browndown with the letter. In making this concession, I privately
said to myself, "I shall keep a tight hand over Oscar; he is the
manageable person of the two!"
The interval before the return of the groom was not an easy interval to
fill up. I proposed some music. Lucilla was still too full of her new
interest to be able to give her attention to anything else. She suddenly
remembered that her father and her step-mother ought both to be informed
that Mr. Dubourg was a perfectly presentable person at the rectory: she
decided on writing to her father.
On this occasion, she made no difficulty about permitting me to hold the
pen, while she told me what to write. We produced between us rather a
flighty, enthusiastic, high-flown sort of letter. I felt by no means sure
that we should raise a favorable impression of our new neighbor in the
mind of Reverend Finch. That was, however, not my affair. I appeared to
excellent advantage in the matter, as the judicious foreign lady who had
insisted on making inquiries. For the rest, it was a point of honor with
me--writing for a person who was blind--not to change a single word in
the sentences which Lucilla dictated to me. The letter completed, I wrote
the address of the house in Brighton at which Mr. Finch then happened to
be staying; and I was next about to close the envelope in due
course--when Lucilla stopped me.
"Wait a little," she said. "Don't close the letter yet."
I wondered why the envelope was to be left open, and why Lucilla looked a
little confused when she forbade me to close it. Another unexpected
revelation of the influence of their affliction on the natures of the
blind, was waiting to enlighten me on those two points.
After consultation between us, it had been decided, at Lucilla's express
request, that I should inform Mrs. Finch that the mystery at Browndown
was now cleared up. Lucilla openly owned to having no great relish for
the society of her step-mother, or for the duty invariably devolving on
anybody who was long in the company of that fertile lady, of either
finding her handkerchief or holding her baby. A duplicate key of the door
of communication between the two sides of the house was given to me; and
I left the room.
Before performing my errand, I went for a minute into my bedchamber to
put away my hat and parasol. Returning into the corridor, and passing the
door of the sitting-room, I found that it had been left ajar by some one
who had entered after I had left; and I heard Lucilla's voice say, "Take
that letter out of the envelope, and read it to me."
I pursued my way along the passage--very slowly, I own--and I heard the
first sentences of the letter which I had written under Lucilla's
dictation, read aloud to her in the old nurse's voice. The incurable
suspicion of the blind--always abandoned to the same melancholy distrust
of the persons about them; always doubting whether some deceit is not
being practiced on them by the happy people who can see--had urged
Lucilla, even in the trifling matter of the letter, to put me to the
test, behind my back. She was using Zillah's eyes to make sure that I had
really written all that she had dictated to me--exactly as, on many an
after occasion, she used my eyes to make sure of Zillah's complete
performance of tasks allotted to her in the house. No experience of the
faithful devotion of those who live with them ever thoroughly satisfies
the blind. Ah, poor things, always in the dark! always in the dark!
In opening the door of communication, it appeared as if I had also opened
all the doors of all the bedchambers in the rectory. The moment I stepped
into the passage, out popped the children from one room after another,
like rabbits out of their burrows.
"Where is your mamma?" I asked.
The rabbits answered by one universal shriek, and popped back again into
their burrows.
I went down the stairs to try my luck on the ground floor. The window on
the landing had a view over the front garden. I looked out, and saw the
irrepressible Arab of the family, our small chubby Jicks, wandering in
the garden, all by herself; evidently on the watch for her next
opportunity of escaping from the house. This curious little creature
cared nothing for the society of the other children. Indoors, she sat
gravely retired in corners, taking her meals (whenever she could) on the
floor. Out of doors, she roamed till she could walk no longer, and then
lay down anywhere, like a little animal, to sleep. She happened to look
up as I stood at the window. Seeing me, she waved her hand indicatively
in the direction of the rectory gate. "What is it?" I asked. The Arab
answered, "Jicks wants to get out."
At the same moment, the screaming of a baby below, informed me that I was
in the near neighborhood of Mrs. Finch.
I advanced towards the noise, and found myself standing before the open
door of a large store-room at the extreme end of the passage. In the
middle of the room (issuing household commodities to the cook) sat Mrs.
Finch. She was robed this time in a petticoat and a shawl; and she had
the baby and the novel laid together flat on their backs in her lap.
"Eight pounds of soap? Where does it all go to I wonder!" groaned Mrs.
Finch to the accompaniment of the baby's screams. "Five pounds of soda
for the laundry? One would think we did the washing for the whole
village. Six pounds of candles? You must eat candles, like the Russians:
who ever heard of burning six pounds of candles in a week? Ten pounds of
sugar? Who gets it all? I never taste sugar from one year's end to
another. Waste, nothing but waste." Here Mrs. Finch looked my way, and
saw me at the door. "Oh? Madame Pratolungo? How d'ye do? Don't go
away--I've just done. A bottle of blacking? My shoes are a disgrace to
the house. Five pounds of rice? If I had Indian servants, five pounds of
rice would last them for a year. There! take the things away into the
kitchen. Excuse my dress, Madame Pratolungo. How _am_ I to dress, with
all I have got to do? What do you say? My time must indeed be fully
occupied? Ah, that's just where it is! When you have lost half an hour in
the morning, and can't pick it up again--to say nothing of having the
store-room on your mind, and the children's dinner late, and the baby
fractious--one slips on a petticoat and a shawl, and gives it up in
despair. What _can_ I have done with my handkerchief? Would you mind
looking among those bottles behind you? Oh, here it is, under the baby.
Might I trouble you to hold my book for one moment? I think the baby will
be quieter if I put him the other way." Here Mrs. Finch turned the baby
over on his stomach, and patted him briskly on the back. At this change
in his circumstances, the unappeasable infant only roared louder than
ever. His mother appeared to be perfectly unaffected by the noise. This
resigned domestic martyr looked placidly up at me, as I stood before her,
bewildered, with the novel in my hand. "Ah, that's a very interesting
story," she went on. "Plenty of love in it, you know. You have come for
it, haven't you? I remember I promised to lend it to you yesterday."
Before I could answer the cook appeared again, in search of more
household commodities. Mrs. Finch repeated the woman's demands, one by
one as she made them, in tones of despair. "Another bottle of vinegar? I
believe you water the garden with vinegar! More starch? The Queen's
washing, I'm firmly persuaded, doesn't come to so much as ours.
Sandpaper? Sandpaper means wastepaper in this profligate house. I shall
tell your master. I really _can_ NOT make the housekeeping money last at
this rate. Don't go, Madame Pratolungo! I shall have done directly. What!
You must go! Oh, then, put the book back on my lap, please--and look
behind that sack of flour. The first volume slipped down there this
morning, and I haven't had time to pick it up since. (Sandpaper! Do you
think I'm made of sandpaper!) Have you found the first volume? Ah, that's
it. All over flour! there's a hole in the sack I suppose. Twelve sheets
of sandpaper used in a week! What for? I defy any of you to tell me what
for. Waste! waste! shameful sinful waste!" At this point in Mrs. Finch's
lamentations, I made my escape with the book, and left the subject of
Oscar Dubourg to be introduced at a fitter opportunity. The last words I
heard, through the screams of the baby, as I ascended the stairs, were
words still relating to the week's prodigal consumption of sandpaper. Let
us drop a tear, if you please, over the woes of Mrs. Finch, and leave the
British matron apostrophizing domestic economy in the odorous seclusion
of her own storeroom.
I had just related to Lucilla the failure of my expedition to the other
side of the house, when the groom returned, bringing with him the gold
vase, and a letter.
Oscar's answer was judiciously modeled to imitate the brevity of
Lucilla's note. "You have made me a happy man again. When may I follow
the vase?" There, in two sentences, was the whole letter.
I had another discussion with Lucilla, relating to the propriety of our
receiving Oscar in Reverend Finch's absence. It was only possible to
persuade her to wait until she had at least heard from her father, by
consenting to take another walk towards Browndown the next morning. This
new concession satisfied her. She had received his present; she had
exchanged letters with him--that was enough to content her for the time.
"Do you think he is getting fond of me?" she asked, the last thing at
night; taking her gold vase to bed with her, poor dear--exactly as she
might have taken a new toy to bed with her when she was a child. "Give
him time, my love," I answered. "It isn't everybody who can travel at
your pace in such a serious matter as this." My banter had no effect upon
her. "Go away with your candle," she said. "The darkness makes no
difference to _me._ I can see him in my thoughts." She nestled her head
comfortably on the pillows, and tapped me saucily on the cheek, as I bent
over her. "Own the advantage I have over you now," she said. "_You_ can't
see at night without your candle. _I_ could go all over the house, at
this moment, without making a false step anywhere."
When I left her that night, I sincerely believe "poor Miss Finch" was the
happiest woman in England.
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH
Mr. Finch smells Money
A DOMESTIC alarm deferred for some hours our proposed walk to Browndown.
The old nurse, Zillah, was taken ill in the night. She was so little
relieved by such remedies as we were able to apply, that it became
necessary to summon the doctor in the morning. He lived at some distance
from Dimchurch; and he had to send back to his own house for the
medicines required. As a necessary result of these delays, it was close
on one o'clock in the afternoon before the medical remedies had their
effect, and the nurse was sufficiently recovered to permit of our leaving
her in the servant's care.
We had dressed for our walk (Lucilla being ready long before I was), and
had got as far as the garden gate on our way to Browndown--when we heard,
on the other side of the wall, a man's voice, pitched in superbly deep
bass tones, pronouncing these words:
"Believe me, my dear sir, there is not the least difficulty. I have only
to send the cheque to my bankers at Brighton."
Lucilla started, and caught hold of me by the arm.
"My father!" she exclaimed in the utmost astonishment. "Who is he talking
to?"
The key of the gate was in my possession. "What a grand voice your father
has got!" I said, as I took the key out of my pocket. I opened the gate.
There, confronting us on the threshold, arm in arm, as if they had known
each other from childhood, stood Lucilla's father, and--Oscar Dubourg!
Reverend Finch opened the proceedings by folding his daughter
affectionately in his arms.
"My dear child!" he said, "I received your letter--your most interesting
letter--this morning. The moment I read it I felt that I owed a duty to
Mr. Dubourg. As pastor of Dimchurch, it was clearly incumbent on me to
comfort a brother in affliction. I really felt, so to speak, a longing to
hold out the right hand of friendship to this sorely-tried man. I
borrowed my friend's carriage, and drove straight to Browndown. We have
had a long and cordial talk. I have brought Mr. Dubourg home with me. He
must be one of us. My dear child, Mr. Dubourg must be one of us. Let me
introduce you. My eldest daughter--Mr. Dubourg."
He performed the ceremony of presentation, with the most impenetrable
gravity, as if he really believed that Oscar and his daughter now met
each other for the first time!
Never had I set my eyes on a meaner-looking man than this rector. In
height he barely reached up to my shoulder. In substance, he was so
miserably lean that he looked the living picture of starvation. He would
have made his fortune in the streets of London, if he had only gone out
and shown himself to the public in ragged clothes. His face was deeply
pitted with the small-pox. His short grisly hair stood up stiff and
straight on his head like hair fixed in a broom. His small whitish-grey
eyes had a restless, inquisitive, hungry look in them, indescribably
irritating and uncomfortable to see. The one personal distinction he
possessed consisted in his magnificent bass voice--a voice which had no
sort of right to exist in the person who used it. Until one became
accustomed to the contrast, there was something perfectly unbearable in
hearing those superb big tones come out of that contemptible little body.
The famous Latin phrase conveys, after all, the best description I can
give of Reverend Finch. He was in very truth--Voice, and nothing else.
"Madame Pratolungo, no doubt?" he went on, turning to me. "Delighted to
make the acquaintance of my daughter's judicious companion and friend.
You must be one of us--like Mr. Dubourg. Let me introduce you. Madame
Pratolungo--Mr. Dubourg. This is the old side of the rectory, my dear
sir. We had it put in repair--let me see: how long since?--we had it put
in repair just after Mrs. Finch's last confinement but one." (I soon
discovered that Mr. Finch reckoned time by his wife's confinements.) "You
will find it very curious and interesting inside. Lucilla, my child! (It
has pleased Providence, Mr. Dubourg, to afflict my daughter with
blindness. Inscrutable Providence!) Lucilla, this is your side of the
house. Take Mr. Dubourg's arm, and lead the way. Do the honors, my child.
Madame Pratolungo, let me offer you my arm. I regret that I was not
present, when you arrived, to welcome you at the rectory. Consider
yourself--do pray consider yourself--one of us." He stopped, and lowered
his prodigious voice to a confidential growl. "Delightful person, Mr.
Dubourg. I can't tell you how pleased I am with him. And what a sad
story! Cultivate Mr. Dubourg, my dear madam. As a favor to Me--cultivate
Mr. Dubourg!"
He said this with an appearance of the deepest anxiety--and more, he
emphasized it by affectionately squeezing my hand.
I have met with a great many audacious people in my time. But the
audacity of Reverend Finch--persisting to our faces in the assumption
that he had been the first to discover our neighbor, and that Lucilla and
I were perfectly incapable of understanding and appreciating Oscar,
unassisted by him--was entirely without a parallel in my experience. I
asked myself what his conduct in this matter--so entirely unexpected by
Lucilla, as well as by me--could possibly mean. My knowledge of his
character, obtained through his daughter, and my memory of what we heard
him say on the other side of the wall, suggested that his conduct might
mean--Money.
We assembled in the sitting-room.
The only person among us who was quite at his ease was Mr. Finch. He
never let his daughter and his guest alone for a single moment. "My
child, show Mr. Dubourg this; show Mr. Dubourg that. Mr. Dubourg, my
daughter possesses this; my daughter possesses that." So he went on, all
round the room. Oscar appeared to feel a little daunted by the
overwhelming attentions of his new friend. Lucilla was, as I could see,
secretly irritated at finding herself authorized by her father to pay
those attentions to Oscar which she would have preferred offering to him
of her own accord. As for me, I was already beginning to weary of the
patronizing politeness of the little priest with the big voice. It was a
relief to us all, when a message on domestic affairs arrived in the midst
of the proceedings from Mrs. Finch, requesting to see her husband
immediately on the rectory side of the house.
Forced to leave us, Reverend Finch made his farewell speech; taking
Oscar's hand into a kind of paternal custody in both his own hands. He
spoke with such sonorous cordiality, that the china and glass ornaments
on Lucilla's chiffonier actually jingled an accompaniment to his booming
bass notes.
"Come to tea, my dear sir. Without ceremony. To-night at six. We must
keep up your spirits, Mr. Dubourg. Cheerful society, and a little music.
Lucilla, my dear child, you will play for Mr. Dubourg, won't you? Madame
Pratolungo will do the same--at My request--I am sure. We shall make even
dull Dimchurch agreeable to our new neighbor before we have done. What
does the poet say? 'Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere; 'tis nowhere
to be found, or everywhere.' How cheering! how true! Good day; good day."
The glasses left off jingling. Mr. Finch's wizen little legs took him out
of the room.
The moment his back was turned, we both assailed Oscar with the same
question. What had passed at the interview between the rector and
himself? Men are all alike incompetent to satisfy women, when the
question between the sexes is a question of small details. A woman, in
Oscar's position, would have been able to relate to us, not only the
whole conversation with the rector, but every little trifling incident
which had noticeably illustrated it. As things were, we could only
extract from our unsatisfactory man the barest outline of the interview.
The coloring and the filling-in we were left to do for ourselves.
Oscar had, on his own confession, acknowledged his visitor's kindness, by
opening his whole heart to the sympathizing rector, and placing that wary
priest and excellent man of business in possession of the completest
knowledge of all his affairs. In return, Reverend Finch had spoken in the
frankest manner, on his side. He had drawn a sad picture of the
poverty-stricken condition of Dimchurch, viewed as an ecclesiastical
endowment; and he had spoken in such feeling terms of the neglected
condition of the ancient and interesting church, that poor simple Oscar,
smitten with pity, had produced his cheque-book, and had subscribed on
the spot towards the Fund for repairing the ancient round tower. They had
been still occupied with the subject of the tower and the subscription,
when we had opened the garden gate and had let them in. Hearing this, I
now understood the motives under which our reverend friend was acting as
well as if they had been my own. It was plain to my mind that the rector
had taken his financial measure of Oscar, and had privately satisfied
himself, that if he encouraged the two young people in cultivating each
other's society, money (to use his own phrase) might come of it. He had,
as I believed, put forward "the round tower," in the first instance, as a
feeler; and he would follow it up, in due time, by an appeal of a more
personal nature to Oscar's well-filled purse. Brief, he was, in my
opinion, quite sharp enough (after having studied his young friend's
character) to foresee an addition to his income, rather than a
subtraction from it, if the relations between Oscar and his daughter
ended in a marriage.
Whether Lucilla arrived, on her side, at the same conclusion as mine, is
what I cannot venture positively to declare. I can only relate that she
looked ill at ease as the facts came out; and that she took the first
opportunity of extinguishing her father, viewed as a topic of
conversation.
As for Oscar, it was enough for him that he had already secured his place
as friend of the house. He took leave of us in the highest spirits. I had
my eye on them when he and Lucilla said good-bye. She squeezed his hand.
I saw her do it. At the rate at which things were now going on, I began
to ask myself whether Reverend Finch would not appear at tea-time in his
robes of office, and celebrate the marriage of his "sorely-tried" young
friend between the first cup and the second.
At our little social assembly in the evening, nothing passed worthy of
much remark.
Lucilla and I (I cannot resist recording this) were both beautifully
dressed, in honor of the occasion; Mrs. Finch serving us to perfection,
by way of contrast. She had made an immense effort--she was half dressed.
Her evening costume was an ancient green silk skirt (with traces of past
babies visible on it to an experienced eye), topped by the everlasting
blue merino jacket. "I lose everything belonging to me," Mrs. Finch
whispered in my ear. "I have got a body to this dress, and it can't be
found anywhere." The rector's prodigious voice was never silent: the
pompous and plausible little man talked, talked, talked, in deeper and
deeper bass, until the very teacups on the table shuddered under the
influence of him. The elder children, admitted to the family festival,
ate till they could eat no more; stared till they could stare no more;
yawned till they could yawn no more--and then went to bed. Oscar got on
well with everybody. Mrs. Finch was naturally interested in him as one of
twins--though she was also surprised and disappointed at hearing that his
mother had begun and ended with his brother and himself. As for Lucilla,
she sat in silent happiness, absorbed in the inexhaustible delight of
hearing Oscar's voice. She found as many varieties of expression in
listening to her beloved tones, as the rest of us find in looking at our
beloved face. We had music later in the evening--and I then heard, for
the first time, how charmingly Lucilla played. She was a born musician,
with a delicacy and subtlety of touch such as few even of the greatest
_virtuosi_ possess. Oscar was enchanted. In a word, the evening was a
success.
I contrived, when our guest took his departure, to say my contemplated
word to him in private, on the subject of his solitary position at
Browndown.
Those doubts of Oscar's security in his lonely house, which I have
described as having been suggested to me by the discovery of the two
ruffians lurking under the wall, still maintained their place in my mind;
and still urged me to warn him to take precautions of some sort, before
the precious metals which he had sent to London to be melted, came back
to him again. He gave me the opportunity I wanted, by looking at his
watch, and apologizing for protracting his visit to a terribly late hour,
for the country--the hour of midnight.
"Is your servant sitting up for you?" I asked, assuming to be ignorant of
his domestic arrangements.
He pulled out of his pocket a great clumsy key.
"This is my only servant at Browndown," he said. "By four or five in the
afternoon, the people at the inn have done all for me that I want. After
that time, there is nobody in the house but myself."
He shook hands with us. The rector escorted him as far as the front door.
I slipped out while they were saying their last words, and joined Oscar,
when he advanced alone into the garden.
"I want a breath of fresh air," I said. "I'll go with you as far as the
gate."
He began to talk of Lucilla directly. I surprised him by returning
abruptly to the subject of his position at Browndown.
"Do you think it's wise," I asked, "to be all by yourself at night in
such a lonely house as yours? Why don't you have a manservant?"
"I detest strange servants," he answered. "I infinitely prefer being by
myself."
"When do you expect your gold and silver plates to be returned to you?"
"In about a week."
"What would be the value of them, in money--at a rough guess?"
"At a rough guess--about seventy or eighty pounds."
"In a week's time then," I said, "you will have seventy or eighty pounds'
worth of property at Browndown. Property which a thief need only put into
the melting-pot, to have no fear of its being traced into his hands."
Oscar stopped, and looked at me.
"What _can_ you be thinking of!" he asked. "There are no thieves in this
primitive place."
"There are thieves in other places," I answered. "And they may come here.
Have you forgotten those two men whom we caught hanging about Browndown
yesterday?"
He smiled. I had recalled to him a humourous association--nothing more.
"It was not we who caught them," he said. "It was that strange child.
What do you say to my having Jicks to sleep in the house and take care of
me?"
"I am not joking," I rejoined. "I never met with two more ill-looking
villains in my life. The window was open when you were telling me about
the necessity for melting the plates again. They may know as well as we
do, that your gold and silver will be returned to you after a time."
"What an imagination you have got!" he exclaimed. "You see a couple of
shabby excursionists from Brighton, who have wandered to Dimchurch--and
you instantly transform them into a pair of housebreakers in a conspiracy
to rob and murder me! You and my brother Nugent would just suit each
other. His imagination runs away with him, exactly like yours."
"Take my advice," I answered gravely. "Don't persist in sleeping at
Browndown without a living creature in the house with you."
He was in wild good spirits. He kissed my hand, and thanked me in his
voluble exaggerated way for the interest that I took in him. "All right!"
he said, as he opened the gate. "I'll have a living creature in the house
with me. I'll get a dog."
We parted. I had told him what was on my mind. I could do no more. After
all, it might be quite possible that his view was the right one, and mine
the wrong.
CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
Second Appearance of Jicks
FIVE more days passed.
During that interval, we saw our new neighbor constantly. Either Oscar
came to the rectory, or we went to Browndown. Reverend Finch waited, with
a masterly assumption of suspecting nothing, until the relations between
the two young people were ripe enough to develop into relations of
acknowledged love. They were already (under Lucilla's influence)
advancing rapidly to that point. You are not to blame my poor blind girl,
if you please, for frankly encouraging the man she loved. He was the most
backward man--viewed as a suitor--whom I ever met with. The fonder he
grew of her, the more timid and self-distrustful he became. I own I don't
like a modest man; and I cannot honestly say that Mr. Oscar Dubourg, on
closer acquaintance, advanced himself much in my estimation. However,
Lucilla understood him, and that was enough. She was determined to have
the completest possible image of him in her mind. Everybody in the house
who had seen him (the children included) she examined and cross-examined
on the subject of his personal appearance, as she had already examined
and cross-examined me. His features and his color, his height and his
breadth; his ornaments and his clothes--on all these points she collected
evidence, in every direction and in the smallest detail. It was an
especial relief and delight to her to hear, on all sides, that his
complexion was fair. There was no reasoning with her against her blind
horror of dark shades of color, whether seen in men, women, or things.
She was quite unable to account for it; she could only declare it.
"I have the strangest instincts of my own about some things," she said to
me one day. "For instance, I knew that Oscar was bright and fair--I mean
I felt it in myself--on that delightful evening when I first heard the
sound of his voice. It went straight from my ear to my heart; and it
described him, just as the rest of you have described him to me since.
Mrs. Finch tells me his complexion is lighter than mine. Do you think so
too? I am so glad to hear that he is fairer than I am! Did you ever meet
before with a person like me? I have the oddest ideas in this blind head
of mine. I associate life and beauty with light colors, and death and
crime with dark colors. If I married a man with a dark complexion, and if
I recovered my sight afterwards, I should run away from him."
This singular prejudice of hers against dark people was a little annoying
to me on personal grounds. It was a sort of reflection on my own taste.
Between ourselves, the late Doctor Pratolungo was of a fine mahogany
brown all over.
As for affairs in general at Dimchurch, my chronicle of the five days
finds little to dwell on that is worth recording.
We were not startled by any second appearance of the two ruffians at
Browndown--neither was any change made by Oscar in his domestic
establishment. He was favored with more than one visit from our little
wandering Jicks. On each occasion, the child gravely reminded him of his
rash promise to appeal to the police, and visit with corporal punishment
the two ugly strangers who had laughed at her. When were the men to be
beaten? and when was Jicks to see it? Such were the serious questions
with which this young lady regularly opened the proceedings, on each
occasion when she favored Oscar with a morning call.
On the sixth day, the gold and silver plates were returned to Browndown
from the manufactory in London.
The next morning a note arrived for me from Oscar. It ran thus:--
"DEAR MADAME PRATOLUNGO,--I regret to inform you that nothing happened to
me last night. My locks and bolts are in their usual good order; my gold
and silver plates are safe in the workshop: and I myself am now eating my
breakfast with an uncut throat--Yours ever,
"OSCAR."
After this, there was no more to be said. Jicks might persist in
remembering the two ill-looking strangers. Older and wiser people
dismissed them from all further consideration.
Saturday came--making the tenth day since the memorable morning when I
had forced Oscar to disclose himself to me in the little side-room at
Browndown.
In the forenoon we had a visit from him at the rectory. In the afternoon
we went to Browndown, to see him begin a new piece of chasing in gold--a
casket for holding gloves--destined to take its place on Lucilla's
toilet-table when it was done. We left him industriously at work;
determined to go on as long as the daylight lasted.
Early in the evening, Lucilla sat down at her pianoforte; and I paid a
visit by appointment to the rectory side of the house.
Unhappy Mrs. Finch had determined to institute a complete reform of her
wardrobe. She had entreated me to give her the benefit of "my French
taste," in the capacity of confidential critic and adviser. "I can't
afford to buy any new things," said the poor lady. "But a deal might be
done in altering what I have got by me, if a clever person took the
matter up." Who could resist that piteous appeal? I resigned myself to
the baby, the novel, and the children in general; and (Reverend Finch
being out of the way, writing his sermon) I presented myself in Mrs.
Finch's parlor, full of ideas, with my scissors and my pattern-paper
ready in my hand.
We had only begun our operations, when one of the elder children arrived
with a message from the nursery.
It was tea-time; and, as usual, Jicks was missing. She was searched for,
first in the lower regions of the house; secondly in the garden. Not a
trace of her was to be discovered in either quarter. Nobody was surprised
or alarmed. We said, "Oh, dear, she has gone to Browndown again!"--and
immersed ourselves once more in the shabby recesses of Mrs. Finch's
wardrobe.
I had just decided that the blue merino jacket was an article of wearing
apparel which had done its duty, and earned its right to final retirement
from the scene--when a plaintive cry reached my ear, through the open
door which led into the back garden.
I stopped, and looked at Mrs. Finch.
The cry was repeated, louder and nearer: recognizable this time as a cry
in a child's voice. The door of the room had been left ajar, when we sent
the messenger back to the nursery. I threw it open, and found myself face
to face with Jicks in the passage.
I felt every nerve in my body shudder at the sight of the child.
The poor little thing was white and wild with terror. She was incapable
of uttering a word. When I knelt down to fondle and soothe her, she
caught convulsively at my hand, and attempted to raise me. I got on my
feet again. She repeated her dumb cry more loudly--and tried to drag me
out of the house. She was so weak that she staggered under the effort. I
took her up in my arms. One of my hands, as I embraced her, touched the
top of her frock, just below the back of her neck. I felt something on my
fingers. I looked at them. Gracious God! I was stained with blood!
I turned the child round. My own blood froze. Her mother, standing behind
me, screamed with horror.
The dear little thing's white frock was spotted and splashed with wet
blood. Not her own blood. There was not a scratch on her. I looked closer
at the horrid marks. They had been drawn purposely on her--drawn, as it
seemed, with a finger. I took her out into the light. It was writing! A
word had been feebly traced on the back of her frock. I made out
something like the letter "H." Then a letter which it was impossible to
read.
Then another next to it, which might have been "L," or might have been
"J." Then a last letter, which I guessed to be "P."
Was the word--"Help"?
Yes!--traced on the back of the child's frock, with a finger dipped in
blood--"HELP."
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
Discoveries at Browndown
IT is needless to tell you at what conclusion I arrived, as soon as I was
sufficiently myself to think at all.
Thanks to my adventurous past life, I have got the habit of deciding
quickly in serious emergencies of all sorts. In the present emergency--as
I saw it--there were two things to be done. One, to go instantly with
help to Browndown: the other, to keep the knowledge of what had happened
from Lucilla until I could get back again, and prepare her for the
discovery.
I looked at Mrs. Finch. She had dropped helplessly into a chair. "Rouse
yourself!" I said--and shook her. It was no time for sympathizing with
swoons and hysterics. The child was still in my arms; fast yielding, poor
little thing, to the exhaustion of fatigue and terror. I could do nothing
until I had relieved myself of the charge of her. Mrs. Finch looked up at
me, trembling and sobbing. I put the child in her lap. Jicks feebly
resisted being parted from me; but soon gave up, and dropped her weary
little head on her mother's bosom. "Can you take off her frock?" I asked,
with another shake--a good one, this time. The prospect of a domestic
occupation (of any sort) appeared to rouse Mrs. Finch. She looked at the
baby, in its cradle in one corner of the room, and at the novel, reposing
on a chair in another corner of the room. The presence of these two
familiar objects appeared to encourage her. She shivered, she swallowed a
sob, she recovered her breath, she began to undo the frock.
"Put it away carefully," I said; "and say nothing to anybody of what has
happened, until I come back. You can see for yourself that the child is
not hurt. Soothe her, and wait here. Is Mr. Finch in the study?"
Mrs. Finch swallowed another sob, and said, "Yes." The child made a last
effort. "Jicks will go with you," said the indomitable little Arab
faintly. I ran out of the room, and left the three babies--big, little,
and least--together.
After knocking at the study door without getting any reply, I opened it
and went in. Reverend Finch, comfortably prostrate in a large arm-chair
(with his sermon-paper spread out in fair white sheets by his side),
started up, and confronted me in the character of a clergyman that moment
awakened from a sound sleep.
The rector of Dimchurch instantly recovered his dignity.
"I beg your pardon, Madame Pratolungo, I was deep in thought. Please
state your business briefly." Saying those words, he waved his hand
magnificently over his empty sheets of paper, and added in his deepest
bass: "Sermon-day."
I told him in the plainest words what I had seen on his child's frock,
and what I feared had happened at Browndown. He turned deadly pale. If I
ever yet set my two eyes on a man thoroughly frightened, Reverend Finch
was that man.
"Do you anticipate danger?" he inquired. "Is it your opinion that
criminal persons are in, or near, the house?"
"It is my opinion that there is not a moment to be lost," I answered. "We
must go to Browndown; and we must get what help we can on the way."
I opened the door, and waited for him to come out with me. Mr. Finch
(still apparently pre-occupied with the question of the criminal persons)
looked as if he wished himself a hundred miles from his own rectory at
that particular moment. But he was the master of the house; he was the
principal man in the place--he had no other alternative, as matters now
stood, than to take his hat and go.
We went out together into the village. My reverend companion was silent
for the first time in my limited experience of him. We inquired for the
one policeman who patrolled the district. He was away on his rounds. We
asked if anybody had seen the doctor. No: it was not the doctor's day for
visiting Dimchurch. I had heard the landlord of the Gross Hands described
as a capable and respectable man; and I suggested stopping at the inn,
and taking him with us. Mr. Finch instantly brightened at that proposal.
His sense of his own importance rose again, like the mercury in a
thermometer when you put it into a warm bath.
"Exactly what I was about to suggest," he said. "Gootheridge of the Gross
Hands is a very worthy person--for his station in life. Let us have
Gootheridge, by all means. Don't be alarmed, Madame Pratolungo. We are
all in the hands of Providence. It is most fortunate for you that I was
at home. What would you have done without me? Now don't, pray don't, be
alarmed. In case of criminal persons--I have my stick, as you see. I am
not tall; but I possess immense physical strength. I am, so to speak, all
muscle. Feel!"
He held out one of his wizen little arms. It was about half the size of
my arm. If I had not been far too anxious to think of playing tricks, I
should certainly have declared that it was needless, with such a tower of
strength by my side, to disturb the landlord. I dare not assert that Mr.
Finch actually detected the turn my thoughts were taking--I can only
declare that he did certainly shout for Gootheridge in a violent hurry,
the moment we were in sight of the inn.
The landlord came out; and, hearing what our errand was, instantly
consented to join us.
"Take your gun," said Mr. Finch.
Gootheridge took his gun. We hastened on to the house.
"Were Mrs. Gootheridge or your daughter at Browndown today?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am--they were both at Browndown. They finished up their work as
usual--and left the house more than an hour since."
"Did anything out of the common happen while they were there?"
"Nothing that I heard of, ma'am."
I considered with myself for a minute, and ventured on putting a few more
questions to Mr. Gootheridge.
"Have any strangers been seen here this evening?" I inquired.
"Yes, ma'am. Nearly an hour ago two strangers drove by my house in a
chaise."
"In what direction?"
"Coming from Brighton way, and going towards Browndown."
"Did you notice the men?"
"Not particularly, ma'am. I was busy at the time."
A sickening suspicion that the two strangers in the chaise might be the
two men whom I had seen lurking under the wall, forced its way into my
mind. I said no more until we reached the house.
All was quiet. The one sign of anything unusual was in the plain traces
of the passage of wheels over the turf in front of Browndown. The
landlord was the first to see them. "The chaise must have stopped at the
house, sir," he said, addressing himself to the rector.
Reverend Finch was suffering under a second suspension of speech. All he
could say as we approached the door of the silent and solitary
building--and he said that with extreme difficulty--was, "Pray let us be
careful!"
The landlord was the first to reach the door. I was behind him. The
rector--at some little distance--acted as rear-guard, with the South
Downs behind him to retreat upon. Gootheridge rapped smartly on the door,
and called out, "Mr. Dubourg!" There was no answer. There was only a
dreadful silence. The suspense was more than I could endure. I pushed by
the landlord, and turned the handle of the unlocked door.
"Let me go first, ma'am," said Gootheridge.
He pushed by me, in his turn. I followed him close. We entered the house,
and called again. Again there was no answer. We looked into the little
sitting-room on one side of the passage, and into the dining-room on the
other. Both were empty. We went on to the back of the house, where the
room was situated which Oscar called his workshop. When we tried the door
of the workshop it was locked.
We knocked, and called again. The horrid silence was all that
followed--as before.
I tried the keyhole with my finger. The key was not in the lock. I knelt
down, and looked through the keyhole. The next instant, I was up again on
my feet, wild and giddy with horror.
"Burst open the door!" I screamed. "I can just see his hand lying on the
floor!"
The landlord, like the rector, was a little man; and the door, like
everything else at Browndown, was of the clumsiest and heaviest
construction. Unaided by instruments, we should all three together have
been too weak to burst it open. In this difficulty, Reverend Finch proved
to be--for the first time, and also for the last--of some use.
"Stay!" he said. "My friends, if the back garden gate is open, we can get
in by the window."
Neither the landlord nor I had thought of the window. We ran round to the
back of the house; seeing the marks of the chaise-wheels leading in the
same direction. The gate in the wall was wide open. We crossed the little
garden. The window of the workshop--opening to the ground--gave us
admission as the rector had foretold. We entered the room.
There he lay--poor harmless, unlucky Oscar--senseless, in a pool of his
own blood. A blow on the left side of his head had, to all appearance,
felled him on the spot. The wound had split the scalp. Whether it had
also split the skull was more than I was surgeon enough to be able to
say. I had gathered some experience of how to deal with wounded men, when
I served the sacred cause of Freedom with my glorious Pratolungo. Cold
water, vinegar, and linen for bandages--these were all in the house; and
these I called for. Gootheridge found the key of the door flung aside in
a corner of the room. He got the water and the vinegar, while I ran
up-stairs to Oscar's bedroom, and provided myself with some of his
handkerchiefs. In a few minutes, I had a cold water bandage over the
wound, and was bathing his face in vinegar and water. He was still
insensible; but he lived. Reverend Finch--not of the slightest help to
anybody--assumed the duty of feeling Oscar's pulse. He did it as if,
under the circumstances, this was the one meritorious action that could
be performed. He looked as if nobody could feel a pulse but himself.
"Most fortunate," he said, counting the slow, faint throbbing at the poor
fellow's wrist--"most fortunate that I was at home. What would you have
done without me?"
The next necessity was, of course, to send for the doctor, and to get
help, in the meantime, to carry Oscar up-stairs to his bed.
Gootheridge volunteered to borrow a horse, and to ride off for the
doctor. We arranged that he was to send his wife and his wife's brother
to help me. This settled, the one last embarrassment left to deal with,
was the embarrassment of Mr. Finch. Now that we were free from all fear
of encountering bad characters in the house, the _boom-boom_ of the
little man's big voice went on unintermittingly, like a machine at work
in the neighborhood. I had another of my inspirations--sitting on the
floor with Oscar's head on my lap. I gave my reverend companion something
to do. "Look about the room!" I said. "See if the packing-case with the
gold and silver plates is here or not."
Mr. Finch did not quite relish being treated like an ordinary mortal, and
being told what he was to do.
"Compose yourself, Madame Pratolungo," he said. "No hysterical activity,
if you please. This business is in My hands. Quite needless, ma'am, to
tell Me to look for the packing-case."
"Quite needless," I agreed. "I know beforehand the packing-case is gone."
That answer instantly set him fussing about the room. Not a sign of the
case was to be seen.
All doubt in my mind was at an end now. The two ruffians lounging against
the wall had justified, horribly justified, my worst suspicions of them.
On the arrival of Mrs. Gootheridge and her brother, we carried him up to
his room. We laid him on the bed, with his neck-tie off, and his throat
free, and the air blowing over him from the open window. He showed no
sign yet of coming to his senses. But still the pulse went faintly on. No
change was discernible for the worse.
It was useless to hope for the doctor's arrival, before another hour at
least. I felt the necessity of getting back at once to the rectory, so as
to be able to tell Lucilla (with all needful preparation) the melancholy
truth. Otherwise, the news of what had happened would get abroad in the
village, and might come to her ears, in the worst possible way, through
one of the servants. To my infinite relief, Mr. Finch, when I rose to go,
excused himself from accompanying me. He had discovered that it was his
duty, as rector, to give the earliest information of the outrage at
Browndown to the legal authorities. He went his way to the nearest
magistrate. And I went mine--leaving Oscar under the care of Mrs.
Gootheridge and her brother--back to the house. Mr. Finch's last words at
parting reminded me, once more, that we had one thing at least to be
thankful for under the circumstances--sad as they otherwise were.
"Most fortunate, Madame Pratolungo, that I was at home. What would you
have done without me?"
CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH
Events at the Bedside
I AM, if you will be so good as to remember, constitutionally
French--and, therefore, constitutionally averse to distressing myself, if
I can possibly help it. For this reason, I really cannot summon courage
to describe what passed between my blind Lucilla and me when I returned
to our pretty sitting-room. She made me cry at the time; and she would
make me (and perhaps you) cry again now, if I wrote the little melancholy
story of what this tender young creature suffered when I told her my
miserable news. I won't write it; I am dead against tears. They affect
the nose; and my nose is my best feature. Let us use our eyes, my fair
friends, to conquer, not to cry.
Be it enough to say, that when I went back to Browndown, Lucilla went
with me.
I now observed her, for the first time, to be jealous of the eyes of us
happy people who could see. The instant she entered, she insisted on
being near enough to the bed, to hear us, or to touch us, as we waited on
the injured man. This was at once followed by her taking the place
occupied by Mrs. Gootheridge at the bed-head, and herself bathing Oscar's
face and forehead. She was even jealous of _me,_ when she discovered that
I was moistening the bandages on the wound. I irritated her into boldly
kissing the poor insensible face in our presence! The landlady of the
Cross Hands was one of my sort: she took cheerful views of things. "Sweet
on him--eh, ma'am?" she whispered in my ear; "we shall have a wedding in
Dimchurch." In presence of these kissings and whisperings, Mrs.
Gootheridge's brother, as the only man present, began to look very
uncomfortable. This worthy creature belonged to that large and
respectable order of Englishmen, who don't know what to do with their
hands, or how to get out of a room. I took pity on him--he was, I assure
you, a fine man. "Smoke your pipe, sir, in the garden," I said. "We will
call to you from the window, if we want you up here." Mrs. Gootheridge's
brother cast on me one look of unutterable gratitude--and escaped, as if
he had been let out of a trap.
At last, the doctor came.
His first words were an indescribable relief to us. The skull of our poor
Oscar was not injured. There was concussion of the brain, and there was a
scalp-wound--inflicted evidently with a blunt instrument. As to the
wound, I had done all that was necessary in the doctor's absence. As to
the injury to the brain, time and care would put everything right again.
"Make your minds easy, ladies," said this angel of a man. "There is no
reason for feeling the slightest alarm about him."
He came to his senses--that is to say, he opened his eyes and looked
vacantly about him--between four and five hours after the time when we
had found him on the floor of the workshop.
His mind, poor fellow, was still all astray. He recognized nobody. He
imitated the action of writing with his finger; and said very earnestly,
over and over again, "Go home, Jicks; go home, go home!" fancying himself
(as I suppose), lying helpless on the floor, and sending the child back
to us to give the alarm. Later in the night he fell asleep. All through
the next day, he still wandered in his mind when he spoke. It was not
till the day after, that he began feebly to recover his reason. The first
person he recognized was Lucilla. She was engaged at the moment in
brushing his beautiful chestnut hair. To her unutterable joy, he patted
her hand, and murmured her name.
She bent over him; and, under cover of the hair-brush, whispered
something in his ear which made the young fellow's pale face flush, and
his dull eyes brighten with pleasure. A day or two afterwards, she owned
to me that she had said, "Get well, for my sake." She was not in the
least ashamed of having spoken to that plain purpose. On the contrary,
she triumphed in it. "Leave him to me," said Lucilla, in the most
positive manner. "I mean first to cure him. And then I mean to be his
wife."
In a week more, he was in complete possession of his faculties--but still
wretchedly weak, and only gaining ground very slowly after the shock that
he had suffered.
He was now able to tell us, by a little at a time, of what had happened
in the workshop.
After Mrs. Gootheridge and her daughter had quitted the house at their
usual hour, he had gone up to his room; had remained there some little
time; and had then gone downstairs again. On approaching the workshop, he
heard voices talking in whispers in the room. The idea instantly occurred
to him that something was wrong. He softly tried the door, and found it
locked--the robbers having no doubt taken that precaution, to prevent
their being surprised at their thieving work by any person in the house.
The one other way of getting into the room, was the way that we had
tried. He went round to the back garden, and found an empty chaise drawn
up outside the door. This circumstance thoroughly puzzled him. But for
the mysterious locking of the workshop door, it would have suggested to
him nothing more alarming than the arrival of some unexpected visitors.
Eager to solve the mystery, he crossed the garden; and, entering the
room, found himself face to face with the same two men whom Jicks had
discovered ten days previously lounging against the wall.
As he approached the window, they were both busily engaged, with their
backs towards him, in cording up the packing-case which contained the
metal plates.
They rose and faced him as he stepped into the room. The act of robbery
which he found them coolly perpetrating in broad daylight, instantly set
his irritable temper in a flame. He rushed at the younger of the two
men--being the one nearest to him. The ruffian sprang aside out of his
reach; snatched up from the table on which it was lying ready, a short
loaded staff of leather called "a life-preserver;" and struck him with it
on the head, before he had recovered himself, and could face his man once
more.
From that moment, he remembered nothing, until he had regained his
consciousness after the first shock of the blow.
He found himself lying, giddy and bleeding, on the floor; and he saw the
child (who must have strayed into the room while he was senseless)
standing petrified with fear, looking at him. The idea of making use of
her--as the only living being near--to give the alarm, came to him
instinctively the moment he recognized her. He coaxed the little creature
to venture within reach of his hand; and, dipping his finger in the blood
that was flowing from him, sent us the terrible message which I had spelt
out on the back of her frock. That done, he exerted his last remains of
strength to push her gently towards the open window, and direct her to go
home. He fainted from loss of blood, while he was still repeating the
words, "Go home! go home!"--and still seeing, or fancying that he saw,
the child stopping obstinately in the room, stupefied with terror. Of the
time at which she found the courage and the sense to run home, and of all
that had happened after that, he was necessarily ignorant. His next
conscious impression was the impression, already recorded, of seeing
Lucilla sitting by his bedside.
The account of the matter thus given by Oscar, was followed by a
supplementary statement provided by the police.
The machinery of the law was put in action; and the village was kept in a
fever of excitement for days together. Never was there a more complete
investigation--and never was a poorer result achieved. Substantially,
nothing was discovered beyond what I had already found out for myself.
The robbery was declared to have been (as I had supposed) a planned
thing. Though we had none of us noticed them at the rectory, it was
ascertained that the thieves had been at Dimchurch on the day when the
unlucky plates were first delivered at Browndown. Having taken their time
to examine the house, and to make themselves acquainted with the domestic
habits of the persons in it, the rogues had paid their second visit to
the village--no doubt to commit the robbery--on the occasion when we had
discovered them. Foiled by the unexpected return of the gold and silver
to London, they had waited again, had followed the plates back to
Browndown, and had effected their object--thanks to the lonely situation
of the house, and to the murderous blow which had stretched Oscar
insensible on the floor.
More than one witness had met them on the road back to Brighton, with the
packing-case in the chaise. But when they returned to the livery-stables
from which they had hired the vehicle, the case was not to be seen.
Accomplices in Brighton had, in all probability, assisted them in getting
rid of it, and in shifting the plates into ordinary articles of luggage,
which would attract no special attention at the railway station. This was
the explanation given by the police. Right or wrong, the one fact remains
that the villains were not caught, and that the assault and robbery at
Oscar's house may be added to the long list of crimes cleverly enough
committed to defy the vengeance of the law.
For ourselves, we all agreed--led by Lucilla--to indulge in no useless
lamentations, and to be grateful that Oscar had escaped without serious
injury. The mischief was done; and there was an end of it.
In this philosophical spirit, we looked at the affair while our invalid
was recovering. We all plumed ourselves on our excellent good sense--and
(ah, poor stupid human wretches!) we were all fatally wrong. So far from
the mischief being at an end, the mischief had only begun. The true
results of the robbery at Browndown were yet to show themselves, and were
yet to be felt in the strangest and the saddest way by every member of
the little circle assembled at Dimchurch.
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
First Result of the Robbery
BETWEEN five and six weeks passed. Oscar was out of his bed-room, and was
well of his wound.
During this lapse of time, Lucilla steadily pursued that process of her
own of curing him, which was to end in marrying him. Never had I seen
such nursing before--never do I expect to see such nursing again. From
morning to night, she interested him, and kept him in good spirits. The
charming creature actually made her blindness a means of lightening the
weary hours of the man she loved.
Sometimes, she would sit before Oscar's looking-glass, and imitate all
the innumerable tricks, artifices, and vanities of a coquette arraying
herself for conquest--with such wonderful truth and humour of mimicry,
that you would have sworn she possessed the use of her eyes. Sometimes,
she would show him her extraordinary power of calculating by the sound of
a person's voice, the exact position which that person occupied towards
her in a room. Selecting me as the victim, she would first provide
herself with one of the nosegays always placed by her own hands at
Oscar's bedside; and would then tell me to take up my position
noiselessly in any part of the room that I pleased, and to say "Lucilla."
The instant the words were out of my mouth, the nosegay flew from her
hand, and hit me on the face. She never once missed her aim, on any one
of the occasions when this experiment was tried--and she never once
flagged in her childish enjoyment of the exhibition of her own skill.
Nobody was allowed to pour out Oscar's medicine but herself. She knew
when the spoon into which it was to be measured was full, by the sound
which the liquid made in falling into it. When he was able to sit up in
his bed, and when she was standing at the pillow-side, she could tell him
how near his head was to hers, by the change which he produced, when he
bent forward or when he drew back, in the action of the air on her face.
In the same way, she knew as well as he knew, when the sun was out and
when it was behind a cloud--judging by the differing effect of the air,
at such times, on her forehead and on her cheeks.
All the litter of little objects accumulating in a sick-room, she kept in
perfect order on a system of her own. She delighted in putting the room
tidy late in the evening, when we helpless people who could see were
beginning to think of lighting the candles. The time when we could just
discern her, flitting to and fro in the dusk, in her bright summer
dress--now visible as she passed the window, now lost in the shadows at
the end of the room--was the time when she began to clear the tables of
the things that had been wanted in the day, and to replace them by the
things which would be wanted at night. We were only allowed to light the
candles when they showed us the room magically put in order during the
darkness as if the fairies had done it. She laughed scornfully at our
surprise, and said she sincerely pitied the poor useless people who could
only see!
The same pleasure which she had in arranging the room in the dark she
also felt in wandering all over the house in the dark, and in making
herself thoroughly acquainted with every inch of it from top to bottom.
As soon as Oscar was well enough to go down-stairs, she insisted on
leading him.
"You have been so long up in your bedroom," she said, "that you must have
forgotten the rest of the house. Take my arm--and come along. Now we are
out in the passage. Mind! there is a step down, just at this place. And
now a step up again. Here is a sharp corner to turn at the top of the
staircase. And there is a rod out of the stair-carpet, and an awkward
fold in it that might throw you down." So she took him into his own
drawing-room, as if it was he that was blind, and she who had the use of
her eyes. Who could resist such a nurse as this? Is it wonderful that I
heard a sound suspiciously like the sound of a kiss, on that first day of
convalescence, when I happened for a moment to be out of the room? I
strongly suspected her of leading the way in that also. She was so
wonderfully composed when I came back--and he was so wonderfully
flurried.
In a week from his convalescence, Lucilla completed the cure of the
patient. In other words, she received from Oscar an offer of marriage. I
have not the slightest doubt, in my own mind, that he required assistance
in bringing this delicate matter to a climax--and that Lucilla helped
him.
I may be right or I may be wrong about this. But I can at least certify
that Lucilla was in such mad high spirits when she told me the news out
in the garden, on a lovely autumn morning, that she actually danced for
joy--and, more improper still, she made me, at my discreet time of life,
dance too. She took me round the waist, and we waltzed on the grass--Mrs.
Finch standing by in the condemned blue merino jacket (with the baby in
one hand and the novel in the other), and warning us both that if we lost
half an hour out of our day, in whirling each other round the lawn, we
should never succeed in picking it up again in that house. We went on
whirling, for all that, until we were both out of breath. Nothing short
of downright exhaustion could tame Lucilla. As for me, I am, I sincerely
believe, the rashest person of my age now in existence. (What is my age?
Ah, I am always discreet about that; it is the one exception.) Set down
my rashness to my French nationality, my easy conscience, and my
excellent stomach--and let us go on with our story.
There was a private interview at Browndown, later on that day, between
Oscar and Reverend Finch.
Of what passed on that occasion, I was not informed. The rector came back
among us with his head high in the air, strutting magnificently on his
wizen little legs. He embraced his daughter in pathetic silence, and gave
me his hand with a serene smile of condescension worthy of the greatest
humbug (say Louis the Fourteenth) that ever sat on a throne. When he got
the better of his paternal emotion, and began to speak, his voice was so
big that I really thought it must have burst him. The vapor of words in
which he enveloped himself (condensed on paper) amounted to these two
statements. First, that he hailed in Oscar (not having, I suppose,
children enough already of his own) the advent of another son. Secondly,
that he saw the finger of Providence in everything that had happened.
Alas, for me! My irreverent French nature saw nothing but the finger of
Finch--in Oscar's pocket.
The wedding-day was not then actually fixed. It was only generally
arranged that the marriage should take place in about six weeks.
This interval was intended to serve a double purpose. It was to give the
lawyers time to prepare the marriage settlements, and to give Oscar time
to completely recover his health. Some anxiety was felt by all of us on
this latter subject. His wound was well, and his mind was itself again.
But still there was something wrong with him, for all that.
Those curious contradictions in his character which I have already
mentioned, showed themselves more strangely than ever. The man who had
found the courage (when his blood was up) to measure himself alone and
unarmed against two robbers, was now unable to enter the room in which
the struggle had taken place, without trembling from head to foot. He,
who had laughed at me when I begged him not to sleep in the house by
himself, now had two men (a gardener and an indoor servant) domiciled at
Browndown to protect him--and felt no sense of security even in that. He
was constantly dreaming that the ruffian with the "life-preserver" was
attacking him again, or that he was lying bleeding on the floor and
coaxing Jicks to venture within reach of his hand. If any of us hinted at
his occupying himself once more with his favorite art, he stopped his
ears, and entreated us not to renew his horrible associations with the
past. He would not even look at his box of chasing tools. The
doctor--summoned to say what was the matter with him--told us that his
nervous system had been shaken, and frankly acknowledged that there was
nothing to be done but to wait until time set it right again.
I am afraid I must confess that I myself took no very indulgent view of
the patient's case.
It was his duty to exert himself--as I thought. He appeared to me to be
too indolent to make a proper effort to better his own condition. Lucilla
and I had more than one animated discussion about him. On a certain
evening when we were at the piano gossiping, and playing in the
intervals, she was downright angry with me for not sympathizing with her
darling as unreservedly as she did. "I have noticed one thing, Madame
Pratolungo," she said to
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