Poor Miss Finch - Wilkie Collins (best books to read for beginners txt) 📗

“You will have it?” he said.

“I will have it?”

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

“Do you mind walking on again?” he asked.

I silently rose on my side, and put my arm in his. We walked on slowly towards the end of the pier. Arrived there, he stood still, and spoke those hard first words—looking out over the broad blue waters: not looking at me.

“I won’t ask you to take anything for granted, on my assertion only,” he began. “The woman’s own words, the woman’s own actions, shall prove her guilty.”

I interrupted him by a question.

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

“You first made me suspect her, by what you said of her at Browndown,” he answered. “Now carry your memory back to the time I have already mentioned in my letter—when she betrayed herself to you in the rectory garden. Is it true that she said you would have fallen in love with Nugent, if you had met him first instead of me?”

“It is true that she said it,” I answered. “At a moment,” I added, “when her temper had got the better of her—and when mine had got the better of me.”

“Advance the hour a little,” he went on, “to the time when she followed you to Browndown. Was she still out of temper, when she made her excuses to you?”

“No.”

“Did she interfere, when Nugent took advantage of your blindness to make you believe you were talking to me?”

“No.”

“Was she out of temper then?”

I still defended her. “She might well have been angry,” I said. “She had made her excuses to me in the kindest manner; and I had received them with the most unpardonable rudeness.”

My defence produced no effect on him. He summed it up coolly so far. “She compared me disadvantageously with Nugent; and she allowed Nugent to personate me in speaking to you, without interfering to stop it. In both these cases, her temper excuses and accounts for her conduct. Very good. We may, or may not, differ so far. Before we go farther, let us—if we can—agree on one unanswerable fact. Which of us two brothers was her favorite, from the first?”

About that, there could be no doubt. I admitted at once that Nugent was her favorite. And more than this, I remembered accusing her myself of never having done justice to Oscar from the first.

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

Oscar went on.

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

I persisted in defending her. “She did that out of sympathy with me,” I said.

He surprised me by again accepting my view of the matter, without attempting to dispute it.

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

“And your brother,” I added, “took the other side, and tried to persuade me to marry you first. How can you reconcile that with what you have told me–-”

He interposed before I could say more. “Don’t bring my brother into the inquiry,” he said. “My brother, at that time, could still behave like an honorable man, and sacrifice his own feelings to his duty to me. Let us strictly confine ourselves, for the present, to what Madame Pratolungo said and did. And let us advance again to a few minutes later on the same day, when our little domestic debate had ended. My brother was the first to go. Then, you retired, and left Madame Pratolungo and me alone in the room. Do you remember?”

I remembered perfectly.

“You had bitterly disappointed me,” I said. “You had shown no sympathy with my eagerness to be restored to the blessing of sight. You made objections and started difficulties. I recollect speaking to you with some of the bitterness that I felt—blaming you for not believing in my future as I believed in it, and hoping as I hoped—and then leaving you, and locking myself up in my own room.”

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

“Madame Pratolungo shared your hard opinion of me, on that occasion,” he proceeded; “and expressed it in infinitely stronger terms. She betrayed herself to you in the rectory garden. She betrayed herself to me, after you had left us together in the sitting-room. Her hasty temper again, beyond all doubt! I quite agree with you. What she said to me in your absence, she would never have said if she had been mistress of herself.”

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

“I was afraid of losing you,” he answered.

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

“Remember,” he said, “that I had unhappily offended you that day, and that you have not heard yet what Madame Pratolungo had the audacity to say to me under those circumstances.”

“What did she say to you?”

“This:—‘It would have been a happier prospect for Lucilla, if she had been going to marry your brother, instead of marrying you.’ I repeat literally: those were the words.”

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

“Are you really sure?” I asked him. “Can she have said anything so cruel to you as that?”

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

“Is that my writing?” he asked.

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

“Read it!” he said; “and judge for yourself.”

[Note.—You have made your acquaintance with this letter already, in my thirty-second chapter. I had said those foolish words to Oscar (as you will find in my record of the time), under the influence of a natural indignation, which any other woman with a spark of spirit in her would have felt in my place. Instead of personally remonstrating with me, Oscar had (as usual) gone home, and written me a letter of expostulation. Having, on my side, had time to cool—and feeling the absurdity of our exchanging letters when we were within a few minutes’ walk of each other—I had gone straight to Browndown, on receiving the letter: first crumpling it up, and (as I supposed) throwing it into the fire. After personally setting myself right with Oscar, I had returned to the rectory; and had there heard that Nugent had been to see me in my absence, had waited a little while alone in the sitting-room, and had gone away again. When I tell you that the letter which he was now showing to Lucilla, was that same letter of Oscar’s, which I had (as I believed) destroyed, you will understand that I had thrown it into the fender instead of into the fire; and that I failed to see it in the fender on my return, simply because Nugent had seen it first, and had taken it away with him. These particulars are described in greater detail in the chapter to which I have referred; the letter itself being there inserted at full length. However, I will save you the trouble of looking back—I know how you hate trouble!—by transcribing literally what I find before me in the Journal. The original letter is pasted on the page: I will copy it from the page for the second time. Am I not good to you? What author by profession would do as much for you as this? I am afraid I am praising myself! Let Lucilla proceed.—P.]

I took the letter from him and read it. At my request, he has permitted me to keep it. The letter is my justification for thinking of Madame Pratolungo as I now think of her. I place it here, before I write another line in my Journal.

“MADAME PRATOLUNGO,—You have distressed and pained me more than I can say. There are faults, and serious ones, on my side, I know. I heartily beg your pardon for anything that I may have said or done to offend you. I cannot submit to your hard verdict on me. If you knew how I adore Lucilla, you would make allowances for me—you would understand me better than you do. I cannot get your last cruel words out of my ears. I cannot meet you again without some explanation of them. You stabbed me to the heart, when you said this evening that it would be a happier prospect for Lucilla if she had been going to marry my brother instead of marrying me. I hope you did not really mean that? Will you please write and tell me whether you did or not?

“OSCAR.”

My first proceeding, after reading those lines, was of course to put my arm again in his, and to draw him as close to me as close could be. My second proceeding followed in due time. I asked, naturally, for Madame Pratolungo’s answer to that most affectionate and most touching letter.

“I have no answer to show you,” he said.

“You have lost it?” I asked.

“I never had it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Madame Pratolungo never answered my letter.”

I made him repeat that—once, twice. Was it not incredible that such an appeal could be made to any woman not utterly depraved—and be left unnoticed? Twice he reiterated the same answer. Twice he declared on his

honor that not a line of reply had been returned to him. She was then utterly depraved? No! there was a last excuse left that justice and friendship might still make for her. I made it.

“There is but one explanation of her conduct,” I said. “She never received the letter. Where did you send it to?”

“To the rectory.”

“Who took it?”

“My own servant.”

“He may have lost it on the way, and have been afraid to tell you. Or the servant at the rectory may have forgotten to deliver it.

Oscar shook his head. “Quite impossible! I know Madame Pratolungo received the letter.”

“How?”

“I found it crumpled up in a corner inside the fender, in your sitting-room at the rectory.”

“Had it been opened?”

“It had been opened. She had received it; she had read it; and she had not thrown quite far enough to throw it into the fire. Now, Lucilla! Is Madame Pratolungo an injured woman? and am I a man who has slandered her?”

There was another public seat, a few paces distant from us. I could stand