Poor Miss Finch Part 30

Oscar hesitated.

"Say you love me!"

Oscar whispered it.

"Out loud!"

Endurance has its limits: I began to lose my temper. She could not have been more superbly indifferent to my presence, if there had been a cat in the room instead of a lady.

"Permit me to inform you," I said, "that I have not (as you appear to suppose) left the room."

She took no notice. She went on with her commands, rising irrepressibly from one amatory climax to another.

"Give me a kiss!"

Unhappy Oscar--sacrificed between us--blushed. Stop! Don't revel prematurely in the greatest enjoyment a reader has--namely, catching a writer out in a mistake. I have not forgotten that his disfigured complexion would prevent his blush from showing on the surface. I beg to say I saw it under the surface--saw it in his expression: I repeat--he blushed.

I felt it necessary to a.s.sert myself for the second time.

"I have only one object in remaining in the room, Miss Finch. I merely wish to know whether you refuse to accept my excuses.

"Oscar! give me a kiss!"

He still hesitated. She threw her arm round his neck. My duty to myself was plain--my duty was to go.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Dubourg," I said--and turned to the door. She heard me cross the room, and called to me to stop. I paused. There was a gla.s.s on the wall opposite to me. On the authority of the gla.s.s, I beg to mention that I paused in my most becoming manner. Grace tempered with dignity: dignity tempered with grace.

"Madame Pratolungo!"

"Miss Finch?"

"This is the man who is not half so agreeable as his brother. Look!"

She tightened her hold round his neck, and gave him--ostentatiously gave him--the kiss which he was ashamed to give _her._ I advanced, in contemptuous silence, to the door. My att.i.tude expressed disgust accompanied by sorrow: sorrow, accompanied by disgust.

"Madame Pratolungo!"

I made no answer.

"This is the man whom I should never have loved if I had happened to meet his brother first. Look!"

She put both arms round his neck; and gave him a shower of kisses all in one. I indignantly withdrew. The door had been imperfectly closed when I had entered the room: it was ajar. I pulled it open--and found myself face to face with Nugent Dubourg, standing by the table, with his letter from Liverpool in his hand! He must have certainly heard Lucilla cast my own words back in my teeth--if he had heard no more.

I stopped short; looking at him in silent surprise. He smiled, and held out the open letter to me. Before we could speak, we heard the door of the room closed. Oscar had followed me out (shutting the door behind him) to apologize for Lucilla's behavior to me. He explained what had happened to his brother. Nugent nodded, and tapped his open letter smartly. "Leave me to manage it. I shall give you something better to do than quarreling among yourselves. You will hear what it is directly. In the meantime, I have got a message for our friend at the inn. Gootheridge is on his way here, to speak to me about altering the stable. Run and tell him I have other business on hand, and I can't keep my appointment to-day. Stop!

Give him this at the same time, and ask him to leave it at the rectory."

He took one of his visiting cards out of the case, wrote a few lines on it in pencil, and handed it to his brother. Oscar (always ready to go on errands for Nugent) hurried out to meet the landlord. Nugent turned to me.

"The German is in England," he said. "Now I may open my lips."

"At once!" I exclaimed.

"At once. I have put off my own business (as you heard) in favor of this.

My friend will be in London to-morrow. I mean to get my authority to consult him to-day, and to start tomorrow for town. Prepare yourself to meet one of the strangest characters you ever set eyes on! You saw me write on my card. It was a message to Mr. Finch, asking him to join us immediately (on important family business) at Browndown. As Lucilla's father, he has a voice in the matter. When Oscar comes back, and when the rector joins us, our domestic privy council will be complete."

He spoke with his customary spirit; he moved with his customary briskness--he had become quite himself again, since I had seen him last.

"I am stagnating in this place," he went on, seeing that I noticed the change in him. "It puts me in spirits again, having something to do. I am not like Oscar--I must have action to stir my blood--action to keep me from fretting over my anxieties. How do you think I found the witness to my brother's innocence at the Trial? In that way. I said to myself, 'I shall go mad if I don't do something.' I did something--and saved Oscar.

I am going to do something again. Mark my words! Now I am stirring in it, Lucilla will recover her sight."

"This is a serious matter," I said. "Pray give it serious consideration."

"Consideration?" he repeated. "I hate the word. I always decide on the instant. If I am wrong in my view of Lucilla's case, consideration is of no earthly use. If I am right, every day's delay is a day of sight lost to the blind. I'll wait for Oscar and Mr. Finch; and then I'll open the business. Why are we talking in the hall? Come in!"

He led the way to the sitting-room. I had a new interest, now, in going back. Still, Lucilla's behavior hung on my mind. Suppose she treated me with renewed coldness and keener contempt? I remained standing at the table in the hall. Nugent looked back at me, over his shoulder.

"Nonsense!" he said. "I'll set things right. It's beneath a woman like you to take notice of what a girl says in a pet. Come in!"

I doubt if I should have yielded to please any other living man. But, there is no denying it, some people have a magnetic attracting power over others. Nugent had that power over me. Against my own will--for I was really hurt and offended by her usage of me--I went back with him into the room.

Lucilla was still sitting in the place which she had occupied when I withdrew. On hearing the door open, and a man's footsteps entering, she of course a.s.sumed that the man was Oscar. She had penetrated his object in leaving her to follow me out, and it had not improved her temper.

"Oh?" she said. "You have come back at last? I thought you had offered yourself as Madame Pratolungo's escort to the rectory." She stopped, with a sudden frown. Her quick ears had detected my return into the room.

"Oscar!" she exclaimed, "what does this mean? Madame Pratolungo and I have nothing more to say to each other. What has she come back for? Why don't you answer? This is infamous! I shall leave the room!"

The utterance of that final threat was followed so rapidly by its execution that, before Nugent (standing between her and the door) could get out of her way, she came in violent contact with him. She instantly caught him by the arm, and shook him angrily. "What does your silence mean? Is it at Madame Pratolungo's instigation that you are insulting me?"

I had just opened my lips to make one more attempt at reconciliation, by saying some pacifying words to her--when she planted that last sting in me. French flesh and blood (whatever English flesh and blood might have done) could bear no more. I silently turned my back on her, in a rage.

At the same moment, Nugent's eyes brightened as if a new idea had struck him. He gave me one significant look--and answered her in his brother's character. Whether he was possessed at the moment by some demon of mischief; or whether he had the idea of trying to make Oscar's peace for him, before Oscar returned--was more than I could say at the time. I ought to have stopped it--I know. But my temper was in a flame. I was as spiteful as a cat and as fierce as a bear. I said to myself (in your English idiom), She wants taking down a peg; quite right, Mr. Nugent; do it. Shocking! shameful! no words are bad enough for me: give it me well.

Ah, Heaven! what is a human being in a rage? On my sacred word of honor, nothing but a human beast! The next time it happens to You, look at yourself in the gla.s.s; and you will find your soul gone out of you at your face, and nothing left but an animal--and a bad, a villainous bad animal too!

"You ask what my silence means?" said Nugent.

He had only to model his articulation on his brother's slower manner of speaking as distinguished from his own, to be his brother himself. In saying those few first words, he did it so dexterously that I could have sworn--if I had not seen him standing before me--Oscar was in the room.

"Yes," she said, "I ask that."

"I am silent," he answered, "because I am waiting."

"What are you waiting for?"

"To hear you make your apologies to Madame Pratolungo."

She started back a step. Submissive Oscar was taking a peremptory tone with her for the first time in his life. Submissive Oscar, instead of giving her time to speak, sternly went on.

"Madame Pratolungo has made her excuses to _you._ You ought to receive them; you ought to reciprocate them. It is distressing to see you and hear you. You are behaving ungratefully to your best friend."

She raised her face, she raised her hands, in blank amazement: she looked as if she distrusted her own ears.