It proved to be the letter from Nugent (already inserted at the close of Lucilla's Journal), informing Miss Batchford of her niece's flight from Ramsgate, and signed in Oscar's name. The only words which it is necessary to repeat here, are these:--"She accompanies me, at my express request, to the house of a married lady who is a relative of mine, and under whose care she will remain, until the time arrives for our marriage."
Those lines instantly lightened my heart of the burden that had oppressed it on the journey. Nugent's married relative was Oscar's married relative too. Oscar had only to tell us where the lady lived--and Lucilla would be found!
I stopped Mr. Finch, in the act of maddening Oscar by administering pastoral consolation to him.
"Leave it to me," I said, showing him the letter. "I know what you want."
The rector stared at me indignantly. I turned to Mrs. Finch.
"We have had a weary journey," I went on. "Oscar is not so well used to traveling as I am. Where is his room?"
Mrs. Finch rose to show the way. Her husband opened his lips to interfere.
"Leave it to me," I repeated. "I understand him; and you don't."
For once in his life, the Pope of Dimchurch was reduced to silence. His amazement at my audacity defied even his powers of expression. I took Oscar's arm, and said, "You are worn out. Go to your room. I will make you something warm and bring it up to you myself in a few minutes." He neither looked at me nor answered me--he yielded silently and followed Mrs. Finch. I took from the sideboard, on which supper was waiting, the materials I wanted; set the kettle boiling; made my renovating mixture; and advanced to the door with it--followed from first to last, move where I might, by the staring and scandalized eyes of Mr. Finch. The moment in which I opened the door was also the moment in which the rector recovered himself. "Permit me to inquire, Madame Pratolungo," he said with his loftiest emphasis, "in what capacity are You here?"
"In the capacity of Oscar's friend," I answered. "You will get rid of us both to-morrow." I banged the door behind me, and went up-stairs. If I had been Mr. Finch's wife, I believe I should have ended in making quite an agreeable man of him.
Mrs. Finch met me in the passage on the first floor, and pointed out Oscar's room. I found him walking backwards and forwards restlessly. The first words he said alluded to his brother's letter. I had arranged not to disturb him by any reference to that painful matter until the next morning; and I tried to change the topic. It was useless. There was an anxiety in his mind which was not to be dismissed at will. He insisted on my instantly setting that anxiety at rest.
"I don't want to see the letter," he said. "I only want to know all that it says about Lucilla."
"All that it says may be summed up in this. Lucilla is perfectly safe."
He caught me by the arm, and looked me searchingly in the face.
"Where?" he asked. With him?"
"With a married lady who is a relative of his."
He dropped my arm, and considered for a moment.
"My cousin at Sydenham!" he exclaimed.
"Do you know the house?"
"Perfectly well."
"We will go there to-morrow. Let that content you for tonight. Get to rest."
I gave him my hand. He took it mechanically--absorbed in his own thoughts.
"Didn't I say something foolish down stairs?" he asked, putting the question suddenly, with an odd suspicious look at me.
"You were quite worn out," I said, consolingly. "Nobody noticed it."
"You are sure of that?"
"Quite sure. Good night."
I left the room, feeling much as I had felt at the station at Marseilles. I was not satisfied with him. I thought his conduct very strange.
On returning to the parlor, I found nobody there but Mrs. Finch. The rector's offended dignity had left the rector no honorable alternative but to withdraw to his own room. I ate my supper in peace; and Mrs. Finch (rocking the cradle with her foot) chattered away to her heart's content about all that had happened in my absence.
I gathered, here and there, from what she said, some particulars worth mentioning.
The new disagreement between Mr. Finch and Miss Batchford, which had driven the old lady out of the rectory almost as soon as she set foot in it, had originated in Mr. Finch's exasperating composure when he heard of his daughter's flight. He supposed, of course, that Lucilla had left Ramsgate with Oscar--whose signed settlements on his future wife were safe in Mr. Finch's possession. It was only when Miss Batchford had communicated with Grosse, and when the discovery followed which revealed the penniless Nugent as the man who had eloped with Lucilla, that Mr. Finch's parental anxiety (seeing no money likely to come of it) became roused to action. He, Miss Batchford, and Grosse, had all, in their various ways, done their best to trace the fugitives--and had all alike been baffled by the impossibility of discovering the residence of the lady mentioned in Nugent's letter. My telegram, announcing my return to England with Oscar, had inspired them with their first hope of being able to interfere, and stop the marriage before it was too late.
The occurrence of Grosse's name in Mrs. Finch's rambling narrative, recalled to my memory what the rector had told me at the garden gate. I had not yet received the letter which the German had sent to wait my arrival at Dimchurch. After a short search, we found it--where it had been contemptuously thrown by Mr. Finch--on the parlor table.
A few lines comprised the whole letter. Grosse informed me that he had so fretted himself about Lucilla, that he had been attacked by "a visitation of gouts." It was impossible to move his "foots" without instantly plunging into the torture of the infernal regions. "If it is you, my goot dear, who are going to find her," he concluded, "come to me first in London. I have something most dismal-serious to say to you about our poor little Feench's eyes."
No words can tell how that last sentence startled and grieved me. Mrs. Finch increased my anxiety and alarm by repeating what she had heard Miss Batchford say, during her brief visit to the rectory, on the subject of Lucilla's sight. Grosse had been seriously dissatisfied with the state of his patient's eyes, when he had seen them as long ago as the fourth of the month; and, on the morning of the next day, the servant had reported Lucilla as being hardly able to distinguish objects in the view from the window of her room. Later on the same day, she had secretly left Ramsgate; and Grosse's letter proved that she had not been near her surgical attendant since.
Weary as I was after the journey, this miserable news kept me waking long after I had gone to my bed. The next morning, I was up with the servants--impatient to start for London, by the first train.
CHAPTER THE FORTY-EIGHTH
On the Way to the End. Second Stage
EARLY riser as I was, I found that Oscar had risen earlier still. He had left the rectory and had disturbed Mr. Gootheridge's morning slumbers by an application at the inn for the key of Browndown.