Poor Miss Finch

Wilkie Collins


Poor Miss Finch Page 45

I gave them the signal; and they each took one of her hands at the same moment. This time, she waited a little longer before she spoke. When she did speak, she was right once more. She turned smiling, towards the left side, pointed to him as he stood by her, and said, "Oscar!"

We were all three equally surprised. I examined Oscar's hand and Nugent's hand alternately. Except the fatal difference in the color, they were, to all intents and purposes, the same hands--the same size, the same shape, the same texture of skin; no scar or mark on the hand of one to distinguish it from the hand of the other. By what mysterious process of divination had she succeeded in discovering which was which?

She was unwilling, or unable, to reply to that question plainly.

"Something in me answers to one of them and not to the other," she said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I don't know. It answers to Oscar. It doesn't answer to Nugent--that's all."

She stopped any further inquiries by proposing that we should finish the evening with some music, in her own sitting-room, on the other side of the house. When we were seated together at the pianoforte--with the twin-brothers established as our audience at the other end of the room--she whispered in my ear:

"I'll tell you!"

"Tell me what?"

"How I know which is which when they both of them take my hand. When Oscar takes it, a delicious tingle runs from his hand into mine, and steals all over me. I can't describe it any better than that."

"I understand. And when Nugent takes your hand, what do you feel?"

"Nothing!"

"And that is how you found out the difference between them down-stairs?"

"That is how I shall always find out the difference between them. If Oscar's brother ever attempts to play tricks upon my blindness (he is quite capable of it--he laughed at my blindness!), that is how I shall find him out. I told you before I saw him that I hated him. I hate him still."

"My dear Lucilla!"

"I hate him still!"

She struck the first chords on the piano, with an obstinate frown on her pretty brow. Our little evening concert began.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH

Nugent puzzles Madame Pratolungo

I WAS far from sharing Lucilla's opinion of Nugent Dubourg. His enormous self-confidence was, to my mind, too amusing to be in the least offensive. I liked the spirit and gaiety of the young fellow. He came much nearer than his brother did to my ideal of the dash and resolution which ought to distinguish a man on the right side of thirty. So far as my experience of them went, Nugent was (in the popular English phrase) good company--and Oscar was not. My nationality leads me to attach great importance to social qualities. The higher virtues of a man only show themselves occasionally on compulsion, His social qualities come familiarly in contact with us every day of our lives. I like to be cheerful: I am all for the social qualities.

There was one little obstacle in those early days, which set itself up between my sympathies and Nugent.

I was thoroughly at a loss to understand the impression which Lucilla had produced on him.

The same constraint which had, in such a marked manner, subdued him at his first interview with her, still fettered him in the time when they became better acquainted with one another. He was never in high spirits in her presence. Mr. Finch could talk him down without difficulty, if Mr. Finch's daughter happened to be by. Even when he was vaporing about himself, and telling us of the wonderful things he meant to do in Painting, Lucilla's appearance was enough to check him, if she happened to come into the room. On the first day when he showed me his American sketches (I define them, if you ask my private opinion, as false pretenses of Art, by a dashing amateur)--on that day, he was in full flow; marching up and down the room, smacking his forehead, and announcing himself quite gravely as "the coming man" in landscape painting.

"My mission, Madame Pratolungo, is to reconcile Humanity and Nature. I propose to show (on an immense scale) how Nature (in her grandest aspects) can adapt herself to the spiritual wants of mankind. In your joy or your sorrow, Nature has subtle sympathies with you, if you only know where to look for them. My pictures--no! my poems in color--will show you. Multiply my works, as they certainly will be multiplied, by means of prints--and what does Art become in my hands? A Priesthood! In what aspect do I present myself to the public? As a mere landscape painter? No! As Grand Consoler!" In the midst of this rhapsody (how wonderfully he resembled Oscar in his bursts of excitement while he was talking!)--in the full torrent of his predictions of his own coming greatness, Lucilla quietly entered the room. The "Grand Consoler" shut up his portfolio; dropped Painting on the spot; asked for Music, and sat down, a model of conventional propriety, in a corner of the room. I inquired afterwards, why he had checked himself when she came in. "Did I?" he said. "I don't know why." The thing was really inexplicable. He honestly admired her--one had only to notice him when he was looking at her to see it. He had not the faintest suspicion of her dislike for him--she carefully concealed it for Oscar's sake. He felt genuine sympathy for her in her affliction--his mad idea that her sight might yet be restored, was the natural offspring of a true feeling for her. He was not unfavorable to his brother's marriage--on the contrary, he ruffled the rector's dignity (he was always giving offense to Mr. Finch) by suggesting that the marriage might be hastened. I heard him say the words myself:--"The church is close by. Why can't you put on your surplice and make Oscar happy to-morrow, after breakfast?" More even than this, he showed the most vivid interest--like a woman's interest rather than a man's--in learning how the love-affair between Oscar and Lucilla had begun. I referred him, so far as Oscar was concerned, to his brother as the fountain-head of information. He did not decline to consult his brother. He did not own to me that he felt any difficulty in doing so. He simply dropped Oscar in silence; and asked about Lucilla. How had it begun on her side? I reminded him of his brother's romantic position at Dimchurch and told him to judge for himself of the effect it would produce on the excitable imagination of a young girl. He declined to judge for himself; he persisted in appealing to me. When I told the little love-story of the two young people, one event in it appeared to make a very strong impression on him. The effect produced on Lucilla (when she first heard it) by the sound of his brother's voice, dwelt strangely on his mind. He failed to understand it; he ridiculed it; he declined to believe it. I was obliged to remind him that Lucilla was blind, and that love which, in other cases, first finds its way to the heart through the eyes, could only, in her case, first find its way through the ears. My explanation, thus offered, had its effect: it set him thinking. "The sound of his voice!" he said to himself, still turning the problem over and over in his mind.

Wilkie Collins

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