"I don't understand myself," she said. "I never was so happy in my life. And yet I feel almost ready to cry!" She turned towards Grosse. "Come here, papa. You have been very good to me to-day. I will give you a kiss." She laid her hands lightly on his shoulders; kissed his lined and wrinkled cheek; gave me a little squeeze round the waist--and left us. Grosse turned sharply to the window, and used his huge silk handkerchief for a purpose to which (I suspect) it had not been put for many a long year past.
CHAPTER THE FORTIETH
Traces of Nugent
"MADAME PRATOLUNGO!"
"Herr Grosse?"
He put his handkerchief back into his pocket, and turned round to me from the window with his face composed again, and his tea-caddy snuff-box in his hand.
"Now you have seen for your own self," he said, with an emphatic rap on the box, "do you dare tell that sweet girls which of them it is that has gone his ways and left her for ever?"
It is not easy to find a limit to the obstinacy of women--when men expect them to acknowledge themselves to have been wrong. After what I had seen, I no more dared tell her than he did. I was only too obstinate to acknowledge it to him--just yet.
"Mind this!" he went on. Whether you shake her with frights, or whether you heat her with rages, or whether you wound her with griefs--it all goes straight the same to those weak new eyes of hers. They are so weak and so new, that I must ask once more for my beds here to-night, for to see to-morrow if I have not already tried them too much. Now, for the last time of asking, have you got the abominable courage in you to tell her the truth?"
He had found my limit at last. I was obliged to own (heartily as I disliked doing it) that there was, for the present, no choice left but mercifully to conceal the truth. Having gone this length I next attempted to consult him as to the safest manner in which I could account to Lucilla for Oscar's absence. He refused (as a man) to recognize the slightest necessity for giving me (as a woman) any advice on a question of evasions and excuses. "I have not lived all my years in the world, without learning something," he said. "When it comes to walking upon eggshells and telling fips, the womens have nothing to learn from the mens.--Will you take a little stroll-walk with me in the garden? I have one odder thing to say to you: and I am hungry and thirsty both togedder--for This."
He produced "This," in the form of his pipe. We left the room at once for our stroll in the garden.
Having solaced himself with his first mouthful of tobacco-smoke, he startled me by announcing that he meant to remove Lucilla forthwith from Dimchurch to the sea-side. In doing this, he was actuated by two motives--first, the medical motive of strengthening her constitution: second, the personal motive of preserving her from making painful discoveries by placing her out of reach of the gossip of the rectory and the village. Grosse had the lowest opinion of Mr. Finch and his household. His dislike and distrust of the rector, in particular, knew no bounds: he characterized the Pope of Dimchurch as an Ape with a long tongue, and a man-and-monkey capacity for doing mischief. Ramsgate was the watering-place which he had fixed on. It was at a safe distance from Dimchurch; and it was near enough to London to enable him to visit Lucilla frequently. The one thing needed was my co-operation in the new plan. If I was at liberty to take charge of Lucilla, he would speak to the Ape with the long tongue; and we might start for Ramsgate before the end of the week.
Was there anything to prevent me from carrying out the arrangement proposed?
There was nothing to prevent me. My one other anxiety apart from Lucilla--anxiety about good Papa--had now, for some time, been happily set at rest. Letter after letter from my sisters in France, brought me always the same cheering news. My evergreen parent had at last discovered that he was no longer in the first bloom of his youth. He had resigned to his juniors, with pathetic expressions of regret, the making of love and the fighting of duels. Ravaged by past passions, this dear innocent had now found a refuge from swords, pistols, and the sex, in collecting butterflies and playing on the guitar. I was free wholly to devote myself to Lucilla; and I honestly rejoiced in the prospect before me. Alone with her, and away from the rectory (where there was always danger off gossip reaching her ears) I could rely on myself to protect her from harm in the present, and to preserve her for Oscar in the future. With all my heart I agreed to the arrangements as Grosse proposed them. When we parted in the garden, he went round to the rector's side of the house to announce (in his medical capacity) the decision at which he had arrived--while I, on my side, went back to Lucilla to make the best excuses that I could invent for Oscar, and to prepare her for our speedy removal from Dimchurch.
"Gone, without coming to say good-bye! Gone, without even writing to me!"
There was the first impression I produced on her, when I had done my best to account harmlessly for Oscar's absence. I had, as I thought, taken the shortest and simplest way out of the difficulty, by merely inverting the truth. In other words, by telling her that Nugent had got into some serious embarrassment abroad, and that Oscar had been called away at a moment's notice, to follow him and help him. It was in vain that I reminded her of Oscar's well-known horror of leave-takings of all kinds; in vain that I represented the urgency of the matter as leaving him no alternative but to confide his excuses and his farewells to me; in vain that I promised for him that he would write to her at the first opportunity. She listened, without conviction. The more perseveringly I tried to account for it, the more perseveringly she dwelt on Oscar's unaccountable disregard of her claims on his consideration for her. As for our journey to Ramsgate, it was impossible to interest her in the subject. I gave it up in despair.
"Surely Oscar has left some address at which I can write to him?" she said.
I could only answer that he was not sure enough of his movements to be able to do that before he went away.
"It is more provoking than you think," she went on. "I believe Oscar is afraid to bring his unfortunate brother into my presence. The blue face startled me when I saw it, I know. But I have quite got over that. I feel none of the absurd terror of the poor man which I felt when I was blind. Now that I have seen for myself what he is really like, I can feel for him. I wanted to tell Oscar this--I wanted to say that he might bring his brother to live with us if he liked--I wanted to prevent (just what has happened,) his going away from me when he wishes to see his brother. You are using me very hardly among you; and I have some reason to complain of it."
While she was talking in this mortifying manner, I felt some consolation nevertheless. Oscar's disfigured complexion would not be the terrible obstacle in the way of his restoration to Lucilla that I had feared.