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Read books online » Fiction » Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins (heaven official's blessing novel english txt) 📖

Book online «Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins (heaven official's blessing novel english txt) đŸ“–Â». Author Wilkie Collins



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darted out on us from behind a tree, and, seizing Oscar round the legs, hailed him affectionately at the top of her voice as “The Blue Man!” Lucilla instantly stopped, and said, “Who do you call ‘The Blue Man’?” Jicks answered boldly, “Oscar.” Lucilla caught the child up in her arms. “Why do you call Oscar ‘The Blue Man’?” she asked. Jicks pointed to Oscar’s face, and then, remembering Lucilla’s blindness, appealed to me. “You tell her!” said Jicks, in high glee. Oscar seized my hand, and looked at me imploringly. I determined not to interfere. It was bad enough to remain passive, and to let her be kept in the dark. Actively, I was resolved to take no part in deceiving her. Her color rose; she put Jicks down on the ground. “Are you both dumb?” she asked. “Oscar! I insist on knowing it—how have you got the nickname of ‘The Blue Man’?” Left helpless, Oscar (to my disgust) took refuge in a lie—and, worse still, a clumsy lie. He declared that he had got his nickname in the nursery, at the time of Lucilla’s absence in London, by one day painting his face in the character of Bluebeard to amuse the children! If Lucilla had felt the faintest suspicion of the truth, blind as she was, she must now have discovered it. As things were, Oscar annoyed and irritated her. I could see that it cost her a struggle to suppress something like a feeling of contempt for him. “Amuse the children, the next time, in some other way,” she said. “Though I can’t see you, still I don’t like to hear of your disfiguring your face by painting it blue.” With that answer, she walked away a little by herself, evidently disappointed in her betrothed husband for the first time in her experience of him.

He cast another imploring look at me. “Did you hear what she said about my face?” he whispered.

“You have lost an excellent opportunity of speaking out,” I answered. “I believe you will bitterly regret the folly and the cruelty of deceiving her.”

He shook his head, with the immovable obstinacy of a weak man.

“Nugent doesn’t think as you do,” he said, handing me the letter. “Read that bit there—now Lucilla is out of hearing.”

I paused for a moment before I could read. The resemblance between the twins extended even to their handwritings! If I had picked Nugent’s letter up, I should have handed it to Oscar as a letter of Oscar’s own writing.

The paragraph to which he pointed, only contained these lines:—“Your last relieves my anxiety about your health. I entirely agree with you that any personal sacrifice which cures you of those horrible attacks is a sacrifice wisely made. As to your keeping the change a secret from the young lady, I can only say that I suppose you know best how to act in this emergency. I will abstain from forming any opinion of my own until we meet.”

I handed Oscar back the letter.

“There is no very warm approval there of the course you are taking,” I said. “The only difference between your brother and me is, that he suspends his opinion, and that I express mine.”

“I have no fear of my brother,” Oscar answered. “Nugent will feel for me, and understand me, when he comes to Browndown. In the meantime, this shall not happen again.”

He stooped over Jicks. The child, while we were talking, had laid herself down luxuriously on the grass, and was singing to herself little snatches of a nursery song. Oscar pulled her up on her legs rather roughly. He was out of temper with her, as well as with himself.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I am going to see Mr. Finch,” he answered, “and to have Jicks kept for the future out of Lucilla’s garden.”

“Does Mr. Finch approve of your silence?”

“Mr. Finch, Madame Pratolungo, leaves me to decide on a matter which concerns nobody but Lucilla and myself.”

After that reply, there was an end of all further remonstrance from me, as a matter of course.

Oscar walked off with his prisoner to the house. Jicks trotted along by his side, unconscious of the mischief she had done, singing another verse of the nursery song. I rejoined Lucilla, with my mind made up as to the line of conduct I should adopt in the future. If Oscar did succeed in keeping the truth concealed from her, I was positively resolved, come what might of it, to enlighten her before they were married, with my own lips. What! after pledging myself to keep the secret? Yes. Perish the promise which makes me false to a person whom I love! I despise such promises from the bottom of my heart.

Two days more slipped by—and then a telegram found its way to Browndown. Oscar came running to us, at the rectory, with his news. Nugent had landed at Liverpool. Oscar was to expect him at Dimchurch on the next day.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD He sets us All Right

I HAVE thus far quite inadvertently omitted to mention one of the prominent virtues of Reverend Finch. He was an accomplished master of that particular form of human persecution which is called reading aloud; and he inflicted his accomplishment on his family circle at every available opportunity. Of what we suffered on these occasions, I shall say nothing. Let it be enough to mention that the rector thoroughly enjoyed the pleasure of hearing his own magnificent voice.

There was no escaping Mr. Finch when the rage for “reading” seized on him. Now on one pretense, and now on another, he descended on us unfortunate women, book in hand; seated us at one end of the room; placed himself at the other; opened his dreadful mouth; and fired words at us, like shots at a target, by the hour together. Sometimes he gave us poetical readings from Shakespeare or Milton; and sometimes Parliamentary speeches by Burke or Sheridan. Read what he might, he made such a noise and such a fuss over it; he put his own individuality so prominently in the foremost place, and he kept the poets or the orators whom he was supposed to be interpreting so far in the back ground, that they lost every trace of character of their own, and became one and all perfectly intolerable reflections of Mr. Finch. I date my first unhappy doubts of the supreme excellence of Shakespeare’s poetry from the rector’s readings; and I attribute to the same exasperating cause my implacable hostility (on every question of the time) to the policy of Mr. Burke. On the evening when Nugent Dubourg was expected at Browndown—and when we particularly wanted to be left alone to dress ourselves, and to gossip by anticipation about the expected visitor—Mr. Finch was seized with one of his periodical rages for firing off words at his family, after tea. He selected Hamlet as the medium for exhibiting his voice, on this occasion; and he declared, as the principal motive for taking his elocutionary exercise, that the object he especially had in view was the benefit of poor Me!

“My good creature, I accidentally heard you reading to Lucilla, the other day. It was very nice, as far as it went—very nice indeed. But you will allow me—as a person, Madame Pratolungo, possessing considerable practice in the art of reading aloud—to observe that you might be benefited by a hint or two. I will give you a few ideas. (Mrs. Finch! I propose giving Madame Pratolungo a few ideas.) Pay particular attention, if you please, to the Pauses, and to the management of the Voice at the end of the lines. Lucilla, my child, you are interested in this. The perfecting of Madame Pratolungo is a matter of considerable importance to you. Don’t go away.”

Lucilla and I happened, on that evening, to be guests at the rectory table. It was one of the regular occasions on which we left our own side of the house, and joined the family at (what Mr. Finch called) “the pastor’s evening meal.” He had got his wife; he had got his eldest daughter; he had got your humble servant. A horrid smile of enjoyment overspread the reverend gentleman’s face, as he surveyed us from the opposite end of the room, and opened his vocal fire on his audience of three.

“Hamlet: Act the First; Scene the First. Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle. Francisco on his post” (Mr. Finch). “Enter to him Bernardo” (Mr. Finch). “Who’s there?” “Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.” (Mrs. Finch unfolds herself—she suckles the baby, and tries to look as if she was having an intellectual treat.) “Francisco and Bernardo converse in bass—Boom-boom-boom. Enter Horatio and Marcellus” (Mr. Finch and Mr. Finch.) “Stand! Who’s there?” “Friends to this ground.” “And liegemen to the Dane.” (Madame Pratolungo begins to feel the elocutionary exposition of Shakespeare, where she always feels it, in her legs. She tries to sit still on her chair. Useless! She is suffering under the malady known to her by bitter experience of Mr. Finch, as the Hamlet-Fidgets.) Bernardo and Franciso, Horatio and Marcellus, converse—Boom-boom-boom. “Enter Ghost of Hamlet’s Father.” Mr. Finch makes an awful pause. In the supernatural silence, we can hear the baby sucking. Mrs. Finch enjoys her intellectual treat. Madame Pratolungo fidgets. Lucilla catches the infection, and fidgets too. Marcellus-Finch goes on. “Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio.” Bernardo-Finch backs him: “Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.” Lucilla-Finch inserts herself in the dialogue: “Papa, I am very sorry; I have had a nervous headache all day; please excuse me if I take a turn in the garden.” The rector makes another awful pause, and glares at his daughter. (Exit Lucilla.) Horatio looks at the Ghost, and takes up the dialogue: “Most like; it harrows me “—Boom-boom-boom. The baby is satiated. Mrs. Finch wants her handkerchief. Madame Pratolungo seizes the opportunity of moving her distracted legs, and finds the handkerchief. Mr. Finch pauses—glares–goes on again—reaches the second scene. “Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius, and Lords Attendant.” All Mr. Finch! oh, my legs! my legs! all Mr. Finch, and Boom-boom-boom. Third scene. “Enter Laertes and Ophelia.” (Both Rectors of Dimchurch; both with deep bass voices; both about five feet high, pitted with the small-pox, and adorned round the neck with dingy white cravats.) Mr. Finch goes on and on and on. Mrs. Finch and the baby simultaneously close their eyes in slumber. Madame Pratolungo suffers such tortures of restlessness in her lower limbs, that she longs for a skilled surgeon to take out his knife and deliver her from her own legs. Mr. Finch advances in deeper and deeper bass, in keener and keener enjoyment, to the Fourth Scene. (“Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.”) Mercy! what do I hear? Is relief approaching to us from the world outside? Are there footsteps in the hall? Yes! Mrs. Finch opens her eyes; Mrs. Finch hears the footsteps, and rejoices in them as I do. Reverend Hamlet hears nothing but his own voice. He begins the scene: “The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold.” The door opens. The rector feels a gust of air, dramatically appropriate, just at the right moment. He looks round. If it is a servant, let that domestic person tremble! No—not a servant. Guests—heavens be praised, guests. Welcome, gentlemen—welcome! No more Hamlet, tonight, thanks to You. Enter two Characters who must be instantly attended to:—Mr. Oscar Dubourg; introducing his twin-brother from America, Mr. Nugent Dubourg.

 

Astonishment at the extraordinary resemblance between them, was the one impression felt by all three of us, as the brothers entered the room.

Exactly alike in their height, in their walk, in their features, and in their voices. Both with the same colored hair

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