On the Way to the End. First Stage
You will perhaps expect me to give some account of how Oscar bore the discovery of his brother's conduct.
I find it by no means easy to do this. Oscar baffled me.
The first words of any importance which he addressed to me were spoken on our way to the station. Rousing himself from his own thoughts, he said very earnestly----
"I want to know what conclusion you have drawn from Mrs. Finch's letter."
Naturally enough, under the circumstances, I tried to avoid answering him. He was not to be put off in that way.
"You will do me a favor," he went on, "if you will reply to my question. The letter has bred in me such a vile suspicion of my dear good brother, who never deceived me in his life, that I would rather believe I am out of my mind than believe in my own interpretation of it. Do you infer from what Mrs. Finch writes, that Nugent has presented himself to Lucilla under my name? Do you believe that he has persuaded her to leave her friends, under the impression that she has yielded to My entreaties, and trusted herself to My care?"
I answered in the fewest and plainest words, "That is what your brother has done."
A sudden change passed over him. My reply seemed to have set his last doubts at rest in an instant.
"That is what my brother has done," he repeated. "After all that I sacrificed to him--after all that I trusted to his honor--when I left England." He paused, and considered a little. "What does such a man deserve?" he went on; speaking to himself, in a low threatening tone that startled me.
"He deserves," I said, "what he will get when we reach England. You have only to show yourself to make him repent his wickedness to the last day of his life. Are exposure and defeat not punishment enough for such a man as Nugent?" I stopped, and waited for his answer.
He turned his face away from me, and said no more until we arrived at the station. There, he drew me aside for a moment out of hearing of the strangers about us.
"Why should I take you away from your father?" he asked abruptly.
"I am behaving very selfishly--and I only see it now."
"Make your mind easy," I said. "If I had not met you to-day, I should have gone to England to-morrow for Lucilla's sake."
"But now you have met me," he persisted, "why shouldn't I spare you the journey? I could write and tell you every thing--without putting you to this fatigue and expense."
"If you say a word more," I answered, "I shall think you have some reason of your own for wishing to go to England by yourself."
He cast one quick suspicious look at me--and led the way back to the booking-office without uttering another word. I was not at all satisfied with him. I thought his conduct very strange.
In silence we took our tickets; in silence, we got into the railway-carriage. I attempted to say something encouraging, when we started. "Don't notice me," was all he replied. "You will be doing me a kindness, if you will let me bear it by myself." In my former experience of him, he had talked his way out of all his other troubles--he had clamorously demanded the expression of my sympathy with him. In this greatest trouble, he was like another being; I hardly knew him again! Were the hidden reserves in his nature (stirred up by another serious call on them) showing themselves once more on the surface as they had shown themselves already, on the fatal first day when Lucilla tried her sight? In that way I accounted for the mere superficial change in him, at the time. What was actually going on below the surface it defied my ingenuity even to guess. Perhaps I shall best describe the sort of vague apprehension which he aroused in me--after what had passed between us at the station--by saying that I would not for worlds have allowed him to go to England by himself.
Left as I now was to my own resources, I occupied the first hours of the journey, in considering what course it would be safest and best for us to take, on reaching England.
I decided, in the first place, that we ought to go straight to Dimchurch. If any tidings had been obtained of Lucilla, they would be sure to have received them at the rectory. Our route, after reaching Paris, must be therefore by way of Dieppe; thence across the Channel to Newhaven, near Brighton--and so to Dimchurch.
In the second place--assuming it to be always possible that we might see Lucilla at the rectory--the risk of abruptly presenting Oscar to her in his own proper person might, for all I knew to the contrary, be a very serious one. It would relieve us, as I thought, of a grave responsibility, if we warned Grosse of our arrival, and so enabled him to be present, if he thought it necessary, in the interests of Lucilla's health. I put this view (as also my plan for returning by way of Dieppe) to Oscar. He briefly consented to everything--he ungraciously left it all to me.
Accordingly, on our arrival at Lyons, having some time for refreshment at our disposal before we went on, I telegraphed to Mr. Finch at the rectory, and to Grosse in London; informing them (as well as I could calculate it) that, if we were lucky in catching trains and steamboats, Oscar and I might be in Dimchurch in good time, on the next night--that is to say, on the night of the eighteenth. In any case, they were to expect us at the earliest possible moment.
These difficulties disposed of, and a little store of refreshment for the night packed in my basket, we re-entered the train, for our long journey to Paris.
Among the new passengers who joined us at Lyons was a gentleman whose face was English, and whose dress was the dress of a clergyman. For the first time in my life, I hailed the appearance of a priest with a feeling of relief. The reason was this. From the moment when I had read Mrs. Finch's letter until now, a horrid doubt, which a priest was just the man to solve, had laid its leaden weight on my mind--and, I firmly believe, on Oscar's mind as well. Had time enough passed, since Lucilla had left Ramsgate, to allow of Nugent's marrying her, under his brother's name?
As the train rolled out of the station, I, the enemy of priests, began to make myself agreeable to this priest. He was young and shy--but I conquered him. Just as the other travelers were beginning (with the exception of Oscar) to compose themselves to sleep, I put my case to the clergyman. "A and B, sir, lady and gentleman, both of age, leave one place in England, and go to live in another place, on the fifth of this month--how soon, if you please, can they be lawfully married after that?"
"I presume you mean in church?" said the young clergyman.
"In church, of course." (To that extent I believed I might answer for Lucilla, without any fear of making a mistake.)
"They may be married by License," said the clergyman--"provided one of them continues to reside in that other place to which they traveled on the fifth--on the twenty-first, or (possibly) even the twentieth of this month."
"Not before?"
"Certainly not before."
It was then the night of the seventeenth. I gave my companion's hand a little squeeze in the dark. Here was a glimpse of encourage