"Open the door!" I said. "I am ashamed to be in the same room with you!"
"I don"t wonder at it," he answered. "You may well be ashamed of me. I am ashamed of myself."
There was nothing cynical in his tone, nothing insolent in his manner.
The same man who had just gloried in that abominable way, in his victory over innocence and misfortune, now spoke and looked like a man who was honestly ashamed of himself. If I could only have felt convinced that he was mocking me, or playing the hypocrite with me, I should have known what to do. But I say again--impossible as it seems--he was, beyond all doubt, genuinely penitent for what he had said, the instant after he had said it! With all my experience of humanity, and all my practice in dealing with strange characters, I stopped mid-way between Nugent and the locked door, thoroughly puzzled.
"Do you believe me?" he asked.
"I don"t understand you," I answered.
He took the key of the door out of his pocket, and put it on the table--close to the chair from which I had just risen.
"I lose my head when I talk of her, or think of her," he went on. "I would give everything I possess not to have said what I said just now. No language you can use is too strong to condemn it. The words burst out of me: if Lucilla herself had been present, I couldn"t have controlled them.
Go, if you like. I have no right to keep you here, after behaving as I have done. There is the key, at your service. Only think first, before you leave me. You had something to propose when you came in. You might influence me--you might shame me into behaving like an honorable man. Do as you please. It rests with you."
Which was I, a good Christian? or a contemptible fool? I went back once more to my chair, and determined to give him a last chance.
"That"s kind," he said. "You encourage me; you show me that I am worth trying again. I had a generous impulse in this room, yesterday. It might have been something better than an impulse--if I had not had another temptation set straight in my way."
"What temptation?" I asked.
"Oscar"s letter has told you: Oscar himself put the temptation in my way.
You must have seen it."
"I saw nothing of the sort."
"Doesn"t he tell you that I offered to leave Dimchurch for ever? I meant it. I saw the misery in the poor fellow"s face, when Grosse and I were leading Lucilla out of the room. With my whole heart, I meant it. If he had taken my hand, and had said Good-bye, I should have gone. He wouldn"t take my hand. He insisted on thinking it over by himself. He came back, resolved to make the sacrifice, on his side----"
"Why did you accept the sacrifice?"
"Because he tempted me."
"Tempted you?"
"Yes! What else can you call it--when he offered to leave me free to plead my own cause with Lucilla? What else can you call it--when he showed me a future life, which was a life with Lucilla? Poor, dear, generous fellow, he tempted me to stay when he ought to have encouraged me to go. How could I resist him? Blame the pa.s.sion that has got me body and soul: don"t blame _me!_"
I looked at the book on the table--the book that he had been reading when I entered the room. These sophistical confidences of his were nothing but Rousseau at second hand. Good! If he talked false Rousseau, nothing was left for me but to talk genuine Pratolungo. I let myself go--I was just in the humour for it.
"How can a clever man like you impose on yourself in that way?" I said.
"Your future with Lucilla? You have no future with Lucilla which is not shocking to think of. Suppose--you shall never do it, as long as I live--suppose you married her? Good heavens, what a miserable life it would be for both of you! You love your brother. Do you think you could ever really know a moment"s peace, with one reflection perpetually forcing itself on your mind? "I have cheated Oscar out of the woman whom he loved; I have wasted his life; I have broken his heart." You couldn"t look at her, you couldn"t speak to her, you couldn"t touch her, without feeling it all embittered by that horrible reproach. And she? What sort of wife would she make you, when she knew how you had got her? I don"t know which of the two she would hate most--you or herself. Not a man would pa.s.s her in the street, who would not rouse the thought in her--"I wonder whether _he_ has ever done anything as base as what my husband has done." Not a married woman of her acquaintance, but would make her sick at heart with envy and regret. "Whatever faults he may have, your husband hasn"t won you as my husband won me." You happy? Your married life endurable? Come! I have saved a few pounds, since I have been with Lucilla. I will lay you every farthing I possess, you two would be separated by mutual consent before you had been six months man and wife.
_Now,_ which will you do? Will you start for the Continent, or stay here?
Will you bring Oscar back, like an honorable man? or let him go, and disgrace yourself for ever?"
His eyes sparkled; his color rose. He sprang to his feet, and unlocked the door. What was he going to do? To start for the Continent, or to turn me out of the house?
He called to the servant.
"James!"
"Yes, sir?"
"Make the house fast when Madame Pratolungo and I have left it. I am not coming back again."
"Sir!"
"Pack my portmanteau, and send it after me to-morrow, to Nagle"s Hotel, London."
He closed the door again, and came back to me.
"You refused to take my hand when you came in," he said. "Will you take it now? I leave Browndown when you leave it; and I won"t come back again till I bring Oscar with me.
"Both hands!" I exclaimed--and took him by both hands. I could say nothing more. I could only wonder whether I was waking or sleeping; fit to be put into an asylum, or fit to go at large?
"Come!" he said. "I will see you as far as the rectory gate.
"You can"t go to-night," I answered. "The last train has left hours since."
"I can! I can walk to Brighton, and get a bed there, and leave for London to-morrow morning. Nothing will induce me to pa.s.s another night at Browndown. Stop! One question before I put the lamp out."
"What is it?"
"Did you do anything towards tracing Oscar, when you were in London to-day?"
"I went to a lawyer, and made what arrangements with him I could."
"Here is my pocket-book. Write me down his name and address."
I wrote them. He extinguished the lamp, and led me into the pa.s.sage. The servant was standing there bewildered. "Good night, James. I am going to bring your master back to Browndown." With that explanation, he took up his hat and stick, and gave me his arm. The moment after, we were out in the dark valley, on our way to the village.
On the walk back to the rectory, he talked with a feverish volubility and excitement. Avoiding the slightest reference to the subject discussed at our strange and stormy interview, he returned, with tenfold confidence in himself, to his old boastful a.s.sertion of the great things he was going to do as a painter. The mission which called him to reconcile Humanity with Nature; the superb scale on which he proposed to interpret sympathetic scenery for the benefit of suffering mankind; the prime necessity of understanding him, not as a mere painter, but as Grand Consoler in Art--I had it all over again, by way of satisfying my mind as to his prospects and occupations in his future life. It was only when we stopped at the rectory-gate that he referred to what had pa.s.sed between us--and even then, he only touched on the subject in the briefest possible way.
"Well?" he said. "Have I won back your old regard for me? Do you believe there is a fine side to be found in the nature of Nugent Dubourg? Man is a compound animal. You are a woman in ten thousand. Give me a kiss."
He kissed me, foreign fashion, on both cheeks.
"Now for Oscar!" he shouted cheerfully. He waved his hat, and disappeared in the darkness. I stood at the gate till the last rapid pit-pat of his feet died away in the silence of the night.
An indescribable depression seized on my spirits. I began to doubt him again, the instant I was alone.
"Is there a time coming," I asked myself, "when all that I have done to-night must be done over again?"
I opened the rectory-gate. Mr. Finch intercepted me before I could get round to our side of the house. He held up before me, in solemn triumph, a ma.n.u.script of many pages.
"My Letter," he said. "A Letter of Christian remonstrance, to Nugent Dubourg."
"Nugent Dubourg has left Dimchurch."
With that reply, I told the rector in as few words as possible how my visit to Browndown had ended.