My aunt looked up from her plate with a little start--not interested, as I was prepared to hear, in the serious question of luncheon, but in the opinion which my medical adviser was likely to give of the state of my health.
"I am anxious to hear what Mr. Grosse says about you to-morrow," the old lady began. "I shall insist on his giving me a far more complete report of you than he gave last time. The recovery of your sight appears to me, my dear, to be quite complete."
"Do you want me to be cured, aunt, because you want to get away?" I asked. "Are you weary of Ramsgate?"
Miss Batchford"s quick temper flashed at me out of Miss Batchford"s bright old eyes.
"I am weary of keeping a letter of yours," she answered, with a look of disgust.
"A letter of mine!" I exclaimed.
"Yes. A letter which is only to be given to you, when Mr. Grosse p.r.o.nounces that you are quite yourself again."
Oscar--who had not taken the slightest interest in the conversation thus far--suddenly stopped, with his fork half way to his mouth; changed color; and looked eagerly at my aunt.
"What letter?" I asked. "Who gave it to you? Why am I not to see it until I am quite myself again?"
Miss Batchford obstinately shook her head three times, in answer to those three questions.
"I hate secrets and mysteries," she said impatiently. "This is a secret and a mystery--and I long to have done with it. That is all. I have said too much already. I shall say no more."
All my entreaties were of no avail. My aunt"s quick temper had evidently led her into committing an imprudence of some sort. Having done that, she was now provokingly determined not to make bad worse. Nothing that I could say would induce her to open her lips on the subject of the mysterious letter. "Wait till Mr. Grosse comes to-morrow." That was the only reply I could get.
As for Oscar, this little incident appeared to have an effect on him which added immensely to the curiosity that my aunt had roused in me.
He listened with breathless attention while I was trying to induce Miss Batchford to answer my questions. When I gave it up, he pushed away his plate, and ate no more. On the other hand (though generally the most temperate of men) he drank a great deal of wine, both at dinner and after. In the evening, he made so many mistakes in playing cards with my aunt, that she dismissed him from the game in disgrace. He sat in a corner for the rest of the time, pretending to listen while I was playing the piano--really lost to me and my music; buried, fathoms deep, in some uneasy thoughts of his own.
When he took his leave, he whispered these words in my ear; anxiously pressing my hand while he spoke:
"I must see you alone to-morrow, before Grosse comes. Can you manage it?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"At the stairs on the cliff, at eleven o"clock."
On that, he left me. But one question has pursued me ever since. Does Oscar know the writer of the mysterious letter? I firmly believe he does.
To-morrow will prove whether I am right or wrong. How I long for to-morrow to come!
CHAPTER THE FORTY-FOURTH
Lucilla"s Journal, continued
_September_ 4th.
I MARK this day as one of the saddest days of my life. Oscar has shown Madame Pratolungo to me, in her true colors. He has reasoned out this miserable matter with a plainness which it is impossible for me to resist. I have thrown away my love and my confidence on a false woman: there is no sense of honor, no feeling of grat.i.tude or of delicacy in her nature. And I once thought her--it sickens me to recall it! I will see her no more.
[Note.--Did it ever occur to you to be obliged to copy out, with your own hand, this sort of opinion of your own character? I can recommend the sensation produced as something quite new, and the temptation to add a line or two on your own account to be as nearly as possible beyond mortal resistance.--P.]
Oscar and I met at the stairs, at eleven o"clock, as we had arranged.
He took me to the west pier. At that hour of the morning (excepting a few sailors who paid no heed to us) the place was a solitude. It was one of the loveliest days of the season. When we were tired of pacing to and fro, we could sit down under the mellow sunshine, and enjoy the balmy sea air. In that pure light, with all those lovely colors about us, there was something, to my mind, horribly and shamefully out of place in the talk that engrossed us--talk that still turned, hour after hour, on nothing but plots and lies, cruelty, ingrat.i.tude, and deceit!
I managed to ask my first question so as to make him enter on the subject at once--without wasting time in phrases to prepare me for what was to come.
"When my aunt mentioned that letter at dinner yesterday," I said, "I fancied that you knew something about it. Was I right?"
"Very nearly right," he answered. "I can"t say I knew anything about it.
I only suspected that it was the production of an enemy of yours and mine."
"Not Madame Pratolungo?"
"Yes! Madame Pratolungo."
I disagreed with him at the outset. Madame Pratolungo and my aunt had quarreled about politics. Any correspondence between them--a confidential correspondence especially--seemed to be one of the most unlikely things that could take place. I asked Oscar if he could guess what the letter contained, and why it was not to be given to me until Grosse reported that I was quite cured.
"I can"t guess at the contents--I can only guess at the object of the letter," he said.
"What is it?"
"The object which she has had in view from the first--to place every possible obstacle in the way of my marrying you."
"What interest can she have in doing that?"
"My brother"s interest."
"Forgive me, Oscar. I cannot believe it of her."
We were walking, while these words were pa.s.sing between us. When I said that, he stopped, and looked at me very earnestly.
"You believed it of her, when you answered my letter," he said.
I admitted that.
"I believed your letter," I replied; "and I shared your opinion of her as long as she was in the same house with me. Her presence fed my anger and my horror of her in some way that I can"t account for. Now she has left me--now I have had time to think--there is something in her absence that pleads for her, and tortures me with doubts if I have done right. I can"t explain it--I don"t understand it. I only know that so it is."
He still looked at me more and more attentively. "Your good opinion of her must have been very firmly rooted to a.s.sert itself in this obstinate manner," he said. "What can she have done to deserve it?"
If I had looked back through all my old recollections of her, and had recalled them one by one, it would only have ended in making me cry. And yet, I felt that I ought to stand up for her as long as I could. I managed to meet the difficulty in this way.
"I will tell you what she did," I said, "after I received your letter.
Fortunately for me, she was not very well that morning; and she breakfasted in bed. I had plenty of time to compose myself, and to caution Zillah (who read your letter to me), before we met for the first time that day. On the previous day, I had felt hurt and offended with her for the manner in which she accounted for your absence from Browndown. I thought she was not treating me with the same confidence which I should have placed in her, if our positions had been reversed. When I next saw her, having your warning in my mind, I made my excuses, and said what I thought she would expect me to say, under the circ.u.mstances. In my excitement and my wretchedness, I daresay I over-acted my part. At any rate, I roused the suspicion in her that something was wrong. She not only asked me if anything had happened, she went the length of saying, in so many words, that she thought she saw a change in me. I stopped it there, by declaring that I did not understand her. She must have seen that I was not telling the truth: she must have known as well as I knew that I was concealing something from her. For all that, not one word more escaped her lips. A proud delicacy--I saw it as plainly in her face, as I now see you--a proud delicacy silenced her; she looked wounded and hurt.
I have been thinking of that look, since I have been here. I have asked myself (what did not occur to me at the time) if a false woman, who knew herself to be guilty, would have behaved in that way? Surely a false woman would have set her wits against mine, and have tried to lead me into betraying to her what discoveries I had really made? Oscar! that delicate silence, that wounded look, _will_ plead for her when I think of her in her absence! I can _not_ feel as satisfied as I once did, that she is the abominable creature you declare her to be. I know you are incapable of deceiving me--I know you believe what you say. But is it not possible that appearances have misled you? Can you really be sure that you have not made some dreadful mistake?"
Without answering me, he suddenly stopped at a seat under the stone parapet of the pier, and signed to me to sit down by him. I obeyed.