I deferred to the next day any attempt at making further discoveries.
The last thing at night, I had a momentary impulse to question Zillah. Reflection soon checked it. My experience of the nurse's character told me that she would take refuge in flat denial—and would then inform her mistress of what had happened. I knew enough of Lucilla to know (after what had already passed between us) that a quarrel with me would follow. Things were bad enough already, without making them worse in that way. When the morning came, I resolved to keep a watchful eye on the village post-office, and on the movements of the nurse.
When the morning came, there was a letter for me from abroad.
The address was in the handwriting of one of my sisters. We usually wrote to each other at intervals of a fortnight or three weeks. This letter had followed its predecessor after an interval of less than one week. What did it mean? Good news or bad?
I opened the letter.
It enclosed a telegram, announcing that my poor dear father was lying dangerously wounded at Marseilles. My sisters had already gone to him: they implored me to follow them without one moment of needless delay. Is it necessary to tell the story of this horrible calamity? Of course it begins with a woman and an elopement. Of course it ends with a young man and a duel. Have I not told you already?—Papa was so susceptible; Papa was so brave. Oh, dear, dear! the old story over again. You have an English proverb: "What is bred in the bone—" etcetera, etcetera. Let us drop the veil. I mean, let us end the chapter.
CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST
A Hard Time for Madame Pratolungo
OUGHT I to have been prepared for the calamity which had now fallen on my sisters and myself? If I had looked my own experience of my poor father fairly in the face, would it not have been plain to me that the habits of a life were not likely to be altered at the end of a life? Surely—if I had exerted my intelligence—I might have foreseen that the longer his reformation lasted, the nearer he was to a relapse, and the more obviously probable it became that he would fail to fulfill the hopeful expectations which I had cherished of his conduct in the future? I grant it all. But where are the pattern people who can exert their intelligence—when their intelligence points to one conclusion, and their interests to another? Ah, my dear ladies and gentlemen, there is such a fine strong foundation of stupidity at the bottom of our common humanity—if we only knew it!