Poor Miss Finch

by Wilkie Collins

I asked for news of Grosse as we went in. The rector actually found some comparatively high notes in his prodigious voice, to express his amazement at my audacity in speaking to him of anybody but Oscar.

"Oh, dear, dear me!" cried Mr. Finch, impatiently conceding to me one precious moment of his attention. "Don't bother about Grosse! Grosse is ill in London. There is a note for you from Grosse.—Take care of the door-step, dear Oscar," he went on, in his deepest and gravest bass notes. "Mrs. Finch is so anxious to see you. We have both looked forward to your arrival with such eager hope—such impatient affection, so to speak. Let me put down your hat. Ah! how you must have suffered! Share my trust in an all-wise Providence, and meet this trial with cheerful submission as I do. All is not lost yet. Bear up! bear up!" He threw open the parlor door. "Mrs. Finch! compose yourself. Our dear adopted son. Our afflicted Oscar!"

Is it necessary to say what Mrs. Finch was about, and how Mrs. Finch looked?

There were the three unchangeable institutions—the novel, the baby, and the missing pocket-handkerchief There was the gaudy jacket over the long trailing dressing-gown—and the damp lady inside them, damp as ever! Receiving Oscar with a mouth drawn down at the corners, and a head that shook sadly in sympathy with him, Mrs. Finch's face underwent a most extraordinary transformation when she turned my way next. To my astonishment, her dim eyes actually sparkled; a broad smile of irrepressible contentment showed itself cunningly to me, in place of the dismal expression which had welcomed Oscar. Holding up the baby in triumph, the lady of the rectory whispered these words in my ear:—"What do you think he has done since you have been away?"

"I really don't know," I answered.

"He has cut two teeth! Put your finger in and feel."

Others might bewail the family misfortune. The family triumph filled the secret mind of Mrs. Finch, to the exclusion of every other earthly consideration. I put my finger in as instructed, and got instantly bitten by the ferocious baby. But for a new outburst of the rector's voice at the moment, Mrs. Finch (if I am any judge of physiognomy) must have certainly relieved herself by a scream of delight. As it was, she opened her mouth; and (having lost her handkerchief as already stated) retired into a corner, and gagged herself with the baby.

In the meantime, Mr. Finch had produced from a cupboard near the fireplace, two letters. The first he threw down impatiently on the table. "Oh, dear, dear! what a nuisance other people's letters are!" The second he handled with extraordinary care; offering it to Oscar with a heavy sigh, and with eyes that turned up martyr-like to the ceiling. "Rouse yourself, and read it," said Mr. Finch in his most pathetic pulpit tones. "I would have spared you, Oscar, if I could. All our hopes depend, dear boy, on what you can say to guide us when you have read those lines."

Oscar took the enclosure out of the envelope—ran over the first words—glanced at the signature—and, with a look of mingled rage and horror, threw the letter on the floor.

"Don't ask me to read it!" he cried, in the first burst of passion which had escaped him yet. "If I read it, I shall kill him when we meet." He dropped into a chair, and hid his face in his hands. "Oh, Nugent! Nugent! Nugent!" he moaned to himself, with a cry that was dreadful to hear.