The occurrence of Grosse's name in Mrs. Finch's rambling narrative, recalled to my memory what the rector had told me at the garden gate. I had not yet received the letter which the German had sent to wait my arrival at Dimchurch. After a short search, we found it—where it had been contemptuously thrown by Mr. Finch—on the parlor table.
A few lines comprised the whole letter. Grosse informed me that he had so fretted himself about Lucilla, that he had been attacked by "a visitation of gouts." It was impossible to move his "foots" without instantly plunging into the torture of the infernal regions. "If it is you, my goot dear, who are going to find her," he concluded, "come to me first in London. I have something most dismal-serious to say to you about our poor little Feench's eyes."
No words can tell how that last sentence startled and grieved me. Mrs. Finch increased my anxiety and alarm by repeating what she had heard Miss Batchford say, during her brief visit to the rectory, on the subject of Lucilla's sight. Grosse had been seriously dissatisfied with the state of his patient's eyes, when he had seen them as long ago as the fourth of the month; and, on the morning of the next day, the servant had reported Lucilla as being hardly able to distinguish objects in the view from the window of her room. Later on the same day, she had secretly left Ramsgate; and Grosse's letter proved that she had not been near her surgical attendant since.
Weary as I was after the journey, this miserable news kept me waking long after I had gone to my bed. The next morning, I was up with the servants—impatient to start for London, by the first train.
CHAPTER THE FORTY-EIGHTH
On the Way to the End. Second Stage
EARLY riser as I was, I found that Oscar had risen earlier still. He had left the rectory and had disturbed Mr. Gootheridge's morning slumbers by an application at the inn for the key of Browndown.
On his return to the rectory, he merely said that he had been to see after various things belonging to him, which were still left in the empty house. His look and manner as he gave us this brief explanation were, to my mind, more unsatisfactory than ever. I made no remark; and, observing that his loose traveling coat was buttoned awry over the breast, I set it right for him. My hand, as I did this, touched his breast-pocket. He started back directly—as if there was something in the pocket which he did not wish me to feel. Was it something he had brought from Browndown?
We got away—encumbered by Mr. Finch, who insisted on attaching himself to Oscar—by the first express train, which took us straight to London. Comparison of time-tables, on reaching the terminus, showed that I had leisure to spare for a brief visit to Grosse, before we again took the railway back to Sydenham. Having decided not to mention the bad news about Lucilla's sight to Oscar, until I had seen the German first, I made the best excuse that suggested itself, and drove away—leaving the two gentlemen in the waiting-room at the station.