Poor Miss Finch

by Wilkie Collins

"Burst open the door!" I screamed. "I can just see his hand lying on the floor!"

The landlord, like the rector, was a little man; and the door, like everything else at Browndown, was of the clumsiest and heaviest construction. Unaided by instruments, we should all three together have been too weak to burst it open. In this difficulty, Reverend Finch proved to be—for the first time, and also for the last—of some use.

"Stay!" he said. "My friends, if the back garden gate is open, we can get in by the window."

Neither the landlord nor I had thought of the window. We ran round to the back of the house; seeing the marks of the chaise-wheels leading in the same direction. The gate in the wall was wide open. We crossed the little garden. The window of the workshop—opening to the ground—gave us admission as the rector had foretold. We entered the room.

There he lay—poor harmless, unlucky Oscar—senseless, in a pool of his own blood. A blow on the left side of his head had, to all appearance, felled him on the spot. The wound had split the scalp. Whether it had also split the skull was more than I was surgeon enough to be able to say. I had gathered some experience of how to deal with wounded men, when I served the sacred cause of Freedom with my glorious Pratolungo. Cold water, vinegar, and linen for bandages—these were all in the house; and these I called for. Gootheridge found the key of the door flung aside in a corner of the room. He got the water and the vinegar, while I ran up-stairs to Oscar's bedroom, and provided myself with some of his handkerchiefs. In a few minutes, I had a cold water bandage over the wound, and was bathing his face in vinegar and water. He was still insensible; but he lived. Reverend Finch—not of the slightest help to anybody—assumed the duty of feeling Oscar's pulse. He did it as if, under the circumstances, this was the one meritorious action that could be performed. He looked as if nobody could feel a pulse but himself. "Most fortunate," he said, counting the slow, faint throbbing at the poor fellow's wrist—"most fortunate that I was at home. What would you have done without me?"

The next necessity was, of course, to send for the doctor, and to get help, in the meantime, to carry Oscar up-stairs to his bed.

Gootheridge volunteered to borrow a horse, and to ride off for the doctor. We arranged that he was to send his wife and his wife's brother to help me. This settled, the one last embarrassment left to deal with, was the embarrassment of Mr. Finch. Now that we were free from all fear of encountering bad characters in the house, the boom-boom of the little man's big voice went on unintermittingly, like a machine at work in the neighborhood. I had another of my inspirations—sitting on the floor with Oscar's head on my lap. I gave my reverend companion something to do. "Look about the room!" I said. "See if the packing-case with the gold and silver plates is here or not."

Mr. Finch did not quite relish being treated like an ordinary mortal, and being told what he was to do.

"Compose yourself, Madame Pratolungo," he said. "No hysterical activity, if you please. This business is in My hands. Quite needless, ma'am, to tell Me to look for the packing-case."

"Quite needless," I agreed. "I know beforehand the packing-case is gone."