"As you please, sir," I said. "I have done my best to serve you--and you quarrel with me and leave me, in return. Go! You are not the first fool who has quarreled with his best friend."
Either the words or the curtsey--or both together--brought him to his senses. He made me an apology--which I received. And he looked excessively foolish--which put me in an excellent humour again. "You stupid boy," I said, taking his arm, and leading him to the stairs. "When we first met at Dimchurch did you find me a suspicious woman or an inhuman woman? Answer me that!"
He answered frankly enough.
"I found you all that was kind and good. Still, it is surely only natural to want _some_ confirmation----" He checked himself there, and reverted abruptly to my letter to Mrs. Finch. The silence of the rector's wife evidently alarmed him. "How long is it since you wrote?" he inquired.
"As long ago as the first of this month," I replied.
He fell into thought. We ascended the next flight of stairs in silence.
At the landing, he stopped me, and spoke again. My unanswered letter was still uppermost in his mind.
"Mrs. Finch loses everything that _can_ be lost," he said. "Is it not likely--with her habits--that when she had written her answer, and wanted your letter to look at to put the address on it, your letter was like her handkerchief or her novel, or anything else--not to be found?"
So far, no doubt, this was quite in Mrs. Finch's character. I could see that--but my mind was too much pre-occupied to draw the inference that followed. Oscar's next words enlightened me.
"Have you tried the Poste-Restante?" he asked.
What could I possibly have been thinking of! Of course, she had lost my letter. Of course, the whole house would be upset in looking for it, and the rector would silence the uproar by ordering his wife to try the Poste-Restante. How strangely we had changed places! Instead of my clear head thinking for Oscar, here was Oscar's clear head thinking for Me. Is my stupidity quite incredible? Remember, if you please, what a weight of trouble and anxiety had lain on my mind while I was at Marseilles. Can one think of everything while one is afflicted, as I was? Not even such a clever person as You can do that. If, as the saying is, "Homer sometimes nods"--why not Madame Pratolungo?
"I never thought of the Poste-Restante," I said to Oscar. "If you don't mind going back a little way, shall we inquire at once?"
He was perfectly willing. We went downstairs again, and out into the street. On our way to the post-office, I seized my first opportunity of making Oscar give me some account of himself.
"I have satisfied your curiosity, to the best of my ability," I said, as we walked arm-in-arm through the streets. "Now suppose you satisfy mine.
A report of your having been seen in a military hospital in Italy, is the only report of you which has reached me here. Of course, it is not true?"
"It is perfectly true."
"You, in a hospital, nursing wounded soldiers?"
"That is exactly what I have been doing."
No words could express my astonishment. I could only stop, and look at him.
"Was that the occupation which you had in view when you left England?" I asked.
"I had no object in leaving England," he answered, "but the object which I avowed to you. After what had happened, I owed it to Lucilla and I owed it to Nugent to go. I left England without caring where I went. The train to Lyons happened to be the first train that started on my arrival at Paris. I took the first train. At Lyons, I saw by chance an account in a French newspaper of the sufferings of some of the badly-wounded men, left still uncured after the battle of Solferino. I felt an impulse, in my own wretchedness, to help these other sufferers in _their_ misery. On every other side of it, my life was wasted. The one worthy use to which I could put it was to employ myself in doing good; and here was good to be done, I managed to get the necessary letters of introduction at Turin. With the help of these, I made myself of some use (under the regular surgeons and dressers) in nursing the poor mutilated, crippled men; and I have helped a little afterwards, from my own resources, in starting them comfortably in new ways of life."
In those manly and simple words, he told me his story.
Once more I felt, what I had felt already, that there were hidden reserves of strength in the character of this innocent young fellow, which had utterly escaped my superficial observation of him. In choosing his vocation, he was, no doubt, only following the conventional modern course in such cases. Despair has its fashions, as well as dress. Ancient despair (especially of Oscar's sort) used to turn soldier, or go into a monastery. Modern despair turns nurse; binds up wounds, gives physic, and gets cured or not in that useful but nasty way. Oscar had certainly struck out nothing new for himself: he had only followed the fashion.
Still, it implied, as I thought, both courage and resolution to have conquered the obstacles which he must have overcome, and to have held steadily on his course after he had once entered it. Having begun by quarreling with him, I was in a fair way to end by respecting him. Surely this man was worth preserving for Lucilla, after all!
"May I ask where you were going, when we met at the port?" I continued.
"Have you left Italy because there were no more wounded soldiers to be cured?"
"There was no more work for me at the hospital to which I was attached," he said. "And there were certain obstacles in my way, as a stranger and a Protestant, among the poor and afflicted population outside the hospital.
