Chapter 18 - Page 2

"I despair, Madame Pratolungo--I assure you, I despair--of conveying any idea of how I feel under this most melancholy state of things. You have been very good; you have shown the sympathy of a true friend. But you cannot possibly understand how this blow has fallen on Me. I am crushed. Madame Pratolungo!" (he appealed to me, in my corner); "Mrs. Finch!" (he appealed to his wife, in her corner)--"I am crushed. There is no other word to express it but the word I have used. Crushed." He stopped in the middle of the room. He looked expectantly at me--he looked expectantly at his wife. His face and manner said plainly, "If both these women faint, I shall consider it a natural and becoming proceeding on their parts, after what I have just told them." I waited for the lead of the lady of the house. Mrs. Finch did not roll prostrate, with the baby and the novel, on the floor. Thus encouraged, I presumed to keep my seat. The rector still waited for us. I looked as miserable as I could. Mrs. Finch cast her eyes up reverentially at her husband, as if she thought him the noblest of created beings, and silently put her handkerchief to her eyes. Mr. Finch was satisfied; Mr. Finch went on. "My health has suffered--I assure you, Madame Pratolungo, MY health has suffered. Since this sad occurrence, my stomach has given way. My balance is lost--my usual regularity is gone. I am subject--entirely through this miserable business--to fits of morbid appetite. I want things at wrong times--breakfast in the middle of the night; dinner at four in the morning. I want something now!" Mr. Finch stopped, horror-struck at his condition; pondering with his eyebrows fiercely knit, and his hand pressed convulsively on the lower buttons of his rusty black waistcoat. Mrs. Finch's watery blue eyes looked across the room at me, in a moist melancholy of conjugal distress. The rector, suddenly enlightened after his consultation with his stomach, strutted to the door, flung it wide open, and called down the kitchen stairs with a voice of thunder, "Poach me an egg!" He came back into the room--held another consultation, keeping his eyes severely fixed on me--strutted back in a furious hurry to the door--and bellowed a counter-order down the kitchen-stairs, "No egg! Do me a red herring!" He came back for the second time, with his eyes closed and his hand laid distractedly on his head. He appealed alternately to Mrs. Finch and to me. "See for yourselves--Mrs. Finch! Madame Pratolungo!--see for yourselves what a state I am in. It's simply pitiable. I hesitate about the most trifling things. First, I think I want a poached egg--then, I think I want a red herring--now I don't know what I want. Upon my word of honor as a clergyman and a gentleman, I don't know what I want! Morbid appetite all day; morbid wakefulness all night--what a condition! I can't rest. I disturb my wife at night. Mrs. Finch! I disturb you at