On the next day, a Tuesday in the week, an event took place which Euneece and I viewed with distrust. Early in the afternoon, a young man called with a note for Helena. It was to be given to her immediately, and no answer was required.
Maria had just closed the house door, and was on her way upstairs with the letter, when she was called back by another ring at the bell. Our visitor was the doctor. He spoke to Maria in the hall:
“I think I see a note in your hand. Was it given to you by the young man who has just left the house?”
“Yes, sir.
“If he’s your sweetheart, my dear, I have nothing more to say.”
“Good gracious, doctor, how you do talk! I never saw the young man before in my life.”
“In that case, Maria, I will ask you to let me look at the address. Aha! Mischief!”
The moment I heard that I threw open the dining-room door. Curiosity is not easily satisfied. When it hears, it wants to see; when it sees, it wants to know. Every lady will agree with me in this observation.
“Pray come in,” I said.
“One minute, Miss Jillgall. My girl, when you give Miss Helena that note, try to get a sly look at her when she opens it, and come and tell me what you have seen.” He joined me in the dining-room, and closed the door. “The other day,” he went on, “when I told you what I had discovered in the chemist’s shop, I think I mentioned a young man who was called to speak to a question of identity—an assistant who knew Miss Helena Gracedieu by sight.”
“Yes, yes!”
“That young man left the note which Maria has just taken upstairs.”
“Who wrote it, doctor, and what does it say?”
“Questions naturally asked, Miss Jillgall—and not easily answered. Where is Eunice? Her quick wit might help us.”
She had gone out to buy some fruit and flowers for Philip.
The doctor accepted his disappointment resignedly. “Let us try what we can do without her,” he said. “That young man’s master has been in consultation (you may remember why) with his lawyer, and Helena may be threatened by an investigation before the magistrates. If this wild guess of mine turns out to have hit the mark, the poisoner upstairs has got a warning.”
I asked if the chemist had written the note. Foolish enough of me when I came to think of it. The chemist would scarcely act a friendly part toward Helena, when she was answerable for the awkward position in which he had placed himself. Perhaps the young man who had left the warning was also the writer of the warning. The doctor reminded me that he was all but a stranger to Helena. “We are not usually interested,” he remarked, “in a person whom we only know by sight.”
“Remember that he is a young man,” I ventured to say. This was a strong hint, but the doctor failed to see it. He had evidently forgotten his own youth. I made another attempt.
“And vile as Helena is,” I continued, “we cannot deny that this disgrace to her sex is a handsome young lady.”
He saw it at last. “Woman’s wit!” he cried. “You have hit it, Miss Jillgall. The young fool is smitten with her, and has given her a chance of making her escape.”
“Do you think she will take the chance?”
“For all our sakes, I pray God she may! But I don’t feel sure about it.”
“Why?”
“Recollect what you and Eunice have done. You have shown your suspicion of her without an attempt to conceal it. If you had put her in prison you could not have more completely defeated her infernal design. Do you think she is a likely person to submit to that, without an effort to be even with you?”
Just as he said those terrifying words, Maria came back to us. He asked at once what had kept her so long upstairs.
The girl had evidently something to say, which had inflated her (if I may use such an expression) with a sense of her own importance.
“Please to let me tell it, sir,” she answered, “in my own way. Miss Helena turned as pale as ashes when she opened the letter, and then she took a turn in the room, and then she looked at me with a smile—well, miss, I can only say that I felt that smile in the small of my back. I tried to get to the door. She stopped me. She says: ‘Where’s Miss Eunice?’ I says: ‘Gone out.’ She says: ‘Is there anybody in the drawing-room?’ I says: ‘No, miss.’ She says: ‘Tell Miss Jillgall I want to speak to her, and say I am waiting in the drawing-room.’ It’s every word of it true! And, if a poor servant may give an opinion, I don’t like the look of it.”
The doctor dismissed Maria. “Whatever it is,” he said to me, “you must go and hear it.”
I am not a courageous woman; I expressed myself as being willing to go to her, if the doctor went with me. He said that was impossible; she would probably refuse to speak before any witness; and certainly before him. But he promised to look after Philip in my absence, and to wait below if it really so happened that I wanted him. I need only ring the bell, and he would come to me the moment he heard it. Such kindness as this roused my courage, I suppose. At any rate, I went upstairs.
She was standing by the fire-place, with her elbow on the chimney-piece, and her head, resting on her hand. I stopped just inside the door, waiting to hear what she had to say. In this position her side-face only was presented to me. It was a ghastly face. The eye that I could see turned wickedly on me when I came in—then turned away again. Otherwise, she never moved. I confess I trembled, but I did my best to disguise it.
She broke out suddenly with what she had to say: “I won’t allow this state of things to go on any longer. My horror of an exposure which will disgrace the family has kept me silent, wrongly silent, so far. Philip’s life is in danger. I am forgetting my duty to my affianced husband, if I allow myself to be kept away from him any longer. Open those locked doors, and relieve me from the sight of you. Open the doors, I say, or you will both of you—you the accomplice, she the wretch who directs you—repent it to the end of your lives.”
In my own mind, I asked myself if she had gone mad. But I only answered: “I don’t understand you.”
She said again: “You are Eunice’s accomplice.”
“Accomplice in what?” I asked.
She turned her head slowly and faced me. I shrank from looking at her.
“All the circumstances prove it,” she went on. “I have supplanted Eunice in Philip’s affection. She was once engaged to marry him; I am engaged to marry him now. She is resolved that he shall never make me his wife. He will die if I delay any longer. He will die if I don’t crush her, like the reptile she is. She comes here—and what does she do? Keeps him prisoner under her own superintendence. Who gets his medicine? She gets it. Who cooks his food? She cooks it. The doors are locked. I might be a witness of what goes on; and I am kept out. The servants who ought to wait on him are kept out. She can do what she likes with his medicine; she can do what she likes with his food: she is infuriated with him for deserting her, and promising to marry me. Give him back to my care; or, dreadful as it is to denounce my own sister, I shall claim protection from the magistrates.”
I lost all fear of her: I stepped close up to the place at which she was standing; I cried out: “Of what, in God’s name, do you accuse your sister?”
She answered: “I accuse her of poisoning Philip Dunboyne.”
I ran out of the room; I rushed headlong down the stairs. The doctor heard me, and came running into the hall. I caught hold of him like a madwoman. “Euneece!” My breath was gone; I could only say: “Euneece!”
He dragged me into the dining-room. There was wine on the side-board, which he had ordered medically for Philip. He forced me to drink some of it. It ran through me like fire; it helped me to speak. “Now tell me,” he said, “what has she done to Eunice?”
“She brings a horrible accusation against her,” I answered.
“What is the accusation?” I told him.
He looked me through and through. “Take care!” he said. “No hysterics, no exaggeration. You may lead to dreadful consequences if you are not sure of yourself. If it’s really true, say it again.” I said it again—quietly this time.
His face startled me; it was white with rage. He snatched his hat off the hall table.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“My duty.” He was out of the house before I could speak to him again.
Third Period(concluded).
TROUBLES AND TRIUMPHS OF THE FAMILY, RELATED BY THE GOVERNOR.
MARTYRS to gout know, by sad experience, that they suffer under one of the most capricious of maladies. An attack of this disease will shift, in the most unaccountable manner, from one part of the body to another; or, it will release the victim when there is every reason to fear that it is about to strengthen its hold on him; or, having shown the fairest promise of submitting to medical treatment, it will cruelly lay the patient prostrate again in a state of relapse. Adverse fortune, in my case, subjected me to this last and worst trial of endurance. Two months passed—months of pain aggravated by anxiety—before I was able to help Eunice and Miss Jillgall personally with my sympathy and advice.
During this interval, I heard regularly from the friendly and faithful Selina.
Terror and suspense, courageously endured day after day, seem to have broken down her resistance, poor soul, when Eunice’s good name and Eunice’s tranquillity were threatened by the most infamous of false accusations. From that time, Miss Jillgall’s method of expressing herself betrayed a gradual deterioration. I shall avoid presenting at a disadvantage a correspondent who has claims on my gratitude, if I give the substance only of what she wrote—assisted by the newspaper which she sent to me, while the legal proceedings were in progress.
Honest indignation does sometimes counsel us wisely. When the doctor left Miss Jillgall, in anger and in haste, he had determined on taking the course from which, as a humane man and a faithful friend, he had hitherto recoiled. It was no time, now, to shrink from the prospect of an exposure. The one hope of successfully encountering the vindictive wickedness of Helena lay in the resolution to be beforehand with her, in the appeal to the magistrates with which she had threatened Eunice and Miss Jillgall. The doctor’s sworn information stated the whole terrible case of the poisoning, ranging from his first suspicions and their confirmation, to Helena’s atrocious attempt to accuse her innocent sister of her own guilt. So firmly were the magistrates convinced of the serious nature of the case thus stated, that they did not hesitate to issue their warrant. Among the witnesses whose attendance was immediately secured, by the legal adviser to whom the doctor applied, were the farmer and his wife.
Helena was arrested while she was dressing to go out. Her composure was not for a moment disturbed. “I was on my way,” she said coolly, “to make a statement before the justices. The sooner they hear what I have to say the better.”
The attempt of this shameless wretch to “turn the tables” on poor Eunice—suggested, as I afterward discovered, by the record of family history which she had quoted in her journal—was defeated with ease. The farmer and his wife proved the date at which Eunice had left her place of residence under their roof. The doctor’s evidence followed. He proved, by the production of his professional diary, that the discovery of the attempt to poison his patient had taken place before the day of Eunice’s departure from the farm, and that the first improvement in Mr. Philip Dunboyne’s state of health had shown itself after that young lady’s arrival to perform the duties of a nurse. To the wise precautions which she had taken—perverted by Helena to the purpose of a false accusation—the doctor attributed the preservation of the young man’s life.
Having produced the worst possible impression on the minds of the magistrates, Helena was remanded. Her legal adviser had predicted this result; but the vindictive obstinacy of his client had set both experience and remonstrance at defiance.
At the renewed examination, the line of defense adopted by the prisoner’s lawyer proved to be—mistaken identity.
It was asserted that she had never entered the chemist’s shop; also, that the assistant had wrongly identified some other lady as Miss Helena Gracedieu; also, that there was not an atom of evidence to connect her with the stealing of the doctor’s prescription-paper and the forgery of his writing. Other assertions to the same purpose followed, on which it is needless to dwell. The case for the prosecution was, happily, in competent hands. With the exception of one witness, cross-examination afforded no material help to the evidence for the defense.
The chemist swore positively to the personal appearance of Helena, as being the personal appearance of the lady who had presented the prescription. His assistant, pressed on the question of identity, broke down under cross-examination—purposely, as it was whispered, serving the interests of the prisoner. But the victory, so far gained by the defense, was successfully contested by the statement of the next witness, a respectable tradesman in the town. He had seen the newspaper report of the first examination, and had volunteered to present himself as a witness. A member of Mr. Gracedieu’s congregation, his pew in the chapel was so situated as to give him a view of the minister’s daughters occupying their pew. He had seen the prisoner on every Sunday, for years past; and he swore that he was passing the door of the chemist’s shop, at the moment when she stepped out into the street, having a bottle covered with the customary white paper in her hand. The doctor and his servant were the next witnesses called. They were severely cross-examined. Some of their statements—questioned technically with success—received unexpected and powerful support, due to the discovery and production of the prisoner’s diary. The entries, guardedly as some of them were written, revealed her motive for attempting to poison Philip Dunboyne; proved that she had purposely called on the doctor when she knew that he would be out, that she had entered the consulting-room, and examined the medical books, had found (to use her own written words) “a volume that interested her,” and had used the prescription-papers for the purpose of making notes. The notes themselves were not to be found; they had doubtless been destroyed. Enough, and more than enough, remained to make the case for the prosecution complete. The magistrates committed Helena Gracedieu for trial at the next assizes.
I arrived in the town, as well as I can remember, about a week after the trial had taken place.
Found guilty, the prisoner had been recommended to mercy by the jury—partly in consideration of her youth; partly as an expression of sympathy and respect for her unhappy father. The judge (a father himself) passed a lenient sentence. She was condemned to imprisonment for two years. The careful matron of the jail had provided herself with a bottle of smelling-salts, in the fear that there might be need for it when Helena heard her sentence pronounced. Not the slightest sign of agitation appeared in her face or her manner. She lied to the last; asserting her innocence in a firm voice, and returning from the dock to the prison without requiring assistance from anybody.
Relating these particulars to me, in a state of ungovernable excitement, good Miss Jillgall ended with a little confession of her own, which operated as a relief to my overburdened mind after what I had just heard.
“I wouldn’t own it,” she said, “to anybody but a dear friend. One thing, in the dreadful disgrace that has fallen on us, I am quite at a loss to account for. Think of Mr. Gracedieu’s daughter being one of those criminal creatures on whom it was once your terrible duty to turn the key! Why didn’t she commit suicide?”
“My dear lady, no thoroughly wicked creature ever yet committed suicide. Self-destruction, when it is not an act of madness, implies some acuteness of feeling—sensibility to remorse or to shame, or perhaps a distorted idea of making atonement. There is no such thing as remorse or shame, or hope of making atonement, in Helena’s nature.”
“But when she comes out of prison, what will she do?”
“Don’t alarm yourself, my good friend. She will do very well.”
“Oh, hush! hush! Poetical justice, Mr. Governor!”
“Poetical fiddlesticks, Miss Jillgall.”
When the subject of the trial was happily dismissed, my first inquiry related to Eunice. The reply was made with an ominous accompaniment of sighs and sad looks. Eunice had gone back to her duties as governess at the farm. Hearing this, I asked naturally what had become of Philip.
Melancholy news, again, was the news that I now heard.
Mr. Dunboyne the elder had died suddenly, at his house in Ireland, while Philip was on his way home. When the funeral ceremony had come to an end, the will was read. It had been made only a few days before the testator’s death; and the clause which left all his property to his son was preceded by expressions of paternal affection, at a time when Philip was in sore need of consolation. After alluding to a letter, received from his son, the old man added: “I always loved him, without caring to confess it; I detest scenes of sentiment, kissings, embracings, tears, and that sort of thing. But Philip has yielded to my wishes, and has broken off a marriage which would have made him, as well as me, wretched for life. After this, I may speak my mind from my grave, and may tell my boy that I loved him. If the wish is likely to be of any use, I will add (on the chance)—God bless him.”
“Does Philip submit to separation from Eunice?” I asked. “Does he stay in Ireland?”
“Not he, poor fellow! He will be here to-morrow or next day. When I last wrote,” Miss Jillgall continued, “I told him I hoped to see you again soon. If you can’t help us (I mean with Eunice) that unlucky young man will do some desperate thing. He will join those madmen at large who disturb poor savages in Africa, or go nowhere to find nothing in the Arctic regions.
“Whatever I can do, Miss Jillgall, shall be gladly done. Is it really possible that Eunice refuses to marry him, after having saved his life?”
“A little patience, please, Mr. Governor; let Philip tell his own story. If I try to do it, I shall only cry—and we have had tears enough lately, in this house.”
Further consultation being thus deferred, I went upstairs to the Minister’s room.
He was sitting by the window, in his favorite armchair, absorbed in knitting! The person who attended on him, a good-natured, patient fellow, had been a sailor in his younger days, and had taught Mr. Gracedieu how to use the needles. “You see it amuses him,” the man said, kindly. “Don’t notice his mistakes, he thinks there isn’t such another in the world for knitting as himself. You can see, sir, how he sticks to it.” He was so absorbed over his employment that I had to speak to him twice, before I could induce him to look at me. The utter ruin of his intellect did not appear to have exercised any disastrous influence over his bodily health. On the contrary, he had grown fatter since I had last seen him; his complexion had lost the pallor that I remembered—there was color in his cheeks.
“Don’t you remember your old friend?” I said. He smiled, and nodded, and repeated the words:
“Yes, yes, my old friend.” It was only too plain that he had not the least recollection of me. “His memory is gone,” the man said. “When he puts away his knitting, at night, I have to find it for him in the morning. But, there! he’s happy—enjoys his victuals, likes sitting out in the garden and watching the birds. There’s been a deal of trouble in the family, sir; and it has all passed over him like a wet sponge over a slate.” The old sailor was right. If that wreck of a man had been capable of feeling and thinking, his daughter’s disgrace would have broken his heart. In a world of sin and sorrow, is peaceable imbecility always to be pitied? I have known men who would have answered, without hesitation: “It is to be envied.” And where (some persons might say) was the poor Minister’s reward for the act of mercy which had saved Eunice in her infancy? Where it ought to be! A man who worthily performs a good action finds his reward in the action itself.
At breakfast, on the next day, the talk touched on those passages in Helena’s diary, which had been produced in court as evidence against her.
I expressed a wish to see what revelation of a depraved nature the entries in the diary might present; and my curiosity was gratified. At a fitter time, I may find an opportunity of alluding to the impression produced on me by the diary. In the meanwhile, the event of Philip’s return claims notice in the first place.
The poor fellow was so glad to see me that he shook hands as heartily as if we had known each other from the time when he was a boy.
“Do you remember how kindly you spoke to me when I called on you in London?” he asked. “If I have repeated those words once—but perhaps you don’t remember them? You said: ‘If I was as young as you are, I should not despair.’ Well! I have said that to myself over and over again, for a hundred times at least. Eunice will listen to you, sir, when she will listen to nobody else. This is the first happy moment I have had for weeks past.”
I suppose I must have looked glad to hear that. Anyway, Philip shook hands with me again.
Miss Jillgall was present. The gentle-hearted old maid was so touched by our meeting that she abandoned herself to the genial impulse of the moment, and gave Philip a kiss. The outraged claims of propriety instantly seized on her. She blushed as if the long-lost days of her girlhood had been found again, and ran out of the room.
“Now, Mr. Philip,” I said, “I have been waiting, at Miss Jillgall’s suggestion, to get my information from you. There is something wrong between Eunice and yourself. What is it? And who is to blame?”
“Her vile sister is to blame,” he answered. “That reptile was determined to sting us. And she has done it!” he cried, starting to his feet, and walking up and down the room, urged into action by his own unendurable sense of wrong. “I say, she has done it, after Eunice has saved me—done it, when Eunice was ready to be my wife.”
“How has she done it?”
Between grief and indignation his reply was involved in a confusion of vehemently-spoken words, which I shall not attempt to reproduce. Eunice had reminded him that her sister had been publicly convicted of an infamous crime, and publicly punished for it by imprisonment. “If I consent to marry you,” she said, “I stain you with my disgrace; that shall never be.” With this resolution, she had left him. “I have tried to convince her,” Philip said, “that she will not be associated with her sister’s disgrace when she bears my name; I have promised to take her far away from England, among people who have never even heard of her sister. Miss Jillgall has used her influence to help me. All in vain! There is no hope for us but in you. I am not thinking selfishly only of myself. She tries to conceal it—but, oh, she is broken-hearted! Ask the farmer’s wife, if you don’t believe me. Judge for yourself, sir. Go—for God’s sake, go to the farm.”
I made him sit down and compose himself.
“You may depend on my going to the farm,” I answered. “I shall write to Eunice to-day, and follow my letter to-morrow.” He tried to thank me; but I would not allow it. “Before I consent to accept the expression of your gratitude,” I said, “I must know a little more of you than I know now. This is only the second occasion on which we have met. Let us look back a little, Mr. Philip Dunboyne. You were Eunice’s affianced husband; and you broke faith with her. That was a rascally action. How do you defend it?”
His head sank. “I am ashamed to defend it,” he answered.
I pressed him without mercy. “You own yourself,” I said, “that it was a rascally action?”
“Use stronger language against me, even than that, sir—I deserve it.”
“In plain words,” I went on, “you can find no excuse for your conduct?”
“In the past time,” he said, “I might have found excuses.”
“But you can’t find them now?”
“I must not even look for them now.”
“Why not?”
“I owe it to Eunice to leave my conduct at its worst; with nothing said—by me—to defend it.”
“What has Eunice done to have such a claim on you as that?”
“Eunice has forgiven me.”
It was gratefully and delicately said. Ought I to have allowed this circumstance to weigh with me? I ask, in return, hadInever committed any faults? As a fellow-mortal and fellow-sinner, had I any right to harden my heart against an expression of penitence which I felt to be sincere in its motive?
But I was bound to think of Eunice. I did think of her, before I ventured to accept the position—the critical position, as I shall presently show—of Philip’s friend.
After more than an hour of questions put without reserve, and of answers given without prevarication, I had traveled over the whole ground laid out by the narratives which appear in these pages, and had arrived at my conclusion—so far as Philip Dunboyne was concerned.
I found him to be a man with nothing absolutely wicked in him—but with a nature so perilously weak, in many respects, that it might drift into wickedness unless a stronger nature was at hand to bold it back. Married to a wife without force of character, the probabilities would point to him as likely to yield to examples which might make him a bad husband. Married to a wife with a will of her own, and with true love to sustain her—a wife who would know when to take the command and how to take the command—a wife who, finding him tempted to commit actions unworthy of his better self, would be far-sighted enough to perceive that her husband’s sense of honor might sometimes lose its balance, without being on that account hopelessly depraved—then, and, in these cases only, the probabilities would point to Philip as a man likely to be the better and the happier for his situation, when the bonds of wedlock had got him.
But the serious question was not answered yet.
Could I feel justified in placing Eunice in the position toward Philip which I have just endeavored to describe? I dared not allow my mind to dwell on the generosity which had so nobly pardoned him, or on the force of character which had bravely endured the bitterest disappointment, the cruelest humiliation. The one consideration which I was bound to face, was the sacred consideration of her happiness in her life to come.
Leaving Philip, with a few words of sympathy which might help him to bear his suspense, I went to my room to think.
The time passed—and I could arrive at no positive conclusion. Either way—with or without Philip—the contemplation of Eunice’s future harassed me with doubt. Even if I had conquered my own indecision, and had made up my mind to sanction the union of the two young people, the difficulties that now beset me would not have been dispersed. Knowing what I alone knew, I could certainly remove Eunice’s one objection to the marriage. In other words, I had only to relate what had happened on the day when the Chaplain brought the Minister to the prison, and the obstacle of their union would be removed. But, without considering Philip, it was simply out of the question to do this, in mercy to Eunice herself. What was Helena’s disgrace, compared with the infamy which stained the name of the poor girl’s mother! The other alternative of telling her part of the truth only was before me, if I could persuade myself to adopt it. I failed to persuade myself; my morbid anxiety for her welfare made me hesitate again. Human patience could endure no more. Rashness prevailed and prudence yielded—I left my decision to be influenced by the coming interview with Eunice.
The next day I drove to the farm. Philip’s entreaties persuaded me to let him be my companion, on one condition—that he waited in the carriage while I went into the house.
I had carefully arranged my ideas, and had decided on proceeding with the greatest caution, before I ventured on saying the all-important words which, once spoken, were not to be recalled. The worst of those anxieties, under which the delicate health of Mr. Gracedieu had broken down, was my anxiety now. Could I reconcile it to my conscience to permit a man, innocent of all knowledge of the truth, to marry the daughter of a condemned murderess, without honestly telling him what he was about to do? Did I deserve to be pitied? did I deserve to be blamed?—my mind was still undecided when I entered the house.
She ran to meet me as if she had been my daughter; she kissed me as if she had been my daughter; she fondly looked up at me as if she had been my daughter. At the sight of that sweet young face, so sorrowful, and so patiently enduring sorrow, all my doubts and hesitations, everything artificial about me with which I had entered the room, vanished in an instant.
After she had thanked me for coming to see her, I saw her tremble a little. The uppermost interest in her heart was forcing its way outward to expression, try as she might to keep it back. “Have you seen Philip?” she asked. The tone in which she put that question decided me—I was resolved to let her marry him. Impulse! Yes, impulse, asserting itself inexcusably in a man at the end of his life. I ought to have known better than to have given way. Very likely. But am I the only mortal who ought to have known better—and did not?
When Eunice asked if I had seen Philip, I owned that he was outside in the carriage. Before she could reproach me, I went on with what I had to say: “My child, I know what a sacrifice you have made; and I should honor your scruples, if you had any reason for feeling them.”
“Any reason for feeling them?” She turned pale as she repeated the words.
An idea came to me. I rang for the servant, and sent her to the carriage to tell Philip to come in. “My dear, I am not putting you to any unfair trial,” I assured her; “I am going to prove that I love you as truly as if you were my own child.”
When they were both present, I resolved that they should not suffer a moment of needless suspense. Standing between them, I took Eunice’s hand, and laid my other hand on Philip’s shoulder, and spoke out plainly.
“I am here to make you both happy,” I said. “I can remove the only obstacle to your marriage, and I mean to do it. But I must insist on one condition. Give me your promise, Philip, that you will ask for no explanations, and that you will be satisfied with the one true statement which is all that I can offer to you.”
He gave me his promise, without an instant’s hesitation.
“Philip grants what I ask,” I said to Eunice. “Do you grant it, too?”
Her hand turned cold in mine; but she spoke firmly when she said: “Yes.”
I gave her into Philip’s care. It was his privilege to console and support her. It was my duty to say the decisive words:
“Rouse your courage, dear Eunice; you are no more affected by Helena’s disgrace than I am. You are not her sister. Her father is not your father; her mother was not your mother. I was present, in the time of your infancy, when Mr. Gracedieu’s fatherly kindness received you as his adopted child. This, I declare to you both, on my word of honor, is the truth.”
How she bore it I am not able to say. My foolish old eyes were filling with tears. I could just see plainly enough to find my way to the door, and leave them together.
In my reckless state of mind, I never asked myself if Time would be my accomplice, and keep the part of the secret which I had not revealed—or be my enemy, and betray me. The chances, either way, were perhaps equal. The deed was done.
The marriage was deferred, at Eunice’s request, as an expression of respect to the memory of Philip’s father.
When the time of delay had passed, it was arranged that the wedding ceremony should be held—after due publication of Banns—at the parish church of the London suburb in which my house was situated. Miss Jillgall was bridesmaid, and I gave away the bride. Before we set out for the church, Eunice asked leave to speak with me for a moment in private.
“Don’t think,” she said, “that I am forgetting my promise to be content with what you have told me about myself. I am not so ungrateful as that. But I do want, before I consent to be Philip’s wife, to feel sure that I am not quite unworthy of him. Is it because I am of mean birth that you told me I was Mr. Gracedieu’s adopted child—and told me no more?”
I could honestly satisfy her, so far. “Certainly not!” I said.
She put her arms round my neck. “Do you say that,” she asked, “to make my mind easy? or do you say it on your word of honor?”
“On my word of honor.”
We arrived at the church. Let Miss Jillgall describe the marriage, in her own inimitable way.
“No wedding breakfast, when you don’t want to eat it. No wedding speeches, when nobody wants to make them, and nobody wants to hear them. And no false sentiment, shedding tears and reddening noses, on the happiest day in the whole year. A model marriage! I could desire nothing better, if I had any prospect of being a bride myself.”
They went away for their honeymoon to a quiet place by the seaside, not very far from the town in which Eunice had passed some of the happiest and the wretchedest days in her life. She persisted in thinking it possible that Mr. Gracedieu might recover the use of his faculties, at the last, and might wish to see her on his death-bed. “His adopted daughter,” she gently reminded me, “is his only daughter now.” The doctor shook his head when I told him what Eunice had said to me—and, the sad truth must be told, the doctor was right.
Miss Jillgall returned, on the wedding-day, to take care of the good man who had befriended her in her hour of need.
Before the end of the week, I heard from her, and was disagreeably reminded of an incident which we had both forgotten, absorbed as we were in other and greater interests, at the time.
Mrs. Tenbruggen had again appeared on the scene! She had written to Miss Jillgall, from Paris, to say that she had heard of old Mr. Dunboyne’s death, and that she wished to have the letter returned, which she had left for delivery to Philip’s father on the day when Philip and Eunice were married. I had my own suspicions of what that letter might contain; and I regretted that Miss Jillgall had sent it back without first waiting to consult me. My misgivings, thus excited, were increased by more news of no very welcome kind. Mrs. Tenbruggen had decided on returning to her professional pursuits in England. Massage, now the fashion everywhere, had put money into her pocket among the foreigners; and her husband, finding that she persisted in keeping out of his reach, had consented to a compromise. He was ready to submit to a judicial separation; in consideration of a little income which his wife had consented to settle on him, under the advice of her lawyer.
Some days later, I received a delightful letter from Philip and Eunice; reminding me that I had engaged to pay them a visit at the seaside. My room was ready for me, and I was left to choose my own day. I had just begun to write my reply, gladly accepting the invitation, when an ominous circumstance occurred. My servant announced “a lady”; and I found myself face to face with—Mrs. Tenbruggen!
She was as cheerful as ever, and as eminently agreeable as ever.
“I have heard it all from Selina,” she said. “Philip’s marriage to Eunice (I shall go and congratulate them, of course), and the catastrophe (how dramatic!) of Helena Gracedieu. I warned. Selina that Miss Helena would end badly. To tell the truth, she frightened me. I don’t deny that I am a mischievous woman when I find myself affronted, quite capable of taking my revenge in my own small spiteful way. But poison and murder—ah, the frightful subject! let us drop it, and talk of something that doesn’t make my hair (it’s really my own hair) stand on end. Has Selina told you that I have got rid of my charming husband, on easy pecuniary terms? Oh, you know that? Very well. I will tell you something that you don’t know. Mr. Governor, I have found you out.”
“May I venture to ask how?”
“When I guessed which was which of those two girls,” she answered, “and guessed wrong, you deliberately encouraged the mistake. Very clever, but you overdid it. From that moment, though I kept it to myself, I began to fear I might be wrong. Do you remember Low Lanes, my dear sir? A charming old church. I have had another consultation with my lawyer. His questions led me into mentioning how it happened that I heard of Low Lanes. After looking again at his memorandum of the birth advertised in the newspaper without naming the place—he proposed trying the church register at Low Lanes. Need I tell you the result? I know, as well as you do, that Philip has married the adopted child. He has had a mother-in-law who was hanged, and, what is more, he has the honor, through his late father, of being otherwise connected with the murderess by marriage—as his aunt!”
Bewilderment and dismay deprived me of my presence of mind. “How did you discover that?” I was foolish enough to ask.
“Do you remember when I brought the baby to the prison?” she said. “The father—as I mentioned at the time—had been a dear and valued friend of mine. No person could be better qualified to tell me who had married his wife’s sister. If that lady had been living, I should never have been troubled with the charge of the child. Any more questions?”
“Only one. Is Philip to hear of this?”
“Oh, for shame! I don’t deny that Philip insulted me grossly, in one way; and that Philip’s late father insulted me grossly, in another way. But Mamma Tenbruggen is a Christian. She returns good for evil, and wouldn’t for the world disturb the connubial felicity of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Dunboyne.”
The moment the woman was out of my house, I sent a telegram to Philip to say that he might expect to see me that night. I caught the last train in the evening; and I sat down to supper with those two harmless young creatures, knowing I must prepare the husband for what threatened them, and weakly deferring it, when I found myself in their presence, until the next day. Eunice was, in some degree, answerable for this hesitation on my part. No one could look at her husband, and fail to see that he was a supremely happy man. But I detected signs of care in the wife’s face.
Before breakfast the next morning I was out on the beach, trying to decide how the inevitable disclosure might be made. Eunice joined me. Now, when we were alone, I asked if she was really and completely happy. Quietly and sadly she answered: “Not yet.”
I hardly knew what to say. My face must have expressed disappointment and surprise.
“I shall never be quite happy,” she resumed, “till I know what it is that you kept from me on that memorable day. I don’t like having a secret from my husband—though it is notmysecret.”
“Remember your promise,” I said
“I don’t forget it,” she answered. “I can only wish that my promise would keep back the thoughts that come to me in spite of myself.”
“What thoughts?”
“There is something, as I fear, in the story of my parents which you are afraid to confide to me. Why did Mr. Gracedieu allow me to believe and leave everybody to believe, that I was his own child?”
“My dear, I relieved your mind of those doubts on the morning of your marriage.”
“No. I was only thinking of myself at that time. My mother—the doubt ofheris the doubt that torments me now.”
“What do you mean?”
She put her arm in mine, and held by it with both hands.
“The mock-mother!” she whispered. “Do you remember that dreadful Vision, that horrid whispering temptation in the dead of night?Wasit a mock-mother? Oh, pity me! I don’t know who my mother was. One horrid thought about her is a burden on my mind. If she was a good woman, you who love me would surely have made me happy by speaking of her?”
Those words decided me at last. Could she suffer more than she had suffered already, if I trusted her with the truth? I ran the risk. There was a time of silence that filled me with terror. The interval passed. She took my hand, and put it to her heart. “Does it beat as if I was frightened?” she asked.
No! It was beating calmly.
“Does it relieve your anxiety?”
It told me that I had not surprised her. That unforgotten Vision of the night had prepared her for the worst, after the time when I had told her that she was an adopted child. “I know,” I said, “that those whispered temptations overpowered you again, when you and Helena met on the stairs, and you forbade her to enter Philip’s room. And I know that love had conquered once more, when you were next seen sitting by Philip’s bedside. Tell me—have you any misgivings now? Is there fear in your heart of the return of that tempting spirit in you, in the time to come?”
“Not while Philip lives!”
There, where her love was—there her safety was. And she knew it! She suddenly left me. I asked where she was going.
“To tell Philip,” was the reply.
She was waiting for me at the door, when I followed her to the house.
“Is it done?” I said.
“It is done,” she answered.
“What did he say?”
“He said: ‘My darling, if I could be fonder of you than ever, I should be fonder of you now.’”
I have been blamed for being too ready to confide to Philip the precious trust of Eunice’s happiness. If that reply does not justify me, where is justification to be found?