My next quotations will suffer a process of abridgment. I intend them to present the substance of three letters, reduced as follows:
Second Extract.
Weak as he may be, Mr. Philip Dunboyne shows (in his second letter) that he can feel resentment, and that he can express his feelings, in replying to Miss Helena. He protests against suspicions which he has not deserved. That he does sometimes think of Eunice he sees no reason to deny. He is conscious of errors and misdeeds, which—traceable as they are to Helena’s irresistible fascinations—may perhaps be considered rather his misfortune than his fault. Be that as it may, he does indeed feel anxious to hear good accounts of Eunice’s health. If this honest avowal excites her sister’s jealousy, he will be disappointed in Helena for the first time.
His third letter shows that this exhibition of spirit has had its effect.
The imperious young lady regrets that she has hurt his feelings, and is rewarded for the apology by receiving news of the most gratifying kind. Faithful Philip has told his father that he is engaged to be married to Miss Helena Gracedieu, daughter of the celebrated Congregational preacher—and so on, and so on. Has Mr. Dunboyne the elder expressed any objection to the young lady? Certainly not! He knows nothing of the other engagement to Eunice; and he merely objects, on principle, to looking forward. “How do we know,” says the philosopher, “what accidents may happen, or what doubts and hesitations may yet turn up? I am not to burden my mind in this matter, till I know that I must do it. Let me hear when she is ready to go to church, and I will be ready with the settlements. My compliments to Miss and her papa, and let us wait a little.” Dearest Helena—isn’t he funny?
The next letter has been already mentioned.
In this there occurs the first startling reference to Mrs. Tenbruggen, by name. She is in London, finding her way to lucrative celebrity by twisting, turning, and pinching the flesh of credulous persons, afflicted with nervous disorders; and she has already paid a few medical visits to old Mr. Dunboyne. He persists in poring over his books while Mrs. Tenbruggen operates, sometimes on his cramped right hand, sometimes (in the fear that his brain may have something to do with it) on the back of his neck. One of them frowns over her rubbing, and the other frowns over his reading. It would be delightfully ridiculous, but for a drawback; Mr. Philip Dunboyne’s first impressions of Mrs. Tenbruggen do not incline him to look at that lady from a humorous point of view.
Helena’s remarks follow, as usual. She has seen Mrs. Tenbruggen’s name on the address of a letter written by Miss Jillgall—which is quite enough to condemn Mrs. Tenbruggen. As for Philip himself, she feels not quite sure of him, even yet. No more do I. Third Extract.
The letter that follows must be permitted to speak for itself:
I have flown into a passion, dearest Helena; and I am afraid I shall make you fly into a passion, too. Blame Mrs. Tenbruggen; don’t blame me.
On the first occasion when I found my father under the hands of the Medical Rubber, she took no notice of me. On the second occasion—when she had been in daily attendance on him for a week, at an exorbitant fee—she said in the coolest manner: “Who is this young gentleman?” My father laid down his book, for a moment only: “Don’t interrupt me again, ma’am. The young gentleman is my son Philip.” Mrs. Tenbruggen eyed me with an appearance of interest which I was at a loss to account for. I hate an impudent woman. My visit came suddenly to an end.
The next time I saw my father, he was alone.
I asked him how he got on with Mrs. Tenbruggen. As badly as possible, it appeared. “She takes liberties with my neck; she interrupts me in my reading; and she does me no good. I shall end, Philip, in applying a medical rubbing to Mrs. Tenbruggen.”
A few days later, I found the masterful “Masseuse” torturing the poor old gentleman’s muscles again. She had the audacity to say to me: “Well, Mr. Philip, when are you going to marry Miss Eunice Gracedieu?” My father looked up. “Eunice?” he repeated. “When my son told me he was engaged to Miss Gracedieu, he said ‘Helena’! Philip, what does this mean?” Mrs. Tenbruggen was so obliging as to answer for me. “Some mistake, sir; it’s Eunice he is engaged to.” I confess I forgot myself. “How the devil do you know that?” I burst out. Mrs. Tenbruggen ignored me and my language. “I am sorry to see, sir, that your son’s education has been neglected; he seems to be grossly ignorant of the laws of politeness.” “Never mind the laws of politeness,” says my father. “You appear to be better acquainted with my son’s matrimonial prospects than he is himself. How is that?” Mrs. Tenbruggen favored him with another ready reply: “My authority is a letter, addressed to me by a relative of Mr. Gracedieu—my dear and intimate friend, Miss Jillgall.” My father’s keen eyes traveled backward and forward between his female surgeon and his son. “Which am I to believe?” he inquired. “I am surprised at your asking the question,” I said. Mrs. Tenbruggen pointed to me. “Look at Mr. Philip, sir—and you will allow him one merit. He is capable of showing it, when he knows he has disgraced himself.” Without intending it, I am sure, my father infuriated me; he looked as if he believed her. Out came one of the smallest and strongest words in the English language before I could stop it: “Mrs. Tenbruggen, you lie!” The illustrious Rubber dropped my father’s hand—she had been operating on him all the time—and showed us that she could assert her dignity when circumstances called for the exertion: “Either your son or I, sir, must leave the room. Which is it to be?” She met her match in my father. Walking quietly to the door, he opened it for Mrs. Tenbruggen with a low bow. She stopped on her way out, and delivered her parting words: “Messieurs Dunboyne, father and son, I keep my temper, and merely regard you as a couple of blackguards.” With that pretty assertion of her opinion, she left us.
When we were alone, there was but one course to take; I made my confession. It is impossible to tell you how my father received it—for he sat down at his library table with his back to me. The first thing he did was to ask me to help his memory.
“Did you say that the father of these girls was a parson?”
“Yes—a Congregational Minister.”
“What does the Minister think of you?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Find out.”
That was all; not another word could I extract from him. I don’t pretend to have discovered what he really has in his mind. I only venture on a suggestion. If there is any old friend in your town, who has some influence over your father, leave no means untried of getting that friend to say a kind word for us. And then ask your father to write to mine. This is, as I see it, our only chance.
.......
There the letter ends. Helena’s notes on it show that her pride is fiercely interested in securing Philip as a husband. Her victory over poor Eunice will, as she plainly intimates, be only complete when she is married to young Dunboyne. For the rest, her desperate resolution to win her way to my good graces is sufficiently intelligible, now.
My own impressions vary. Philip rather gains upon me; he appears to have some capacity for feeling ashamed of himself. On the other hand, I regard the discovery of an intimate friendship existing between Mrs. Tenbruggen and Miss Jillgall with the gloomiest views. Is this formidable Masseuse likely to ply her trade in the country towns? And is it possible that she may come to this town? God forbid!
Of the other letters in the collection, I need take no special notice. I returned the whole correspondence to Helena, and waited to hear from her.
The one recent event in Mr. Gracedieu’s family, worthy of record, is of a melancholy nature. After paying his visit to-day, the doctor has left word that nobody but the nurse is to go near the Minister. This seems to indicate, but too surely, a change for the worse.
Helena has been away all the evening at the Girls’ School. She left a little note, informing me of her wishes: “I shall expect to be favored with your decision to-morrow morning, in my housekeeping room.”
At breakfast time, the report of the poor Minister was still discouraging. I noticed that Helena was absent from the table. Miss Jillgall suspected that the cause was bad news from Mr. Philip Dunboyne, arriving by that morning’s post. “If you will excuse the use of strong language by a lady,” she said, “Helena looked perfectly devilish when she opened the letter. She rushed away, and locked herself up in her own shabby room. A serious obstacle, as I suspect, in the way of her marriage. Cheering, isn’t it?” As usual, good Selina expressed her sentiments without reserve.
I had to keep my appointment; and the sooner Helena Gracedieu and I understood each other the better.
I knocked at the door. It was loudly unlocked, and violently thrown open. Helena’s temper had risen to boiling heat; she stammered with rage when she spoke to me.
“I mean to come to the point at once,” she said.
“I am glad to hear it, Miss Helena.”
“May I count on your influence to help me? I want a positive answer.”
I gave her what she wanted. I said: “Certainly not.”
She took a crumpled letter from her pocket, opened it, and smoothed it out on the table with a blow of her open hand.
“Look at that,” she said.
I looked. It was the letter addressed to Mr. Dunboyne the elder, which I had written for Mr. Gracedieu—with the one object of preventing Helena’s marriage.
“Of course, I can depend on you to tell me the truth?” she continued.
“Without fear or favor,” I answered, “you may depend onthat.”
“The signature to the letter, Mr. Governor, is written by my father. But the letter itself is in a different hand. Do you, by any chance, recognize the writing?”
“I do.”
“Whose writing is it?”
“Mine.”
After having identified my handwriting, I waited with some curiosity to see whether Helena would let her anger honestly show itself, or whether she would keep it down. She kept it down.
“Allow me to return good for evil.” (The evil was uppermost, nevertheless, when Miss Gracedieu expressed herself in these self-denying terms.) “You are no doubt anxious to know if Philip’s father has been won over to serve your purpose. Here is Philip’s own account of it: the last of his letters that I shall trouble you to read.”
I looked it over. The memorandum follows which I made for my own use:
An eccentric philosopher is as capable as the most commonplace human being in existence of behaving like an honorable man. Mr. Dunboyne read the letter which bore the Minister’s signature, and handed it to his son. “Can you answer that?” was all he said. Philip’s silence confessed that he was unable to answer it—and Philip himself, I may add, rose accordingly in my estimation. His father pointed to the writing-desk. “I must spare my cramped hand,” the philosopher resumed, “and I must answer Mr. Gracedieu’s letter. Write, and leave a place for my signature.” He began to dictate his reply. “Sir—My son Philip has seen your letter, and has no defense to make. In this respect he has set an example of candor which I propose to follow. There is no excuse for him. What I can do to show that I feel for you, and agree with you, shall be done. At the age which this young man has reached, the laws of England abolish the authority of his father. If he is sufficiently infatuated to place his honor and his happiness at the mercy of a lady, who has behaved to her sister as your daughter has behaved to Miss Eunice, I warn the married couple not to expect a farthing of my money, either during my lifetime or after my death. Your faithful servant, DUNBOYNE, SENIOR.” Having performed his duty as secretary, Philip received his dismissal: “You may send my reply to the post,” his father said; “and you may keep Mr. Gracedieu’s letter. Morally speaking, I regard that last document as a species of mirror, in which a young gentleman like yourself may see how ugly he looks.” This, Philip declared, was his father’s form of farewell. I handed back the letter to Helena. Not a word passed between us. In sinister silence she opened the door and left me alone in the room.
That Mrs. Gracedieu and I had met in the bygone time, and—this was the only serious part of it—had met in secret, would now be made known to the Minister. Was I to blame for having shrunk from distressing my good friend, by telling him that his wife had privately consulted me on the means of removing his adopted child from his house? And, even if I had been cruel enough to do this, would he have believed my statement against the positive denial with which the woman whom he loved and trusted would have certainly met it? No! let the consequences of the coming disclosure be what they might, I failed to see any valid reason for regretting my conduct in the past time.
I found Miss Jillgall waiting in the passage to see me come out.
Before I could tell her what had happened, there was a ring at the house-bell. The visitor proved to be Mr. Wellwood, the doctor. I was anxious to speak to him on the subject of Mr. Gracedieu’s health. Miss Jillgall introduced me, as an old and dear friend of the Minister, and left us together in the dining-room.
“What do I think of Mr. Gracedieu?” he said, repeating the first question that I put. “Well, sir, I think badly of him.”
Entering into details, after that ominous reply, Mr. Wellwood did not hesitate to say that his patient’s nerves were completely shattered. Disease of the brain had, as he feared, been already set up. “As to the causes which have produced this lamentable break-down,” the doctor continued, “Mr. Gracedieu has been in the habit of preaching extempore twice a day on Sundays, and sometimes in the week as well—and has uniformly refused to spare himself when he was in most urgent need of rest. If you have ever attended his chapel, you have seen a man in a state of fiery enthusiasm, feeling intensely every word that he utters. Think of such exhaustion as that implies going on for years together, and accumulating its wasting influences on a sensitively organized constitution. Add that he is tormented by personal anxieties, which he confesses to no one, not even to his own children and the sum of it all is that a worse case of its kind, I am grieved to say, has never occurred in my experience.”
Before the doctor left me to go to his patient, I asked leave to occupy a minute more of his time. My object was, of course, to speak about Eunice.
The change of subject seemed to be agreeable to Mr. Wellwood. He smiled good-humoredly.
“You need feel no alarm about the health of that interesting girl,” he said. “When she complained to me—at her age!—of not being able to sleep, I should have taken it more seriously if I had been told that she too had her troubles, poor little soul. Love-troubles, most likely—but don’t forget that my professional limits keep me in the dark! Have you heard that she took some composing medicine, which I had prescribed for her father? The effect (certain, in any case, to be injurious to a young girl) was considerably aggravated by the state of her mind at the time. A dream that frightened her, and something resembling delirium, seems to have followed. And she made matters worse, poor child, by writing in her diary about the visions and supernatural appearances that had terrified her. I was afraid of fever, on the day when they first sent for me. We escaped that complication, and I was at liberty to try the best of all remedies—quiet and change of air. I have no fears for Miss Eunice.”
With that cheering reply he went up to the Minister’s room.
All that I had found perplexing in Eunice was now made clear. I understood how her agony at the loss of her lover, and her keen sense of the wrong that she had suffered, had been strengthened in their disastrous influence by her experiment on the sleeping draught intended for her father. In mind and body, both, the poor girl was in the condition which offered its opportunity to the lurking hereditary taint. It was terrible to think of what might have happened, if the all-powerful counter-influence had not been present to save her.
Before I had been long alone the servant-maid came in, and said the doctor wanted to see me.
Mr. Wellwood was waiting in the passage, outside the Minister’s bedchamber. He asked if he could speak to me without interruption, and without the fear of being overheard. I led him at once to the room which I occupied as a guest.
“At the very time when it is most important to keep Mr. Gracedieu quiet,” he said, “something has happened to excite—I might almost say to infuriate him. He has left his bed, and is walking up and down the room; and, I don’t scruple to say, he is on the verge of madness. He insists on seeing you. Being wholly unable to control him in any other way, I have consented to this. But I must not allow you to place yourself in what may be a disagreeable position, without a word of warning. Judging by his tones and his looks, he seems to have no very friendly motive for wishing to see you.”
Knowing perfectly well what had happened, and being one of those impatient people who can never endure suspense—I offered to go at once to Mr. Gracedieu’s room. The doctor asked leave to say one word more.
“Pray be careful that you neither say nor do anything to thwart him,” Mr. Wellwood resumed. “If he expresses an opinion, agree with him. If he is insolent and overbearing, don’t answer him. In the state of his brain, the one hopeful course to take is to let him have his own way. Pray remember that. I will be within call, in case of your wanting me.”
“Who’s there?”
Only two words—but the voice that uttered them, hoarse and peremptory, was altered almost beyond recognition. If I had not known whose room it was, I might have doubted whether the Minister had really spoken to me.
At the instant when I answered him, I was allowed to pass in. Having admitted me, he closed the door, and placed himself with his back against it. The customary pallor of his face had darkened to a deep red; there was an expression of ferocious mockery in his eyes. Helena’s vengeance had hurt her unhappy father far more severely than it seemed likely to hurt me. The doctor had said he was on the verge of madness. To my thinking, he had already passed the boundary line.
He received me with a boisterous affectation of cordiality.
“My excellent friend! My admirable, honorable, welcome guest, you don’t know how glad I am to see you. Stand a little nearer to the light; I want to admire you.”
Remembering the doctor’s advice, I obeyed him in silence.
“Ah, you were a handsome fellow when I first knew you,” he said, “and you have some remains of it still left. Do you remember the time when you were a favorite with the ladies? Oh, don’t pretend to be modest; don’t turn your back, now you are old, on what you were in the prime of your life. Do you own that I am right?”
What his object might be in saying this—if, indeed, he had an object—it was impossible to guess. The doctor’s advice left me no alternative; I hastened to own that he was right. As I made that answer, I observed that he held something in his hand which was half hidden up the sleeve of his dressing-gown. What the nature of the object was I failed to discover.
“And when I happened to speak of you somewhere,” he went on, “I forget where—a member of my congregation—I don’t recollect who it was—told me you were connected with the aristocracy. How were you connected?”
He surprised me; but, however he had got his information, he had not been deceived. I told him that I was connected, through my mother, with the family to which he had alluded.
“The aristocracy!” he repeated. “A race of people who are rich without earning their money, and noble because their great-grandfathers were noble before them. They live in idleness and luxury—profligates who gratify their passions without shame and without remorse. Deny, if you dare, that this is a true description of them.”
It was really pitiable. Heartily sorry for him, I pacified him again.
“And don’t suppose I forget that you are one of them. Do you hear me, my noble friend?”
There was no help for it—I made another conciliatory reply.
“So far,” he resumed, “I don’t complain of you. You have not attempted to deceive me—yet. Absolute silence is what I require next. Though you may not suspect it, my mind is in a ferment; I must try to think.”
To some extent at least, his thoughts betrayed themselves in his actions. He put the object that I had half seen in his hand into the pocket of his dressing-gown, and moved to the toilet-table. Opening one of the drawers, he took from it a folded sheet of paper, and came back to me.
“A minister of the Gospel,” he said, “is a sacred man, and has a horror of crime. You are safe, so far—provided you obey me. I have a solemn and terrible duty to perform. This is not the right place for it. Follow me downstairs.”
He led the way out. The doctor, waiting in the passage, was not near the stairs, and so escaped notice. “What is it?” Mr. Wellwood whispered. In the same guarded way, I said: “He has not told me yet; I have been careful not to irritate him.” When we descended the stairs, the doctor followed us at a safe distance. He mended his pace when the Minister opened the door of the study, and when he saw us both pass in. Before he could follow, the door was closed and locked in his face. Mr. Gracedieu took out the key and threw it through the open window, into the garden below.
Turning back into the room, he laid the folded sheet of paper on the table. That done, he spoke to me.
“I distrust my own weakness,” he said. “A dreadful necessity confronts me—I might shrink from the horrid idea, and, if I could open the door, might try to get away. Escape is impossible now. We are prisoners together. But don’t suppose that we are alone. There is a third person present, who will judge between you and me. Look there!”
He pointed solemnly to the portrait of his wife. It was a small picture, very simply framed; representing the face in a “three-quarter” view, and part of the figure only. As a work of art it was contemptible; but, as a likeness, it answered its purpose. My unhappy friend stood before it, in an attitude of dejection, covering his face with his hands.
In the interval of silence that followed, I was reminded that an unseen friend was keeping watch outside.
Alarmed by having heard the key turned in the lock, and realizing the embarrassment of the position in which I was placed, the doctor had discovered a discreet way of communicating with me. He slipped one of his visiting-cards under the door, with these words written on it: “How can I help you?”
I took the pencil from my pocketbook, and wrote on the blank side of the card: “He has thrown the key into the garden; look for it under the window.” A glance at the Minister, before I returned my reply, showed that his attitude was unchanged. Without being seen or suspected, I, in my turn, slipped the card under the door.
The slow minutes followed each other—and still nothing happened.
My anxiety to see how the doctor’s search for the key was succeeding, tempted me to approach the window. On my way to it, the tail of my coat threw down a little tray containing pens and pencils, which had been left close to the edge of the table. Slight as the noise of the fall was, it disturbed Mr. Gracedieu. He looked round vacantly.
“I have been comforted by prayer,” he told me. “The weakness of poor humanity has found strength in the Lord.” He pointed to the portrait once more: “My hands must not presume to touch it, while I am still in doubt. Take it down.”
I removed the picture and placed it, by his directions, on a chair that stood midway between us. To my surprise his tones faltered; I saw tears rising in his eyes. “You may think you see a picture there,” he said. “You are wrong. You see my wife herself. Stand here, and look at my wife with me.”
We stood together, with our eyes fixed on the portrait.
Without anything said or done on my part to irritate him, he suddenly turned to me in a state of furious rage. “Not a sign of sorrow!” he burst out. “Not a blush of shame! Wretch, you stand condemned by the atrocious composure that I see in your face!”
A first discovery of the odious suspicion of which I was the object, dawned on my mind at that moment. My capacity for restraining myself completely failed me. I spoke to him as if he had been an accountable being. “Once for all,” I said, “tell me what I have a right to know. You suspect me of something. What is it?”
Instead of directly replying, he seized my arm and led me to the table. “Take up that paper,” he said. “There is writing on it. Read—and let Her judge between us. Your life depends on how you answer me.”
Was there a weapon concealed in the room? or had he got it in the pocket of his dressing-gown? I listened for the sound of the doctor’s returning footsteps in the passage outside, and heard nothing. My life had once depended, years since, on my success in heading the arrest of an escaped prisoner. I was not conscious, then, of feeling my energies weakened by fear. Butthatman was not mad; and I was younger, in those days, by a good twenty years or more. At my later time of life, I could show my old friend that I was not afraid of him—but I was conscious of an effort in doing it.
I opened the paper. “Am I to read this to myself?” I asked. “Or am I to read it aloud?”
“Read it aloud!”
In these terms, his daughter addressed him:
“I have been so unfortunate, dearest father, as to displease you, and I dare not hope that you will consent to receive me. What it is my painful duty to tell you, must be told in writing.
“Grieved as I am to distress you, in your present state of health, I must not hesitate to reveal what it has been my misfortune—I may even say my misery, when I think of my mother—to discover.
“But let me make sure, in such a serious matter as this is, that I am not mistaken.
“In those happy past days, when I was still dear to my father, you said you thought of writing to invite a dearly-valued friend to pay a visit to this house. You had first known him, as I understood, when my mother was still living. Many interesting things you told me about this old friend, but you never mentioned that he knew, or that he had even seen, my mother. I was left to suppose that those two had remained strangers to each other to the day of her death.
“If there is any misinterpretation here of what you said, or perhaps of what you meant to say, pray destroy what I have written without turning to the next page; and forgive me for having innocently startled you by a false alarm.”
Mr. Gracedieu interrupted me.
“Put it down!” he cried; “I won’t wait till you have got to the end—I shall question you now. Give me the paper; it will help me to keep this mystery of iniquity clear in my own mind.”
I gave him the paper.
He hesitated—and looked at the portrait once more. “Turn her away from me,” he said; “I can’t face my wife.”
I placed the picture with its back to him.
He consulted the paper, reading it with but little of the confusion and hesitation which my experience of him had induced me to anticipate. Had the mad excitement that possessed him exercised an influence in clearing his mind, resembling in some degree the influence exercised by a storm in clearing the air? Whatever the right explanation may be, I can only report what I saw. I could hardly have mastered what his daughter had written more readily, if I had been reading it myself.
“Helena tells me,” he began, “that you said you knew her by her likeness to her mother. Is that true?”
“Quite true.”
“And you made an excuse for leaving her—see! here it is, written down. You made an excuse, and left her when she asked for an explanation.”
“I did.”
He consulted the paper again.
“My daughter says—No! I won’t be hurried and I won’t be interrupted—she says you were confused. Is that so?”
“It is so. Let your questions wait for a moment. I wish to tell you why I was confused.”
“Haven’t I said I won’t be interrupted? Do you think you can shakemyresolution?” He referred to the paper again. “I have lost the place. It’s your fault—find it for me.”
The evidence which was intended to convict me was the evidence which I was expected to find! I pointed it out to him.
His natural courtesy asserted itself in spite of his anger. He said “Thank you,” and questioned me the moment after as fiercely as ever. “Go back to the time, sir, when we met in your rooms at the prison. Did you know my wife then?”
“Certainly not.”
“Did you and she see each other—ha! I’ve got it now—did you see each other after I had left the town? No prevarication! You own to telling Helena that you knew her by her likeness to her mother. You must have seen her mother. Where?”
I made another effort to defend myself. He again refused furiously to hear me. It was useless to persist. Whatever the danger that threatened me might be, the sooner it showed itself the easier I should feel. I told him that Mrs. Gracedieu had called on me, after he and his wife had left the town.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he cried, “that she came to you?”
“I do.”
After that answer, he no longer required the paper to help him. He threw it from him on the floor.
“And you received her,” he said, “without inquiring whether I knew of her visit or not? Guilty deception on your part—guilty deception on her part. Oh, the hideous wickedness of it!”
When his mad suspicion that I had been his wife’s lover betrayed itself in this way, I made a last attempt, in the face of my own conviction that it was hopeless, to place my conduct and his wife’s conduct before him in the true light.
“Mrs. Gracedieu’s object was to consult me—” Before I could say the next words, I saw him put his hand into the pocket of his dressing-gown.
“An innocent man,” he sternly declared, “would have told me that my wife had been to see him—you kept it a secret. An innocent woman would have given me a reason for wishing to go to you—she kept it a secret, when she left my house; she kept it a secret when she came back.”
“Mr. Gracedieu, I insist on being heard! Your wife’s motive—”
He drew from his pocket the thing that he had hidden from me. This time, there was no concealment; he let me see that he was opening a razor. It was no time for asserting my innocence; I had to think of preserving my life. When a man is without firearms, what defense can avail against a razor in the hands of a madman? A chair was at my side; it offered the one poor means of guarding myself that I could see. I laid my hand on it, and kept my eye on him.
He paused, looking backward and forward between the picture and me.
“Which of them shall I kill first?” he said to himself. “The man who was my trusted friend? Or the woman whom I believed to be an angel on earth?” He stopped once more, in a state of fierce self-concentration, debating what he should do. “The woman,” he decided. “Wretch! Fiend! Harlot! How I loved her!!!”
With a yell of fury, he pounced on the picture—ripped the canvas out of the frame—and cut it malignantly into fragments. As they dropped from the razor on the floor, he stamped on them, and ground them under his foot. “Go, wife of my bosom,” he cried, with a dreadful mockery of voice and look—“go, and burn everlastingly in the place of torment!” His eyes glared at me. “Your turn now,” he said—and rushed at me with his weapon ready in his hand. I hurled the chair at his right arm. The razor dropped on the floor. I caught him by the wrist. Like a wild animal he tried to bite me. With my free hand—if I had known how to defend myself in any other way, I would have taken that way—with my free hand I seized him by the throat; forced him back; and held him against the wall. My grasp on his throat kept him quiet. But the dread of seriously injuring him so completely overcame me, that I forgot I was a prisoner in the room, and was on the point of alarming the household by a cry for help.
I was still struggling to preserve my self-control, when the sound of footsteps broke the silence outside. I heard the key turn in the lock, and saw the doctor at the open door.
I cannot prevail upon myself to dwell at any length on the events that followed.
We secured my unhappy friend, and carried him to his bed. It was necessary to have men in attendance who could perform the duty of watching him. The doctor sent for them, while I went downstairs to make the best I could of the miserable news which it was impossible entirely to conceal. All that I could do to spare Miss Jillgall, I did. I was obliged to acknowledge that there had been an outbreak of violence, and that the portrait of the Minister’s wife had been destroyed by the Minister himself. Of Helena’s revenge on me I said nothing. It had led to consequences which even her merciless malice could not have contemplated. There were no obstacles in the way of keeping secret the attempt on my life. But I was compelled to own that Mr. Gracedieu had taken a dislike to me, which rendered it necessary that my visit should be brought to an end. I hastened to add that I should go to the hotel, and should wait there until the next day, in the hope of hearing better news.
Of the multitude of questions with which poor Miss Jillgall overwhelmed me—of the wild words of sorrow and alarm that escaped her—of the desperate manner in which she held by my arm, and implored me not to go away, when I must see for myself that “she was a person entirely destitute of presence of mind”—I shall say nothing. The undeserved suffering that is inflicted on innocent persons by the sins of others demands silent sympathy; and, to that extent at least, I can say that I honestly felt for my quaint and pleasant little friend.
In the evening the doctor called on me at the hotel. The medical treatment of his patient had succeeded in calming the maddened brain under the influence of sleep. If the night passed quietly, better news might be hoped for in the morning.
On the next day I had arranged to drive to the farm, being resolved not to disappoint Eunice. But I shrank from the prospect of having to distress her as I had already distressed Miss Jillgall. The only alternative left was to repeat the sad story in writing, subject to the concealments which I had already observed. This I did, and sent the letter by messenger, overnight, so that Eunice might know when to expect me.
The medical report, in the morning, justified some hope. Mr. Gracedieu had slept well, and there had been no reappearance of insane violence on his waking. But the doctor’s opinion was far from encouraging when we spoke of the future. He did not anticipate the cruel necessity of placing the Minister under restraint—unless some new provocation led to a new outbreak. The misfortune to be feared was imbecility.
I was just leaving the hotel to keep my appointment with Eunice, when the waiter announced the arrival of a young lady who wished to speak with me. Before I could ask if she had mentioned her name, the young lady herself walked in—Helena Gracedieu.
She explained her object in calling on me, with the exasperating composure which was peculiarly her own. No parallel to it occurs to me in my official experience of shameless women.
“I don’t wish to speak of what happened yesterday, so far as I know anything about it,” she began. “It is quite enough for me that you have been obliged to leave the house and to take refuge in this hotel. I have come to say a word about the future. Are you honoring me with your attention?”
I signed to her to go on. If I had answered in words, I should have told her to leave the room.
“At first,” she resumed, “I thought of writing; but it occurred to me that you might keep my letter, and show it to Philip, by way of lowering me in his good opinion, as you have lowered me in the good opinion of his father. My object in coming here is to give you a word of warning. If you attempt to make mischief next between Philip and myself, I shall hear of it—and you know what to expect, when you have me for an enemy. It is not worth while to say any more. We understand each other, I hope?”
She was determined to have a reply—and she got it.
“Not quite yet,” I said. “I have been hitherto, as becomes a gentleman, always mindful of a woman’s claims to forbearance. You will do well not to tempt me into forgetting thatyouare a woman, by prolonging your visit. Now, Miss Helena Gracedieu, we understand each other.” She made me a low curtsey, and answered in her finest tone of irony: “I only desire to wish you a pleasant journey home.”
I rang for the waiter. “Show this lady out,” I said.
Even this failed to have the slightest effect on her. She sauntered to the door, as perfectly at her ease as if the room had been hers—not mine.
I had thought of driving to the farm. Shall I confess it? My temper was so completely upset that active movement of some kind offered the one means of relief in which I could find refuge. The farm was not more than five miles distant, and I had been a good walker all my life. After making the needful inquiries, I set forth to visit Eunice on foot.
My way through the town led me past the Minister’s house. I had left the door some fifty yards behind me, when I saw two ladies approaching. They were walking, in the friendliest manner, arm in arm. As they came nearer, I discovered Miss Jillgall. Her companion was the middle-aged lady who had declined to give her name, when we met accidentally at Mr. Gracedieu’s door.
Hysterically impulsive, Miss Jillgall seized both my hands, and overwhelmed me with entreaties that I would go back with her to the house. I listened rather absently. The middle-aged lady happened to be nearer to me now than on either of the former occasions on which I had seen her. There was something in the expression of her eyes which seemed to be familiar to me. But the effort of my memory was not helped by what I observed in the other parts of her face. The iron-gray hair, the baggy lower eyelids, the fat cheeks, the coarse complexion, and the double chin, were features, and very disagreeable features, too, which I had never seen at any former time.
“Do pray come back with us,” Miss Jillgall pleaded. “We were just talking of you. I and my friend—” There she stopped, evidently on the point of blurting out the name which she had been forbidden to utter in my hearing.
The lady smiled; her provokingly familiar eyes rested on me with a humorous enjoyment of the scene.
“My dear,” she said to Miss Jillgall, “caution ceases to be a virtue when it ceases to be of any use. The Governor is beginning to remember me, and the inevitable recognition—withhisquickness of perception—is likely to be a matter of minutes now.” She turned to me. “In more ways than one, sir, women are hardly used by Nature. As they advance in years they lose more in personal appearance than the men do. You are white-haired, and (pray excuse me) you are too fat; and (allow me to take another liberty) you stoop at the shoulders—but you have not entirely lost your good looks.Iam no longer recognizable. Allow me to prompt you, as they say on the stage. I am Mrs. Tenbruggen.”
As a man of the world, I ought to have been capable of concealing my astonishment and dismay. She struck me dumb.
Mrs. Tenbruggen in the town! The one woman whose appearance Mr. Gracedieu had dreaded, and justly dreaded, stood before me—free, as a friend of his kinswoman, to enter his house, at the very time when he was a helpless man, guarded by watchers at his bedside. My first clear idea was to get away from both the women, and consider what was to be done next. I bowed—and begged to be excused—and said I was in a hurry, all in a breath.
Hearing this, the best of genial old maids was unable to restrain her curiosity. “Where are you going?” she asked.
Too confused to think of an excuse, I said I was going to the farm.
“To see my dear Euneece?” Miss Jillgall burst out. “Oh, we will go with you!” Mrs. Tenbruggen’s politeness added immediately, “With the greatest pleasure.”