name?"
"In the case of any one else in your position, Miss Helena, I should venture to
call it bad taste."
I was provoked into saying that. It failed entirely as a well-meant effort in
the way of implied reproof. Miss Helena smiled.
"You grant me a liberty which you would not concede to another girl." That was
how she viewed it. "We are getting on better already. To return to what I was
saying. When Philip first saw me--I have it from himself, mind--he felt that I
should have been his choice, if he had met with me before he met with my sister.
Do you blame him?"
"If you will take my advice," I said, "you will not inquire too closely into my
opinion of Mr. Philip Dunboyne."
"Perhaps you don't wish me to say anymore?" she suggested.
"On the contrary, pray go on, if you like."
After that concession, she was amiability itself. "Oh, yes," she assured me,
"that's easily done." And she went on accordingly: "Philip having informed me of
the state of his affections, I naturally followed his example. In fact, we
exchanged confessions. Our marriage engagement followed as a matter of course.
Do you blame me?"
"I will wait till you have done."
"I have no more to say."
She made that amazing reply with such perfect composure, that I began to fear
there must have been some misunderstanding between us. "Is that really all you
have to say for yourself?" I persisted.
Her patience with me was most exemplary. She lowered herself to my level. Not
trusting to words only on this occasion, she (so to say) beat her meaning into
my head by gesticulating on her fingers, as if she was educating a child.
"Philip and I," she began, "are the victims of an accident, which kept us apart
when we ought to have met together--we are not responsible for an accident." She
impressed this on me by touching her forefinger. "Philip and I fell in love with
each other at first sight--we are not responsible for the feelings implanted in
our natures by an all-wise Providence." She assisted me in understanding this by
touching her middle finger. "Philip and I owe a duty to each other, and accept a
responsibility under those circumstances--the responsibility of getting
married." A touch on her third finger, and an indulgent bow, announced that the
lesson was ended. "I am not a clever man like you," she modestly acknowledged,
"but I ask you to help us, when you next see my father, with some confidence.
You know exactly what to say to him, by this time. Nothing has been forgotten."
"Pardon me," I said, "a person has been forgotten."
"Indeed? What person?"
"Your sister."
A little perplexed at first, Miss Helena reflected, and recovered herself.
"Ah, yes," she said; "I was afraid I might be obliged to trouble you for an
explanation--I see it now. You are shocked (very properly) when feelings of
enmity exist between near relations; and you wish to be assured that I bear no
malice toward Eunice. She is violent, she is sulky, she is stupid, she is
selfish; and she cruelly refuses to live in the same house with me. Make your
mind easy, sir, I forgive my sister."
Let me not attempt to disguise it--Miss Helena Gracedieu confounded me.
Ordinary audacity is one of those forms of insolence which mature experience
dismisses with contempt. This girl's audacity struck down all resistance, for
one shocking reason: it was unquestionably sincere. Strong conviction of her own
virtue stared at me in her proud and daring eyes. At that time, I was not aware
of what I have learned since. The horrid hardening of her moral sense had been
accomplished by herself. In her diary, there has been found the confession of a
secret course of reading--with supplementary reflections flowing from it, which
need only to be described as worthy of their source.
A person capable of repentance and reform would, in her place, have seen that
she had disgusted me. Not a suspicion of this occurred to Miss Helena. "I see
you are embarrassed," she remarked, "and I am at no loss to account for it. You
are too polite to acknowledge that I have not made a friend of you yet. Oh, I
mean to do it!"
"No," I said, "I think not."
"We shall see," she replied. "Sooner or later, you will find yourself saying a
kind word to my father for Philip and me." She rose, and took a turn in the
room--and stopped, eying me attentively. "Are you thinking of Eunice?" she
asked.
"Yes."
"My heart-felt sympathy."
"I needn't ask how I stand in your estimation, after that. Pray express yourself
freely. Your looks confess it--you view me with a feeling of aversion."
"I view you with a feeling of horror."
The exasperating influences of her language, her looks, and her tones would, as
I venture to think, have got to the end of another man's self-control before
this. Anyway, she had at last irritated me into speaking as strongly as I felt.
What I said had been so plainly (perhaps so rudely) expressed, that
misinterpretation of it seemed to be impossible. She mistook me, nevertheless.
The most merciless disclosure of the dreary side of human destiny is surely to
be found in the failure of words, spoken or written, so to answer their purpose
that we can trust them, in our attempts to communicate with each other. Even
when he seems to be connected, by the nearest and dearest relations, with his
fellow-mortals, what a solitary creature, tried by the test of sympathy, the
human being really is in the teeming world that he inhabits! Affording one more
example of the impotence of human language to speak for itself, my
misinterpreted words had found their way to the one sensitive place in Helena
Gracedieu's impenetrable nature. She betrayed it in the quivering and flushing
of her hard face, and in the appeal to the looking-glass which escaped her eyes
the next moment. My hasty reply had roused the idea of a covert insult addressed
to her handsome face. In other words, I had wounded her vanity. Driven by
resentment, out came the secret distrust of me which had been lurking in that
cold heart, from the moment when we first met.
"I inspire you with horror, and Eunice inspires you with compassion," she said.
"That, Mr. Governor, is not natural."
"May I ask why?"
"You know why."
"No."
"You will have it?"
"I want an explanation, Miss Helena, if that is what you mean."
"Take your explanation, then! You are not the stranger you are said to be to my
sister and to me. Your interest in Eunice is a personal interest of some kind. I
don't pretend to guess what it is. As for myself, it is plain that somebody else
has been setting you against me, before Miss Jillgall got possession of your
private ear."
In alluding to Eunice, she had blundered, strangely enough, on something like
the truth. But when she spoke of herself, the headlong malignity of her
suspicions--making every allowance for the anger that had hurried her into
them--seemed to call for
some little protest against a false assertion. I told
her that she was completely mistaken.
"I am completely right," she answered; "I saw it."
"Saw what?"
"Saw you pretending to be a stranger to me."
"When did I do that?"
"You did it when we met at the station."
The reply was too ridiculous for the preservation of any control over my own
sense of humor. It was wrong; but it was inevitable--I laughed. She looked at me
with a fury, revealing a concentration of evil passion in her which I had not
seen yet. I asked her pardon; I begged her to think a little before she
persisted in taking a view of my conduct unworthy of her, and unjust to myself.
"Unjust to You!" she burst out. "Who are you? A man who has driven your trade
has spies always at his command--yes! and knows how to use them. You were primed
with private information--you had, for all I know, a stolen photograph of me in
your pocket--before ever you came to our town. Do you still deny it? Oh, sir,
why degrade yourself by telling a lie?"
No such outrage as this had ever been inflicted on me, at any time in my life.
My forbearance must, I suppose, have been more severely tried than I was aware
of myself. With or without excuse for me, I was weak enough to let a girl's
spiteful tongue sting me, and, worse still, to let her see that I felt it.
"You shall have no second opportunity, Miss Gracedieu, of insulting me." With
that foolish reply, I opened the door violently and went out.
She ran after me, triumphing in having roused the temper of a man old enough to
have been her grandfather, and caught me by the arm. "Your own conduct has
exposed you." (That was literally how she expressed herself.) "I saw it in your
eyes when we met at the station. You, the stranger--you who allowed poor
ignorant me to introduce myself--you knew me all the time, knew me by sight!"
"It's false!" I cried. "I knew you by your likeness to your mother."
The moment the words had passed my lips, I came to my senses again; I remembered
what fatal words they might prove to be, if they reached the Minister's ears.
Heard only by his daughter, my reply seemed to cool the heat of her anger in an
instant.
"So you knew my mother?" she said. "My father never told us that, when he spoke
of your being such a very old friend of his. Strange, to say the least of it."
I was wise enough--now when wisdom had come too late--not to attempt to explain
myself, and not to give her an opportunity of saying more. "We are neither of us
in a state of mind," I answered, "to allow this interview to continue. I must
try to recover my composure; and I leave you to do the same."
In the solitude of my room, I was able to look my position fairly in the face.
Mr. Gracedieu's wife had come to me, in the long-past time, without her
husband's knowledge. Tempted to a cruel resolve by the maternal triumph of
having an infant of her own, she had resolved to rid herself of the poor little
rival in her husband's fatherly affection, by consigning the adopted child to
the keeping of a charitable asylum. She had dared to ask me to help her. I had
kept the secret of her shameful visit--I can honestly say, for the Minister's
sake. And now, long after time had doomed those events to oblivion, they were
revived--and revived by me. Thanks to my folly, Mr. Gracedieu's daughter knew
what I had concealed from Mr. Gracedieu himself.
What course did respect for my friend, and respect for myself, counsel me to
take?
I could only see before me a choice of two evils. To wait for events--with the
too certain prospect of a vindictive betrayal of my indiscretion by Helena
Gracedieu. Or to take the initiative into my own hands, and risk consequences
which I might regret to the end of my life, by making my confession to the
Minister.
Before I had decided, somebody knocked at the door. It was the maid-servant
again. Was it possible she had been sent by Helena?
"Another message?"
"Yes, sir. My master wishes to see you."
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE GIRLS' AGES.
HAD the Minister's desire to see me been inspired by his daughter's betrayal of
what I had unfortunately said to her? Although he would certainly not consent to
receive her personally, she would be at liberty to adopt a written method of
communication with him, and the letter might be addressed in such a manner as to
pique his curiosity. If Helena's vindictive purpose had been already
accomplished--and if Mr. Gracedieu left me no alternative but to present his
unworthy wife in her true character--I can honestly say that I dreaded the
consequences, not as they might affect myself, but as they might affect my
unhappy friend in his enfeebled state of body and mind.
When I entered his room, he was still in bed.
The bed-curtains were so drawn, on the side nearest to the window, as to keep
the light from falling too brightly on his weak eyes. In the shadow thus thrown
on him, it was not possible to see his face plainly enough, from the open side
of the bed, to arrive at any definite conclusion as to what might be passing in
his mind. After having been awake for some hours during the earlier part of the
night, he had enjoyed a long and undisturbed sleep. "I feel stronger this
morning," he said, "and I wish to speak to you while my mind is clear."
If the quiet tone of his voice was not an assumed tone, he was surely ignorant
of all that had passed between his daughter and myself.
"Eunice will be here soon," he proceeded, "and I ought to explain why I have
sent for her to come and meet you. I have reasons, serious reasons, mind, for
wishing you to compare her personal appearance with Helena's personal
appearance, and then to tell me which of the two, on a fair comparison, looks
the eldest. Pray bear in mind that I attach the greatest importance to the
conclusion at which you may arrive."
He spoke more clearly and collectedly than I had heard him speak yet.
Here and there I detected hesitations and repetitions, which I have purposely
passed over. The substance of what he said to me is all that I shall present in
this place. Careful as I have been to keep my record of events within strict
limits, I have written at a length which I was far indeed from contemplating
when I accepted Mr. Gracedieu's invitation.
Having promised to comply with the strange request which he had addressed to me,
I ventured to remind him of past occasions on which he had pointedly abstained,
when the subject presented itself, from speaking of the girls' ages. "You have
left it to my discretion," I added, "to decide a question in which you are
seriously interested, relating to your daughters. Have I no excuse for
regretting that I have not been admitted to your confidence a little more
freely?"
"You have every excuse," he answered. "But you trouble me all the same. There
was something else that I had to say to you--and your curiosity gets in the
way."
He said this with a sullen emphasis. In my position, the worst of evils was
suspense. I told him that my curiosity could wait; and I begged that he would
relieve his mind of what was pressing on it at the moment.
"Let me think a little," he said.
I waited anxiously for the decision at which he might arrive. Nothing came of it
to justify my misgivings. "Leave what I have in my mind to ripen in my mind," he
said. "The mystery about the girls' ages seems to irritate you. If I put my good
friend's temper to any further trial, he will be of no use to me. Never mind if
my head swims; I'm used to that. Now listen!"
Strange as the preface was, the explanation that followed was stranger yet. I
offer a shortened and simplified version, giving accurately the substance of
what I heard.
The Minister entered without reserve on the mysterious subject of the ages.
Eunice, he informed me, was nearly two years older than Helena. If she outwardly
showed her superiority of age, any person acquainted with the circumstances
under which the adopted infant had been received into Mr. Gracedieu's childless
household, need only compare the so-called sisters in after-life, and would
thereupon identify the eldest-looking young lady of the two as the offspring of
the woman who had been hanged for murder. With such a misfortune as this
presenting itself as a possible prospect, the Minister was bound to prevent the
girls from ignorantly betraying each other by allusions to their ages and their
birthdays. After much thought, he had devised a desperate means of meeting the
difficulty--already made known, as I am told, for the information of strangers
who may read the pages that have gone before mine. My friend's plan of
proceeding had, by the nature of it, exposed him to injurious comment, to
embarrassing questions, and to doubts and misconceptions, all patiently endured
in consideration of the security that had been attained. Proud of his
explanation, Mr. Gracedieu's vanity called upon me to acknowledge that my
curiosity had been satisfied, and my doubts completely set at rest.
No: my obstinate common sense was not reduced to submission, even yet. Looking
back over a lapse of seventeen years, I asked what had happened, in that long
interval, to justify the anxieties which still appeared to trouble my friend.
This time, my harmless curiosity could be gratified by a reply expressed in
three words--nothing had happened.
Then what, in Heaven's name, was the Minister afraid of?
His voice dropped to a whisper. He said: "I am afraid of the women."
Who were the women?
Two of them actually proved to be the servants employed in Mr. Gracedieu's
house, at the bygone time when be had brought the child home with him from the
prison! To point out the absurdity of the reasons that he gave for fearing what
female curiosity might yet attempt, if circumstances happened to encourage it,
would have been a mere waste of words. Dismissing the subject, I next
ascertained that the Minister's doubts extended even to the two female warders,
who had been appointed to watch the murderess in turn, during her last days in
prison. I easily relieved his mind in this case. One of the warders was dead.
The other had married a farmer in Australia. Had we exhausted the list of
suspected persons yet? No: there was one more left; and the Minister declared
that he had first met with her in my official residence, at the time when I was
Governor of the prison.
"She presented herself to me by name," he said; "and she spoke rudely. A Miss--"
He paused to consult his memory, and this time (thanks perhaps to his night's
rest) his memory answered the appeal. "I have got it!" he cried--"Miss Chance."
My friend had interested me in his imaginary perils at last. It was just
possible that he might have a formidable person to deal with now.
During my residence at Florence, the Chaplain and I had taken many a
retrospective look (as old men will) at past events in our lives. My former
colleague spoke of the time when he had performed clerical duty for his friend,