Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1382 page)

“You know who Selina is?” she resumed. “My friend! The only friend I had, till you came here.”

I guessed that she was speaking of the quaint, kindly little woman, whose ugly surname had been hitherto the only name known to me.

“Selina has, I daresay, told you that I have been ill,” she continued, “and that I am staying in the country for the benefit of my health.”

It was plain that she had something to say to me, far more important than this, and that she was dwelling on trifles to gain time and courage. Hoping to help her, I dwelt on trifles, too; asking commonplace questions about the part of the country in which she was staying. She answered absently — then, little by little, impatiently. The one poor proof of kindness that I could offer, now, was to say no more.

“Do you know what a strange creature I am?” she broke out. “Shall I make you angry with me? or shall I make you laugh at me? What I have shrunk from confessing to Selina — what I dare not confess to my father — I must, and will, confess to You.”

There was a look of horror in her face that alarmed me. I drew her to me so that she could rest her head on my shoulder. My own agitation threatened to get the better of me. For the first time since I had seen this sweet girl, I found myself thinking of the blood that ran in her veins, and of the nature of the mother who had borne her.

“Did you notice how I behaved upstairs?” she said. “I mean when we left my father, and came out on the landing.”

It was easily recollected; I begged her to go on.

“Before I went downstairs,” she proceeded, “you saw me look and listen. Did you think I was afraid of meeting some person? and did you guess who it was I wanted to avoid?”

“I guessed that — and I understood you.”

“No! You are not wicked enough to understand me. Will you do me a favor? I want you to look at me.”

It was said seriously. She lifted her head for a moment, so that I could examine her face.

“Do you see anything,” she asked, “which makes you fear that I am not in my right mind?”

“Good God! how can you ask such a horrible question?”

She laid her head back on my shoulder with a sad little sigh of resignation. “I ought to have known better,” she said; “there is no such easy way out of it as that. Tell me — is there one kind of wickedness more deceitful than another? Can it be hid in a person for years together, and show itself when a time of suffering — no; I mean when a sense of injury comes? Did you ever see that, when you were master in the prison?”

I had seen it — and, after a moment’s doubt, I said I had seen it.

“Did you pity those poor wretches?”

“Certainly! They deserved pity.”

“I am one of them!” she said. “Pity
me
. If Helena looks at me — if Helena speaks to me — if I only see Helena by accident — do you know what she does? She tempts me! Tempts me to do dreadful things! Tempts me — ” The poor child threw her arms round my neck, and whispered the next fatal words in my ear.

The mother! Prepared as I was for the accursed discovery, the horror of it shook me.

She left me, and started to her feet. The inherited energy showed itself in furious protest against the inherited evil. “What does it mean?” she cried. “I’ll submit to anything. I’ll bear my hard lot patiently, if you will only tell me what it means. Where does this horrid transformation of me out of myself come from? Look at my good father. In all this world there is no man so perfect as he is. And oh, how he has taught me! there isn’t a single good thing that I have not learned from him since I was a little child. Did you ever hear him speak of my mother? You must have heard him. My mother was an angel. I could never be worthy of her at my best — but I have tried! I have tried! The wickedest girl in the world doesn’t have worse thoughts than the thoughts that have come to me. Since when? Since Helena — oh, how can I call her by her name as if I still loved her? Since my sister — can she be my sister, I ask myself sometimes! Since my enemy — there’s the word for her — since my enemy took Philip away from me. What does it mean? I have asked in my prayers — and have got no answer. I ask you. What does it mean? You must tell me! You shall tell me! What does it mean?”

Why did I not try to calm her? I had vainly tried to calm her — I who knew who her mother was, and what her mother had been.

At last, she had forced the sense of my duty on me. The simplest way of calming her was to put her back in the place by my side that she had left. It was useless to reason with her, it was impossible to answer her. I had my own idea of the one way in which I might charm Eunice back to her sweeter self.

“Let us talk of Philip,” I said.

The fierce flush on her face softened, the swelling trouble of her bosom began to subside, as that dearly-loved name passed my lips! But there was some influence left in her which resisted me.

“No,” she said; “we had better not talk of him.”

“Why not?”

“I have lost all my courage. If you speak of Philip, you will make me cry.”

I drew her nearer to me. If she had been my own child, I don’t think I could have felt for her more truly than I felt at that moment. I only looked at her; I only said:

“Cry!”

The love that was in her heart rose, and poured its tenderness into her eyes. I had longed to see the tears that would comfort her. The tears came.

There was silence between us for a while. It was possible for me to think.

In the absence of physical resemblance between parent and child, is an unfavorable influence exercised on the tendency to moral resemblance? Assuming the possibility of such a result as this, Eunice (entirely unlike her mother) must, as I concluded, have been possessed of qualities formed to resist, as well as of qualities doomed to undergo, the infection of evil. While, therefore, I resigned myself to recognise the existence of the hereditary maternal taint, I firmly believed in the counterbalancing influences for good which had been part of the girl’s birthright. They had been derived, perhaps, from the better qualities in her father’s nature; they had been certainly developed by the tender care, the religious vigilance, which had guarded the adopted child so lovingly in the Minister’s household; and they had served their purpose until time brought with it the change, for which the tranquil domestic influences were not prepared. With the great, the vital transformation, which marks the ripening of the girl into the woman’s maturity of thought and passion, a new power for Good, strong enough to resist the latent power for Evil, sprang into being, and sheltered Eunice under the supremacy of Love. Love ill-fated and ill-bestowed — but love that no profanation could stain, that no hereditary evil could conquer — the True Love that had been, and was, and would be, the guardian angel of Eunice’s life.

If I am asked whether I have ventured to found this opinion on what I have observed in one instance only, I reply that I have had other opportunities of investigation, and that my conclusions are derived from experience which refers to more instances than one.

No man in his senses can doubt that physical qualities are transmitted from parents to children. But inheritance of moral qualities is less easy to trace. Here, the exploring mind finds its progress beset by obstacles. That those obstacles have been sometimes overcome I do not deny. Moral resemblances have been traced between parents and children. While, however, I admit this, I doubt the conclusion which sees, in inheritance of moral qualities, a positive influence exercised on moral destiny. There are inherent emotional forces in humanity to which the inherited influences must submit; they are essentially influences under control — influences which can be encountered and forced back. That we, who inhabit this little planet, may be the doomed creatures of fatality, from the cradle to the grave, I am not prepared to dispute. But I absolutely refuse to believe that it is a fatality with no higher origin than can be found in our accidental obligation to our fathers and mothers.

Still absorbed in these speculations, I was disturbed by a touch on my arm.

I looked up. Eunice’s eyes were fixed on a shrubbery, at some little distance from us, which closed the view of the garden on that side. I noticed that she was trembling. Nothing to alarm her was visible that I could discover. I asked what she had seen to startle her. She pointed to the shrubbery.

“Look again,” she said.

This time I saw a woman’s dress among the shrubs. The woman herself appeared in a moment more. It was Helena. She carried a small portfolio, and she approached us with a smile.

CHAPTER XLI. THE WHISPERING VOICE.

I looked at Eunice. She had risen, startled by her first suspicion of the person who was approaching us through the shrubbery; but she kept her place near me, only changing her position so as to avoid confronting Helena. Her quickened breathing was all that told me of the effort she was making to preserve her self-control. Entirely free from unbecoming signs of hurry and agitation, Helena opened her business with me by means of an apology.

“Pray excuse me for disturbing you. I am obliged to leave the house on one of my tiresome domestic errands. If you will kindly permit it, I wish to express, before I go, my very sincere regret for what I was rude enough to say, when I last had the honour of seeing you. May I hope to be forgiven? How-do-you-do, Eunice? Have you enjoyed your holiday in the country?”

Eunice neither moved nor answered. Having some doubt of what might happen if the two girls remained together, I proposed to Helena to leave the garden and to let me hear what she had to say, in the house.

“Quite needless,” she replied; “I shall not detain you for more than a minute. Please look at this.”

She offered to me the portfolio that she had been carrying, and pointed to a morsel of paper attached to it, which contained this inscription:

“Philip’s Letters To Me. Private. Helena Gracedieu.”

“I have a favor to ask,” she said, “and a proof of confidence in you to offer. Will you be so good as to look over what you find in my portfolio? I am unwilling to give up the hopes that I had founded on our interview, when I asked for it. The letters will, I venture to think, plead my cause more convincingly than I was able to plead it for myself. I wish to forget what passed between us, to the last word. To the last word,” she repeated emphatically — with a look which sufficiently informed me that I had not been betrayed to her father yet. “Will you indulge me?” she asked, and offered her portfolio for the second time.

A more impudent bargain could not well have been proposed to me.

I was to read, and to be favorably impressed by, Mr. Philip Dunboyne’s letters; and Miss Helena was to say nothing of that unlucky slip of the tongue, relating to her mother, which she had discovered to be a serious act of self-betrayal — thanks to my confusion at the time. If I had not thought of Eunice, and of the desolate and loveless life to which the poor girl was so patiently resigned, I should have refused to read Miss Gracedieu’s love-letters.

But, as things were, I was influenced by the hope (innocently encouraged by Eunice herself) that Philip Dunboyne might not be so wholly unworthy of the sweet girl whom he had injured as I had hitherto been too hastily disposed to believe. To act on this view with the purpose of promoting a reconciliation was impossible, unless I had the means of forming a correct estimate of the man’s character. It seemed to me that I had found the means. A fair chance of putting his sincerity to a trustworthy test, was surely offered by the letters (the confidential letters) which I had been requested to read. To feel this as strongly as I felt it, brought me at once to a decision. I consented to take the portfolio — on my own conditions.

“Understand, Miss Helena,” I said, “that I make no promises. I reserve my own opinion, and my own right of action.”

“I am not afraid of your opinions or your actions,” she answered confidently, “if you will only read the letters. In the meantime, let me relieve my sister, there, of my presence. I hope you will soon recover, Eunice, in the country air.”

If the object of the wretch was to exasperate her victim, she had completely failed. Eunice remained as still as a statue. To all appearance, she had not even heard what had been said to her. Helena looked at me, and touched her forehead with a significant smile. “Sad, isn’t it?” she said — and bowed, and went briskly away on her household errand.