Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1391 page)

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘how has it ended?’

“Quite calmly my noble Elizabeth answered: ‘In total failure.’

“‘What did you say to him after you sent me away?’

“‘I tried, in every possible way, to get him to tell me which of his two daughters was the oldest.’

“‘Did he refuse to answer?’

“‘He was only too ready to answer. First, he said Helena was the oldest — then he corrected himself, and declared that Eunice was the oldest — then he said they were twins — then he went back to Helena and Eunice. Now one was the oldest, and now the other. He rang the changes on those two names, I can’t tell you how often, and seemed to think it a better game than cup-and-ball.’

“‘What is to be done?’

“‘Nothing is to be done, Selina.’

“‘What!’ I cried, ‘you give it up?’

“My heroic friend answered: ‘I know when I am beaten, my dear — I give it up.’ She looked at her watch; it was time to operate on the muscles of one of her patients. Away she went, on her glorious mission of Massage, without a murmur of regret. What strength of mind! But, oh, dear, what a disappointment for poor little me! On one thing I am determined. If I find myself getting puzzled or frightened, I shall instantly write to you.”

With that expression of confidence in me, Selina’s narrative came to an end. I wish I could have believed, as she did, that the object of her admiration had been telling her the truth.

A few days later, Mrs. Tenbruggen honoured me with a visit at my house in the neighbourhood of London. Thanks to this circumstance, I am able to add a postscript which will complete the revelations in Miss Jillgall’s letter.

The illustrious Masseuse, having much to conceal from her faithful Selina, was well aware that she had only one thing to keep hidden from me; namely, the advantage which she would have gained if her inquiries had met with success.

“I thought I might have got at what I wanted,” she told me, “by mesmerizing our reverend friend. He is as weak as a woman; I threw him into hysterics, and had to give it up, and quiet him, or he would have alarmed the house. You look as if you don’t believe in mesmerism.”

“My looks, Mrs. Tenbruggen, exactly express my opinion. Mesmerism is a humbug!”

“You amusing old Tory! Shall I throw you into a state of trance? No! I’ll give you a shock of another kind — a shock of surprise. I know as much as you do about Mr. Gracedieu’s daughters. What do you think of that?”

“I think I should like to hear you tell me, which is the adopted child.”

“Helena, to be sure!”

Her manner was defiant, her tone was positive; I doubted both. Under the surface of her assumed confidence, I saw something which told me that she was trying to read my thoughts in my face. Many other women had tried to do that. They succeeded when I was young. When I had reached the wrong side of fifty, my face had learned discretion, and they failed.

“How did you arrive at your discovery?” I asked. “I know of nobody who could have helped you.”

“I helped myself, sir! I reasoned it out. A wonderful thing for a woman to do, isn’t it? I wonder whether you could follow the process?”

My reply to this was made by a bow. I was sure of my command over my face; but perfect control of the voice is a rare power. Here and there, a great actor or a great criminal possesses it.

Mrs. Tenbruggen’s vanity took me into her confidence. “In the first place,” she said, “Helena is plainly the wicked one of the two. I was not prejudiced by what Selina had told me of her: I saw it, and felt it, before I had been five minutes in her company. If lying tongues ever provoke her as lying tongues provoked her mother, she will follow her mother’s example. Very well. Now — in the second place — though it is very slight, there is a certain something in her hair and her complexion which reminds me of the murderess: there is no other resemblance, I admit. In the third place, the girls’ names point to the same conclusion. Mr. Gracedieu is a Protestant and a Dissenter. Would he call a child of his own by the name of a Roman Catholic saint? No! he would prefer a name in the Bible; Eunice is
his
child. And Helena was once the baby whom I carried into the prison. Do you deny that?”

“I don’t deny it.”

Only four words! But they were deceitfully spoken, and the deceit — practiced in Eunice’s interest, it is needless to say — succeeded. Mrs. Tenbruggen’s object in visiting me was attained; I had confirmed her belief in the delusion that Helena was the adopted child.

She got up to take her leave. I asked if she proposed remaining in London. No; she was returning to her country patients that night.

As I attended her to the house-door, she turned to me with her mischievous smile. “I have taken some trouble in finding the clew to the Minister’s mystery,” she said. “Don’t you wonder why?”

“If I did wonder,” I answered, “would you tell me why?”

She laughed at the bare idea of it. “Another lesson,” she said, “to assist a helpless man in studying the weaker sex. I have already shown you that a woman can reason. Learn next that a woman can keep a secret. Good-by. God bless you!”

Of the events which followed Mrs. Tenbruggen’s visit it is not possible for me, I am thankful to say, to speak from personal experience. Ought I to conclude with an expression of repentance for the act of deception to which I have already pleaded guilty? I don’t know. Yes! the force of circumstances does really compel me to say it, and say it seriously — I declare, on my word of honour, I don’t know.

Third period: 1876. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.

CHAPTER LII. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.

While my father remains in his present helpless condition, somebody must assume a position of command in this house. There cannot be a moment’s doubt that I am the person to do it.

In my agitated state of mind, sometimes doubtful of Philip, sometimes hopeful of him, I find Mrs. Tenbruggen simply unendurable. A female doctor is, under any circumstances, a creature whom I detest. She is, at her very best, a bad imitation of a man. The Medical Rubber is worse than this; she is a bad imitation of a mountebank. Her grinning good-humor, adopted no doubt to please the fools who are her patients, and her impudent enjoyment of hearing herself talk, make me regret for the first time in my life that I am a young lady. If I belonged to the lowest order of the population, I might take the first stick I could find, and enjoy the luxury of giving Mrs. Tenbruggen a good beating.

She literally haunts the house, encouraged, of course, by her wretched little dupe, Miss Jillgall. Only this morning, I tried what a broad hint would do toward suggesting that her visits had better come to an end.

“Really, Mrs. Tenbruggen,” I said, “I must request Miss Jillgall to moderate her selfish enjoyment of your company, for your own sake. Your time is too valuable, in a professional sense, to be wasted on an idle woman who has no sympathy with your patients, waiting for relief perhaps, and waiting in vain.”

She listened to this, all smiles and good-humor: “My dear, do you know how I might answer you, if I was an ill-natured woman?”

“I have no curiosity to hear it, Mrs. Tenbruggen.”

“I might ask you,” she persisted, “to allow me to mind my own business. But I am incapable of making an ungrateful return for the interest which you take in my medical welfare. Let me venture to ask if you understand the value of time.”

“Are you going to say much more, Mrs. Tenbruggen?”

“I am going to make a sensible remark, my child. If you feel tired, permit me — here is a chair. Father Time, dear Miss Gracedieu, has always been a good friend of mine, because I know how to make the best use of him. The author of the famous saying
Tempus fugit
(you understand Latin, of course) was, I take leave to think, an idle man. The more I have to do, the readier Time is to wait for me. Let me impress this on your mind by some interesting examples. The greatest conqueror of the century — Napoleon — had time enough for everything. The greatest novelist of the century — Sir Walter Scott — had time enough for everything. At my humble distance, I imitate those illustrious men, and my patients never complain of me.”

“Have you done?” I asked.

“Yes, dear — for the present.”

“You are a clever woman, Mrs. Tenbruggen and you know it. You have an eloquent tongue, and you know it. But you are something else, which you don’t seem to be aware of. You are a Bore.”

She burst out laughing, with the air of a woman who thoroughly enjoyed a good joke. I looked back when I left the room, and saw the friend of Father Time in the easy chair opening our newspaper.

This is a specimen of the customary encounter of our wits. I place it on record in my Journal, to excuse myself
to
myself. When she left us at last, later in the day, I sent a letter after her to the hotel. Not having kept a copy of it, let me present the substance, like a sermon, under three heads: I begged to be excused for speaking plainly; I declared that there was a total want of sympathy between us, on my side; and I proposed that she should deprive me of future opportunities of receiving her in this house. The reply arrived immediately in these terms: “Your letter received, dear girl. I am not in the least angry; partly because I am very fond of you, partly because I know that you will ask me to come back again. P. S.: Philip sends his love.”

This last piece of insolence was unquestionably a lie. Philip detests her. They are both staying at the same hotel. But I happen to know that he won’t even look at her, if they meet by accident on the stairs.

People who can enjoy the melancholy spectacle of human nature in a state of degradation would be at a loss which exhibition to prefer — an ugly old maid in a rage, or an ugly old maid in tears. Miss Jillgall presented herself in both characters when she heard what had happened. To my mind, Mrs. Tenbruggen’s bosom-friend is a creature not fit to be seen or heard when she loses her temper. I only told her to leave the room. To my great amusement, she shook her bony fist at me, and expressed a frantic wish: “Oh, if I was rich enough to leave this wicked house!” I wonder whether there is insanity (as well as poverty) in Miss Jillgall’s family?

Last night my mind was in a harassed state. Philip was, as usual, the cause of it.

Perhaps I acted indiscreetly when I insisted on his leaving London, and returning to this place. But what else could I have done? It was not merely my interest, it was an act of downright necessity, to withdraw him from the influence of his hateful father — whom I now regard as the one serious obstacle to my marriage. There is no prospect of being rid of Mr. Dunboyne the elder by his returning to Ireland. He is trying a new remedy for his crippled hand — electricity. I wish it was lightning, to kill him! If I had given that wicked old man the chance, I am firmly convinced he would not have let a day pass without doing his best to depreciate me in his son’s estimation. Besides, there was the risk, if I had allowed Philip to remain long away from me, of losing — no, while I keep my beauty I cannot be in such danger as that — let me say, of permitting time and absence to weaken my hold on him. However sullen and silent he may be, when we meet — and I find him in that condition far too often — I can, sooner or later, recall him to his brighter self. My eyes preserve their charm, my talk can still amuse him, and, better even than that, I feel the answering thrill in him, which tells me how precious my kisses are — not too lavishly bestowed! But the time when I am obliged to leave him to himself is the time that I dread. How do I know that his thoughts are not wandering away to Eunice? He denies it; he declares that he only went to the farmhouse to express his regret for his own thoughtless conduct, and to offer her the brotherly regard due to the sister of his promised wife. Can I believe it? Oh, what would I not give to be able to believe it! How can I feel sure that her refusal to see him was not a cunning device to make him long for another interview, and plan perhaps in private to go back and try again. Marriage! Nothing will quiet these frightful doubts of mine, nothing will reward me for all that I have suffered, nothing will warm my heart with the delightful sense of triumph over Eunice, but my marriage to Philip. And what does he say, when I urge it on him? — yes, I have fallen as low as that, in the despair which sometimes possesses me. He has his answer, always the same, and always ready: “How are we to live? where is the money?” The maddening part of it is that I cannot accuse him of raising objections that don’t exist. We are poorer than ever here, since my father’s illness — and Philip’s allowance is barely enough to suffice him as a single man. Oh, how I hate the rich!