Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1379 page)

“Pray go on, Miss Helena.”

“Have I not said enough already?”

“Not enough, I regret to say, to convey your meaning to me.”

She drew her chair a little further away from me. “I am sadly disappointed,” she said. “I had such a high opinion of your perfect candor. I thought to myself: There is such a striking expression of frankness in his face. Another illusion gone! I hope you won’t think I am offended, if I say a bold word. I am only a young girl, to be sure; but I am not quite such a fool as you take me for. Do you really think I don’t know that Miss Jillgall has been telling you everything that is bad about me; putting every mistake that I have made, every fault that I have committed, in the worst possible point of view? And you have listened to her — quite naturally! And you are prejudiced, strongly prejudiced, against me — what else could you be, under the circumstances? I don’t complain; I have purposely kept out of your way, and out of Miss Jillgall’s way; in short, I have afforded you every facility, as the prospectuses say. I only want to know if my turn has come at last. Once more, have I given you time enough, and opportunities enough?”

“A great deal more than enough.”

“Do you mean that you have made up your mind about me without stopping to think?”

“That is exactly what I mean. An act of treachery, Miss Helena,
is
an act of treachery; no honest person need hesitate to condemn it. I am sorry you sent for me.”

I got up to go. With an ironical gesture of remonstrance, she signed to me to sit down again.

“Must I remind you, dear sir, of our famous native virtue? Fair play is surely due to a young person who has nobody to take her part. You talked of treachery just how. I deny the treachery. Please give me a hearing.”

I returned to my chair.

“Or would you prefer waiting,” she went out, “till my sister comes here later in the day, and continues what Miss Jillgall has begun, with the great advantage of being young and nice-looking?”

When the female mind gets into this state, no wise man answers the female questions.

“Am I to take silence as meaning Go on?” Miss Helena inquired.

I begged her to interpret my silence in the sense most agreeable to herself.

This naturally encouraged her. She made a proposal:

“Do you mind changing places, sir?”

“Just as you like, Miss Helena.”

We changed chairs; the light now fell full on her face. Had she deliberately challenged me to look into her secret mind if I could? Anything like the stark insensibility of that young girl to every refinement of feeling, to every becoming doubt of herself, to every customary timidity of her age and sex in the presence of a man who had not disguised his unfavorable opinion of her, I never met with in all my experience of the world and of women.

“I wish to be quite mistress of myself,” she explained; “your face, for some reason which I really don’t know, irritates me. The fact is, I have great pride in keeping my temper. Please make allowances. Now about Miss Jillgall. I suppose she told you how my sister first met with Philip Dunboyne?”

“Yes.”

“She also mentioned, perhaps, that he was a highly-cultivated man?”

“She did.”

“Now we shall get on. When Philip came to our town here, and saw me for the first time — Do you object to my speaking familiarly of him, by his Christian 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.”

“She has your sympathy, I suppose?”

“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.