Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1398 page)

It is my belief that I could have felt no greater dismay, if the long arm of the Law had laid its hold on me while he was speaking. I asked what was to be done.

“If she leaves the house at once,” the doctor replied, “she may escape the infamy of being charged with an attempt at murder by poison; and, in her absence, I can answer for Philip’s life. I don’t urge you to warn her, because that might be a dangerous thing to do. It is for you to decide, as a member of the family, whether you will run the risk.”

I tried to speak to him of Euneece, and to tell him what I had already related to yourself. He was in no humour to listen to me. “Keep it for a fitter time,” he answered; “and think of what I have just said to you.” With that, he left me, on his way to Philip’s room.

Mental exertion was completely beyond me. Can you understand a poor middle-aged spinster being frightened into doing a dangerous thing? That may seem to be nonsense. But if you ask why I took a morsel of paper, and wrote the warning which I was afraid to communicate by word of mouth — why I went upstairs with my knees knocking together, and opened the door of Helena’s room just wide enough to let my hand pass through — why I threw the paper in, and banged the door to again, and ran downstairs as I have never run since I was a little girl — I can only say, in the way of explanation, what I have said already: I was frightened into doing it.

What I have written, thus far, I shall send to you by to-night’s post.

The doctor came back to me, after he had seen Philip, and spoken with Euneece. He was very angry; and, I must own, not without reason. Philip had flatly refused to let himself be removed to the hospital; and Euneece — ”a mere girl” — had declared that she would be answerable for consequences! The doctor warned me that he meant to withdraw from the case, and to make his declaration before the magistrates. At my entreaties he consented to return in the evening, and to judge by results before taking the terrible step that he had threatened.

While I remained at home on the watch, keeping the doors of both rooms locked, Eunice went out to get Philip’s medicine. She came back, followed by a boy carrying a portable apparatus for cooking. “All that Philip wants, and all that we want,” she explained, “we can provide for ourselves. Give me a morsel of paper to write on.”

Unhooking the little pencil attached to her watch-chain, she paused and looked toward the door. “Somebody listening,” she whispered. “Let them listen.” She wrote a list of necessaries, in the way of things to eat and things to drink, and asked me to go out and get them myself. “I don’t doubt the servants,” she said, speaking distinctly enough to be heard outside; “but I am afraid of what a Poisoner’s cunning and a Poisoner’s desperation may do, in a kitchen which is open to her.” I went away on my errand — discovering no listener outside, I need hardly say. On my return, I found the door of communication with Philip’s room closed, but no longer locked. “We can now attend on him in turn,” she said, “without opening either of the doors which lead into the hall. At night we can relieve each other, and each of us can get sleep as we want it in the large armchair in the dining-room. Philip must be safe under our charge, or the doctor will insist on taking him to the hospital. When we want Maria’s help, from time to time, we can employ her under our own superintendence. Have you anything else, Selina, to suggest?”

There was nothing left to suggest. Young and inexperienced as she was, how (I asked) had she contrived to think of all this? She answered, simply “I’m sure I don’t know; my thoughts came to me while I was looking at Philip.”

Soon afterward I found an opportunity of inquiring if Helena had left the house. She had just rung her bell; and Maria had found her, quietly reading, in her room. Hours afterward, when I was on the watch at night, I heard Philip’s door softly tried from the outside. Her dreadful purpose had not been given up, even yet.

The doctor came in the evening, as he had promised, and found an improvement in Philip’s health. I mentioned what precautions we had taken, and that they had been devised by Euneece. “Are you going to withdraw from the case?” I asked. “I am coming back to the case,” he answered, “to-morrow morning.”

It had been a disappointment to me to receive no answer to the telegram which I had sent to Mr. Dunboyne the elder. The next day’s post brought the explanation in a letter to Philip from his father, directed to him at the hotel here. This showed that my telegram, giving my address at this house, had not been received. Mr. Dunboyne announced that he had returned to Ireland, finding the air of London unendurable, after the sea-breezes at home. If Philip had already married, his father would leave him to a life of genteel poverty with Helena Gracedieu. If he had thought better of it, his welcome was waiting for him.

Little did Mr. Dunboyne know what changes had taken place since he and his son had last met, and what hope might yet present itself of brighter days for poor Euneece! I thought of writing to him. But how would that crabbed old man receive a confidential letter from a lady who was a stranger?

My doubts were set at rest by Philip himself. He asked me to write a few lines of reply to his father; declaring that his marriage with Helena was broken off — that he had not given up all hope of being permitted to offer the sincere expression of his penitence to Euneece — and that he would gladly claim his welcome, as soon as he was well enough to undertake the journey to Ireland. When he had signed the letter, I was so pleased that I made a smart remark. I said: “This is a treaty of peace between father and son.”

When the doctor arrived in the morning, and found the change for the better in his patient confirmed, he did justice to us at last. He spoke kindly, and even gratefully, to Euneece. No more allusions to the hospital as a place of safety escaped him. He asked me cautiously for news of Helena. I could only tell him that she had gone out at her customary time, and had returned at her customary time. He did not attempt to conceal that my reply had made him uneasy.

“Are you still afraid that she may succeed in poisoning Philip?” I asked.

“I am afraid of her cunning,” he said. “If she is charged with attempting to poison young Dunboyne, she has some system of defense, you may rely on it, for which we are not prepared. There, in my opinion, is the true reason for her extraordinary insensibility to her own danger.”

Two more days passed, and we were still safe under the protection of lock and key.

On the evening of the second day (which was a Monday) Maria came to me in great tribulation. On inquiring what was the matter, I received a disquieting reply: “Miss Helena is tempting me. She is so miserable at being prevented from seeing Mr. Philip, and helping to nurse him, that it is quite distressing to see her. At the same time, miss, it’s hard on a poor servant. She asks me to take the key secretly out of the door, and lend it to her at night for a few minutes only. I’m really afraid I shall be led into doing it, if she goes on persuading me much longer.”

I commended Maria for feeling scruples which proved her to be the best of good girls, and promised to relieve her from all fear of future temptation. This was easily done. Euneece kept the key of Philip’s door in her pocket; and I kept the key of the dining-room door in mine.

CHAPTER LXI. ATROCITY.

On the next day, a Tuesday in the week, an event took place which Euneece and I viewed with distrust. Early in the afternoon, a young man called with a note for Helena. It was to be given to her immediately, and no answer was required.

Maria had just closed the house door, and was on her way upstairs with the letter, when she was called back by another ring at the bell. Our visitor was the doctor. He spoke to Maria in the hall:

“I think I see a note in your hand. Was it given to you by the young man who has just left the house?”

“Yes, sir.

“If he’s your sweetheart, my dear, I have nothing more to say.”

“Good gracious, doctor, how you do talk! I never saw the young man before in my life.”

“In that case, Maria, I will ask you to let me look at the address. Aha! Mischief!”

The moment I heard that I threw open the dining-room door. Curiosity is not easily satisfied. When it hears, it wants to see; when it sees, it wants to know. Every lady will agree with me in this observation.

“Pray come in,” I said.

“One minute, Miss Jillgall. My girl, when you give Miss Helena that note, try to get a sly look at her when she opens it, and come and tell me what you have seen.” He joined me in the dining-room, and closed the door. “The other day,” he went on, “when I told you what I had discovered in the chemist’s shop, I think I mentioned a young man who was called to speak to a question of identity — an assistant who knew Miss Helena Gracedieu by sight.”

“Yes, yes!”

“That young man left the note which Maria has just taken upstairs.”

“Who wrote it, doctor, and what does it say?”

“Questions naturally asked, Miss Jillgall — and not easily answered. Where is Eunice? Her quick wit might help us.”

She had gone out to buy some fruit and flowers for Philip.

The doctor accepted his disappointment resignedly. “Let us try what we can do without her,” he said. “That young man’s master has been in consultation (you may remember why) with his lawyer, and Helena may be threatened by an investigation before the magistrates. If this wild guess of mine turns out to have hit the mark, the poisoner upstairs has got a warning.”

I asked if the chemist had written the note. Foolish enough of me when I came to think of it. The chemist would scarcely act a friendly part toward Helena, when she was answerable for the awkward position in which he had placed himself. Perhaps the young man who had left the warning was also the writer of the warning. The doctor reminded me that he was all but a stranger to Helena. “We are not usually interested,” he remarked, “in a person whom we only know by sight.”

“Remember that he is a young man,” I ventured to say. This was a strong hint, but the doctor failed to see it. He had evidently forgotten his own youth. I made another attempt.

“And vile as Helena is,” I continued, “we cannot deny that this disgrace to her sex is a handsome young lady.”

He saw it at last. “Woman’s wit!” he cried. “You have hit it, Miss Jillgall. The young fool is smitten with her, and has given her a chance of making her escape.”

“Do you think she will take the chance?”

“For all our sakes, I pray God she may! But I don’t feel sure about it.”

“Why?”

“Recollect what you and Eunice have done. You have shown your suspicion of her without an attempt to conceal it. If you had put her in prison you could not have more completely defeated her infernal design. Do you think she is a likely person to submit to that, without an effort to be even with you?”

Just as he said those terrifying words, Maria came back to us. He asked at once what had kept her so long upstairs.

The girl had evidently something to say, which had inflated her (if I may use such an expression) with a sense of her own importance.

“Please to let me tell it, sir,” she answered, “in my own way. Miss Helena turned as pale as ashes when she opened the letter, and then she took a turn in the room, and then she looked at me with a smile — well, miss, I can only say that I felt that smile in the small of my back. I tried to get to the door. She stopped me. She says: ‘Where’s Miss Eunice?’ I says: ‘Gone out.’ She says: ‘Is there anybody in the drawing-room?’ I says: ‘No, miss.’ She says: ‘Tell Miss Jillgall I want to speak to her, and say I am waiting in the drawing-room.’ It’s every word of it true! And, if a poor servant may give an opinion, I don’t like the look of it.”

The doctor dismissed Maria. “Whatever it is,” he said to me, “you must go and hear it.”

I am not a courageous woman; I expressed myself as being willing to go to her, if the doctor went with me. He said that was impossible; she would probably refuse to speak before any witness; and certainly before him. But he promised to look after Philip in my absence, and to wait below if it really so happened that I wanted him. I need only ring the bell, and he would come to me the moment he heard it. Such kindness as this roused my courage, I suppose. At any rate, I went upstairs.