The Legacy of Cain Read online

I came to them, and they could study my wishes too. Of course I was ready to go

  where they pleased. I asked Philip if there was anything he would like to see,

  when we got into the streets again.

  Clever Helena suggested what seemed to be a strange amusement to offer to

  Philip. "Let's take him to the Girls' School," she said.

  It appeared to be a matter of perfect indifference to him; he was, what they

  call, ironical. "Oh, yes, of course. Deeply interesting! deeply interesting!" He

  suddenly broke into the wildest good spirits, and tucked my hand under his arm

  with a gayety which it was impossible to resist. "What a boy you are!" Helena

  said, enjoying his delightful hilarity as I did.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  EUNICE'S DIARY.

  ON entering the schoolroom we lost our gayety, all in a moment. Something

  unpleasant had evidently happened.

  Two of the eldest girls were sitting together in a corner, separated from the

  rest, and looking most wickedly sulky. The teachers were at the other end of the

  room, appearing to be ill at ease. And there, standing in the midst of them,

  with his face flushed and his eyes angry--there was papa, sadly unlike his

  gentle self in the days of his health and happiness. On former occasions, when

  the exercise of his authority was required in the school, his forbearing temper

  always set things right. When I saw him now, I thought of what the doctor had

  said of his health, on my way home from the station.

  Papa advanced to us the moment we showed ourselves at the door.

  He shook hands--cordially shook hands--with Philip. It was delightful to see

  him, delightful to hear him say: "Pray don't suppose, Mr. Dunboyne, that you are

  intruding; remain with us by all means if you like." Then he spoke to Helena and

  to me, still excited, still not like himself: "You couldn't have come here, my

  dears, at a time when your presence was more urgently needed." He turned to the

  teachers. "Tell my daughters what has happened; tell them why they see me

  here--shocked and distressed, I don't deny it."

  We now heard that the two girls in disgrace had broken the rules, and in such a

  manner as to deserve severe punishment.

  One of them had been discovered hiding a novel in her desk. The other had

  misbehaved herself more seriously still--she had gone to the theater. Instead of

  expressing any regret, they had actually dared to complain of having to learn

  papa's improved catechism. They had even accused him of treating them with

  severity, because they were poor girls brought up on charity. "If we had been

  young ladies," they were audacious enough to say, "more indulgence would have

  been shown to us; we should have been allowed to read stories and to see plays."

  All this time I had been asking myself what papa meant, when he told us we could

  not have come to the schoolroom at a better time. His meaning now appeared. When

  he spoke to the offending girls, he pointed to Helena and to me.

  "Here are my daughters," he said. "You will not deny that they are young ladies.

  Now listen. They shall tell you themselves whether my rules make any difference

  between them and you. Helena! Eunice! do I allow you to read novels? do I allow

  you to go to the play?"

  We said, "No"--and hoped it was over. But he had not done yet. He turned to

  Helena.

  "Answer some of the questions," he went on, "from my Manual of Christian

  Obligation, which the girls call my catechism." He asked one of the questions:

  "If you are told to do unto others as you would they should do unto you, and if

  you find a difficulty in obeying that Divine Precept, what does your duty

  require?"

  It is my belief that Helena has the materials in her for making another Joan of

  Arc. She rose, and answered without the slightest sign of timidity: "My duty

  requires me to go to the minister, and to seek for advice and encouragement."

  "And if these fail?"

  "Then I am to remember that my pastor is my friend. He claims no priestly

  authority or priestly infallibility. He is my fellow-Christian who loves me. He

  will tell me how he has himself failed; how he has struggled against himself;

  and what a blessed reward has followed his victory--a purified heart, a peaceful

  mind."

  Then papa released my sister, after she had only repeated two out of all the

  answers in Christian Obligation, which we first began to learn when we were

  children. He then addressed himself again to the girls.

  "Is what you have just heard a part of my catechism? Has my daughter been

  excused from repeating it because she is a young lady? Where is the difference

  between the religious education which is given to my own child, and that given

  to you?"

  The wretched girls still sat silent and obstinate, with their heads down. I

  tremble again as I write of what happened next. Papa fixed his eyes on me. He

  said, out loud: "Eunice!"--and waited for me to rise and answer, as my sister

  had done.

  It was entirely beyond my power to get on my feet.

  Philip had (innocently, I am sure) discouraged me; I saw displeasure, I saw

  contempt in his face. There was a dead silence in the room. Everybody looked at

  me. My heart beat furiously, my hands turned cold, the questions and answers in

  Christian Obligation all left my memory together. I looked imploringly at papa.

  For the first time in his life, he was hard on me. His eyes were as angry as

  ever; they showed me no mercy. Oh, what had come to me? what evil spirit

  possessed me? I felt resentment; horrid, undutiful resentment, at being treated

  in this cruel way. My fists clinched themselves in my lap, my face felt as hot

  as fire. Instead of asking my father to excuse me, I said: "I can't do it." He

  was astounded, as well he might be. I went on from bad to worse. I said: "I

  won't do it."

  He stooped over me; he whispered: "I am going to ask you something; I insist on

  your answering, Yes or No." He raised his voice, and drew himself back so that

  they could all see me.

  "Have you been taught like your sister?" he asked. "Has the catechism that has

  been her religious lesson, for all her life, been your religious lesson, for all

  your life, too?"

  I said: "Yes"--and I was in such a rage that I said it out loud. If Philip had

  handed me his cane, and had advised me to give the young hussies who were

  answerable for this dreadful state of things a good beating, I believe I should

  have done it. Papa turned his back on me and offered the girls a last chance:

  "Do you feel sorry for what you have done? Do you ask to be forgiven?"

  Neither the one nor the other answered him. He called across the room to the

  teachers: "Those two pupils are expelled the school."

  Both the women looked horrified. The elder of the two approached him, and tried

  to plead for a milder sentence. He answered in one stern word: "Silence!"--and

  left the schoolroom, without even a passing bow to Philip. And this, after he

  had cordially shaken hands with my poor dear, not half an hour before.

  I ought to have made affectionate allowance for his nervous miseries; I ought to

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sp; have run after him, and begged his pardon. There must be something wrong, I am

  afraid, in girls loving anybody but their fathers. When Helena led the way out

  by another door, I ran after Philip; and I asked him to forgive me.

  I don't know what I said; it was all confusion. The fear of having forfeited his

  fondness must, I suppose, have shaken my mind. I remember entreating Helena to

  say a kind word for me. She was so clever, she had behaved so well, she had

  deserved that Philip should listen to her. "Oh," I cried out to him desperately,

  "what must you think of me?"

  "I will tell you what I think of you," he said. "It is your father who is in

  fault, Eunice--not you. Nothing could have been in worse taste than his

  management of that trumpery affair in the schoolroom; it was a complete mistake

  from beginning to end. Make your mind easy; I don't blame You."

  "Are you, really and truly, as fond of me as ever?"

  "Yes, to be sure!"

  Helena seemed to be hardly as much interested in this happy ending of my

  anxieties as I might have anticipated. She walked on by herself. Perhaps she was

  thinking of poor papa's strange outbreak of excitement, and grieving over it.

  We had only a little way to walk, before we passed the door of Philip's hotel.

  He had not yet received the expected letter from his father-- the cruel letter

  which might recall him to Ireland. It was then the hour of delivery by our

  second post; he went to look at the letter-rack in the hall. Helena saw that I

  was anxious. She was as kind again as ever; she consented to wait with me for

  Philip, at the door.

  He came out to us with an open letter in his hand.

  "From my father, at last," he said--and gave me the letter to read. It only

  contained these few lines:

  "Do not be alarmed, my dear boy, at the change for the worse in my handwriting.

  I am suffering for my devotion to the studious habits of a lifetime: my right

  hand is attacked by the malady called Writer's Cramp. The doctor here can do

  nothing. He tells me of some foreign woman, mentioned in his newspaper, who

  cures nervous derangements of all kinds by hand-rubbing, and who is coming to

  London. When you next hear from me, I may be in London too." --There the letter

  ended.

  Of course I knew who the foreign woman, mentioned in the newspaper, was.

  But what does Miss Jillgall's friend matter to me? The one important thing is,

  that Philip has not been called back to Ireland. Here is a fortunate

  circumstance, which perhaps means more good luck. I may be Mrs. Philip Dunboyne

  before the year is out.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  HELENA'S DIARY.

  THEY all notice at home that I am looking worn and haggard. That hideous old

  maid, Miss Jillgall, had her malicious welcome ready for me when we met at

  breakfast this morning: "Dear Helena, what has become of your beauty? One would

  think you had left it in your room!" Poor deluded Eunice showed her sisterly

  sympathy: "Don't joke about it, Selina: can't you see that Helena is ill?"

  I have been ill; ill of my own wickedness.

  But the recovery to my tranquillity will bring with it the recovery of my good

  looks. My fatal passion for Philip promises to be the utter destruction of

  everything that is good in me. Well! what is good in me may not be worth

  keeping. There is a fate in these things. If I am destined to rob Eunice of the

  one dear object of her love and hope--how can I resist? The one kind thing I can

  do is to keep her in ignorance of what is coming, by acts of affectionate

  deceit.

  Besides, if she suffers, I suffer too. In the length and breadth of England, I

  doubt if there is a much more wicked young woman to be found than myself. Is it

  nothing to feel that, and to endure it as I do?

  Upon my word, there is no excuse for me!

  Is this sheer impudence? No; it is the bent of my nature. I have a tendency to

  self-examination, accompanied by one merit--I don't spare myself.

  There are excuses for Eunice. She lives in a fools' paradise; and she sees in

  her lover a radiant creature, shining in the halo thrown over him by her own

  self-delusion, Nothing of this sort is to be said for me. I see Philip as he is.

  My penetration looks into the lowest depths of his character--when I am not in

  his company. There seems to be a foundation of good, somewhere in his nature. He

  despises and hates himself (he has confessed it to me), when Eunice is with

  him--still believing in her false sweetheart. But how long do these better

  influences last? I have only to show myself, in my sister's absence, and Philip

  is mine body and soul. His vanity and his weakness take possession of him the

  moment he sees my face. He is one of those men--even in my little experience I

  have met with them--who are born to be led by women. If Eunice had possessed my

  strength of character, he would have been true to her for life.

  Ought I not, in justice to myself, to have lifted my heart high above the reach

  of such a creature as this? Certainly I ought! I know it, I feel it. And yet,

  there is some fascination in having him which I am absolutely unable to resist.

  What, I ask myself, has fed the new flame which is burning in me? Did it begin

  with gratified pride? I might well feel proud when I found myself admired by a

  man of his beauty, set off by such manners and such accomplishments as his. Or,

  has the growth of this masterful feeling been encouraged by the envy and

  jealousy stirred in me, when I found Eunice (my inferior in every respect)

  distinguished by the devotion of a handsome lover, and having a brilliant

  marriage in view--while I was left neglected, with no prospect of changing my

  title from Miss to Mrs.? Vain inquiries! My wicked heart seems to have secrets

  of its own, and to keep them a mystery to me.

  What has become of my excellent education? I don't care to inquire; I have got

  beyond the reach of good books and religious examples. Among my other blamable

  actions there may now be reckoned disobedience to my father. I have been reading

  novels in secret.

  At first I tried some of the famous English works, published at a price within

  the reach of small purses. Very well written, no doubt--but with one

  unpardonable drawback, so far as I am concerned. Our celebrated native authors

  address themselves to good people, or to penitent people who want to be made

  good; not to wicked readers like me.

  Arriving at this conclusion, I tried another experiment. In a small bookseller's

  shop I discovered some cheap translations of French novels. Here, I found what I

  wanted--sympathy with sin. Here, there was opened to me a new world inhabited

  entirely by unrepentant people; the magnificent women diabolically beautiful;

  the satanic men dead to every sense of virtue, and alive--perhaps rather dirtily

  alive--to the splendid fascinations of crime. I know now that Love is above

  everything but itself. Love is the one law that we are bound to obey. How deep!

  how consoling! how admirably true! The novelists of England have reason indeed

  to hide their heads before the novelists of France. All that I have felt, and
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  have written here, is inspired by these wonderful authors.

  I have relieved my mind, and may now return to the business of my diary--the

  record of domestic events.

  An overwhelming disappointment has fallen on Eunice. Our dinner-party has been

  put off.

  The state of father's health is answerable for this change in our arrangements

  That wretched scene at the school, complicated by my sister's undutiful behavior

  at the time, so seriously excited him that he passed a sleepless night, and kept

  his bedroom throughout the day. Eunice's total want of discretion added, no

  doubt, to his sufferings: she rudely intruded on him to express her regret and

  to ask his pardon. Having carried her point, she was at leisure to come to me,

  and to ask (how amazingly simple of her!) what she and Philip were to do next.

  "We had arranged it all so nicely," the poor wretch began. "Philip was to have

  been so clever and agreeable at dinner, and was to have chosen his time so very

  discreetly, that papa would have been ready to listen to anything he said. Oh,

  we should have succeeded; I haven't a doubt of it! Our only hope, Helena, is in

  you. What are we to do now?"

  "Wait," I answered.

  "Wait?" she repeated, hotly. "Is my heart to be broken? and, what is more cruel

  still, is Philip to be disappointed? I expected something more sensible, my

  dear, from you. What possible reason can there be for waiting?"

  The reason--if I could only have mentioned it--was beyond dispute. I wanted time

  to quiet Philip's uneasy conscience, and to harden his weak mind against

  outbursts of violence, on Eunice's part, which would certainly exhibit

  themselves when she found that she had lost her lover, and lost him to me. In

  the meanwhile, I had to produce my reason for advising her to wait. It was

  easily done. I reminded her of the irritable condition of our father's nerves,

  and gave it as my opinion that he would certainly say No, if she was unwise

  enough to excite him on the subject of Philip, in his present frame of mind.

  These unanswerable considerations seemed to produce the right effect on her. "I

  suppose you know best," was all she said. And then she left me.

  I let her go without feeling any distrust of this act of submission on her part;

  it was such a common experience, in my life, to find my sister guiding herself

  by my advice. But experience is not always to be trusted. Events soon showed

  that I had failed to estimate Eunice's resources of obstinacy and cunning at

  their true value.

  Half an hour later I heard the street door closed, and looked out of the window.

  Miss Jillgall was leaving the house; no one was with her. My dislike of this

  person led me astray once more. I ought to have suspected her of being bent on

  some mischievous errand, and to have devised some means of putting my suspicions

  to the test. I did nothing of the kind. In the moment when I turned my head away

  from the window, Miss Jillgall was a person forgotten--and I was a person who

  had made a serious mistake.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  HELENA'S DIARY.

  THE event of to-day began with the delivery of a message summoning me to my

  father's study. He had decided--too hastily, as I feared--that he was

  sufficiently recovered to resume his usual employments. I was writing to his

  dictation, when we were interrupted. Maria announced a visit from Mr. Dunboyne.

  Hitherto Philip had been content to send one of the servants of the hotel to

  make inquiry after Mr. Gracedieu's health. Why had he now called personally?

  Noticing that father seemed to be annoyed, I tried to make an opportunity of

  receiving Philip myself. "Let me see him," I suggested; "I can easily say you

  are engaged."

  Very unwillingly, as it was easy to see, my father declined to allow this. "Mr.

  Dunboyne's visit pays me a compliment," he said; "and I must receive him." I

  made a show of leaving the room, and was called back to my chair. "This is not a