The Legacy of Cain Page 22

the rector of a parish church in London. Neither he nor I had heard again of the

  "Miss Chance" of our disagreeable prison experience, whom he had married to the

  dashing Dutch gentleman, Mr. Tenbruggen. We could only wonder what had become of

  that mysterious married pair.

  Mr. Gracedieu being undoubtedly ignorant of the woman's marriage, it was not

  easy to say what the consequence might be, in his excitable state, if I informed

  him of it. He would, in all probability, conclude that I knew more of the woman

  than he did. I decided on keeping my own counsel, for the present at least.

  Passing at once, therefore, to the one consideration of any importance, I

  endeavored to find out whether Mr. Gracedieu and Mrs. Tenbruggen had met, or had

  communicated with each other in any way, during the long period of separation

  that had taken place between the Minister and myself. If he had been so unlucky

  as to offend her, she was beyond all doubt an enemy to be dreaded. Apart,

  however, from a misfortune of this kind, she would rank, in my opinion, with the

  other harmless objects of Mr. Gracedieu's distrust.

  In making my inquiries, I found that I had an obstacle to contend with.

  While he felt the renovating influence of the repose that he enjoyed, the

  Minister had been able to think and to express himself with less difficulty than

  usual. But the reserves of strength, on which the useful exercise of his memory

  depended, began to fail him as the interview proceeded. He distinctly

  recollected that "something unpleasant had passed between that audacious woman

  and himself." But at what date--and whether by word of mouth or by

  correspondence--was more than his memory could now recall. He believed be was

  not mistaken in telling me that he "had been in two minds about her." At one

  time, he was satisfied that he had taken wise measures for his own security, if

  she attempted to annoy him. But there was another and a later time, when doubts

  and fears had laid hold of him again. If I wanted to know how this had happened,

  he fancied it was through a dream; and if I asked what the dream was, he could

  only beg and pray that I would spare his poor head.

  Unwilling even yet to submit unconditionally to defeat, it occurred to me to try

  a last experiment on my friend, without calling for any mental effort on his own

  part. The "Miss Chance" of former days might, by a bare possibility, have

  written to him. I asked accordingly if he was in the habit of keeping his

  letters, and if he would allow me (when he had rested a little) to lay them open

  before him, so that he could look at the signatures. "You might find the lost

  recollection in that way," I suggested, "at the bottom of one of your letters."

  He was in that state of weariness, poor fellow, in which a man will do anything

  for the sake of peace. Pointing to a cabinet in his room, he gave me a key taken

  from a little basket on his bed. "Look for yourself," he said. After some

  hesitation--for I naturally recoiled from examining another man's

  correspondence--I decided on opening the cabinet, at any rate.

  The letters--a large collection--were, to my relief, all neatly folded, and

  indorsed with the names of the writers. I could run harmlessly through bundle

  after bundle in search of the one name that I wanted, and still respect the

  privacy of the letters. My perseverance deserved a reward--and failed to get it.

  The name I wanted steadily eluded my search. Arriving at the upper shelf of the

  cabinet, I found it so high that I could barely reach it with my hand. Instead

  of getting more letters to look over, I pulled down two newspapers.

  One of them was an old copy of the Times, dating back as far as the 13th

  December, 1858. It was carefully folded, longwise, with the title-page

  uppermost. On the first column, at the left-hand side of the sheet, appeared the

  customary announcements of Births. A mark with a blue pencil, against one of the

  advertisements, attracted my attention. I read these lines:

  "On the 10th inst., the wife of the Rev. Abel Gracedieu, of a daughter."

  The second newspaper bore a later date, and contained nothing that interested

  me. I naturally assumed that the advertisement in the Times had been inserted at

  the desire of Mrs. Gracedieu; and, after all that I had heard, there was little

  difficulty in attributing the curious omission of the place in which the child

  had been born to the caution of her husband. If Mrs. Tenbruggen (then Miss

  Chance) had happened to see the advertisement in the great London newspaper, Mr.

  Gracedieu might yet have good reason to congratulate himself on his prudent

  method of providing against mischievous curiosity.

  I turned toward the bed and looked at him. His eyes were closed. Was he

  sleeping? Or was he trying to remember what he had desired to say to me, when

  the demands which I made on his memory had obliged him to wait for a later

  opportunity?

  Either way, there was something that quickened my sympathies, in the spectacle

  of his helpless repose. It suggested to me personal reasons for his anxieties,

  which he had not mentioned, and which I had not thought of, up to this time. If

  the discovery that he dreaded took place, his household would be broken up, and

  his position as pastor would suffer in the estimation of the flock. His own

  daughter would refuse to live under the same roof with the daughter of an

  infamous woman. Popular opinion, among his congregation, judging a man who had

  passed off the child of other parents as his own, would find that man guilty of

  an act of deliberate deceit.

  Still oppressed by reflections which pointed to the future in this discouraging

  way, I was startled by a voice outside the door--a sweet, sad voice--saying,

  "May I come in?"

  The Minister's eyes opened instantly: he raised himself in his bed.

  "Eunice, at last!" he cried. "Let her in."

  CHAPTER XXXIX.

  THE ADOPTED CHILD

  I OPENED the door.

  Eunice passed me with the suddenness almost of a flash of light. When I turned

  toward the bed, her arms were round her father's neck. "Oh, poor papa, how ill

  you look!" Commonplace expressions of fondness, and no more; but the tone gave

  them a charm that subdued me. Never had I felt so indulgent toward Mr.

  Gracedieu's unreasonable fears as when I saw him in the embrace of his adopted

  daughter. She had already reminded me of the bygone day when a bright little

  child had sat on my knee and listened to the ticking of my watch.

  The Minister gently lifted her head from his breast. "My darling," he said, "you

  don't see my old friend. Love him, and look up to him, Eunice. He will be your

  friend, too, when I am gone."

  She came to me and offered her cheek to be kissed. It was sadly pale, poor

  soul--and I could guess why. But her heart was now full of her father. "Do you

  think he is seriously ill?" she whispered. What I ought to have said I don't

  know. Her eyes, the sweetest, truest, loveliest eyes I ever saw in a human face,

  were pleading with me. Let my enemies make the worst of it, if they like--I did

  certainly lie. And if I deserved my punishment, I g
ot it; the poor child

  believed me! "Now I am happier," she said, gratefully. "Only to hear your voice

  seems to encourage me. On our way here, Selina did nothing but talk of you. She

  told me I shouldn't have time to feel afraid of the great man; he would make me

  fond of him directly. I said, 'Are you fond of him?' She said, 'Madly in love

  with him, my dear.' My little friend really thinks you like her, and is very

  proud of it There are some people who call her ugly. I hope you don't agree with

  them?"

  I believe I should have lied again, if Mr. Gracedieu had not called me to the

  bedside

  "How does she strike you?" he whispered, eagerly. "Is it too soon to ask if she

  shows her age in her face?"

  "Neither in her face nor her figure," I answered: "it astonishes me that you can

  ever have doubted it. No stranger, judging by personal appearance, could fail to

  make the mistake of thinking Helena the oldest of the two."

  He looked fondly at Eunice. "Her figure seems to bear out what you say," he went

  on. "Almost childish, isn't it?"

  I could not agree to that. Slim, supple, simply graceful in every movement,

  Eunice's figure, in the charm of first youth, only waited its perfect

  development. Most men, looking at her as she stood at the other end of the room

  with her back toward us, would have guessed her age to be sixteen.

  Finding that I failed to agree with him, Mr. Gracedieu's misgivings returned.

  "You speak very confidently," he said, "considering that you have not seen the

  girls together. Think what a dreadful blow it would be to me if you made a

  mistake."

  I declared, with perfect sincerity, that there was no fear of a mistake. The

  bare idea of making the proposed comparison was hateful to me. If Helena and I

  had happened to meet at that moment, I should have turned away from her by

  instinct--she would have disturbed my impressions of Eunice.

  The Minister signed to me to move a little nearer to him. "I must say it," he

  whispered, "and I am afraid of her hearing me. Is there anything in her face

  that reminds you of her miserable mother?"

  I had hardly patience to answer the question: it was simply preposterous. Her

  hair was by many shades darker than her mother's hair; her eyes were of a

  different color. There was an exquisite tenderness and sincerity in their

  expression--made additionally beautiful, to my mind, by a gentle, uncomplaining

  sadness. It was impossible even to think of the eyes of the murderess when I

  looked at her child. Eunice's lower features, again, had none of her mother's

  regularity of proportion. Her smile, simple and sweet, and soon passing away,

  was certainly not an inherited smile on the maternal side. Whether she resembled

  her father, I was unable to conjecture--having never seen him. The one thing

  certain was, that not the faintest trace, in feature or expression, of Eunice's

  mother was to be seen in Eunice herself. Of the two girls, Helena--judging by

  something in the color of her hair, and by something in the shade of her

  complexion--might possibly have suggested, in those particulars only, a purely

  accidental resemblance to my terrible prisoner of past times.

  The revival of Mr. Gracedieu's spirits indicated a temporary change only, and

  was already beginning to pass away. The eyes which had looked lovingly at Eunice

  began to look languidly now: his head sank on the pillow with a sigh of weak

  content. "My pleasure has been almost too much for me," he said. "Leave me for a

  while to rest, and get used to it."

  Eunice kissed his forehead--and we left the room.

  CHAPTER XL.

  THE BRUISED HEART.

  WHEN we stepped out on the landing, I observed that my companion paused. She

  looked at the two flights of stairs below us before she descended them. It

  occurred to me that there must be somebody in the house whom she was anxious to

  avoid.

  Arrived at the lower hall, she paused again, and proposed in a whisper that we

  should go into the garden. As we advanced along the backward division of the

  hall, I saw her eyes turn distrustfully toward the door of the room in which

  Helena had received me. At last, my slow perceptions felt with her and

  understood her. Eunice's sensitive nature recoiled from a chance meeting with

  the wretch who had laid waste all that had once been happy and hopeful in that

  harmless young life.

  "Will you come with me to the part of the garden that I am fondest of?" she

  asked.

  I offered her my arm. She led me in silence to a rustic seat, placed under the

  shade of a mulberry tree. I saw a change in her face as we sat down--a tender

  and beautiful change. At that moment the girl's heart was far away from me.

  There was some association with this corner of the garden, on which I felt that

  I must not intrude.

  "I was once very happy here," she said. "When the time of the heartache came

  soon after, I was afraid to look at the old tree and the bench under it. But

  that is all over now. I like to remember the hours that were once dear to me,

  and to see the place that recalls them. Do you know who I am thinking of? Don't

  be afraid of distressing me. I never cry now."

  "My dear child, I have heard your sad story--but I can't trust myself to speak

  of it."

  "Because you are so sorry for me?"

  "No words can say how sorry I am!"

  "But you are not angry with Philip?"

  "Not angry! My poor dear, I am afraid to tell you how angry I am with him."

  "Oh, no! You mustn't say that. If you wish to be kind to me--and I am sure you

  do wish it--don't think bitterly of Philip."

  When I remember that the first feeling she roused in me was nothing worthier of

  a professing Christian than astonishment, I drop in my own estimation to the

  level of a savage. "Do you really mean," I was base enough to ask, "that you

  have forgiven him?"

  She said, gently: "How could I help forgiving him?"

  The man who could have been blessed with such love as this, and who could have

  cast it away from him, can have been nothing but an idiot. On that

  ground--though I dared not confess it to Eunice--I forgave him, too.

  "Do I surprise you?" she asked simply. "Perhaps love will bear any humiliation.

  Or perhaps I am only a poor weak creature. You don't know what a comfort it was

  to me to keep the few letters that I received from Philip. When I heard that he

  had gone away, I gave his letters the kiss that bade him good-by. That was the

  time, I think, when my poor bruised heart got used to the pain; I began to feel

  that there was one consolation still left for me--I might end in forgiving him.

  Why do I tell you all this? I think you must have bewitched me. Is this really

  the first time I have seen you?"

  She put her little trembling hand into mine; I lifted it to my lips, and kissed

  it. Sorely was I tempted to own that I had pitied and loved her in her infancy.

  It was almost on my lips to say: "I remember you an easily-pleased little

  creature, amusing yourself with the broken toys which were once the playthings

  of my own children." I
believe I should have said it, if I could have trusted

  myself to speak composedly to her. This was not to be done. Old as I was, versed

  as I was in the hard knowledge of how to keep the mask on in the hour of need,

  this was not to be done.

  Still trying to understand that I was little better than a stranger to her, and

  still bent on finding the secret of the sympathy that united us, Eunice put a

  strange question to me.

  "When you were young yourself," she said, "did you know what it was to love, and

  to be loved--and then to lose it all?"

  It is not given to many men to marry the woman who has been the object of their

  first love. My early life had been darkened by a sad story; never confided to

  any living creature; banished resolutely from my own thoughts. For forty years

  past, that part of my buried self had lain quiet in its grave--and the chance

  touch of an innocent hand had raised the dead, and set us face to face again!

  Did I know what it was to love, and to be loved, and then to lose it all? "Too

  well, my child; too well!"

  That was all I could say to her. In the last days of my life, I shrank from

  speaking of it. When I had first felt that calamity, and had felt it most

  keenly, I might have given an answer worthier of me, and worthier of her.

  She dropped my hand, and sat by me in silence, thinking. Had I--without meaning

  it, God knows!--had I disappointed her?

  "Did you expect me to tell my own sad story," I said, "as frankly and as

  trustfully as you have told yours?"

  "Oh, don't think that! I know what an effort it was to you to answer me at all.

  Yes, indeed! I wonder whether I may ask something. The sorrow you have just told

  me of is not the only one--is it? You have had other troubles?"

  "Many of them."

  "There are times," she went on, "when one can't help thinking of one's own

  miserable self. I try to be cheerful, but those times come now and then."

  She stopped, and looked at me with a pale fear confessing itself in her face.

  "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 lauding."

  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