Miss Jillgall joined us at the dinner-table, in a state of excitement,
carrying a book in her hand.
I am inclined, on reflection, to suspect that she is quite clever enough
to have discovered that I hate her--and that many of the aggravating
things she says and does are assumed, out of retaliation, for the
purpose of making me angry. That ugly face is a double face, or I am
much mistaken.
To return to the dinner-table, Miss Jillgall addressed herself, with an
air of playful penitence, to my father.
“Dear cousin, I hope I have not done wrong. Helena left me all by
myself. When I had finished darning the curtain, I really didn’t know
what to do. So I opened all the bedroom doors upstairs and looked into
the rooms. In the big room with two beds--oh, I am so ashamed--I found
this book. Please look at the first page.”
My father looked at the title-page: “Doctor Watts’s Hymns. Well, Selina,
what is there to be ashamed of in this?”
“Oh, no! no! It’s the wrong page. Do look at the other page--the one
that comes first before that one.”
My patient father turned to the blank page.
“Ah,” he said quietly, “my other daughter’s name is written in it--the
daughter whom you have not seen. Well?”
Miss Jillgall clasped her hands distractedly. “It’s my ignorance I’m so
ashamed of. Dear cousin, forgive me, enlighten me. I don’t know how to
pronounce your other daughter’s name. Do you call her Euneece?”
The dinner was getting cold. I was provoked into saying: “No, we don’t.”
She had evidently not forgiven me for leaving her by herself. “Pardon
me, Helena, when I want information I don’t apply to you: I sit, as it
were, at the feet of your learned father. Dear cousin, is it--”
Even my father declined to wait for his dinner any longer. “Pronounce it
as you like, Selina. Here we say Euni’ce--with the accent on the ‘i’ and
with the final ‘e’ sounded: Eu-ni’-see. Let me give you some soup.”
Miss Jillgall groaned. “Oh, how difficult it seems to be! Quite beyond
my poor brains! I shall ask the dear girl’s leave to call her Euneece.
What very strong soup! Isn’t it rather a waste of meat? Give me a little
more, please.”
I discovered another of Miss Jillgall’s peculiarities. Her appetite
was enormous, and her ways were greedy. You heard her eat her soup. She
devoured the food on her plate with her eyes before she put it into
her mouth; and she criticised our English cookery in the most impudent
manner, under pretense of asking humbly how it was done. There was,
however, some temporary compensation for this. We had less of her talk
while she was eating her dinner.
With the removal of the cloth, she recovered the use of her tongue; and
she hit on the one subject of all others which proves to be the sorest
trial to my father’s patience.
“And now, dear cousin, let us talk of your other daughter, our absent
Euneece. I do so long to see her. When is she coming back?”
“In a few days more.”
“How glad I am! And do tell me--which is she? Your oldest girl or your
youngest?”
“Neither the one nor the other, Selina.”
“Oh, my head! my head! This is even worse than the accent on the ‘i’ and
the final ‘e.’ Stop! I am cleverer than I thought I was. You mean that
the girls are twins. Are they both so exactly like each other that I
shan’t know which is which? What fun!”
When the subject of our ages was unluckily started at Mrs. Staveley’s,
I had slipped out of the difficulty easily by assuming the character of
the eldest sister--an example of ready tact which my dear stupid Eunice
doesn’t understand. In my father’s presence, it is needless to say that
I kept silence, and left it to him. I was sorry to be obliged to
do this. Owing to his sad state of health, he is easily
irritated--especially by inquisitive strangers.
“I must leave you,” he answered, without taking the slightest notice of
what Miss Jillgall had said to him. “My work is waiting for me.”
She stopped him on his way to the door. “Oh, tell me--can’t I help you?”
“Thank you; no.”
“Well--but tell me one thing. Am I right about the twins?”
“You are wrong.”
Miss Jillgall’s demonstrative hands flew up into the air again, and
expressed the climax of astonishment by quivering over her head. “This
is positively maddening,” she declared. “What does it mean?”
“Take my advice, cousin. Don’t attempt to find out what it means.”
He left the room. Miss Jillgall appealed to me. I imitated my father’s
wise brevity of expression: “Sorry to disappoint you, Selina; I know no
more about it than you do. Come upstairs.”
Every step of the way up to the drawing-room was marked by a protest or
an inquiry. Did I expect her to believe that I couldn’t say which of
us was the elder of the two? that I didn’t really know what my father’s
motive was for this extraordinary mystification? that my sister and I
had submitted to be robbed, as it were, of our own ages, and had not
insisted on discovering which of us had come into the world first? that
our friends had not put an end to this sort of thing by comparing us
personally, and discovering which was the elder sister by investigation
of our faces? To all this I replied: First, that I did certainly expect
her to believe whatever I might say: Secondly, that what she was pleased
to call the “mystification” had begun when we were both children; that
habit had made it familiar to us in the course of years; and above all,
that we were too fond of our good father to ask for explanations which
we knew by experience would distress him: Thirdly, that friends did try
to discover, by personal examination, which was the elder sister, and
differed perpetually in their conclusions; also that we had amused
ourselves by trying the same experiment before our looking-glasses, and
that Eunice thought Helena was the oldest, and Helena thought Eunice was
the oldest: Fourthly (and finally), that the Reverend Mr. Gracedieu’s
cousin had better drop the subject, unless she was bent on making her
presence in the house unendurable to the Reverend Mr. Gracedieu himself.
I write it with a sense of humiliation; Miss Jillgall listened
attentively to all I had to say--and then took me completely by
surprise. This inquisitive, meddlesome, restless, impudent woman
suddenly transformed herself into a perfect model of amiability and
decorum. She actually said she agreed with me, and was much obliged for
my good advice!
A stupid young woman, in my place, would have discovered that this was
not natural, and that Miss Jillgall was presenting herself to me in
disguise, to reach some secret end of her own. I am not a stupid young
woman; I ought to have had at my service penetration enough to
see through and through Cousin Selina. Well! Cousin Selina was an
impenetrable mystery to me.
The one thing to be done was to watch her. I was at least sly enough to
take up a book, and pretend to be reading it. How contemptible!
She looked round the room, and discovered our pretty writing-table;
a present to my father from his congregation. After a little
consideration, she sat down to write a letter.
“When does the post go out?” she asked.
I mentioned the hour; and she began her letter. Before she could have
written more than the first two or three lines, she turned round on her
seat, and began talking to me.
“Do you like writing letters, my dear?”
“Yes--but then I have not many letters to write.”
“Only a few friends, Helena, but those few worthy to be loved? My own
case exactly. Has your father told you of my troubles? Ah, I am glad of
that. It spares me the sad necessity of confessing what I have suffered.
Oh, how good my friends, my new friends, were to me in that dull little
Belgian town! One of them was generosity personified--ah, she had
suffered, too! A vile husband who had deceived and deserted her. Oh,
the men! When she heard of the loss of my little fortune, that noble
creature got up a subscription for me, and went round herself to
collect. Think of what I owe to her! Ought I to let another day pass
without writing to my benefactress? Am I not bound in gratitude to make
her happy in the knowledge of _my_ happiness--I mean the refuge opened
to me in this hospitable house?”
She twisted herself back again to the writing-table, and went on with
her letter.
I have not attempted to conceal my stupidity. Let me now record a
partial recovery of my intelligence.
It was not to be denied that Miss Jillgall had discovered a good reason
for writing to her friend; but I was at a loss to understand why
she should have been so anxious to mention the reason. Was it
possible--after the talk which had passed between us--that she had
something mischievous to say in her letter, relating to my father or
to me? Was she afraid I might suspect this? And had she been so
communicative for the purpose of leading my suspicions astray? These
were vague guesses; but, try as I might, I could arrive at no clearer
view of what was passing in Miss Jillgall’s mind. What would I not have
given to be able to look over her shoulder, without discovery!
She finished her letter, and put the address, and closed the envelope.
Then she turned round toward me again.
“Have you got a foreign postage stamp, dear?”
If I could look at nothing else, I was resolved to look at her envelope.
It was only necessary to go to the study, and to apply to my father. I
returned with the foreign stamp, and I stuck it on the envelope with my
own hand.
There was nothing to interest _me_ in the address, as I ought to have
foreseen, if I had not been too much excited for the exercise of
a little common sense. Miss Jillgall’s wonderful friend was only
remarkable by her ugly foreign name--MRS. TENBRUGGEN.