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 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.