“Do you know that lady?” Miss Helena asked, as we entered the house.
“She is a perfect stranger to me,” I answered.
“Are you sure you have not forgotten her?”
“Why do you think I have forgotten her?”
“Because she evidently remembered you.”
The lady had no doubt looked at me twice. If this meant that my face was
familiar to her, I could only repeat what I have already said. Never, to
my knowledge, had I seen her before.
Leading the way upstairs, Miss Helena apologized for taking me into her
father’s bedroom. “He is able to sit up in an armchair,” she said; “and
he might do more, as I think, if he would exert himself. He won’t exert
himself. Very sad. Would you like to look at your room, before you see
my father? It is quite ready for you. We hope”--she favored me with
a fascinating smile, devoted to winning my heart when her interests
required it--“we hope you will pay us a long visit; we look on you as
one of ourselves.”
I thanked her, and said I would shake hands with my old friend before I
went to my room. We parted at the bedroom door.
It is out of my power to describe the shock that overpowered me when I
first saw the Minister again, after the long interval of time that had
separated us. Nothing that his daughter said, nothing that I myself
anticipated, had prepared me for that lamentable change. For the moment,
I was not sufficiently master of myself to be able to speak to him. He
added to my embarrassment by the humility of his manner, and the formal
elaboration of his apologies.
“I feel painfully that I have taken a liberty with you,” he said,
“after the long estrangement between us--for which my want of Christian
forbearance is to blame. Forgive it, sir, and forget it. I hope to
show that necessity justifies my presumption, in subjecting you to a
wearisome journey for my sake.”
Beginning to recover myself, I begged that he would make no more
excuses. My interruption seemed to confuse him.
“I wished to say,” he went on, “that you are the one man who can
understand me. There is my only reason for asking to see you, and
looking forward as I do to your advice. You remember the night--or was
it the day?--before that miserable woman was hanged? You were the only
person present when I agreed to adopt the poor little creature, stained
already (one may say) by its mother’s infamy. I think your wisdom
foresaw what a terrible responsibility I was undertaking; you tried to
prevent it. Well! well! you have been in my confidence--you only. Mind!
nobody in this house knows that one of the two girls is not really my
daughter. Pray stop me, if you find me wandering from the point. My wish
is to show that you are the only man I can open my heart to. She--”
He paused, as if in search of a lost idea, and left the sentence
uncompleted. “Yes,” he went on, “I was thinking of my adopted child. Did
I ever tell you that I baptized her myself? and by a good Scripture name
too--Eunice. Ah, sir, that little helpless baby is a grown-up girl now;
of an age to inspire love, and to feel love. I blush to acknowledge
it; I have behaved with a want of self-control, with a cowardly
weakness.--No! I am, indeed, wandering this time. I ought to have told
you first that I have been brought face to face with the possibility of
Eunice’s marriage. And, to make it worse still, I can’t help liking
the young man. He comes of a good family--excellent manners, highly
educated, plenty of money, a gentleman in every sense of the word. And
poor little Eunice is so fond of him! Isn’t it dreadful to be obliged to
check her dearly-loved Philip? The young gentleman’s name is Philip.
Do you like the name? I say I am obliged to cheek her sweetheart in
the rudest manner, when all he wants to do is to ask me modestly for
my sweet Eunice’s hand. Oh, what have I not suffered, without a word
of sympathy to comfort me, before I had courage enough to write to you!
Shall I make a dreadful confession? If my religious convictions had not
stood in my way, I believe I should have committed suicide. Put yourself
in my place. Try to see yourself shrinking from a necessary
explanation, when the happiness of a harmless girl--so dutiful, so
affectionate--depended on a word of kindness from your lips. And that
word you are afraid to speak! Don’t take offense, sir; I mean myself,
not you. Why don’t you say something?” he burst out fiercely, incapable
of perceiving that he had allowed me no opportunity of speaking to him.
“Good God! don’t you understand me, after all?”
The signs of mental confusion in his talk had so distressed me, that I
had not been composed enough to feel sure of what he really meant,
until he described himself as “shrinking from a necessary explanation.”
Hearing those words, my knowledge of the circumstances helped me; I
realized what his situation really was.
“Compose yourself,” I said, “I understand you at last.”
He had suddenly become distrustful. “Prove it,” he muttered, with a
furtive look at me. “I want to be satisfied that you understand my
position.”
“This is your position,” I told him. “You are placed between two
deplorable alternatives. If you tell this young gentleman that Miss
Eunice’s mother was a criminal hanged for murder, his family--even if he
himself doesn’t recoil from it--will unquestionably forbid the marriage;
and your adopted daughter’s happiness will be the sacrifice.”
“True!” he said. “Frightfully true! Go on.”
“If, on the other hand, you sanction the marriage, and conceal the
truth, you commit a deliberate act of deceit; and you leave the lives of
the young couple at the mercy of a possible discovery, which might
part husband and wife--cast a slur on their children--and break up the
household.”
He shuddered while he listened to me. “Come to the end of it,” he cried.
I had no more to say, and I was obliged to answer him to that effect.
“No more to say?” he replied. “You have not told me yet what I most want
to know.”
I did a rash thing; I asked what it was that he most wanted to know.
“Can’t you see it for yourself?” he demanded indignantly. “Suppose you
were put between those two alternatives which you mentioned just now.”
“Well?”
“What would you do, sir, in my place? Would you own the disgraceful
truth--before the marriage--or run the risk, and keep the horrid story
to yourself?”
Either way, my reply might lead to serious consequences. I hesitated.
He threatened me with his poor feeble hand. It was only the anger of a
moment; his humor changed to supplication. He reminded me piteously of
bygone days: “You used to be a kind-hearted man. Has age hardened you?
Have you no pity left for your old friend? My poor heart is sadly in
want of a word of wisdom, spoken kindly.”
Who could have resisted this? I took his hand: “Be at ease, dear
Minister. In your place I should run the risk, and keep that horrid
story to myself.”
He sank back gently in his chair. “Oh, the relief of it!” he said. “How
can I thank you as I ought for quieting my mind?”
I seized the opportunity of quieting his mind to good purpose by
suggesting a change of subject. “Let us have done with serious talk for
the present,” I proposed. “I have been an idle man for the last five
years, and I want to tell you about my travels.”
His attention began to wander, he evidently felt no interest in my
travels. “Are you sure,” he asked anxiously, “that we have said all we
ought to say? No!” he cried, answering his own question. “I believe
I have forgotten something--I am certain I have forgotten something.
Perhaps I mentioned it in the letter I wrote to you. Have you got my
letter?”
I showed it to him. He read the letter, and gave it back to me with a
heavy sigh. “Not there!” he said despairingly. “Not there!”
“Is the lost remembrance connected with anybody in the house?” I asked,
trying to help him. “Does it relate, by any chance, to one of the young
ladies?”
“You wonderful man! Nothing escapes you. Yes; the thing I have forgotten
concerns one of the girls. Stop! Let me get at it by myself. Surely
it relates to Helena?” He hesitated; his face clouded over with an
expression of anxious thought. “Yes; it relates to Helena,” he repeated
“but how?” His eyes filled with tears. “I am ashamed of my weakness,”
he said faintly. “You don’t know how dreadful it is to forget things in
this way.”
The injury that his mind had sustained now assumed an aspect that was
serious indeed. The subtle machinery, which stimulates the memory, by
means of the association of ideas, appeared to have lost its working
power in the intellect of this unhappy man. I made the first suggestion
that occurred to me, rather than add to his distress by remaining
silent.
“If we talk of your daughter,” I said, “the merest accident--a word
spoken at random by. you or me--may be all your memory wants to rouse
it.”
He agreed eagerly to this: “Yes! Yes! Let me begin. Helena met you, I
think, at the station. Of course, I remember that; it only happened
a few hours since. Well?” he went on, with a change in his manner to
parental pride, which it was pleasant to see, “did you think my daughter
a fine girl? I hope Helena didn’t disappoint you?”
“Quite the contrary.” Having made that necessary reply, I saw my way to
keeping his mind occupied by a harmless subject. “It must, however, be
owned,” I went on, “that your daughter surprised me.”
“In what way?”
“When she mentioned her name. Who could have supposed that you--an
inveterate enemy to the Roman Catholic Church--would have christened
your daughter by the name of a Roman Catholic Saint?”
He listened to this with a smile. Had I happily blundered on some
association which his mind was still able to pursue?
“You happen to be wrong this time,” he said pleasantly. “I never gave
my girl the name of Helena; and, what is more, I never baptized her.
You ought to know that. Years and years ago, I wrote to tell you that my
poor wife had made me a proud and happy father. And surely I said that
the child was born while she was on a visit to her brother’s rectory.
Do you remember the name of the place? I told you it was a remote
little village, called--Suppose we put _your_ memory to a test? Can you
remember the name?” he asked, with a momentary appearance of triumph
showing itself, poor fellow, in his face.
After the time that had elapsed, the name had slipped my memory. When I
confessed this, he exulted over me, with an unalloyed pleasure which it
was cheering to see.
“_Your_ memory is failing you now,” he said. “The name is Long Lanes.
And what do you think my wife did--this is so characteristic of
her!--when I presented myself at her bedside. Instead of speaking of our
own baby, she reminded me of the name that I had given to our adopted
daughter when I baptized the child. ‘You chose the ugliest name that a
girl can have,’ she said. I begged her to remember that ‘Eunice’ was
a name in Scripture. She persisted in spite of me. (What firmness of
character!) ‘I detest the name of Eunice!’ she said; ‘and now that I
have a girl of my own, it’s my turn to choose the name; I claim it as my
right.’ She was beginning to get excited; I allowed her to have her own
way, of course. ‘Only let me know,’ I said, ‘what the name is to be when
you have thought of it.’ My dear sir, she had the name ready, without
thinking about it: ‘My baby shall be called by the name that is sweetest
in my ears, the name of my dear lost mother.’ We had--what shall I call
it?--a slight difference of opinion when I heard that the name was to be
Helena. I really could _not_ reconcile it to my conscience to baptize
a child of mine by the name of a Popish saint. My wife’s brother set
things right between us. A worthy good man; he died not very long ago--I
forget the date. Not to detain you any longer, the rector of Long Lanes
baptized our daughter. That is how she comes by her un-English name; and
so it happens that her birth is registered in a village which her father
has never inhabited. I hope, sir, you think a little better of my memory
now?”
I was afraid to tell him what I really did think.
He was not fifty years old yet; and he had just exhibited one of the sad
symptoms which mark the broken memory of old age. Lead him back to the
events of many years ago, and (as he had just proved to me) he could
remember well and relate coherently. But let him attempt to recall
circumstances which had only taken place a short time since, and
forgetfulness and confusion presented the lamentable result, just as I
have related it.
The effort that he had made, the agitation that he had undergone in
talking to me, had confirmed my fears that he would overtask his
wasted strength. He lay back in his chair. “Let us go on with our
conversation,” he murmured. “We haven’t recovered what I had forgotten,
yet.” His eyes closed, and opened again languidly. “There was something
I wanted to recall--” he resumed, “and you were helping me.” His weak
voice died away; his weary eyes closed again. After waiting until there
could be no doubt that he was resting peacefully in sleep, I left the
room.