CHAPTER II.—THE DREADFUL SECRET.
Oh, shame! oh, guilt! oh, horror! oh, remorse
Oh, punishment! Had Satan never fallen,
Hell had been made for me. Oh, Leonora!
Leonora! Leonora!
Young.
Helen Grahame, borne helpless to her bed-chamber, remained for many hours without exhibiting any sign of returning consciousness.
An experienced physician had been summoned, and at length the fit was so far mastered by the application of remedies and restoratives, that the semblance of death no longer remained, and she was roused into motion, though not to consciousness.
She was delirious, at first: and sitting upright in the bed, caught the terrified, weeping Evangeline by the wrist, and pointed into vacancy.
“See, see,” she shrieked; “he stands tottering on the vessel’s side. Hold him back for mercy sake, hold him back, or he will be lost! Oh, Hugh, but one moment—pause—for very charity pause! I come to you—one moment, Hugh—I will hang on your breast, I will cling to you, I will go through the world with you—stay—one instant! Save him! Save him! Hugh!—Hugh!—see, he curses me—his eyes glare angrily on me, he tosses his hands wildly in the air—he leaps—ha!”
A piercing shriek burst from her lips, and rang through the house.
Evangeline threw her arms round her sister, and by force prevented her from springing from the bed on to the floor.
“Helen, darling,” she exclaimed, sobbing, as she felt the quivering, trembling frame of her sister shake in every limb, as though she was struck with an ague—“Helen, look upon me—I am Eva, sister Eva; you see only a horrible vision—a dreadful dream; you are at home in your own room—oh, Helen, Helen darling, speak to me one word, say that you know me, one word, Helen dearest.”
“One word, Helen dearest! the words mock me,” exclaimed Helen, in a low subdued tone, her large dark eyes wandering slowly round the room. “One word, Helen, dearest!—and I would not utter it. My cold selfishness has killed him. The remorseless sea has closed over him, the moaning wind chants his dirge, the slimy seaweed entangles his locks, he lays upon the cold, cold sand in the green depths, his white wan face turned, despairing, to the harsh world which had no compassion for him. He is gone, he is for ever gone!—I—I have slain him!”
A fearful passion of hysteric weeping followed these words. Her whole frame was convulsed. It took the united aid of the physician, Chayter, and Evangeline to hold her down, in order to prevent her committing some wild act of delirious extravagance.
The paroxysm passed away but it left her utterly prostrate. The physician declaring her out of immediate danger, retired, leaving Evangeline and Chayter to watch by her as she lay, wan and motionless—the faint heaving of her bosom only telling that she was not dead.
Helen’s intercourse with Hugh was known only to herself and to him—she had no confidante—and it was well that Mrs. Grahame was not present during the ravings uttered by her daughter. A secret is never so well kept as when it is never entrusted. Helen believed this, and confided to no one the love passage in her young life, Evangeline, in her innocence, believed that the mere relation of the incident with which Hugh Riversdale was connected, coming upon Helen at a moment when she was not quite in health, had so shocked her as to produce this grave result; but such would not have been the interpretation by Mrs. Grahame.
At present that lady decided in her own mind that Helen had been attacked by this fit, wholly irrespective of the paragraph in the paper; but she would at once have surmised the truth, if she had seen how her daughter wept the loss of the person they “could not notice now.”
The report of the physician was that she had suffered a severe attack of hysteria—that she was much prostrated, with a tendency to be delirious; but that though she might be compelled to keep her chamber for some time, there was no real danger. “It was necessary that she should be well nursed,” he said, and as he perceived that in that mansion, where pride reigned supreme, she was not likely to obtain the careful and constant attention which she so much needed, he recommended a person to be sent for from the institution for trained nurses.
Mrs. Grahame approved of the suggestion, and, within a couple of hours, one, a tall matronly female, was duly installed empress of Helen’s sick chamber.
She had a struggle, at first, to wrest the empire from Evangeline, but she was so forcible in her reasoning, and so kind and gentle in her manner, that Eva yielded up the sway, on the understanding that she should spend the greater portion of her time at her sister’s bedside.
And now the house assumed an aspect of quiet. The Duke of St. Allborne had just begun to find favourable qualities in Margaret, not visible to the eyes of others, but bright in his, for her homage to him had been so direct that he could but notice and approve it. Direct flattery rarely disgusts the weak-minded; it charmed the Duke, and he purred as he received it. He would have become more marked in his attentions to the artful girl, but Helen’s sudden illness brought his and Lester Vane’s visit to an abrupt close.
They quitted, with expressions of complimentary condolence, and promised, at a future time, to repeat their visit. Both intended to keep their word.
Lester Vane had no thought of yielding up his designs on Helen. He neither forgot nor forgave. He had correctly read her intention to make a prize of his heart, and then to toss it away as a worthless gain. He overlooked the provocation he gave her for entertaining such a scheme, unjustifiable as it was, and he resolved to punish her. There was a blow to wipe out, and he thought he knew how to exact ample vengeance in atonement of it.
So he determined to return again to the house when Helen had recovered.
The anticipated visit of old Wilton and his daughter Flora to the house of Mr. Grahame was not paid, the reason assigned was, that Wilton, with his daughter, had gone into the country—rather unexpectedly—to take possession of the estate of which he had been so long deprived.
The pressing claims upon Mr. Grahame were all satisfied, a large sum had been placed to his credit at his bankers, and proceedings were going on to carry into effect Nathan Gomer’s scheme.
Mr. Grahame was, upon the whole, though rather mystified and vexed by a lurking uneasiness, glad that the deed, bearing the signature of Eustace Wilton, which the latter had never written, had so strangely disappeared; and he was also rather pleased, though perplexed, to find Mr. Chewkle had never returned to him, after his departure with the professed object of enlisting the services of two arrant scoundrels in the atrocious business of false swearing. He, therefore, set out on a business visit to an estate he possessed in Scotland, with a much easier frame of mind, and a more decided disposition to enact the part of a haughty feudal lord, than he had done on the visits immediately preceding the present.
Mrs. Grahame and Margaret were incessantly engaged in fulfilling with propriety what they deemed the duties of the station they held. They were in their carriage one-half the day, and one-half the night at the opera, at soirées, and routs.
Evangeline spent all the time allotted her by her mamma, and by the nurse, Mrs. Truebody, in Helen’s room; but in the sick chamber, or away from it, her soft footsteps and her sweet low voice were rarely heard.
So the mansion was for the most part silent as an untenanted house of prayer. Helen was slowly recovering. She was still very ill. Since her raving in her delirium, she had never spoken a word.
To the fond and affectionate questions of Evangeline, she replied by a faint, loving smile, or a gentle pressure of the hand, but not a word.
To the physician or to the nurse, she either nodded slightly or shook her head, but not a sound escaped her lips.
At length the physician terminated his visits, recommending that Helen should rise for an hour or two, extending the time each day, until she had strength enough to resume her ordinary routine of life.
Mrs. Truebody had been most attentive to her patient; her medical knowledge was excellent, and frequently most usefully applied; her kindness, her patient, unweary watching, most exemplary; it had won, as it could not fail to do, the gratitude of Helen, occasionally displayed by a beaming look, not at all difficult of interpretation.
One night, towards midnight, when Eva had, after embracing and kissing her sister tenderly, retired to her own room to pray, as usual, for the speedy restoration of Helen to health, Mrs. Truebody seated herself by the bedside, and took Helen’s wasted hand in her own, and held it there.
“Miss Grahame,” she said, in a low tone, “you are progressing, though slowly, to recovery; but there is one impediment to your more rapid return to health, which, I confess, I am sadly afraid cannot be easily removed.”
She paused.
Helen turned her dark eyes upon her, with an inquiring look, but did not speak.
“You have a weight preying on your mind, which alone causes the physical prostration under which you suffer,” continued Mrs. Truebody. “It will continue to keep you here unless prompt arrangements are made to alleviate it by some decided step on your part.”
Helen remained silent. Still, Mrs. Truebody went on—
“Have you a friend, Miss Grahame?” she asked; adding—“I do not mean a mere acquaintance, nor yet a relative, but a friend, in whom you can place the fullest confidence, and who would spare no exertion and faint not at trial and trouble to serve you. Speak, my child, for in truth it is a momentous question I ask of you.”
Helen faintly shook her head, and, in a feeble voice, replied—
“No, I have not—not one—now.”
The tears clustered in her eyes.
Mrs. Truebody gazed upon her sadly.
“You have need of one—sore need of one,” she said, gravely; “for you have some painful secret in your heart.”
There was a silence as of the grave.
Helen’s eyes looked into the dark shadow in her room, as though there she saw a phantom. She spoke not.
“Have you never confided, by word or hint, to anyone that grief which now oppresses you?” asked Mrs. Truebody, in a curiously solemn tone.
A flush spread itself over the hitherto pale features of Helen, and then it passed away, leaving her whiter than ever.
“Never,” she murmured, in a low voice.
“And where is he who has brought you to this condition?” asked Mrs. Truebody, in a tone betraying indignation.
“Oh, do not speak, do not think harshly of him!” exclaimed Helen, with a quivering lip. “His anguish, his misery, and his despair, were greater than my own!”
Then, in hoarse accents, she briefly spoke of the circumstances which called Hugh away, of his letter to her, of her mental struggles, her hesitation, and vacillation, until too late even to write to him, and then of the incident published in the newspaper.
Mrs. Truebody listened in silence, with her eyes intently fixed upon Helen’s features, perusing them earnestly as though to ascertain whether there was not something more which Helen studiously concealed, but she did not seem to find what she sought.
Presently, she said abruptly—
“Were you married?”
A change instantly passed over the features of Helen—an expression impossible to describe: it told that a throng of unutterable thoughts were passing through her brain.
“Why do you ask me such a question?” she said, in an almost inarticulate voice.
Mrs. Truebody took a firmer hold of her hand.
“Look in my eyes, my child,” she said solemnly; “answer me truly—are you ignorant of your actual condition?”
“My—my condition!” feebly echoed Helen.
“Know you not, my poor girl,” exclaimed Mrs. Truebody, in a deep and earnest tone, “that ere a few short months have passed over your head, you will become a mother?”
Helen’s face became instantly of a ghastly whiteness. She turned an affrighted glare upon Mrs. Truebody. Her lips moved as though she would speak but could not. A film spread itself over her eyes, a moment before unnaturally bright, and she swooned away.
Mrs. Truebody let fall her hand, and hastened to apply restoratives.
Her tears fell fast upon the pallid countenance over which she bent like a tender mother.
“Poor child” she murmured. “Poor deluded child! Riches have not saved her from sin, nor spared her sorrow. Oh, woman! woman! you, who claim this frail creature as your child, what have you not to answer for!”
Once again Helen became conscious, and now she was face to face with her true position—now she felt more terribly the upbraidings of self-reproach, for not having complied with Hugh’s passionate appeal to her. But the opportunity was passed. He was gone—perhaps to heaven. She was here alone—alone with her sin.
Something to Mrs. Truebody’s surprise, she did not exhibit the violent emotions she had expected her to give way to, on being restored to a full sense of her position. She wept, it is true—her eyes rained tears, and her sobs—low, wailing sobs—were very painful to hear—but she was almost motionless; it was as though she cowered beneath the bed-clothes to hide herself for very shame.
After a time she whispered—
“This is a dreadful secret—a most dreadful secret. I have had, since I have laid here, a terrifying sense of the truth, but I drove it away—I would not think of it, I would not believe it—but oh! is it true—is it true?”
“It is true,” repeated Mrs. Truebody, emphatically.
Helen clasped her hands, and said to her, imploringly—
“Leave me to deal with this fearful discovery alone, but oh! Mrs. Truebody, if you have a spark of human charity, breathe not to mortal the calamity with which Heaven has afflicted me in meting out to me my deserts. Oh! think of my father’s and of my mother’s pride in the honour of our house. To know of my fall would crush them—that foul blot on their escutcheon would slay them. Oh! Mrs. Truebody, let me not add murder to my dread fault, I implore you, I pray of you—upon my knees with bitter, bitter tears I will pray of you, as you alone discovered my secret, so retain it in your own bosom.”
“Be comforted in this, my poor child,” she replied: “I will not add a pang to the anguish which I am sure you must now so keenly suffer, but what I must know, and what I will know, is, the course you are going to adopt.”
“You shall know as soon as I have the power to decide. At present my brain is racked with agony, my temples burn and throb: I cannot collect my thoughts into anything like coherency. Let me but have quiet—quiet, Mrs. Truebody, and I shall be able then to shape out the path my guilt and shame may compel me to take, without injuring or degrading those who are so jealous of their virtue and their fame.”
“Ah!” thought Mrs. Truebody, “if they had mixed up with this stern purity of character a little common humanity. If the haughty mother of this frail sinful girl had been but as proud of being a good, watchful, loving parent as she has been of her long line of ancestry, this dreadful thing surely had not happened.” She turned to Helen, and said—
“You shall have quiet and rest—so that you may gather strength to reflect upon the consequences of your terrible error, and pray to God for pardon.”
“I will try to do all you counsel,” responded Helen, excitedly, though speaking in the same hissing undertone; “but I must be left for a time to myself—be alone, quite alone! Above all, let not Eva come to me!”
“Miss Grahame?”
“No!—no!—no! Not Eva!—not Eva! I cannot now dare to look in her sinless face. I cannot bear the soft gaze of her innocent eyes, nor hear those affectionate words emanating from her pure heart, without acutely feeling each look, each tone of her dear voice, as a terrible reproach. I have so looked down upon her simplicity, taunted her guilelessness, scoffed at her singleness of heart, that the very sight of her seems to humble me to the dust.”
“She will be so very grieved, to be forbidden the usual seat by your bedside,” said Mrs. Truebody, deprecatingly.
“I know it—I feel it. I can see her turning sorrowfully away when you deny her access to me, but she is now to me an angel of such spotless purity, and I so foul, so black, so begrimed with wickedness, that were she to lay her tender hand upon me, and with those immaculate lips press my hot forehead, I should shrink from her, fearing to pollute her by the contact.”
“Whatever you may inwardly feel—and I would not have you repulse any such sense of your grievous fault—it will be necessary to obtain a control over your feelings, and to appear much as usual,” said Mrs. Truebody; “and I would suggest to you that by refusing to see your sister Eva—dear, sweet creature that she is—you will give rise to questions which it will be difficult to answer.”
“I will be guided by you, but pray let me be alone for the next day or two,” urged Helen. “You will tell her that, unless I am for a short time left entirely to myself, my recovery will be greatly retarded. She will not, after that, press her own kind desires in opposition to my recovery. And, now, if my beating brain will let me, I will try to sleep, and strive to gather strength; for, oh! I have a dreadful task to encounter—a desperate part to play. Good night, Mrs. Truebody; remember your promise!—not a word to mortal—not a word—not a word! as you hope hereafter for mercy from the Almighty!”
Mrs. Truebody slept in a small antechamber. Her room door was in Helen’s apartment, and this she always left open all night. Having performed a few necessary duties, and bade Helen farewell for the night, she retired to her bed.
At length Helen was quite alone. The slight hum of the gently-moving trees in the garden was broken only by the monotonous ticking of the time-piece over the fireplace. An hour passed, and not a sound broke the intense stillness which reigned throughout the house.
Suddenly Helen sat straight up in the bed. She stretched her arms out, and murmured, in accents of the keenest misery—
“Oh! Hugh, Hugh—pardon and pity me! If you are dead, come to me in the spirit; let your sad eyes once more turn on mine. I will not tremble, nor faint, nor be appalled. Come to me—bear me with you; for oh! it is dreadful to be here alone—alone, Hugh! Oh! you know not how lone I am—so utterly lonely. No, no; oh, mercy Heaven! not alone—not alone—no more alone!”
With a low wail, more like a cry of horror than, the sob of anguish, she sank shivering down, and buried her head beneath the bed-clothes. Once more she raised herself, and parted her long black hair from her tearful eyes, dim with long weeping.
“Are you dead, Hugh?” she moaned; “it is happiness for you, if you are. I may not die—I dare not die; I must live—live for, for—oh—I shall go frantic! Live? Live where?—where?—where?”
She clasped her hands in despair.
“Here I cannot stay. Here? No; I must out into the world. Oh! where, to hide my misery and my shame from all—the pitying and the pitiless? Oh, Hugh! that I had fled to you. If I had but listened to the pleadings of my heart, I had not fallen before the whisperings of my pride!”
And thus the night through did she start up and murmur in moaning accents, or hide herself beneath the bed-covering, sobbing and wailing in the very wildest grief.
The pale gray dawn began to show through the transparent blind, when sleep stole over the exhausted girl, and it was mid-day ere she awoke, strengthened, though not refreshed, by her long slumber—awoke, as Mrs. Truebody had told her, to be face to face with her miserable situation.
She did not shrink from it. The nurse kept her promise, and suffered no one to enter the chamber but herself, and Helen had all the quiet she could hope for.
She lay motionless the remainder of the day. The nurse could, however, see that her mind was working with ceaseless activity. Occasionally she would perceive her dark eyes, shining with an unnatural brilliancy, turned upon herself, and she knew that Helen was taking into her calculations her aid or her silence.
She did not try to induce her to speak, especially as she saw that she had a disinclination to do so. She believed it to be better for her to think. A steady reflection upon the failings of our nature tends to promote an endeavour to remedy them. Under such an impression, she did not care to make Helen talk.
Helen slept all that night, but the following day was a counterpart of the last. Neither Mrs. Grahame nor Margaret made any attempt to see her, when they were requested not to visit her for a day or so, but Evangeline could scarcely be moved from the chamber door.
She stole there upon tiptoe, and stood without for hours, listening intently. If she could have only heard Helen speak, it would have made her heart light and glad.
That night, at the hour when the household were retiring to repose, Evangeline escaped the vigilance of Mrs. Truebody, and crept to the bedside.
Helen lay there in deep thought, as for hours she had been—living over her past life, and vainly trying to shape out of the obscure future the lot she would have to endure.
Her restless eyes suddenly fell upon the upturned, loving face of her sister—that face so full of tenderness, and yet charged with an expression deprecating her anger for having broken through the arrangement which compelled her absence.
At first Helen shrank, as if horrified, from her, but Evangeline leaned over, and caught her in her arms.
“Do not be angry with me, Helen, dearest,” she said, entreatingly; “but indeed, indeed, I could not sleep without speaking just one little word to you, and kissing you. I sobbed all last night; it was foolish, I know; but I could not bear to go to bed without having even seen you during the day.”
“Do—do not touch me, Eva,” said Helen, gasping and struggling to free herself from her sister’s affectionate embrace.
Eva burst into tears.
“Do not be cross with me, Helen, darling, for I love you fondly and dearly!” she exclaimed. “If I too much intrude my love upon you, forgive me, for I cannot help it. Say to me only, ‘Good night, Eva,’ and kiss me, and I will leave you—oh, so happy, Helen.”
Helen could not bear this tenderness of her sister’s, and not respond to it; she strained her passionately to her bosom, and sobbed violently upon her neck. She then wiped her scalding tears from her burning eyes, and kissed Eva fervidly upon the forehead.
“Eva,” she whispered in her ear, “I love you with my whole soul. I have wronged you. I have treated you with unkindness——”
“No, darling—no, never.”
“With unfeeling scorn, Eva—cruel, selfish pride. I am punished, Eva—you cannot dream how fearfully; but let that pass—mine the crime, mine the atonement. Know this, however—that my eyes are opened, and my error stands before me, a monument of glowing brass. You do not understand this, sweet Eva; but you will comprehend that, from the inmost depths of my heart, I love and honour you.”
“Helen!”
“That in—in the—the time to come, I shall never forget your more than sisterly affection, your dear love for me, and I shall pray for blessings to be showered upon you, Eva—pray for you—as I hope you will—will pray for me.”
The last words were almost inaudible. She kissed the astonished Eva again and again with passionate fervour, and then she bade her not to say a word, but to leave her and come again at the same hour on the following night.
“But you will say, ‘Good night and good bye, dearest,’ to me, will you not, Helen?” asked Eva, softly and fondly.
Helen felt as if she should be suffocated by a rising hysterical sob, but she contrived to force out the words—
“Good night and good bye, dearest Eva,” and then she fell back, almost lifeless, on the bed.
Eva bent over her, imprinted one last kiss upon her burning lips, and then ran out of the room with a heart throbbing with joy, and kneeling down at her own bedside, she prayed with sincerity and fervour for the recovery and for the happiness of her sister Helen.
In the early morning, while Helen seemed yet sleeping, Mrs. Truebody went upon an errand, which her patient had begged her to execute herself; it took her to no great distance from the house, and when she returned she went into the kitchen and made breakfast for Helen herself, according to her usual custom, and then she carried it up to her bedside.
But Helen was not there!
Nor in the room, nor in the house, ransacked, in wild terror, by Mrs. Truebody.
Upon the toilet table, was subsequently found a note, addressed to Mrs. Grahame. Within, ran the following words—
“Search not for me. I have departed of my own free will. Rest satisfied in this—that the life bestowed by my Creator will not beshortened by a despairing hand. One word of solemn warning. Inquire not. Be content that there is a mystery. Do not seek to draw a veil from that which, hidden, cannot wound you, but if revealed would destroy you. Forget me!”
“Helen.”
So she was gone.
Mrs. Grahame, after perusing this strange and, to her mind, incomprehensible epistle, concluded to take no step in the matter until she had consulted with Mr. Gra-hame upon the subject. Such undignified behaviour on the part of her eldest daughter was unpardonable.
Margaret thought that her mother had adopted quite the proper course to pursue; Malcolm was out of town for a few days; and Evangeline, upon her knees, implored Mrs. Truebody to accompany her over London in search of her absent sister.
Mrs. Truebody, in deep tribulation, promised everything, and did nothing.
Yes, she did one thing.
She kept Helen’s dreadful secret!