“Sing!” echoed Helen, with a shrill laugh, “you don’t know what you ask. Could you sing when your heart was heavy with the knowledge of a sin about to be committed by those nearest to you? Don’t try to quiet me, I must talk whether you listen or not; I shall go frantic if I don’t tell some one; all the world will know it soon. Sit down, I’ll not hurt you, but don’t thwart me or you’ll be sorry for it.”
Speaking with a vehemence that left her breathless, Helen thrust Christie down upon a seat, and went on with an expression in her face that bereft the listener of power to move or speak.
“Harry has just told me of it; he was very angry, and I saw it, and made him tell me. Poor boy, he can keep nothing from me. I’ve been dreading it, and now it’s coming. You don’t know it, then? Young Butler is in love with Bella, and no one has prevented it. Think how wicked when such a curse is on us all.”
The question, “What curse?” rose involuntarily to Christie’s lips, but did not pass them, for, as if she read the thought, Helen answered it in a whisper that made the blood tingle in the other’s veins, so full of ominous suggestion was it.
“The curse of insanity I mean. We are all mad, or shall be; we come of a mad race, and for years we have gone recklessly on bequeathing this awful inheritance to our descendants. It should end with us, we are the last; none of us should marry; none dare think of it but Bella, and she knows nothing. She must be told, she must be kept from the sin of deceiving her lover, the agony of seeing her children become what I am, and what we all may be.”
Here Helen wrung her hands and paced the room in such a paroxysm of impotent despair that Christie sat bewildered and aghast, wondering if this were true, or but the fancy of a troubled brain. Mrs. Carrol’s face and manner returned to her with sudden vividness, so did Augustine’s gloomy expression, and the strange wish uttered over his sleeping sister long ago. Harry’s reckless, aimless life might be explained in this way; and all that had perplexed her through that year. Every thing confirmed the belief that this tragical assertion was true, and Christie covered up her face, murmuring, with an involuntary shiver:
“My God, how terrible!”
Helen came and stood before her with such grief and penitence in her countenance that for a moment it conquered the despair that had broken bounds.
“We should have told you this at first; I longed to do it, but I was afraid you’d go and leave me. I was so lonely, so miserable, Christie. I could not give you up when I had learned to love you; and I did learn very soon, for no wretched creature ever needed help and comfort more than I. For your sake I tried to be quiet, to control my shattered nerves, and hide my desperate thoughts. You helped me very much, and your unconsciousness made me doubly watchful. Forgive me; don’t desert me now, for the old horror may be coming back, and I want you more than ever.”
Too much moved to speak, Christie held out her hands, with a face full of pity, love, and grief. Poor Helen clung to them as if her only help lay there, and for a moment was quite still. But not long; the old anguish was too sharp to be borne in silence; the relief of confidence once tasted was too great to be denied; and, breaking loose, she went to and fro again, pouring out the bitter secret which had been weighing upon heart and conscience for a year.