“Oh thank you! bless you!” cried Lady Cecilia in an ecstasy—“you will take the letters?”
“Yes,” Helen feebly said; “yes, since it must be so.”
Cecilia embraced her, thanked her, blessed her, and hastily left the room, but in an instant afterward she returned, and said, “One thing I forgot, and I must tell you. Think of my forgetting it! The letters are not signed with my real name, they are signed Emma—Henry and Emma!—Oh folly, folly! My dear, dear friend! save me but now, and I never will be guilty of the least deception again during my whole life; believe me, believe me! When once my mother is safely gone I will tell Clarendon all. Look at me, dear Helen, look at me and believe me.”
And Helen looked at her, and Helen believed her.
CHAPTER XV.
Helen slept no more this night. When alone in the stillness of the long hours, she went over and over again all that had passed, what Cecilia had said, what she had at first thought and afterwards felt, all the persuasions by which she had been wrought upon, and, on the contrary, all the reasons by which she ought to be decided; backward and forward her mind vibrated, and its painful vacillation could not be stilled.
“What am I going to do? To tell a falsehood! That cannot be right; but in the circumstances—yet this is Cecilia’s own way of palliating the fault that her mother so fears in her—that her mother trusted to me to guard her against; and now, already, even before Lady Davenant has left us, I am going to assist Cecilia in deceiving her husband, and on that very dangerous point—Colonel D’Aubigny.” Lady Davenant’s foreboding having already been so far accomplished struck Helen fearfully, and her warning voice in the dead silence of that night sounded, and her look was upon her, so strongly, that she for an instant hid her head to get rid of her image. “But what can I do? her own life is at stake! No less a motive could move me, but this ought—must—shall decide me. Yet, if Lady Davenant were to know it!—and I, in the last hours I have to pass with her—the last I ever may have with her, shall I deceive her? But it is not deceit, only prudence—necessary prudence; what a physician would order, what even humanity requires. I am satisfied it is quite right, quite, and I will go to sleep that I may be strong, and calm, and do it all well in the morning. After all, I have been too cowardly; frightening myself about nothing; too scrupulous—for what is it I have promised? only to receive the letters as if they were mine. Not to say that they are mine; he will not ask me, Cecilia thinks he will not ask me. But how can she tell? if he should, what can I do? I must then answer that they are mine. Indeed it is the same thing, for I should lead him to believe it as much by my receiving them in silence; it will be telling or acting an absolute falsehood, and can that ever be right?” Back it came to the same point, and in vain her cheek settled on the pillow and she thought she could sleep. Then with closed eyes she considered how the general would look, and speak, or not speak. “What will he think of me when he sees the picture—the letters? for he must open the packet. But he will not read them, no, he is too honourable. I do not know what is in them. There can be nothing, however, but nonsense, Cecilia says; yet even so, love-letters he must know they are, and a clandestine correspondence. I heard him once express such contempt for any clandestine affair. He, who is so nice, so strict, about women’s conduct, how I shall sink in his esteem! Well, be it so, that concerns only myself; and it is for his own sake too, to save his happiness; and Cecilia, my dear Cecilia, oh I can bear it, and it will be a pride to me to bear it, for I am grateful; my gratitude shall not be only in words; now, when I am put to the trial, I can do something for my friends. Yes, and I will, let the consequences be what they may.” Yet Beauclerc! that thought was at the bottom of her heart; the fear, the almost certainty, that some way or other—every way in which she could think of it, it would lead to difficulty with Beauclerc. But this fear was mere selfishness, she thought, and to counteract it came all her generous, all her grateful, all her long-cherished, romantic love of sacrifice—a belief that she was capable of self-devotion for the friends she loved; and upon the strength of this idea she fixed at last. Quieted, she soothed herself to repose, and, worn out with reasoning or trying to reason in vain, she at last, in spite of the morning light dawning upon her through the unclosed shutters, in a soft sort of enthusiastic vision fading away, fell asleep.
She slept long; when she awoke it was with that indescribable feeling that something painful had happened—that something dreadful was to be this day. She recollected, first, that Lady Davenant was to go. Then came all that had passed with Cecilia. It was late, she saw that her maid had been in the room, but had refrained from awakening her; she rose, and dressed as fast as she could. She was to go to Lady Davenant, when her bell rang twice. How to appear before one who knew her countenance so well, without showing that any thing had happened, was her first difficulty. She looked in her glass to see whether there was any alteration in her face; none that she could see, but she was no judge. “How foolish to think so much about it all!” She dressed, and between times inquired from her maid if she had heard of any change in Lady Davenant’s intentions of going. Had any counter-orders about the carriage been given? None; it was ordered to be at the door by twelve o’clock. “That was well,” Helen said to herself. It would all soon be over. Lady Davenant would be safe, then she could bear all the rest; next she hoped, that any perturbation or extraordinary emotion in herself would not be observed in the hurry of departure, or would be thought natural at parting with Lady Davenant. “So then, I come at every turn to some little deceit,” thought she, “and I must, I must!” and she sighed.