Like Another Helen

by Sydney C. Grier

Mr F. Woman! is this true that you tell me?

Mrs F. (with her handkerchief to her eyes). No unkind rudeness shall hinder me from confessing the truth. The gentleman whose name so disturbs you, sir, obliged me at various times with sums of money, professing himself amply repaid by my countenance and conversation, possibly also by his persistent good fortune at the cards. But when your daughter arrived from home, I perceived a change in him. He began to hint at a certain means of discharging the debt of gratitude I owed him, and I demanded of him eagerly what it might be. You know it now as well as I. The fool was fallen in love with Miss—but why, I know no more than why she persists in refusing him. The match was an extraordinary good one for her, far better than any she could have looked for in England, and I experienced a glow of satisfaction in thus discharging in the most exemplary style my duties to you, sir, to your girl, and to the gentleman to whom I was so much indebted. Your conscience, sir, will tell you, and so will your daughter’s tell her, that I did all in my power to bring about the happy consummation which has all along been frustrated by your fatal easiness and softness of temper, and the pert wilfulness of Miss—

Mr F. Aye, madam, all in your power—I’ll grant you that.

Mrs F. I thank you, sir. At least, then, I need not reproach myself with my unhappy failure here. It happened, alas! that Mr Menotti was disturbed by the appearance of two other suitors for his charmer’s favour—the Fraser fellow upon whom Miss’s inconstant fancy is fixed for the moment, and him whom you call the Unknown—and the balance of the poor gentleman’s judgment was unsettled. Not knowing his true friend, he went so far as to turn his resentment against me. Had he but confided in the purity of my motives, all had been well, but he saw fit to attempt to increase his influence over me by means of threats. He had learned, he said, from my conversation, certain important matters of the Company’s, which I must have heard from you, sir, and these facts, dropped innocently by me, he had made use of to ingratiate himself with the Chuta Nabob, with whom he had had friendly relations for some time.

Mr F. (bitterly). In other words, the fellow is and always has been one of Surajah Dowlah’s spies, and my wife’s another of ’em.

Mrs F. I am resolved, Mr Freyne, to bear with patience all your injurious remarks until you have heard me out. If I had not felt it possible to confide to you the difficulties I was in about money, you’ll guess that I could not endure the thought of your becoming sensible of the new and shocking trouble into which my easiness of temper had led me, and ’twas this Menotti threatened me with when he saw his hopes in danger. But when he discovered the renewed assiduities of the Unknown by that letter he intercepted in the hands of Omy Chund’s peon, the current of his thoughts was changed again, and he proposed a settlement at once so charming and so honourable that I could not but accept it. The poor man was much upset to find the Unknown plotting against him in a matter in which his heart was so deeply engaged——

Mr F. And who, pray, is the Unknown, madam? for he en’t unknown to you.

Mrs F. Why, sir, he’s no other than the Nabob’s Frenchman, Sinzaun.

Mr F. And my wife knew our subtlest enemy to be in the place, meditating dishonour to my daughter, and destruction to the factory, and never——

Mrs F. And never warned you, you would say, sir? No, indeed; where was the need of making a fuss and pother when things could be managed in a way vastly more agreeable to all parties? Finding, I say, that Sinzaun was working against him in the matter of Miss, and knowing that he had the ear of the Nabob, Menotti conceived the plan of atoning nobly for his former errors. He promised me that if my efforts to marry him to Miss should be successful, he would not only keep silence on the matter of the money and of my incautious admissions to him, but he would reveal to the Presidency all his dealings with the Nabob, and assist ’em to lay their hands upon Sinzaun, thus frustrating all Surajah Dowlah’s monstrous schemes against the town. Could I hesitate in such a case? Would Mr Freyne have me weigh a young creature’s silly likes and dislikes against the safety of the whole factory, and the lives of all the Britons in Bengall? Your wife en’t such a sentimental fool, sir. I did my best to pleasure Menotti, and I en’t ashamed of it.