We were alone again.
Still, Eunice never moved. I spoke to her, and produced no impression. Beginning to feel alarmed, I tried the effect of touching her. With a wild cry, she started into a state of animation. Almost at the same moment, she weakly swayed to and fro as if the pleasant breeze in the garden moved her at its will, like the flowers. I held her up, and led her to the seat.
“There is nothing to be afraid of,” I said. “She has gone.”
Eunice’s eyes rested on me in vacant surprise. “How do you know?” she asked. “I hear her; but I never see her. Do you see her?”
“My dear child! of what person are you speaking?”
She answered: “Of no person. I am speaking of a Voice that whispers and tempts me, when Helena is near.”
“What voice, Eunice?”
“The whispering Voice. It said to me, ‘I am your mother;’ it called me Daughter when I first heard it. My father speaks of my mother, the angel. That good spirit has never come to me from the better world. It is a mock-mother who comes to me—some spirit of evil. Listen to this. I was awake in my bed. In the dark I heard the mock-mother whispering, close at my ear. Shall I tell you how she answered me, when I longed for light to see her by, when I prayed to her to show herself to me? She said: ‘My face was hidden when I passed from life to death; my face no mortal creature may see.’ I have never seen her—how can you have seen her? But I heard her again, just now. She whispered to me when Helena was standing there—where you are standing. She freezes the life in me. Did she freeze the life in you? Did you hear her tempting me? Don’t speak of it, if you did. Oh, not a word! not a word!”
A man who has governed a prison may say with Macbeth, “I have supped full with horrors.” Hardened as I was—or ought to have been—the effect of what I had just heard turned me cold. If I had not known it to be absolutely impossible, I might have believed that the crime and the death of the murderess were known to Eunice, as being the crime and the death of her mother, and that the horrid discovery had turned her brain. This was simply impossible. What did it mean? Good God! what did it mean?
My sense of my own helplessness was the first sense in me that recovered. I thought of Eunice’s devoted little friend. A woman’s sympathy seemed to be needed now. I rose to lead the way out of the garden.