It was entirely beyond my power to get on my feet.
Philip had (innocently, I am sure) discouraged me; I saw displeasure, I saw contempt in his face. There was a dead silence in the room. Everybody looked at me. My heart beat furiously, my hands turned cold, the questions and answers in Christian Obligation all left my memory together. I looked imploringly at papa.
For the first time in his life, he was hard on me. His eyes were as angry as ever; they showed me no mercy. Oh, what had come to me? what evil spirit possessed me? I felt resentment; horrid, undutiful resentment, at being treated in this cruel way. My fists clinched themselves in my lap, my face felt as hot as fire. Instead of asking my father to excuse me, I said: "I can't do it." He was astounded, as well he might be. I went on from bad to worse. I said: "I won't do it."
He stooped over me; he whispered: "I am going to ask you something; I insist on your answering, Yes or No." He raised his voice, and drew himself back so that they could all see me.
"Have you been taught like your sister?" he asked. "Has the catechism that has been her religious lesson, for all her life, been your religious lesson, for all your life, too?"
I said: "Yes"--and I was in such a rage that I said it out loud. If Philip had handed me his cane, and had advised me to give the young hussies who were answerable for this dreadful state of things a good beating, I believe I should have done it. Papa turned his back on me and offered the girls a last chance: "Do you feel sorry for what you have done? Do you ask to be forgiven?"
Neither the one nor the other answered him. He called across the room to the teachers: "Those two pupils are expelled the school."
Both the women looked horrified. The elder of the two approached him, and tried to plead for a milder sentence. He answered in one stern word: "Silence!"--and left the schoolroom, without even a passing bow to Philip. And this, after he had cordially shaken hands with my poor dear, not half an hour before.
I ought to have made affectionate allowance for his nervous miseries; I ought to have run after him, and begged his pardon. There must be something wrong, I am afraid, in girls loving anybody but their fathers. When Helena led the way out by another door, I ran after Philip; and I asked him to forgive me.
I don't know what I said; it was all confusion. The fear of having forfeited his fondness must, I suppose, have shaken my mind. I remember entreating Helena to say a kind word for me. She was so clever, she had behaved so well, she had deserved that Philip should listen to her. "Oh," I cried out to him desperately, "what must you think of me?"
"I will tell you what I think of you," he said. "It is your father who is in fault, Eunice--not you. Nothing could have been in worse taste than his management of that trumpery affair in the schoolroom; it was a complete mistake from beginning to end. Make your mind easy; I don't blame You."
"Are you, really and truly, as fond of me as ever?"
"Yes, to be sure!"
Helena seemed to be hardly as much interested in this happy ending of my anxieties as I might have anticipated. She walked on by herself. Perhaps she was thinking of poor papa's strange outbreak of excitement, and grieving over it.
We had only a little way to walk, before we passed the door of Philip's hotel. He had not yet received the expected letter from his father--the cruel letter which might recall him to Ireland. It was then the hour of delivery by our second post; he went to look at the letter-rack in the hall. Helena saw that I was anxious. She was as kind again as ever; she consented to wait with me for Philip, at the door.
He came out to us with an open letter in his hand.
"From my father, at last," he said--and gave me the letter to read. It only contained these few lines:
"Do not be alarmed, my dear boy, at the change for the worse in my handwriting. I am suffering for my devotion to the studious habits of a lifetime: my right hand is attacked by the malady called Writer's Cramp. The doctor here can do nothing. He tells me of some foreign woman, mentioned in his newspaper, who cures nervous derangements of all kinds by hand-rubbing, and who is coming to London. When you next hear from me, I may be in London too."--There the letter ended.
Of course I knew who the foreign woman, mentioned in the newspaper, was.
But what does Miss Jillgall's friend matter to me? The one important thing is, that Philip has not been called back to Ireland. Here is a fortunate circumstance, which perhaps means more good luck. I may be Mrs. Philip Dunboyne before the year is out.
CHAPTER XXV.
HELENA'S DIARY.
They all notice at home that I am looking worn and haggard. That hideous old maid, Miss Jillgall, had her malicious welcome ready for me when we met at breakfast this morning: "Dear Helena, what has become of your beauty? One would think you had left it in your room!" Poor deluded Eunice showed her sisterly sympathy: "Don't joke about it, Selina: can't you see that Helena is ill?"
I have been ill; ill of my own wickedness.
But the recovery to my tranquillity will bring with it the recovery of my good looks. My fatal passion for Philip promises to be the utter destruction of everything that is good in me. Well! what is good in me may not be worth keeping. There is a fate in these things. If I am destined to rob Eunice of the one dear object of her love and hope--how can I resist? The one kind thing I can do is to keep her in ignorance of what is coming, by acts of affectionate deceit.
Besides, if she suffers, I suffer too. In the length and breadth of England, I doubt if there is a much more wicked young woman to be found than myself. Is it nothing to feel that, and to endure it as I do?
Upon my word, there is no excuse for me!
Is this sheer impudence? No; it is the bent of my nature. I have a tendency to self-examination, accompanied by one merit--I don't spare myself.
There are excuses for Eunice. She lives in a fools' paradise; and she sees in her lover a radiant creature, shining in the halo thrown over him by her own self-delusion, Nothing of this sort is to be said for me. I see Philip as he is. My penetration looks into the lowest depths of his character--when I am not in his company. There seems to be a foundation of good, somewhere in his nature. He despises and hates himself (he has confessed it to me), when Eunice is with him--still believing in her false sweetheart. But how long do these better influences last? I have only to show myself, in my sister's absence, and Philip is mine body and soul. His vanity and his weakness take possession of him the moment he sees my face. He is one of those men--even in my little experience I have met with them--who are born to be led by women. If Eunice had possessed my strength of character, he would have been true to her for life.
Ought I not, in justice to myself, to have lifted my heart high above the reach of such a creature as this? Certainly I ought! I know it, I feel it.