Anyway, Philip shook hands with me again.
Miss Jillgall was present. The gentle-hearted old maid was so touched by our meeting that she abandoned herself to the genial impulse of the moment, and gave Philip a kiss. The outraged claims of propriety instantly seized on her. She blushed as if the long-lost days of her girlhood had been found again, and ran out of the room.
"Now, Mr. Philip," I said, "I have been waiting, at Miss Jillgall's suggestion, to get my information from you. There is something wrong between Eunice and yourself. What is it? And who is to blame?"
"Her vile sister is to blame," he answered. "That reptile was determined to sting us. And she has done it!" he cried, starting to his feet, and walking up and down the room, urged into action by his own unendurable sense of wrong. "I say, she has done it, after Eunice has saved me--done it, when Eunice was ready to be my wife."
"How has she done it?"
Between grief and indignation his reply was involved in a confusion of vehemently-spoken words, which I shall not attempt to reproduce. Eunice had reminded him that her sister had been publicly convicted of an infamous crime, and publicly punished for it by imprisonment. "If I consent to marry you," she said, "I stain you with my disgrace; that shall never be." With this resolution, she had left him. "I have tried to convince her," Philip said, "that she will not be associated with her sister's disgrace when she bears my name; I have promised to take her far away from England, among people who have never even heard of her sister. Miss Jillgall has used her influence to help me. All in vain! There is no hope for us but in you. I am not thinking selfishly only of myself. She tries to conceal it--but, oh, she is broken-hearted! Ask the farmer's wife, if you don't believe me. Judge for yourself, sir. Go--for God's sake, go to the farm."
I made him sit down and compose himself.
"You may depend on my going to the farm," I answered. "I shall write to Eunice to-day, and follow my letter to-morrow." He tried to thank me; but I would not allow it. "Before I consent to accept the expression of your gratitude," I said, "I must know a little more of you than I know now. This is only the second occasion on which we have met. Let us look back a little, Mr. Philip Dunboyne. You were Eunice's affianced husband; and you broke faith with her. That was a rascally action. How do you defend it?"
His head sank. "I am ashamed to defend it," he answered.
I pressed him without mercy. "You own yourself," I said, "that it was a rascally action?"
"Use stronger language against me, even than that, sir--I deserve it."
"In plain words," I went on, "you can find no excuse for your conduct?"
"In the past time," he said, "I might have found excuses."
"But you can't find them now?"
"I must not even look for them now."
"Why not?"
"I owe it to Eunice to leave my conduct at its worst; with nothing said--by me--to defend it."
"What has Eunice done to have such a claim on you as that?"
"Eunice has forgiven me."
It was gratefully and delicately said. Ought I to have allowed this circumstance to weigh with me? I ask, in return, had I never committed any faults? As a fellow-mortal and fellow-sinner, had I any right to harden my heart against an expression of penitence which I felt to be sincere in its motive?
But I was bound to think of Eunice. I did think of her, before I ventured to accept the position--the critical position, as I shall presently show--of Philip's friend.
After more than an hour of questions put without reserve, and of answers given without prevarication, I had traveled over the whole ground laid out by the narratives which appear in these pages, and had arrived at my conclusion--so far as Philip Dunboyne was concerned.
I found him to be a man with nothing absolutely wicked in him--but with a nature so perilously weak, in many respects, that it might drift into wickedness unless a stronger nature was at hand to bold it back. Married to a wife without force of character, the probabilities would point to him as likely to yield to examples which might make him a bad husband. Married to a wife with a will of her own, and with true love to sustain her--a wife who would know when to take the command and how to take the command--a wife who, finding him tempted to commit actions unworthy of his better self, would be far-sighted enough to perceive that her husband's sense of honor might sometimes lose its balance, without being on that account hopelessly depraved--then, and, in these cases only, the probabilities would point to Philip as a man likely to be the better and the happier for his situation, when the bonds of wedlock had got him.
But the serious question was not answered yet.
Could I feel justified in placing Eunice in the position toward Philip which I have just endeavored to describe? I dared not allow my mind to dwell on the generosity which had so nobly pardoned him, or on the force of character which had bravely endured the bitterest disappointment, the cruelest humiliation. The one consideration which I was bound to face, was the sacred consideration of her happiness in her life to come.
Leaving Philip, with a few words of sympathy which might help him to bear his suspense, I went to my room to think.
The time passed--and I could arrive at no positive conclusion. Either way--with or without Philip--the contemplation of Eunice's future harassed me with doubt. Even if I had conquered my own indecision, and had made up my mind to sanction the union of the two young people, the difficulties that now beset me would not have been dispersed. Knowing what I alone knew, I could certainly remove Eunice's one objection to the marriage. In other words, I had only to relate what had happened on the day when the Chaplain brought the Minister to the prison, and the obstacle of their union would be removed. But, without considering Philip, it was simply out of the question to do this, in mercy to Eunice herself. What was Helena's disgrace, compared with the infamy which stained the name of the poor girl's mother! The other alternative of telling her part of the truth only was before me, if I could persuade myself to adopt it. I failed to persuade myself; my morbid anxiety for her welfare made me hesitate again. Human patience could endure no more. Rashness prevailed and prudence yielded--I left my decision to be influenced by the coming interview with Eunice.
The next day I drove to the farm. Philip's entreaties persuaded me to let him be my companion, on one condition--that he waited in the carriage while I went into the house.
I had carefully arranged my ideas, and had decided on proceeding with the greatest caution, before I ventured on saying the all-important words which, once spoken, were not to be recalled. The worst of those anxieties, under which the delicate health of Mr. Gracedieu had broken down, was my anxiety now. Could I reconcile it to my conscience to permit a man, innocent of all knowledge of the truth, to marry the daughter of a condemned murderess, without honestly telling him what he was about to do? Did I deserve to be pitied? did I deserve to be blamed?--my mind was still undecided when I entered the house.