needles. 'You see it amuses him,' the man said, kindly. 'Don't notice his mistakes, he thinks there isn't such another in the world for knitting as himself. You can see, sir, how he sticks to it.' He was so absorbed over his employment that I had to speak to him twice, before I could induce him to look at me. The utter ruin of his intellect did not appear to have exercised any disastrous influence over his bodily health. On the contrary, he had grown fatter since I had last seen him; his complexion had lost the pallor that I remembered—there was color in his cheeks.
'Don't you remember your old friend?' I said. He smiled, and nodded, and repeated the words:
'Yes, yes, my old friend.' It was only too plain that he had not the least recollection of me. 'His memory is gone,' the man said. 'When he puts away his knitting, at night, I have to find it for him in the morning. But, there! he's happy—enjoys his victuals, likes sitting out in the garden and watching the birds. There's been a deal of trouble in the family, sir; and it has all passed over him like a wet sponge over a slate.' The old sailor was right. If that wreck of a man had been capable of feeling and thinking, his daughter's disgrace would have broken his heart. In a world of sin and sorrow, is peaceable imbecility always to be pitied? I have known men who would have answered, without hesitation: 'It is to be envied.' And where (some persons might say) was the poor Minister's reward for the act of mercy which had saved Eunice in her infancy? Where it ought to be! A man who worthily performs a good action finds his reward in the action itself.
At breakfast, on the next day, the talk touched on those passages in Helena's diary, which had been produced in court as evidence against her.
I expressed a wish to see what revelation of a depraved nature the entries in the diary might present; and my curiosity was gratified. At a fitter time, I may find an opportunity of alluding to the impression produced on me by the diary. In the meanwhile, the event of Philip's return claims notice in the first place.
The poor fellow was so glad to see me that he shook hands as heartily as if we had known each other from the time when he was a boy.
'Do you remember how kindly you spoke to me when I called on you in London?' he asked. 'If I have repeated those words once—but perhaps you don't remember them? You said: 'If I was as young as you are, I should not despair.' Well! I have said that to myself over and over again, for a hundred times at least. Eunice will listen to you, sir, when she will listen to nobody else. This is the first happy moment I have had for weeks past.'
I suppose I must have looked glad to hear that. 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
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.
