The Legacy of Cain - Уилки Коллинз

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stranger, to our confidence. I replied, expressing sincere admiration of Mr. Dunboyne’s motives, and merely informing him that the child was already provided for.

      After that, I heard no more of the Irish gentleman.

      It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that I kept the Minister in ignorance of my correspondence with Mr. Dunboyne. I was too well acquainted with my friend’s sensitive and self-tormenting nature to let him know that a relative of the murderess was living, and was aware that she had left a child.

      A last event remains to be related, before I close these pages.

      During the year of which I am now writing, our Chaplain added one more to the many examples that I have seen of his generous readiness to serve his friends. He had arranged to devote his annual leave of absence to a tour among the English Lakes, when he received a letter from a clergyman resident in London, whom he had known from the time when they had been school-fellows. This old friend wrote under circumstances of the severest domestic distress, which made it absolutely necessary that he should leave London for a while. Having failed to find a representative who could relieve him of his clerical duties, he applied to the Chaplain to recommend a clergyman who might be in a position to help him. My excellent colleague gave up his holiday-plans without hesitation, and went to London himself.

      On his return, I asked if he had seen anything of some acquaintances of his and of mine, who were then visitors to the metropolis. He smiled significantly when he answered me.

      “I have a card to deliver from an acquaintance whom you have not mentioned,” he said; “and I rather think it will astonish you.”

      It simply puzzled me. When he gave me the card, this is what I found printed on it:

      “MRS. TENBRUGGEN (OF SOUTH BEVELAND).”

      “Well?” said the Chaplain.

      “Well,” I answered; “I never even heard of Mrs. Tenbruggen, of South Beveland. Who is she?”

      “I married the lady to a foreign gentleman, only last week, at my friend’s church,” the Chaplain replied. “Perhaps you may remember her maiden name?”

      He mentioned the name of the dangerous creature who had first presented herself to me, in charge of the Prisoner’s child—otherwise Miss Elizabeth Chance. The reappearance of this woman on the scene—although she was only represented by her card—caused me a feeling of vague uneasiness, so contemptibly superstitious in its nature that I now remember it with shame. I asked a stupid question:

      “How did it happen?”

      “In the ordinary course of such things,” my friend said. “They were married by license, in their parish church. The bridegroom was a fine tall man, with a bold eye and a dashing manner. The bride and I recognized each other directly. When Miss Chance had become Mrs. Tenbruggen, she took me aside, and gave me her card. ‘Ask the Governor to accept it,’ she said, ‘in remembrance of the time when he took me for a nursemaid. Tell him I am married to a Dutch gentleman of high family. If he ever comes to Holland, we shall be glad to see him in our residence at South Beveland.’ There is her message to you, repeated word for word.”

      “I am glad she is going to live out of England.”

      “Why? Surely you have no reason to fear her?”

      “None whatever.”

      “You are thinking, perhaps, of somebody else?”

      I was thinking of the Minister; but it seemed to be safest not to say so. ——

      My pen is laid aside, and my many pages of writing have been sent to their destination. What I undertook to do, is now done. To take a metaphor from the stage—the curtain falls here on the Governor and the Prison.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      We both said good-night, and went up to our room with a new object in view. By our father’s advice we had resolved on keeping diaries, for the first time in our lives, and had pledged ourselves to begin before we went to bed.

      Slowly and silently and lazily, my sister sauntered to her end of the room and seated herself at her writing-table. On the desk lay a nicely bound book, full of blank pages. The word “Journal” was printed on it in gold letters, and there was fitted to the covers a bright brass lock and key. A second journal, exactly similar in every respect to the first, was placed on the writing-table at my end of the room. I opened my book. The sight of the blank leaves irritated me; they were so smooth, so spotless, so entirely ready to do their duty. I took too deep a dip of ink, and began the first entry in my diary by making a blot. This was discouraging. I got up, and looked out of window.

      “Helena!”

      My sister’s voice could hardly have addressed me in a more weary tone, if her pen had been at work all night, relating domestic events. “Well!” I said. “What is it?”

      “Have you done already?” she asked.

      I showed her the blot. My sister Eunice (the strangest as well as the dearest of girls) always blurts out what she has in her mind at the time. She fixed her eyes gravely on my spoiled page, and said: “That comforts me.” I crossed the room, and looked at her book. She had not even summoned energy enough to make a blot. “What will papa think of us,” she said, “if we don’t begin to-night?”

      “Why not begin,” I suggested, “by writing down what he said, when he gave us our journals? Those wise words of advice will be in their proper place on the first page of the new books.”

      Not at all a demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person—I declare she kissed me. “Oh,” she burst out, “how clever you are! The very thing to write about; I’ll do it directly.”

      She really did it directly; without once stopping to consider, without once waiting to ask my advice. Line after line, I heard her noisy pen hurrying to the bottom of a first page, and getting three-parts of the way toward the end of a second page, before she closed her diary. I reminded her that she had not turned the key, in the lock which was intended to keep her writing private.

      “It’s not worth while,” she answered. “Anybody who cares to do it may read what I write. Good-night.”

      The singular change which I had noticed in her began to disappear, when she set about her preparations for bed. I noticed the old easy indolent movements again, and that regular and deliberate method of brushing her hair, which I can never contemplate without feeling a stupefying influence that has helped me to many a delicious night’s sleep. She said her prayers in her favorite corner of the room, and laid her head on the pillow with the luxurious little sigh which announces that she is falling asleep. This reappearance of her usual habits was really a relief to me. Eunice in a state of excitement is Eunice exhibiting an unnatural spectacle.

      The next thing I did was to take the liberty which she had already sanctioned—I mean the liberty of reading what she had written. Here it is, copied exactly:

      “I am not half so fond of anybody as I am of papa. He is always kind, he is always right. I love him, I love him, I love him.

      “But this is not how I meant to begin. I must tell how he talked to us; I wish he was here to tell it himself.

      “He

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