The signs of mental confusion in his talk had so distressed me, that I had not been composed enough to feel sure of what he really meant, until he described himself as "shrinking from a necessary explanation." Hearing those words, my knowledge of the circumstances helped me; I realized what his situation really was.
"Compose yourself," I said, "I understand you at last."
He had suddenly become distrustful. "Prove it," he muttered, with a furtive look at me. "I want to be satisfied that you understand my position."
"This is your position," I told him. "You are placed between two deplorable alternatives. If you tell this young gentleman that Miss Eunice's mother was a criminal hanged for murder, his family—even if he himself doesn't recoil from it—will unquestionably forbid the marriage; and your adopted daughter's happiness will be the sacrifice."
"True!" he said. "Frightfully true! Go on."
"If, on the other hand, you sanction the marriage, and conceal the truth, you commit a deliberate act of deceit; and you leave the lives of the young couple at the mercy of a possible discovery, which might part husband and wife—cast a slur on their children—and break up the household."
He shuddered while he listened to me. "Come to the end of it," he cried.
I had no more to say, and I was obliged to answer him to that effect.
"No more to say?" he replied. "You have not told me yet what I most want to know."
I did a rash thing; I asked what it was that he most wanted to know.
"Can't you see it for yourself?" he demanded indignantly. "Suppose you were put between those two alternatives which you mentioned just now."
"Well?"
"What would you do, sir, in my place? Would you own the disgraceful truth—before the marriage—or run the risk, and keep the horrid story to yourself?"
Either way, my reply might lead to serious consequences. I hesitated.
He threatened me with his poor feeble hand. It was only the anger of a moment; his humor changed to supplication. He reminded me piteously of bygone days: "You used to be a kind-hearted man. Has age hardened you? Have you no pity left for your old friend? My poor heart is sadly in want of a word of wisdom, spoken kindly."
Who could have resisted this? I took his hand: "Be at ease, dear Minister. In your place I should run the risk, and keep that horrid story to myself."
He sank back gently in his chair. "Oh, the relief of it!" he said. "How can I thank you as I ought for quieting my mind?"
I seized the opportunity of quieting his mind to good purpose by suggesting a change of subject. "Let us have done with serious talk for the present," I proposed. "I have been an idle man for the last five years, and I want to tell you about my travels."
His attention began to wander, he evidently felt no interest in my travels. "Are you sure," he asked anxiously, "that we have said all we ought to say? No!" he cried, answering his own question. "I believe I have forgotten something—I am certain I have forgotten something. Perhaps I mentioned it in the letter I wrote to you. Have you got my letter?"
I showed it to him. He read the letter, and gave it back to me with a heavy sigh. "Not there!" he said despairingly. "Not there!"
"Is the lost remembrance connected with anybody in the house?" I asked, trying to help him. "Does it relate, by any chance, to one of the young ladies?"
"You wonderful man! Nothing escapes you. Yes; the thing I have forgotten concerns one of the girls. Stop! Let me get at it by myself. Surely it relates to Helena?" He hesitated; his face clouded over with an expression of anxious thought. "Yes; it relates to Helena," he repeated "but how?" His eyes filled with tears. "I am ashamed of my weakness," he said faintly. "You don't know how dreadful it is to forget things in this way."
The injury that his mind had sustained now assumed an aspect that was serious indeed. The subtle machinery, which stimulates the memory, by means of the association of ideas, appeared to have lost its working power in the intellect of this unhappy man. I made the first suggestion that occurred to me, rather than add to his distress by remaining silent.
"If we talk of your daughter," I said, "the merest accident—a word spoken at random by. you or me—may be all your memory wants to rouse it."
He agreed eagerly to this: "Yes! Yes! Let me begin. Helena met you, I think, at the station. Of course, I remember that; it only happened a few hours since. Well?" he went on, with a change in his manner to parental pride, which it was pleasant to see, "did you think my daughter a fine girl? I hope Helena didn't disappoint you?"
"Quite the contrary." Having made that necessary reply, I saw my way to keeping his mind occupied by a harmless subject. "It must, however, be owned," I went on, "that your daughter surprised me."
"In what way?"
"When she mentioned her name. Who could have supposed that you—an inveterate enemy to the Roman Catholic Church—would have christened your daughter by the name of a Roman Catholic Saint?"
He listened to this with a smile. Had I happily blundered on some association which his mind was still able to pursue?
"You happen to be wrong this time," he said pleasantly. "I never gave my girl the name of Helena; and, what is more, I never baptized her. You ought to know that. Years and years ago, I wrote to tell you that my poor wife had made me a proud and happy father. And surely I said that the child was born while she was on a visit to her brother's rectory. Do you remember the name of the place? I told you it was a remote little village, called—Suppose we put your memory to a test? Can you remember the name?" he asked, with a momentary appearance of triumph showing itself, poor fellow, in his face.
After the time that had elapsed, the name had slipped my memory. When I confessed this, he exulted over me, with an unalloyed pleasure which it was cheering to see.
"Your memory is failing you now," he said. "The name is Long Lanes. And what do you think my wife did—this is so characteristic of her!—when I presented myself at her bedside. Instead of speaking of our own baby, she reminded me of the name that I had given to our adopted daughter when I baptized the child. 'You chose the ugliest name that a girl can have,' she said. I begged her to remember that 'Eunice' was a name in Scripture. She persisted in spite of me. (What firmness of character!) 'I detest the name of Eunice!' she said; 'and now that I have a girl of my own, it's my turn to choose the name; I claim it as my right.' She was beginning to get excited; I allowed her to have her own way, of course. 'Only let me know,' I said, 'what the name is to be when you have thought of it.' My dear sir, she had the name ready, without thinking about it: 'My baby shall be called by the name that is sweetest in my ears, the name of my dear lost mother.' We had—what shall I call it?—a slight difference of opinion when I heard that the name was to be Helena. I really could not reconcile it to my conscience to baptize a child of mine by the name of a Popish saint. My wife's brother set things right between us. A worthy good man; he died not very long ago—I forget the date. Not to detain you any longer, the rector of Long Lanes baptized our daughter. That is how she comes by her un-English name; and so it happens that her birth is registered in a village which her father has never inhabited. I hope, sir, you think a little better of my memory now?"