‘Leave us,' he said, looking at her over his shoulder. She looked back over her shoulder and waited as if she didn't care to go. ‘Do you hear?' he roared out, ‘leave the room.' ‘Speak to me civilly,' says she, getting red in the face. ‘Turn the idiot out,' says he, looking my way. She had always had crazy notions of her own about her dignity, and that word ‘idiot' upset her in a moment. Before I could interfere she stepped up to him in a fine passion. ‘Beg my pardon, directly,' says she, ‘or I'll make it the worse for you. I'll let out your Secret. I can ruin you for life if I choose to open my lips.' My own words! -- repeated exactly from what I had said the day before -- repeated, in his presence, as if they had come from herself.
He sat speechless, as white as the paper I am writing on, while I pushed her out of the room. When he recovered himself --
No! I am too respectable a woman to mention what he said when he recovered himself. My pen is the pen of a member of the rector's congregation, and a subscriber to the ‘Wednesday Lectures on justification by Faith' -- how can you expect me to employ it in writing bad language? Suppose, for yourself, the raging, swearing frenzy of the lowest ruffian in England, and let us get on together, as fast as may be, to the way in which it all ended.
It ended, as you probably guess by this time, in his insisting on securing his own safety by shutting her up.
I tried to set things right. I told him that she had merely repeated, like a parrot, the words she had heard me say and that she knew no particulars whatever, because I had mentioned none. I explained that she had affected, out of crazy spite against him, to know what she really did not know -- that she only wanted to threaten him and aggravate him for speaking to her as he had just spoken -- ad that my unlucky words gave her just the chance of doing mischief of which she was in search. I referred him to other queer ways of hers, and to his own experience of the vagaries of half-witted people -- it was all to no purpose -- he would not believe me on my oath -- he was absolutely certain I had betrayed the whole Secret.
In short, he would hear of nothing but shutting her up.
Under these circumstances, I did my duty as a mother. ‘No pauper Asylum,'
I said, ‘I won't have her put in a pauper Asylum. A Private Establishment, if you please. I have my feelings as a mother, and my character to preserve in the town, and I will submit to nothing but a Private Establishment, of the sort which my genteel neighbours would choose for afflicted relatives of their own.' Those were my words. It is gratifying to me to reflect that I did my duty. Though never overfond of my late daughter, I had a proper pride about her. No pauper stain -- thanks to my firmness and resolution -- ever rested on My child.
Having carried my point (which I did the more easily, in consequence of the facilities offered by private Asylums), I could not refuse to admit that there were certain advantages gained by shutting her up. In the first place, she was taken excellent care of -- being treated (as I took care to mention in the town) on the footing of a lady. In the second place, she was kept away from Welmingham, where she might have set people suspecting and inquiring, by repeating my own incautious words.
The only drawback of putting her under restraint was a very slight one.
We merely turned her empty boast about knowing the Secret into a fixed delusion. Having first spoken in sheer crazy spitefulness against the man who had offended her, she was cunning enough to see that she had seriously frightened him, and sharp enough afterwards to discover that he was concerned in shutting her up. The consequence was she flamed out into a perfect frenzy of passion against him, going to the Asylum, and the fist words she said to the nurses, after they had quieted her, were, that she was put in confinement for knowing his Secret, and that she meant to open her lips and ruin him, when the right time came.
She may have said the same thing to you, when you thoughtlessly assisted her escape. She certainly said it (as I heard last summer) to the unfortunate woman who married our sweet-tempered, nameless gentleman lately deceased.
If either you, or that unlucky lady, had questioned my daughter closely, and had insisted on her explaining what she really meant, you would have found her lose all her self-importance suddenly, and get vacant, and restless, and confused -- you would have discovered that I am writing nothing here but the plain truth. She knew that there was a Secret -- she knew who was connected with it -- she knew who would suffer by its being known -- and beyond that, whatever airs of importance she may have given herself, whatever crazy boasting she may have indulged in with strangers, she never to her dying day knew more.
Have I satisfied your curiosity? I have taken pains enough to satisfy it at any rate. There is really nothing else I have to tell you about myself or my daughter. My worst responsibilities, so far as she was concerned, were all over when she was secured in the Asylum. I had a form of letter relating to the circumstances under which she was shut up, given me to write, in answer to one Miss Halcombe, who was curious in the matter, and who must have heard plenty of lies about me from a certain tongue well accustomed to the telling of the same. And I did what I could afterwards to trace my runaway daughter, and prevent her from doing mischief by making inquiries myself in the neighbourhood where she was falsely reported to have been seen. But these, and other trifles like them, are of little or no interest to you after what you have heard already.
So far, I have written in the friendliest possible spirit. But I cannot close this letter, without adding a word here of serious remonstrance and reproof, addressed to yourself.