HE stopped just inside the door. His first look was for Mercy; his is second look was for Julian.
“I knew it!” he said, with an assumption of sardonic composure. “If I could only have persuaded Lady Janet to bet, I should have won a hundred pounds.” He advanced to Julian, with a sudden change from irony to anger. “Would you like to hear what the bet was?” he asked.
“I should prefer seeing you able to control yourself in the presence of this lady,” Julian answered, quietly.
“I offered to lay Lady Janet two hundred pounds to one,” Horace proceeded, “that I should find you here, making love to Miss Roseberry behind my back.”
Mercy interfered before Julian could reply.
“If you cannot speak without insulting one of us,” she said, “permit me to request that you willnotaddress yourself to Mr. Julian Gray.”
Horace bowed to her with a mockery of respect.
“Pray don’t alarm yourself—I am pledged to be scrupulously civil to both of you,” he said. “Lady Janet only allowed me to leave her on condition of my promising to behave with perfect politeness. What else can I do? I have two privileged people to deal with—a parson and a woman. The parson’s profession protects him, and the woman’s sex protects her. You have got me at a disadvantage, and you both of you know it. I beg to apologize if I have forgotten the clergyman’s profession and the lady’s sex.”
“You have forgotten more than that,” said Julian. “You have forgotten that you were born a gentleman and bred a man of honor. So far as I am concerned, I don’t ask you to remember that I am a clergyman—I obtrude my profession on nobody—I only ask you to remember your birth and your breeding. It is quite bad enough to cruelly and unjustly suspect an old friend who has never forgotten what he owes to you and to himself. But it is still more unworthy of you to acknowledge those suspicions in the hearing of a woman whom your own choice has doubly bound you to respect.”
He stopped. The two eyed each other for a moment in silence.
It was impossible for Mercy to look at them, as she was looking now, without drawing the inevitable comparison between the manly force and dignity of Julian and the womanish malice and irritability of Horace. A last faithful impulse of loyalty toward the man to whom she had been betrothed impelled her to part them, before Horace had hopelessly degraded himself in her estimation by contrast with Julian.
“You had better wait to speak to me,” she said to him, “until we are alone.”
“Certainly,” Horace answered with a sneer, “if Mr. Julian Gray will permit it.”
Mercy turned to Julian, with a look which said plainly, “Pity us both, and leave us!”
“Do you wish me to go?” he asked.
“Add to all your other kindnesses to me,” she answered. “Wait for me in that room.”
She pointed to the door that led into the dining-room. Julian hesitated.
“You promise to let me know it if I can be of the smallest service to you?” he said.
“Yes, yes!” She followed him as he withdrew, and added, rapidly, in a whisper, “Leave the door ajar!”
He made no answer. As she returned to Horace he entered the dining-room. The one concession he could make to her he did make. He closed the door so noiselessly that not even her quick hearing could detect that he had shut it.
Mercy spoke to Horace, without waiting to let him speak first.
“I have promised you an explanation of my conduct,” she said, in accents that trembled a little in spite of herself. “I am ready to perform my promise.”
“I have a question to ask you before you do that,” he rejoined. “Can you speak the truth?”
“I am waiting to speak the truth.”
“I will give you an opportunity. Are you or are you not in love with Julian Gray?”
“You ought to be ashamed to ask the question!”
“Is that your only answer?”
“I have never been unfaithful to you, Horace, even in thought. If I hadnotbeen true to you, should I feel my position as you see I feel it now?”
He smiled bitterly. “I have my own opinion of your fidelity and of his honor,” he said. “You couldn’t even send him into the next room without whispering to him first. Never mind that now. At least you know that Julian Gray is in love with you.”
“Mr. Julian Gray has never breathed a word of it to me.”
“A man can show a woman that he loves her, without saying it in words.”
Mercy’s power of endurance began to fail her. Not even Grace Roseberry had spoken more insultingly to her of Julian than Horace was speaking now. “Whoever says that of Mr. Julian Gray, lies!” she answered, warmly.
“Then Lady Janet lies,” Horace retorted.
“Lady Janet never said it! Lady Janet is incapable of saying it!”
“She may not have said it in so many words; but she never denied it whenIsaid it. I reminded her of the time when Julian Gray first heard from me that I was going to marry you: he was so overwhelmed that he was barely capable of being civil to me. Lady Janet was present, and could not deny it. I asked her if she had observed, since then, signs of a confidential understanding between you two. She could not deny the signs. I asked if she had ever found you two together. She could not deny that she had found you together, this very day, under circumstances which justified suspicion. Yes! yes! Look as angry as you like! you don’t know what has been going on upstairs. Lady Janet is bent on breaking off our engagement—and Julian Gray is at the bottom of it.”
As to Julian, Horace was utterly wrong. But as to Lady Janet, he echoed the warning words which Julian himself had spoken to Mercy. She was staggered, but she still held to her own opinion. “I don’t believe it,” she said, firmly.
He advanced a step, and fixed his angry eyes on her searchingly.
“Do you know why Lady Janet sent for me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then I will tell you. Lady Janet is a stanch friend of yours, there is no denying that. She wished to inform me that she had altered her mind about your promised explanation of your conduct. She said, ‘Reflection has convinced me that no explanation is required; I have laid my positive commands on my adopted daughter that no explanation shall take place.’ Has she done that?”
“Yes.”
“Now observe! I waited till she had finished, and then I said, ‘What have I to do with this?’ Lady Janet has one merit—she speaks out. ‘You are to do as I do,’ she answered. ‘You are to consider that no explanation is required, and you are to consign the whole matter to oblivion from this time forth.’ ‘Are you serious?’ I asked. ‘Quite serious.’ ‘In that case I have to inform your ladyship that you insist on more than you may suppose: you insist on my breaking my engagement to Miss Roseberry. Either I am to have the explanation that she has promised me, or I refuse to marry her.’ How do you think Lady Janet took that? She shut up her lips, and she spread out her hands, and she looked at me as much as to say, ‘Just as you please! Refuse if you like; it’s nothing to me!’”
He paused for a moment. Mercy remained silent, on her side: she foresaw what was coming. Mistaken in supposing that Horace had left the house, Julian had, beyond all doubt, been equally in error in concluding that he had been entrapped into breaking off the engagement upstairs.
“Do you understand me so far?” Horace asked.
“I understand you perfectly.”
“I will not trouble you much longer,” he resumed. “I said to Lady Janet, ‘Be so good as to answer me in plain words. Do you still insist on closing Miss Roseberry’s lips?’ ‘I still insist,’ she answered. ‘No explanation is required. If you are base enough to suspect your betrothed wife, I am just enough to believe in my adopted daughter.’ I replied—and I beg you will give your best attention to what I am now going to say—I replied to that, ‘It is not fair to charge me with suspecting her. I don’t understand her confidential relations with Julian Gray, and I don’t understand her language and conduct in the presence of the police officer. I claim it as my right to be satisfied on both those points—in the character of the man who is to marry her.’ There was my answer. I spare you all that followed. I only repeat what I said to Lady Janet. She has commanded you to be silent. If you obey her commands, I owe it to myself and I owe it to my family to release you from your engagement. Choose between your duty to Lady Janet and your duty to Me.”
He had mastered his temper at last: he spoke with dignity, and he spoke to the point. His position was unassailable; he claimed nothing but his right.
“My choice was made,” Mercy answered, “when I gave you my promise upstairs.”
She waited a little, struggling to control herself on the brink of the terrible revelation that was coming. Her eyes dropped before his; her heart beat faster and faster; but she struggled bravely. With a desperate courage she faced the position. “If you are ready to listen,” she went on, “I am ready to tell you why I insisted on having the police officer sent out of the house.”
Horace held up his hand warningly.
“Stop!” he said; “that is not all.”
His infatuated jealousy of Julian (fatally misinterpreting her agitation) distrusted her at the very outset. She had limited herself to clearing up the one question of her interference with the officer of justice. The other question of her relations with Julian she had deliberately passed over. Horace instantly drew his own ungenerous conclusion.
“Let us not misunderstand one another,” he said. “The explanation of your conduct in the other room is only one of the explanations which you owe me. You have something else to account for. Let us begin withthat, if you please.”
She looked at him in unaffected surprise.
“What else have I to account for?” she asked.
He again repeated his reply to Lady Janet.
“I have told you already,” he said. “I don’t understand your confidential relations with Julian Gray.”
Mercy’s color rose; Mercy’s eyes began to brighten.
“Don’t return to that!” she cried, with an irrepressible outbreak of disgust. “Don’t, for God’s sake, make me despise you at such a moment as this!”
His obstinacy only gathered fresh encouragement from that appeal to his better sense.
“I insist on returning to it.”
She had resolved to bear anything from him—as her fit punishment for the deception of which she had been guilty. But it was not in womanhood (at the moment when the first words of her confession were trembling on her lips) to endure Horace’s unworthy suspicion of her. She rose from her seat and met his eye firmly.
“I refuse to degrade myself, and to degrade Mr. Julian Gray, by answering you,” she said.
“Consider what you are doing,” he rejoined. “Change your mind, before it is too late!”
“You have had my reply.”
Those resolute words, that steady resistance, seemed to infuriate him. He caught her roughly by the arm.
“You are as false as hell!” he cried. “It’s all over between you and me!”
The loud threatening tone in which he had spoken penetrated through the closed door of the dining-room. The door instantly opened. Julian returned to the library.
He had just set foot in the room, when there was a knock at the other door—the door that opened on the hall. One of the men-servants appeared, with a telegraphic message in his hand. Mercy was the first to see it. It was the Matron’s answer to the letter which she had sent to the Refuge.
“For Mr. Julian Gray?” she asked.
“Yes, miss.”
“Give it to me.”
She signed to the man to withdraw, and herself gave the telegram to Julian. “It is addressed to you, at my request,” she said. “You will recognize the name of the person who sends it, and you will find a message in it for me.”
Horace interfered before Julian could open the telegram.
“Another private understanding between you!” he said. “Give me that telegram.”
Julian looked at him with quiet contempt.
“It is directed to Me,” he answered—and opened the envelope.
The message inside was expressed in these terms: “I am as deeply interested in her as you are. Say that I have received her letter, and that I welcome her back to the Refuge with all my heart. I have business this evening in the neighborhood. I will call for her myself at Mablethorpe House.”
The message explained itself. Of her own free-will she had made the expiation complete! Of her own free-will she was going back to the martyrdom of her old life! Bound as he knew himself to be to let no compromising word or action escape him in the presence of Horace, the irrepressible expression of Julian’s admiration glowed in his eyes as they rested on Mercy. Horace detected the look. He sprang forward and tried to snatch the telegram out of Julian’s hand.
“Give it to me!” he said. “I will have it!”
Julian silently put him back at arms-length.
Maddened with rage, he lifted his hand threateningly. “Give it to me!” he repeated between his set teeth, “or it will be the worse for you!”
“Give it tome!” said Mercy, suddenly placing herself between them.
Julian gave it. She turned, and offered it to Horace, looking at him with a steady eye, holding it out to him with a steady hand.
“Read it,” she said.
Julian’s generous nature pitied the man who had insulted him. Julian’s great heart only remembered the friend of former times.
“Spare him!” he said to Mercy. “Remember he is unprepared.”
She neither answered nor moved. Nothing stirred the horrible torpor of her resignation to her fate. She knew that the time had come.
Julian appealed to Horace.
“Don’t read it!” he cried. “Hear what she has to say to you first!”
Horace’s hand answered him with a contemptuous gesture. Horace’s eyes devoured, word by word, the Matron’s message.
He looked up when he had read it through. There was a ghastly change in his face as he turned it on Mercy.
She stood between the two men like a statue. The life in her seemed to have died out, except in her eyes. Her eyes rested on Horace with a steady, glittering calmness.
The silence was only broken by the low murmuring of Julian’s voice. His face was hidden in his hands—he was praying for them.
Horace spoke, laying his finger on the telegram. His voice had changed with the change in his face. The tone was low and trembling: no one would have recognized it as the tone of Horace’s voice.
“What does this mean?” he said to Mercy. “It can’t be for you?”
“Itisfor me.”
“What have You to do with a Refuge?”
Without a change in her face, without a movement in her limbs, she spoke the fatal words:
“I have come from a Refuge, and I am going back to a Refuge. Mr. Horace Holmcroft, I am Mercy Merrick.”
The moments passed—and not one of the three moved. The moments passed—and not one of the three spoke. Insensibly the words of supplication died away on Julian’s lips. Even his energy failed to sustain him, tried as it now was by the crushing oppression of suspense. The first trifling movement which suggested the idea of change, and which so brought with it the first vague sense of relief, came from Mercy. Incapable of sustaining the prolonged effort of standing, she drew back a little and took a chair. No outward manifestation of emotion escaped her. There she sat—with the death-like torpor of resignation in her face—waiting her sentence in silence from the man at whom she had hurled the whole terrible confession of the truth in one sentence!
Julian lifted his head as she moved. He looked at Horace, and advancing a few steps, looked again. There was fear in his face, as he suddenly turned it toward Mercy.
“Speak to him!” he said, in a whisper. “Rouse him, before it’s too late!”
She moved mechanically in her chair; she looked mechanically at Julian.
“What more have I to say to him?” she asked, in faint, weary tones. “Did I not tell him everything when I told him my name?”
The natural sound of her voice might have failed to affect Horace. The altered sound of it roused him. He approached Mercy’s chair, with a dull surprise in his face, and put his hand, in a weak, wavering way, on her shoulder. In that position he stood for a while, looking down at her in silence.
The one idea in him that found its way outward to expression was the idea of Julian. Without moving his hand, without looking up from Mercy, he spoke for the first time since the shock had fallen on him.
“Where is Julian?” he asked, very quietly.
“I am here, Horace—close by you.”
“Will you do me a service?”
“Certainly. How can I help you?”
He considered a little before he replied. His hand left Mercy’s shoulder, and went up to his head—then dropped at his side. His next words were spoken in a sadly helpless, bewildered way.
“I have an idea, Julian, that I have been somehow to blame. I said some hard words to you. It was a little while since. I don’t clearly remember what it was all about. My temper has been a good deal tried in this house; I have never been used to the sort of thing that goes on here—secrets and mysteries, and hateful low-lived quarrels. We have no secrets and mysteries at home. And as for quarrels—ridiculous! My mother and my sisters are highly bred women (you know them); gentlewomen, in the best sense of the word. When I am withthemI have no anxieties. I am not harassed at home by doubts of who people are, and confusion about names, and so on. I suspect the contrast weighs a little on my mind and upsets it. They make me over-suspicious among them here, and it ends in my feeling doubts and fears that I can’t get over: doubts about you and fears about myself. I have got a fear about myself now. I want you to help me. Shall I make an apology first?”
“Don’t say a word. Tell me what I can do.”
He turned his face toward Julian for the first time.
“Just look at me,” he said. “Does it strike you that I am at all wrong in my mind? Tell me the truth, old fellow.”
“Your nerves are a little shaken, Horace. Nothing more.”
He considered again after that reply, his eyes remaining anxiously fixed on Julian’s face.
“My nerves are a little shaken,” he repeated. “That is true; I feel they are shaken. I should like, if you don’t mind, to make sure that it’s no worse. Will you help me to try if my memory is all right?”
“I will do anything you like.”
“Ah! you are a good fellow, Julian—and a clear-headed fellow too, which is very important just now. Look here! I say it’s about a week since the troubles began in this house. Do you say so too?”
“Yes.”
“The troubles came in with the coming of a woman from Germany, a stranger to us, who behaved very violently in the dining-room there. Am I right, so far?”
“Quite right.”
“The woman carried matters with a high hand. She claimed Colonel Roseberry—I wish to be strictly accurate—she claimedthe lateColonel Roseberry as her father. She told a tiresome story about her having been robbed of her papers and her name by an impostor who had personated her. She said the name of the impostor was Mercy Merrick. And she afterward put the climax to it all: she pointed to the lady who is engaged to be my wife, and declared thatshewas Mercy Merrick. Tell me again, is that right or wrong?”
Julian answered him as before. He went on, speaking more confidently and more excitedly than he had spoken yet.
“Now attend to this, Julian. I am going to pass from my memory of what happened a week ago to my memory of what happened five minutes since. You were present; I want to know if you heard it too.” He paused, and, without taking his eyes off Julian, pointed backward to Mercy. “There is the lady who is engaged to marry me,” he resumed. “Did I, or did I not, hear her say that she had come out of a Refuge, and that she was going back to a Refuge? Did I, or did I not, hear her own to my face that her name was Mercy Merrick? Answer me, Julian. My good friend, answer me, for the sake of old times.”
His voice faltered as he spoke those imploring words. Under the dull blank of his face there appeared the first signs of emotion slowly forcing its way outward. The stunned mind was reviving faintly. Julian saw his opportunity of aiding the recovery, and seized it. He took Horace gently by the arm, and pointed to Mercy.
“There is your answer!” he said. “Look!—and pity her.”
She had not once interrupted them while they had been speaking: she had changed her position again, and that was all. There was a writing-table at the side of her chair; her outstretched arms rested on it. Her head had dropped on her arms, and her face was hidden. Julian’s judgment had not misled him; the utter self-abandonment of her attitude answered Horace as no human language could have answered him. He looked at her. A quick spasm of pain passed across his face. He turned once more to the faithful friend who had forgiven him. His head fell on Julian’s shoulder, and he burst into tears.
Mercy started wildly to her feet, and looked at the two men.
“O God” she cried, “what have I done!”
Julian quieted her by a motion of his hand.
“You have helped me to save him,” he said. “Let his tears have their way. Wait.”
He put one arm round Horace to support him. The manly tenderness of the action, the complete and noble pardon of past injuries which it implied, touched Mercy to the heart. She went back to her chair. Again shame and sorrow overpowered her, and again she hid her face from view.
Julian led Horace to a seat, and silently waited by him until he had recovered his self-control. He gratefully took the kind hand that had sustained him: he said, simply, almost boyishly, “Thank you, Julian. I am better now.”
“Are you composed enough to listen to what is said to you?” Julian asked.
“Yes. Doyouwish to speak to me?”
Julian left him without immediately replying, and returned to Mercy.
“The time has come,” he said. “Tell him all—truly, unreservedly, as you would tell it to me.”
She shuddered as he spoke. “Have I not told him enough?” she asked. “Do you want me to break his heart? Look at him! Look what I have done already!”
Horace shrank from the ordeal as Mercy shrank from it.
“No, no! I can’t listen to it! I daren’t listen to it!” he cried, and rose to leave the room.
Julian had taken the good work in hand: he never faltered over it for an instant. Horace had loved her—how dearly Julian now knew for the first time. The bare possibility that she might earn her pardon if she was allowed to plead her own cause was a possibility still left. To let her win on Horace to forgive her, was death to the love that still filled his heart in secret. But he never hesitated. With a resolution which the weaker man was powerless to resist, he took him by the arm and led him back to his place.
“For her sake, and for your sake, you shall not condemn her unheard,” he said to Horace, firmly. “One temptation to deceive you after another has tried her, and she has resisted them all. With no discovery to fear, with a letter from the benefactress who loves her commanding her to be silent, with everything that a woman values in this world to lose, if she owns what she has done—thiswoman, for the truth’s sake, has spoken the truth. Does she deserve nothing at your hands in return for that? Respect her, Horace—and hear her.”
Horace yielded. Julian turned to Mercy.
“You have allowed me to guide you so far,” he said. “Will you allow me to guide you still?”
Her eyes sank before his; her bosom rose and fell rapidly. His influence over her maintained its sway. She bowed her head in speechless submission.
“Tell him,” Julian proceeded, in accents of entreaty, not of command—“tell him what your life has been. Tell him how you were tried and tempted, with no friend near to speak the words which might have saved you. And then,” he added, raising her from the chair, “let him judge you—if he can!”
He attempted to lead her across the room to the place which Horace occupied. But her submission had its limits. Half-way to the place she stopped, and refused to go further. Julian offered her a chair. She declined to take it. Standing with one hand on the back of the chair, she waited for the word from Horace which would permit her to speak. She was resigned to the ordeal. Her face was calm; her mind was clear. The hardest of all humiliations to endure—the humiliation of acknowledging her name—she had passed through. Nothing remained but to show her gratitude to Julian by acceding to his wishes, and to ask pardon of Horace before they parted forever. In a little while the Matron would arrive at the house—and then it would be over.
Unwillingly Horace looked at her. Their eyes met. He broke out suddenly with something of his former violence.
“I can’t realize it even now!” he cried. “Isit true that you are not Grace Roseberry? Don’t look at me! Say in one word—Yes or No!”
She answered him, humbly and sadly, “Yes.”
“You have done what that woman accused you of doing? Am I to believe that?”
“You are to believe it, sir.”
All the weakness of Horace’s character disclosed itself when she made that reply.
“Infamous!” he exclaimed. “What excuse can you make for the cruel deception you have practiced on me? Too bad! too bad! There can be no excuse for you!”
She accepted his reproaches with unshaken resignation. “I have deserved it!” was all she said to herself, “I have deserved it!”
Julian interposed once more in Mercy’s defense.
“Wait till you are sure there is no excuse for her, Horace,” he said, quietly. “Grant her justice, if you can grant no more. I leave you together.”
He advanced toward the door of the dining-room. Horace’s weakness disclosed itself once more.
“Don’t leave me alone with her!” he burst out. “The misery of it is more than I can bear!”
Julian looked at Mercy. Her face brightened faintly. That momentary expression of relief told him how truly he would be befriending her if he consented to remain in the room. A position of retirement was offered to him by a recess formed by the central bay-window of the library. If he occupied this place, they could see or not see that he was present, as their own inclinations might decide them.
“I will stay with you, Horace, as long as you wish me to be here.” Having answered in those terms, he stopped as he passed Mercy, on his way to the window. His quick and kindly insight told him that he might still be of some service to her. A hint from him might show her the shortest and the easiest way of making her confession. Delicately and briefly he gave her the hint. “The first time I met you,” he said, “I saw that your life had had its troubles. Let us hear how those troubles began.”
He withdrew to his place in the recess. For the first time, since the fatal evening when she and Grace Roseberry had met in the French cottage, Mercy Merrick looked back into the purgatory on earth of her past life, and told her sad story simply and truly in these words.
“MR. JULIAN GRAY has asked me to tell him, and to tell you, Mr. Holmcroft, how my troubles began. They began before my recollection. They began with my birth.
“My mother (as I have heard her say) ruined her prospects, when she was quite a young girl, by a marriage with one of her father’s servants—the groom who rode out with her. She suffered, poor creature, the usual penalty of such conduct as hers. After a short time she and her husband were separated—on the condition of her sacrificing to the man whom she had married the whole of the little fortune that she possessed in her right.
“Gaining her freedom, my mother had to gain her daily bread next. Her family refused to take her back. She attached herself to a company of strolling players.
“She was earning a bare living in this way, when my father accidentally met with her. He was a man of high rank, proud of his position, and well known in the society of that time for his many accomplishments and his refined tastes. My mother’s beauty fascinated him. He took her from the strolling players, and surrounded her with every luxury that a woman could desire in a house of her own.
“I don’t know how long they lived together. I only know that my father, at the time of my first recollections, had abandoned her. She had excited his suspicions of her fidelity—suspicions which cruelly wronged her, as she declared to her dying day. I believed her, because she was my mother. But I cannot expect others to do as I did—I can only repeat what she said. My father left her absolutely penniless. He never saw her again; and he refused to go to her when she sent to him in her last moments on earth.
“She was back again among the strolling players when I first remember her. It was not an unhappy time for me. I was the favorite pet and plaything of the poor actors. They taught me to sing and to dance at an age when other children are just beginning to learn to read. At five years old I was in what is called ‘the profession,’ and had made my poor little reputation in booths at country fairs. As early as that, Mr. Holmcroft, I had begun to live under an assumed name—the prettiest name they could invent for me ‘to look well in the bills.’ It was sometimes a hard struggle for us, in bad seasons, to keep body and soul together. Learning to sing and dance in public often meant learning to bear hunger and cold in private, when I was apprenticed to the stage. And yet I have lived to look back on my days with the strolling players as the happiest days of my life!
“I was ten years old when the first serious misfortune that I can remember fell upon me. My mother died, worn out in the prime of her life. And not long afterward the strolling company, brought to the end of its resources by a succession of bad seasons, was broken up.
“I was left on the world, a nameless, penniless outcast, with one fatal inheritance—God knows, I can speak of it without vanity, after what I have gone through!—the inheritance of my mother’s beauty.
“My only friends were the poor starved-out players. Two of them (husband and wife) obtained engagements in another company, and I was included in the bargain The new manager by whom I was employed was a drunkard and a brute. One night I made a trifling mistake in the course of the performances—and I was savagely beaten for it. Perhaps I had inherited some of my father’s spirit—without, I hope, also inheriting my father’s pitiless nature. However that may be, I resolved (no matter what became of me) never again to serve the man who had beaten me. I unlocked the door of our miserable lodging at daybreak the next morning; and, at ten years old, with my little bundle in my hand, I faced the world alone.
“My mother had confided to me, in her last moments, my father’s name and the address of his house in London. ‘He may feel some compassion for you’ (she said), ‘though he feels none for me: try him.’ I had a few shillings, the last pitiful remains of my wages, in my pocket; and I was not far from London. But I never went near my father: child as I was, I would have starved and died rather than go to him. I had loved my mother dearly; and I hated the man who had turned his back on her when she lay on her deathbed. It made no difference to Me that he happened to be my father.
“Does this confession revolt you? You look at me, Mr. Holmcroft, as if it did.
“Think a little, sir. Does what I have just said condemn me as a heartless creature, even in my earliest years? What is a father to a child—when the child has never sat on his knee, and never had a kiss or a present from him? If we had met in the street, we should not have known each other. Perhaps in after-days, when I was starving in London, I may have begged of my father without knowing it; and he may have thrown his daughter a penny to get rid of her, without knowing it either! What is there sacred in the relations between father and child, when they are such relations as these? Even the flowers of the field cannot grow without light and air to help them! How is a child’s love to grow, with nothing to help it?
“My small savings would have been soon exhausted, even if I had been old enough and strong enough to protect them myself. As things were, my few shillings were taken from me by gypsies. I had no reason to complain. They gave me food and the shelter of their tents, and they made me of use to them in various ways. After a while hard times came to the gypsies, as they had come to the strolling players. Some of them were imprisoned; the rest were dispersed. It was the season for hop-gathering at the time. I got employment among the hop-pickers next; and that done, I went to London with my new friends.
“I have no wish to weary and pain you by dwelling on this part of my childhood in detail. It will be enough if I tell you that I sank lower and lower until I ended in selling matches in the street. My mother’s legacy got me many a sixpence which my matches would never have charmed out of the pockets of strangers if I had been an ugly child. My face. which was destined to be my greatest misfortune in after-years, was my best friend in those days.
“Is there anything, Mr. Holmcroft, in the life I am now trying to describe which reminds you of a day when we were out walking together not long since?
“I surprised and offended you, I remember; and it was not possible for me to explain my conduct at the time. Do you recollect the little wandering girl, with the miserable faded nosegay in her hand, who ran after us, and begged for a half-penny? I shocked you by bursting out crying when the child asked us to buy her a bit of bread. Now you know why I was so sorry for her. Now you know why I offended you the next day by breaking an engagement with your mother and sisters, and going to see that child in her wretched home. After what I have confessed, you will admit that my poor little sister in adversity had the first claim on me.
“Let me go on. I am sorry if I have distressed you. Let me go on.
“The forlorn wanderers of the streets have (as I found it) one way always open to them of presenting their sufferings to the notice of their rich and charitable fellow-creatures. They have only to break the law—and they make a public appearance in a court of justice. If the circumstances connected with their offense are of an interesting kind, they gain a second advantage: they are advertised all over England by a report in the newspapers.
“Yes! evenIhave my knowledge of the law. I know that it completely overlooked me as long as I respected it. But on two different occasions it became my best friend when I set it at defiance! My first fortunate offense was committed when I was just twelve years old.
“It was evening time. I was half dead with starvation; the rain was falling; the night was coming on. I begged—openly, loudly, as only a hungry child can beg. An old lady in a carriage at a shop door complained of my importunity. The policeman did his duty. The law gave me a supper and shelter at the station-house that night. I appeared at the police court, and, questioned by the magistrate, I told my story truly. It was the every-day story of thousands of children like me; but it had one element of interest in it. I confessed to having had a father (he was then dead) who had been a man of rank; and I owned (just as openly as I owned everything else) that I had never applied to him for help, in resentment of his treatment of my mother. This incident was new, I suppose; it led to the appearance of my ‘case’ in the newspapers. The reporters further served my interests by describing me as ‘pretty and interesting.’ Subscriptions were sent to the court. A benevolent married couple, in a respectable sphere of life, visited the workhouse to see me. I produced a favorable impression on them—especially on the wife. I was literally friendless; I had no unwelcome relatives to follow me and claim me. The wife was childless; the husband was a good-natured man. It ended in their taking me away with them to try me in service.
“I have always felt the aspiration, no matter how low I may have fallen, to struggle upward to a position above me; to rise, in spite of fortune, superior to my lot in life. Perhaps some of my father’s pride may be at the root of this restless feeling in me. It seems to be a part of my nature. It brought me into this house—and it will go with me out of this house. Is it my curse or my blessing? I am not able to decide.
“On the first night when I slept in my new home I said to myself, ‘They have taken me to be their servant: I will be something more than that—they shall end in taking me for their child.’ Before I had been a week in the house I was the wife’s favorite companion in the absence of her husband at his place of business. She was a highly accomplished woman, greatly her husband’s superior in cultivation, and, unfortunately for herself, also his superior in years. The love was all on her side. Excepting certain occasions on which he roused her jealousy, they lived together on sufficiently friendly terms. She was one of the many wives who resign themselves to be disappointed in their husbands—and he was one of the many husbands who never know what their wives really think of them. Her one great happiness was in teaching me. I was eager to learn; I made rapid progress. At my pliant age I soon acquired the refinements of language and manner which characterized my mistress. It is only the truth to say that the cultivation which has made me capable of personating a lady was her work.
“For three happy years I lived under that friendly roof. I was between fifteen and sixteen years of age, when the fatal inheritance from my mother cast its first shadow on my life. One miserable day the wife’s motherly love for me changed in an instant to the jealous hatred that never forgives. Can you guess the reason? The husband fell in love with me.
“I was innocent; I was blameless. He owned it himself to the clergyman who was with him at his death. By that time years had passed. It was too late to justify me.
“He was at an age (when I was under his care) when men are usually supposed to regard women with tranquillity, if not with indifference. It had been the habit of years with me to look on him as my second father. In my innocent ignorance of the feeling which really inspired him, I permitted him to indulge in little paternal familiarities with me, which inflamed his guilty passion. His wife discovered him—not I. No words can describe my astonishment and my horror when the first outbreak of her indignation forced on me the knowledge of the truth. On my knees I declared myself guiltless. On my knees I implored her to do justice to my purity and my youth. At other times the sweetest and the most considerate of women, jealousy had now transformed her to a perfect fury. She accused me of deliberately encouraging him; she declared she would turn me out of the house with her own hands. Like other easy-tempered men, her husband had reserves of anger in him which it was dangerous to provoke. When his wife lifted her hand against me, he lost all self-control, on his side. He openly told her that life was worth nothing to him without me. He openly avowed his resolution to go with me when I left the house. The maddened woman seized him by the arm—I saw that, and saw no more. I ran out into the street, panic-stricken. A cab was passing. I got into it before he could open the house door, and drove to the only place of refuge I could think of—a small shop, kept by the widowed sister of one of our servants. Here I obtained shelter for the night. The next day he discovered me. He made his vile proposals; he offered me the whole of his fortune; he declared his resolution, say what I might, to return the next day. That night, by help of the good woman who had taken care of me—under cover of the darkness, as ifIhad been to blame!—I was secretly removed to the East End of London, and placed under the charge of a trustworthy person who lived, in a very humble way, by letting lodgings.
“Here, in a little back garret at the top of the house, I was thrown again on the world—an age when it was doubly perilous for me to be left to my own resources to earn the bread I ate and the roof that covered me.
“I claim no credit to myself—young as I was, placed as I was between the easy life of Vice and the hard life of Virtue—for acting as I did. The man simply horrified me: my natural impulse was to escape from him. But let it be remembered, before I approach the saddest part of my sad story, that I was an innocent girl, and that I was at least not to blame.
“Forgive me for dwelling as I have done on my early years. I shrink from speaking of the events that are still to come.
“In losing the esteem of my first benefactress, I had, in my friendless position, lost all hold on an honest life—except the one frail hold of needle-work. The only reference of which I could now dispose was the recommendation of me by my landlady to a place of business which largely employed expert needle-women. It is needless for me to tell you how miserably work of that sort is remunerated: you have read about it in the newspapers. As long as my health lasted I contrived to live and to keep out of debt. Few girls could have resisted as long as I did the slowly-poisoning influences of crowded work-room, insufficient nourishment, and almost total privation of exercise. My life as a child had been a life in the open air: it had helped to strengthen a constitution naturally hardy, naturally free from all taint of hereditary disease. But my time came at last. Under the cruel stress laid on it my health gave way. I was struck down by low fever, and sentence was pronounced on me by my fellow-lodgers: ‘Ah, poor thing,hertroubles will soon be at an end!’
“The prediction might have proved true—I might never have committed the errors and endured the sufferings of after years—if I had fallen ill in another house.
“But it was my good, or my evil, fortune—I dare not say which—to have interested in myself and my sorrows an actress at a suburban theatre, who occupied the room under mine. Except when her stage duties took her away for two or three hours in the evening, this noble creature never left my bedside. Ill as she could afford it, her purse paid my inevitable expenses while I lay helpless. The landlady, moved by her example, accepted half the weekly rent of my room. The doctor, with the Christian kindness of his profession, would take no fees. All that the tenderest care could accomplish was lavished on me; my youth and my constitution did the rest. I struggled back to life—and then I took up my needle again.
“It may surprise you that I should have failed (having an actress for my dearest friend) to use the means of introduction thus offered to me to try the stage—especially as my childish training had given me, in some small degree, a familiarity with the Art.
“I had only one motive for shrinking from an appearance at the theatre—but it was strong enough to induce me to submit to any alternative that remained, no matter how hopeless it might be. If I showed myself on the public stage, my discovery by the man from whom I had escaped would be only a question of time. I knew him to be habitually a play-goer and a subscriber to a theatrical newspaper. I had even heard him speak of the theatre to which my friend was attached, and compare it advantageously with places of amusement of far higher pretensions. Sooner or later, if I joined the company he would be certain to go and see ‘the new actress.’ The bare thought of it reconciled me to returning to my needle. Before I was strong enough to endure the atmosphere of the crowded workroom I obtained permission, as a favor, to resume my occupation at home.
“Surely my choice was the choice of a virtuous girl? And yet the day when I returned to my needle was the fatal day of my life.
“I had now not only to provide for the wants of the passing hour—I had my debts to pay. It was only to be done by toiling harder than ever, and by living more poorly than ever. I soon paid the penalty, in my weakened state, of leading such a life as this. One evening my head turned suddenly giddy; my heart throbbed frightfully. I managed to open the window, and to let the fresh air into the room, and I felt better. But I was not sufficiently recovered to be able to thread my needle. I thought to myself, ‘If I go out for half an hour, a little exercise may put me right again.’ I had not, as I suppose, been out more than ten minutes when the attack from which I had suffered in my room was renewed. There was no shop near in which I could take refuge. I tried to ring the bell of the nearest house door. Before I could reach it I fainted in the street.
“How long hunger and weakness left me at the mercy of the first stranger who might pass by, it is impossible for me to say.
“When I partially recovered my senses I was conscious of being under shelter somewhere, and of having a wine-glass containing some cordial drink held to my lips by a man. I managed to swallow—I don’t know how little, or how much. The stimulant had a very strange effect on me. Reviving me at first, it ended in stupefying me. I lost my senses once more.
“When I next recovered myself, the day was breaking. I was in a bed in a strange room. A nameless terror seized me. I called out. Three or four women came in, whose faces betrayed, even to my inexperienced eyes, the shameless infamy of their lives. I started up in the bed. I implored them to tell me where I was, and what had happened—
“Spare me! I can say no more. Not long since you heard Miss Roseberry call me an outcast from the streets. Now you know—as God is my judge I am speaking the truth!—now you know what made me an outcast, and in what measure I deserved my disgrace.”
Her voice faltered, her resolution failed her, for the first time.
“Give me a few minutes,” she said, in low, pleading tones. “If I try to go on now, I am afraid I shall cry.”
She took the chair which Julian had placed for her, turning her face aside so that neither of the men could see it. One of her hands was pressed over her bosom, the other hung listlessly at her side.
Julian rose from the place that he had occupied. Horace neither moved nor spoke. His head was on his breast: the traces of tears on his cheeks owned mutely that she had touched his heart. Would he forgive her? Julian passed on, and approached Mercy’s chair.
In silence he took the hand which hung at her side. In silence he lifted it to his lips and kissed it, as her brother might have kissed it. She started, but she never looked up. Some strange fear of discovery seemed to possess her. “Horace?” she whispered, timidly. Julian made no reply. He went back to his place, and allowed her to think it was Horace.
The sacrifice was immense enough—feeling toward her as he felt—to be worthy of the man who made it.
A few minutes had been all she asked for. In a few minutes she turned toward them again. Her sweet voice was steady once more; her eyes rested softly on Horace as she went on.
“What was it possible for a friendless girl in my position to do, when the full knowledge of the outrage had been revealed to me?
“If I had possessed near and dear relatives to protect and advise me, the wretches into whose hands I had fallen might have felt the penalty of the law. I knew no more of the formalities which set the law in motion than a child. But I had another alternative (you will say). Charitable societies would have received me and helped me, if I had stated my case to them. I knew no more of the charitable societies than I knew of the law. At least, then, I might have gone back to the honest people among whom I had lived? When I received my freedom, after the interval of some days, I was ashamed to go back to the honest people. Helplessly and hopelessly, without sin or choice of mine, I drifted, as thousands of other women have drifted, into the life which set a mark on me for the rest of my days.
“Are you surprised at the ignorance which this confession reveals?
“You, who have your solicitors to inform you of legal remedies and your newspapers, circulars, and active friends to sound the praises of charitable institutions continually in your ears—you, who possess these advantages, have no idea of the outer world of ignorance in which your lost fellow-creatures live. They know nothing (unless they are rogues accustomed to prey on society) of your benevolent schemes to help them. The purpose of public charities, and the way to discover and apply to them, ought to be posted at the corner of every street. What do we know of public dinners and eloquent sermons and neatly printed circulars? Every now and then the ease of some forlorn creature (generally of a woman) who has committed suicide, within five minutes’ walk, perhaps, of an institution which would have opened its doors to her, appears in the newspapers, shocks you dreadfully, and is then forgotten again. Take as much pains to make charities and asylums known among the people without money as are taken to make a new play, a new journal, or a new medicine known among the people with money and you will save many a lost creature who is perishing now.
“You will forgive and understand me if I say no more of this period of my life. Let me pass to the new incident in my career which brought me for the second time before the public notice in a court of law.
“Sad as my experience has been, it has not taught me to think ill of human nature. I had found kind hearts to feel for me in my former troubles; and I had friends—faithful, self-denying, generous friends—among my sisters in adversity now. One of these poor women (she has gone, I am glad to think, from the world that used her so hardly) especially attracted my sympathies. She was the gentlest, the most unselfish creature I have ever met with. We lived together like sisters. More than once in the dark hours when the thought of self-destruction comes to a desperate woman, the image of my poor devoted friend, left to suffer alone, rose in my mind and restrained me. You will hardly understand it, but even we had our happy days. When she or I had a few shillings to spare, we used to offer one another little presents, and enjoy our simple pleasure in giving and receiving as keenly as if we had been the most reputable women living.
“One day I took my friend into a shop to buy her a ribbon—only a bow for her dress. She was to choose it, and I was to pay for it, and it was to be the prettiest ribbon that money could buy.
“The shop was full; we had to wait a little before we could be served.
“Next to me, as I stood at the counter with my companion, was a gaudily-dressed woman, looking at some handkerchiefs. The handkerchiefs were finely embroidered, but the smart lady was hard to please. She tumbled them up disdainfully in a heap, and asked for other specimens from the stock in the shop. The man, in clearing the handkerchiefs out of the way, suddenly missed one. He was quite sure of it, from a peculiarity in the embroidery which made the handkerchief especially noticeable. I was poorly dressed, and I was close to the handkerchiefs. After one look at me he shouted to the superintendent: ‘Shut the door! There is a thief in the shop!’
“The door was closed; the lost handkerchief was vainly sought for on the counter and on the floor. A robbery had been committed; and I was accused of being the thief.
“I will say nothing of what I felt—I will only tell you what happened.
“I was searched, and the handkerchief was discovered on me. The woman who had stood next to me, on finding herself threatened with discovery, had no doubt contrived to slip the stolen handkerchief into my pocket. Only an accomplished thief could have escaped detection in that way without my knowledge. It was useless, in the face of the facts, to declare my innocence. I had no character to appeal to. My friend tried to speak for me; but what was she? Only a lost woman like myself. My landlady’s evidence in favor of my honesty produced no effect; it was against her that she let lodgings to people in my position. I was prosecuted, and found guilty. The tale of my disgrace is now complete, Mr. Holmcroft. No matter whether I was innocent or not, the shame of it remains—I have been imprisoned for theft.
“The matron of the prison was the next person who took an interest in me. She reported favorably of my behavior to the authorities and when I had served my time (as the phrase was among us) she gave me a letter to the kind friend and guardian of my later years—to the lady who is coming here to take me back with her to the Refuge.
“From this time the story of my life is little more than the story of a woman’s vain efforts to recover her lost place in the world.
“The matron, on receiving me into the Refuge, frankly acknowledged that there were terrible obstacles in my way. But she saw that I was sincere, and she felt a good woman’s sympathy and compassion for me. On my side, I did not shrink from beginning the slow and weary journey back again to a reputable life from the humblest starting-point—from domestic service. After first earning my new character in the Refuge, I obtained a trial in a respectable house. I worked hard, and worked uncomplainingly; but my mother’s fatal legacy was against me from the first. My personal appearance excited remark; my manners and habits were not the manners and habits of the women among whom my lot was cast. I tried one place after another—always with the same results. Suspicion and jealousy I could endure; but I was defenseless when curiosity assailed me in its turn. Sooner or later inquiry led to discovery. Sometimes the servants threatened to give warning in a body—and I was obliged to go. Sometimes, where there was a young man in the family, scandal pointed at me and at him—and again I was obliged to go. If you care to know it, Miss Roseberry can tell you the story of those sad days. I confided it to her on the memorable night when we met in the French cottage; I have no heart repeat it now. After a while I wearied of the hopeless struggle. Despair laid its hold on me—I lost all hope in the mercy of God. More than once I walked to one or other of the bridges, and looked over the parapet at the river, and said to myself ‘Other women have done it: why shouldn’t I?’
“You saved me at that time, Mr. Gray—as you have saved me since. I was one of your congregation when you preached in the chapel of the Refuge You reconciled others besides me to our hard pilgrimage. In their name and in mine, sir, I thank you.
“I forget how long it was after the bright day when you comforted and sustained us that the war broke out between France and Germany. But I can never forget the evening when the matron sent for me into her own room and said, ‘My dear, your life here is a wasted life. If you have courage enough left to try it, I can give you another chance.’
“I passed through a month of probation in a London hospital. A week after that I wore the red cross of the Geneva Convention—I was appointed nurse in a French ambulance. When you first saw me, Mr. Holmcroft, I still had my nurse’s dress on, hidden from you and from everybody under a gray cloak.
“You know what the next event was; you know how I entered this house.
“I have not tried to make the worst of my trials and troubles in telling you what my life has been. I have honestly described it for what it was when I met with Miss Roseberry—a life without hope. May you never know the temptation that tried me when the shell struck its victim in the French cottage! There she lay—dead!Hername was untainted.Herfuture promised me the reward which had been denied to the honest efforts of a penitent woman. My lost place in the world was offered back to me on the one condition that I stooped to win it by a fraud. I had no prospect to look forward to; I had no friend near to advise me and to save me; the fairest years of my womanhood had been wasted in the vain struggle to recover my good name. Such was my position when the possibility of personating Miss Roseberry first forced itself on my mind. Impulsively, recklessly—wickedly, if you like—I seized the opportunity, and let you pass me through the German lines under Miss Roseberry’s name. Arrived in England, having had time to reflect, I made my first and last effort to draw back before it was too late. I went to the Refuge, and stopped on the opposite side of the street, looking at it. The old hopeless life of irretrievable disgrace confronted me as I fixed my eyes on the familiar door; the horror of returning to that life was more than I could force myself to endure. An empty cab passed me at the moment. The driver held up his hand. In sheer despair I stopped him, and when he said ‘Where to?’ in sheer despair again I answered, ‘Mablethorpe House.’
“Of what I have suffered in secret since my own successful deception established me under Lady Janet’s care I shall say nothing. Many things which must have surprised you in my conduct are made plain to you by this time. You must have noticed long since that I was not a happy woman. Now you know why.
“My confession is made; my conscience has spoken at last. You are released from your promise to me—you are free. Thank Mr. Julian Gray if I stand here self-accused of the offense, that I have committed, before the man whom I have wronged.”