Dolff did not know how to sustain this sudden assault. He looked round stupidly at the active assailant at his shoulder with a little pang, even in his agitated and helpless state, to find that Julia was no longer on his side. His head was going round and round: already in his soul he had entirely collapsed, although he still kept his feet in outward appearance. And it would have been difficult to end this scene without an entire breakdown on one side or the other, had not the pensive little voice of the parlor-maid become audible at this moment over their heads, making them all start and draw back into themselves.
“If you please, ma’am,” said Priscilla, “for I can’t find Miss Gussy—shall I take Mr. Meredith’s tray to his room, or shall I bring it in here?”
“I think Mr. Meredith is going to bed,” said Mrs. Harwood; “he is a little tired. Take it into his room, Priscilla. And Miss Gussy has gone to bed; you may come now and help me to get into my room, and then shut up everything. It is later than I thought.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Priscilla, in those quiet tones of commonplace which calm down every excitement.
Priscilla indeed was herself bursting with curiosity and eagerness to find out what had happened. The long-shut-up door stood ajar, and every maid in the house had already come to peep into the dark passage and wonder what it led to: and the keenest excitement filled the house. But a parlor-maid has as high a standard of duty as any one, were it an archbishop. It was against the unwritten household law to show any such commotion. She took hold of the handle of her mistress’s chair as she did on the mildest of domestic evenings, and drew her very steadily and gently away. The only revelation she made of knowing anything was in the suggestion that a little gruel with a glass of wine in it would be a proper thing for Mrs. Harwood to take.
“You may bring me the glass of wine without the gruel,” Mrs. Harwood was heard saying as the sound of her wheels moved slowly across the hall, an hour ago the scene of such passionate agitation. “I don’t think I have caught cold. A glass of wine—and a few biscuits,” she said as by an afterthought.
Was this part of the elaborate make-believe intended to deceive the servants and persuade them that nothing particular had happened? or was she indeed capable of munching those biscuits after such a night of fate?
“Ju, don’t you turn against me,” said Dolff, feebly, throwing himself into a chair when they were thus left alone.
“Oh!” cried Julia, still panting with her outburst, “to think you had hold of him and didn’t really hurt him, not to matter! I can never, never forgive you, Dolff.”
“Oh, hold your tongue, you little fool; the only thing I’m glad of is that I didn’t hurt him—to matter! You don’t know what it is to live for a long week, all the time he was insensible, thinking you have killed a man!”
“When it was only Charley Meredith!” Julia said.
Itwas strange that it should be Gussy, who was not ideal or visionary, but very matter-of-fact in all her ways, who was the most cruelly offended and wounded by the events of this night. It seemed to Gussy that she had been deceived and played upon by everybody. By her mother, who had never confided to her the gravity of the position, though she had known the fact for years; by Meredith, who had seemed to know more of it than Gussy did, and whose eyes had been keen with understanding, following every word of what was to Gussy merely the ravings without consequence of a madman; he knew more of it than she did, who had helped to take care of the secret inmate. And then Dolff, her brother. What was the meaning of this cloud of tempest which had come into Dolff’s trivial, schoolboyish life? Why had he tried to kill, if that was what he wanted, or, at least, to injure, to assault Meredith?
It was all a mystery to Gussy. She understood nothing except that many things had been going on in the house which she either did not know at all or knew imperfectly—that she had been possibly made a dupe of, brought down from theposition which she had seemed to hold of right as the chief influence in the family. She had thought this was how it was: her mother’s confidant, the nurse and guardian-angel of her lover, the controller, more or less, of all the house. And it turned out that she knew nothing, that there were all kinds of passions and mysteries in her own home with which she was unacquainted, that what she knew she knew imperfectly, and that even in the confidences given to her she had been kept in the dark.
Gussy was not imaginative, and consequently had little power of entering into the feelings or divining the movements of the minds of others. She was wounded, mortified to the depths of her heart, and angry, with a deep, silent anger not easily to be overcome. She did not linger nor ask for explanations, but went straight up to her room without a moment’s pause, careless that both her mother, whom she generally attended through the troublesome process of undressing, and Julia, whom she usually held under such strict authority, were left behind, the latter in contempt of all ordinary hours. Janet, whose charge that was, was not visible; she had stolen away, as it had lately been her habit to do. Janet, Gussy felt sure, was mixed up in it too; but how was she mixed up in it?
Think as she would, Miss Harwood could not make out to her satisfaction how it could be that Janet could have influenced Dolff to assault Meredith. Janet had no quarrel with Meredith, could not have. He had been very civil to her—too civil, Gussy had sometimes thought. She remembered that there was a time when she had felt it very tiresome to have to discuss Miss Summerhayes so often; and on the night of the ball, certainly, they had danced and talked together almost more than was becoming. How, then, could Janet have moved Dolff to attack Meredith? It seemed impossible to discern any plausible reason: and yet Gussy had a moral certainty that Janet was somehow mixed up in it. Could it be that the joke about Dolff and his accompaniments had been the cause? Gussy felt involuntarily that it must be something more serious than that.
She went to bed resolutely, for, indeed, there are times when it requires a severe effort to do this—to shut out the commotions which are around, and turn one’s back upon all the questions that require solving. Gussy felt bitterly that she had no certainty as to what might be going on in the house, which she had lately been as sure of as if she had created it. Her mother, for anything she knew, might be going from room to room, her chair set aside, and all herpretences with it. To think that she, Gussy, should have been taken in by it so long, and have believed whatever was told her! Her brother Dolff, so good-natured, of so little account as he was! might have caught Meredith again at a disadvantage, and have accomplished now what he tried before.
The house, her calm and secure domain, seemed now full of incomprehensible noises and mysterious sounds to Gussy. But she would not even look over the banisters to see what was going on. She would not open her door, much less steal downstairs, as another woman might have done, to find out everything. She went to bed. She asked no explanation. She shut her door and drew her curtains, and closed her eyes. Whatever might be going on within or without, the gateways of her mind were closely fastened up, so that she might hear or see no more.
It was Priscilla who put her mistress to bed: and Mrs. Harwood was very angry with her children, feeling that Gussy had deserted her and that Dolff had insulted her. But it takes more than that to make a woman betray her sons and daughters. With the flush of anger still on her cheek and the tremble on her lips she told Priscilla how tired Miss Harwood was, how she had been overdoing herself, how she had made her go to bed.
“I told her you could see to all I want quite nicely, Priscilla.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Priscilla; but it was doubtful how far she was taken in, for, of course, the servants knew a great deal more than they were supposed to know, and where they did not know they guessed freely, and with wonderful success.
It was curious to see them all assemble in the morning at the breakfast-table as if nothing had happened. Nay, that was not a thing that was possible. There were traces of last night’s excitement on every face; but yet they came in and sat down opposite to each other, and Gussy helped Dolff to his coffee and again wondered how in all the world Janet could be the cause of his attack on Meredith: for it was evident that now, at least, Dolff was not in a state of mind to do anything for Janet. He never spoke to her during breakfast. He avoided her eye. When she spoke, he turned away as if he would not let her voice reach his ears if he could help it. How then could Janet be mixed up in it? Gussy was sorely perplexed by this problem. As for Janet, though she was pale, she put on an elaborate appearance of composure and of knowing nothing which (in her readiness to be exasperated with everything) provoked Gussy most of all. She said to herself that it was a worse offence to pretend not to know when everybody was aware that she must know, than to show her knowledge in the most irritating way. No doubt, however, that if Janet had betrayed any knowledge, Gussy would have found that the most ill-timed exhibition that could be.
There was very little conversation, except between Janet and Julia, during this embarrassing meal. And Mrs. Harwood came out of her room as she had gone into it, unattended by her daughters. There were less signs about her than about any of them of the perturbation of last night. Sometimes an old woman will bear agitation better than the young. She has probably had so much of it, and been compelled to gulp it down so often! Her eyes were not less bright than usual—nay, they had a glance of fire in them which was not usual in their calmer state, and the color in her cheeks was fresher than that of any one else in the house. The girls were all pale—even Julia, and Dolff of a sort of dusky pallor, which made his light hair and mustache stand out from his face. But Mrs. Harwood’s pretty complexion was unchanged—perhaps because though they had all made so many discoveries she had made none, but had been aware of everything and of far more than any one else knew, for years.
Early in the day the policeman of last night appeared with a summons to Mrs. Harwood, directing her to appear before some board to show cause why she should have kept, unregistered and unsuspected, a lunatic shut up in her house. Mrs. Harwood saw the man herself, and begged to be allowed to make him a little present, “for your great civility last night.” The policeman almost blushed, as he was a man who bore a conscience, for he was not conscious of being very civil; but he accepted the gratuity, let us hope, with the intention of being civil next time he was employed on any such piece of business.
While he spoke to Mrs. Harwood in the hall, whither she had been wheeled out to see him, Meredith came from his room and joined her. He had not escaped so well as she the excitement of the previous night, and it was with unfeigned astonishment that he contemplated this old lady, fresh and smiling, her pretty color unimpaired, her eyes as bright as usual. She was over sixty; she had just been baffled in an object which had been the chief inspiration of her life for years, disappointed, exposed to universal censure, perhaps to punishment, but her wonderful force of nature was not abated; the extraordinary crisis which had passed over her, breaking the bonds of her ailment, delivering her from her weakness, hadleft no signs of exhaustion upon her. She looked like a woman who had never known what trouble or anxiety was as she sat there smiling, assuring the policeman that she could fully explain everything, and would not fail to do so in the proper quarter. She turned to Meredith as he appeared, and held out her hand to him.
“Good-morning, my dear Charley; I hope you are not the worse for last night’s agitation. You see our friend here has come to summon me to make explanations about my poor dear upstairs. You will appear for me and settle everything, won’t you? You see this gentleman is a barrister,” she explained, smiling to the man who stood looking on.
“Of course I will,” Meredith said.
Upon this the policeman took courage, and with a scrape made hisamende honorable.
“I ought to beg your pardon, sir, and yours too, lady, for all the trouble last night. I had every confidence in Jim Harrison, the man that said he could identify the culprit—that is the fellow as nearly killed you, sir—and rumors have been getting up all over the place as it was the young gentleman here as had been a bit wild, and hated you like poison.”
“Dolff never hated me like poison, did he?” said Meredith, elevating his eyebrows and appealing to Mrs. Harwood.
“Never! you have always been one of his best friends.”
“Well,” said the officer, who was not too confident either in this assurance or in the conclusion he had been obliged to come to, “there was a parcel of tales about. You can never tell how them tales gets up. However, it’s all been a mistake: for when Jim sees your young gentleman he says in a moment, ‘Nothing of the sort—that’s not ‘m.’ So it all falls to the ground, as you’ll see, sir, being used to these questions, as the lady says—for want of evidence.”
“Exactly,” said Meredith, “and you’ll do me the justice to say, officer, that I told you it would from the first. It’s worth while occasionally taking a man’s advice that knows something about it, you perceive, instead of your Mr. Jim, who evidently knows nothing but what he thinks he saw or didn’t see.”
“That’s it, sir, I suppose,” said the policeman, “and if he did see it, or if he didn’t I couldn’t tell, not if it was as much as my place was worth.”
“He would have looked rather foolish though, don’t you think, in the witness-box? You see,” added Meredith, with a laugh, “you might have spared this lady the trouble of last night.”
“No, I don’t see that, sir,” said the policeman, promptly,“for if it didn’t answer one purpose, it did another. I’m very sorry to upset a lady, but she didn’t ought to bottle up a madman in a private house without no register, nor information to the commissioners, nor proper precautions. You know that, sir, just as well as me.”
“How do you know that the lady has no license?” said Meredith, “or that her relation’s illness is not perfectly known? I think you will find a little difficulty in proving that: and then your superiors will be less pleased with the discovery. However, that’s my business, as Mrs. Harwood has confided it to me,” he added, with a laugh, which he could not restrain, at the man’s sudden look of alarm.
“Don’t find fault with our friend; he was as civil as it was possible to be. Good-morning, and thank you,” said Mrs. Harwood, sitting, with her placid smile, watching her visitor, stiff and uneasy in his plain clothes, as he went away.
When the door was shut upon him by Priscilla, who sniffed and tossed her head at the necessity of being thus civil to a man who had made so much commotion in the house—much as she and her fellow-servants had enjoyed the excitement—Mrs. Harwood’s countenance underwent a certain change. The smile faded; a look of age crept round the still beaming eyes.
“If you will wheel me back to my room, Charley, we can talk,” she said. She could not but be conscious that he was thinking, asking himself why she could not walk, she who had found power to do so when she wanted it; but she betrayed no consciousness of this inevitable thought. She was very grave when he came round from the back of her chair and stood facing her in the firelight, which, on a dull London morning in the end of January, was the chief light in the room. Perhaps the dreary atmosphere threw a cloud upon her face. Her soft, half-caressing tone was gone. She had become hard and businesslike in a moment. “You want me to explain,” she said.
“If you please. You know how much my father was involved: that craze about the money to be paid back means something. Even a mad repetition like that seems likely to have a foundation in fact. Is it true?”
She bent her head a little, and for the moment cast down her eyes.
“It was true.”
“Itwastrue; then you have alienated——”
“Wait a little. There were no such creditors as his own children, who would have been ruined had not I saved them.They know nothing of any question of money. They knew nothing of——”
“Of his existence at all—till last night?”
“I am bound to furnish you with every information I can. The young ones knew nothing of his existence. Gussy did; but only that I kept him there to save him from an asylum where he might have been treated cruelly—nothing more. You will not take a high moral tone against me, as she is ready to do, and Dolff——”
“No; I will take up no high moral tone,” said Meredith; “but the position is very difficult. You have not, I suppose, done away with the money?”
“It is well invested; it is intact. We could not have lived as we have done on my own money. Now, of course, I must give it up—— And no injustice need be done,” she added, with a sigh; “it can be paid—at last.”
“With interest for all these years?” said Meredith, with a smile.
“Oh, what are you talking of?” She said, “People will be so glad to get anything so unexpectedly, that they will say nothing about interest. I even think——”
“What do you even think?” he said, as she paused.
“How can I tell how you may take it, whether it will commend itself to you or not? There might still be an arrangement by which things might be—tided over.”
“After it gets into the papers and it is known that you have been concealing——”
“Oh,” she cried again, “you are more dull than I gave you credit for being, Charley Meredith! Who will notice up in Liverpool a romantic story (which is all the papers will make of it) occurring in St. John’s Wood? Who will link one thing to another and understand exactly what has happened, or believe that—— I might have taken him in, a miserable wreck, out of sheer love and kindness. I did! I did!” she cried, suddenly, her face melting out of its hardness, her eyes filling with tears. “You may not believe me, but I did. I thought he had not a penny. I went to all the expense of fitting up the wing for him—working with my own hands at it, that nobody should suspect—believing that Vicars had brought him back with his own money—thathehad none—— I did, though you may not believe me,” she said.
“I have not said I did not believe you. We are all very queer creatures—mixed up. And then when you found he had that old pocketbook—for it was full of something better than old papers then—you were tempted, and you——”
She nodded her head; then said, after a while,
“I do not accept that formula. I was tempted—and I did what I had a right to do.Ihad wronged nobody—I knew nothing about the debts. If I had dividedthatamong them, what would it have been?—a trifle to each, but enough to dry up all the sympathy they were meeting with. He had made ducks and drakes of more than that belonging to me. And the children were the most deeply wronged. I took it for their sakes, to make up what they had been robbed of. It can go to the others now, and you will see how much it will be.”
“You said something,” said Meredith, “about an arrangement that might still be made?”
“Yes—if you could lend yourself to it, Charley. It could not be done without you.”
“I cannot tell whether I could lend myself to it or not, until I hear what it is.”
She looked at him, and two or three times made as if she would speak, but shut her lips again. Her eyes searched his face with an anxious expression.
“I don’t know how you will take it,” she said, hesitating; “I don’t know how you will take it.” Then, after a pause, she added, “I will begin by asking you a question. Do you want to marry my daughter Gussy? Yes or no!”
Meredith made a step backwards, and put his hand to his breast as if he had received a blow. In that moment various dreams swept through his mind. Janet’s image was not the only one, though it had the freshness of being the last. One of those dreams, indeed, was no other than the freedom of his own bachelor estate, and the advantage of life which was not bound by any social ties. He avowed, however, at length, soberly,
“I think I may say yes, Mrs. Harwood—that is it what has been for a long time in my mind.”
Theconduct of affairs in the house of the Harwoods was very dreary during the whole of this day. It was, to begin with, a very dreary day, not fog, which can be borne, but one of those dark days which are the scourge of London, when everything is dull and without color without and within, the skies gray, the earth gray, the leafless branches rising like a black tracery upon the colorless background, the lightscarcely enough to swear by, to make it seem unnatural to shut the shutters and light the lamp, which is what every well-constituted mind desires to do in the circumstances.
And in the moral atmosphere the same thing reigned. Gussy had a countenance like the day. She, who had at no time much color, had now none. She was like the landscape: hair, eyes, and cheeks seemed the same. Every glimmer of light seemed to have been suppressed in her eyes. She kept them down, or she turned their gaze inward, or she veiled them with some film which is at the command of those who are angry, whether with or without cause. She made no inquiry even after the health of Meredith, which had been hitherto her chief preoccupation, except in so far as was implied in the conventional “How d’you do?” with which they met. Even he was daunted by the determined indifference of her aspect. When he talked of the drive which the doctor had suggested to him as a preliminary to getting out on foot, Gussy never lifted her eyes or made the least inquiry. Yesterday this step of decided progress would have been the most exciting event in the world to her. She took no notice of it now. There was scarcely anything said at table when they took their midday meal, with a candle or two lit on the mantelpiece, “to add a little cheerfulness,” as Mrs. Harwood said.
“For certainly we are not a very cheerful party,” added the mother, who was more full of life than all the rest put together.
She it was who took the lead in the conversation till Gussy retired. She talked to Meredith and a little to Janet, whom this curious aspect of the family interested greatly, though she did not quite understand it. But Gussy and Dolff both sat bolt upright and said nothing. They ate nothing, too, which, perhaps, was a more effectual weapon against their mother’s heart, and, when luncheon was over, they separated gloomily, Dolff disappearing no one knew where, Gussy to her room, where she said she had something to do while Mrs. Harwood retired with Meredith, between whom and herself a curious intimacy seemed to have struck up, to the dining-room, his room as it was called, to talk there.
In this universal gloom and strangeness Julia drew Janet out into the garden. The day grew darker as it approached its end, the atmosphere became more yellow, signs as of a fog appeared in the air. The governess and the pupil put on their ulsters, and began to walk up and down the garden walks, Julia hanging with all her might upon the arm of her companion, dragging down Janet almost to the ground.
“Did you ever know,” Julia said, “such a detestable day?”
“It is turning to fog,” said Janet, trying to keep to what was commonplace. “It was better that we did not go out.”
“Oh, was I thinking of the fog?” said Julia. “I would rather see a dozen fogs than Gussy shut up like that, pursing up her lips as if she were afraid something would drop out when she spoke. And poor Dolff, so dismal, not knowing what to do with himself. Janet, do you think there could be any truth in all that story about Dolff?”
“My dear,” said Janet, “how should I have any opinion? I cannot be supposed to know about your brother, what he is likely to do.”
“Oh,” said Julia, “I did not ask you what you know, but what youthink; everybody must have an opinion. Besides, after all, it is not so very little that you know about Dolff. He has been at home for six weeks, and you have always seen a great deal of him; at least I am sure he has always tried to see as much as he could of you.”
“I think,” said Janet, “that it is very bad taste for us to discuss people, especially for you to talk with me about your own family. You forget that I am the governess, Julia.”
“I think you are very nasty, and not nice at all. Whoever thinks of you as the governess! I wonder what you mean, saying such unkind things.”
“They are not unkind, they are true. Your mother and Gussy have been very good to me, but——”
“Oh, Janet, when you know we were very fond of you, and we thought you were fond of us!”
Here Janet was suddenly visited by a great compunction which changed at once her countenance and her feelings.
“Julia,” she said, “don’t speak to me. I feel so horrible sometimes, I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t think I am nice or good at all. Perhaps,” she added with a faint revulsion of self-defence after this impulsive confession, “it is not quite my fault.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Julia. “I ask you a question, quite a simple question, and you go off into reproaching yourself and saying you are not nice. What I want to know is whether you think it was Dolff that knocked Charley Meredith down? If it was, he has not had the strength of mind to stick to it, as I should have done. And what do you think that man meant who came to identify him, and then said it wasn’t he? And do you think that man last night really meant anything about Dolff, or did they only pretend to find out about the wing? And, oh, Janet, did you ever know, didyou ever suspect anything about the wing? Please don’t run away to other subjects, but tell me what you think.”
“Where am I to begin? I can’t answer all those questions at once.”
“Oh,” said Julia, with impatience, “how tiresome you are to-day! You don’t want to answer me at all. Do you remember that first night when you heard that cry, and were so frightened? I had heard it before, but mamma told me it was nothing, it was the wind in the empty rooms. One thinks it strange,” said Julia, “but at first one is stupid, you know, and just believes anything. But you see you were right; and you didn’t look surprised at all, not even to see mamma walking upstairs, she who never moves. Or, do you think she only pretends not to be able to move, to take us all in?” Julia added, after a pause.
“Oh, Julia, hush! How dare you say such a thing of your mother?”
“It is because she has deceived us about things,” said Julia, hanging her head. “It was Dolff that said so, not me. She has deceived us in one thing, and how are we to believe her in another. Both Dolff and Gussy think so, though Gussy says nothing; to think she has kept it secret all this time, and never let even the elder ones know: and how can we tell if it is not a deceit about the chair, too?”
“If you had seen how she tore herself out of it last night! It was only her misery and anxiety that gave her power to do it. It is very hard to judge any one like that. I daresay,” said Janet, indignantly, “that the other was done for your sakes, too, not to trouble you, when you were still so young, with knowing what was a great secret, I suppose?”
“Ah, but why was it a secret? and who do you think the man is, Janet?” said Julia, clinging ever and ever closer to her arm.
“Julia, what have I to do with the secrets of your family?”
“Why, you are one of the family,” said Julia; “you can’t help knowing; and again I tell you, Janet, it isn’t what you know, it’s what you think I am asking. Why don’t you give me your opinion? every one must have an opinion. Dolff and I, we don’t know what to think.”
Dolff himself came hurriedly up behind the girls at this moment. He had not gone out after all.
“Why do you trouble Miss Summerhayes, Ju? It is very interesting for us, but not for—a stranger——”
“That is what I have just been saying, Mr. Harwood.”
“—Who can’t take any particular interest, except just as a wonder and a thing to talk about, in what happens to us?”
Dolff’s hands were thrust to the very bottom of his pockets, his shoulders were up to his ears, his head upon his breast. Gloom and anger and misery were on Dolff’s face. As for Janet, she had stiffened more and more with every word he said, and Julia, who had been clinging, with all a child’s affection, to the arm of her governess, felt herself repulsed and detached, she could not tell how, and protested loudly:
“Janet, because Dolff is disagreeable that’s no reason for shaking me off!”
“I have no intention of being disagreeable,” said Dolff, walking slowly with them. “I only say what every one must perceive to be the fact. We have all supposed there was a miracle to be performed, and Miss Summerhayes was to think of us as if—as if—she was, as you say, Ju, one of the family; but she does not feel like that; our affairs are nothing to her—only something that is odd and makes a story to talk about, as they would be to any other stranger.”
“Oh, if you are going to quarrel!” said Julia, “you had better get it over between yourselves. I don’t like people who are quarrelling. You had better have it out with him, Janet, and then perhaps he will not be so dreadful as he has been all these days.”
“There is nothing for us to quarrel about. I am, as Mr. Harwood says, only a stranger,” said Janet, endeavoring to hold the girl’s hand upon her arm.
But Julia slipped it out and ran indoors, not without a thought that she had managed matters well. Julia had long ago made up her mind that a romantic attachment between Dolff and Janet would add great interest to her own life, and that the probable struggles of a love that would not run too smooth would be very desirable for a young lady to witness. And Dolff, under Janet’s influence, had been so much “nicer” than Dolff without that. He had stayed at home; he had been ready for anything (though there was always too much of that horrid music), he had not objected even to a round game. It was true that all these domestic pleasures had come to an end since Charley Meredith’s accident. But Julia, in her inexperience, could not see why they might not come to an explanation and “get over it,” and everything go on as before.
Janet did not follow her pupil as she would have liked to do. She consented to the explanation as it seemed necessary, but she neither hoped nor intended that everything should go on as before.
“Yes,” said Dolff, “you are only a stranger, Miss Summerhayes. My mother, I think, took to you as if you had beenher own, and everybody was at your feet, but you did not respond—that is to say, you were very kind, and the things you could not help but see, being in the house with us, though we never saw them who belonged to it, you told—as amusing incidents, I suppose, to——”
“What did I tell, Mr. Harwood?”
“Oh, I have not been taken into anyone’s confidence. You gave information—you heard him say it—which made a secret meeting necessary, and—all that followed. One might say,” said Dolff, with a cheerless laugh, “that everything had followed. I went mad, I suppose, for a little while; and you know as well as I do what I did. Oh, I am very well aware that you know. You saved me in your way after you had ruined me. Fellows say that women are like that—driving you mad first, and then—— But I never was one that talked about women—till I knew you.”
“I am very sorry,” said Janet, “to have given you a bad opinion of women; but I don’t know why Mr. Meredith——” Here her voice faltered a little in spite of herself.
“Ah!” cried Dolff, fiercely, “you have found out that fellow is not worth his salt, yet you could cry when you say his name.”
“It is nothing of the sort,” exclaimed Janet. “Icry—for any man in the world! You don’t know me, Mr. Harwood. Mr. Meredith, I remember, walked home a part of the road with me, as it was a dark night. There are some men who think that is a right thing when they meet a lady alone; and, though I am the governess, I am not very old. I think it very old-fashioned, and unnecessary, and I am not afraid to go anywhere alone.”
“You know very well if you had wished for an escort, Miss Summerhayes——”
“Yes, Mrs. Harwood would have liked her son to be at the command of the governess! Mr. Meredith walked home with me out of a civility which is old-fashioned, and he stood talking, which it seems is his way—with ladies. A man like that,” said Janet, almost fiercely, “will never learn that all girls are not alike, and that some detest these old-fashioned ways of being polite. But there was not in all that any reason for knocking the man down. I supposed when I saw it that you were, perhaps, working out some old quarrel.”
“You thought,” said Dolff, grinding his teeth, “that I had watched him, and flew at him, by premeditation, to take him at a disadvantage—not because I was driven mad to see him holding you by the hands.”
“How could I know one thing or another? There was no reason for anyone being mad about me: I can take care ofmyself without anyone interfering. But I did not want any scandal, I do not want to be mixed up in it; when a girl’s name is mentioned it is always she that gets the whole blame. You know what they say, ‘Oh, there was a woman at the bottom of it.’ Now, I had done nothing wrong, I was not at the bottom of it. Whatever you choose to say, it was no doing of mine.”
“One of the things that fellow says,” said Dolff, “is that a woman has always reasons to show she is never wrong.”
“They say everything that is brutal and cruel,” said Janet, with a sound of tears in her voice, “and therefore I was determined not to be mixed up in it: and I did my best to save you from what was—not a very fine action, Mr. Harwood. You did take him at a disadvantage. I don’t doubt that you were very angry, though you had no reason——”
“If you think it was all for you!” cried Dolff, transported with boyish passion and anxious to give a blow in his turn. “But to think of that fellow, jeering and laughing at everybody, those who trusted in him——”
“You see,” said Janet, with a smile, “that I was right when I said I was not at the bottom of it!”
Dolff gave her a look which might have killed her where she stood, had the fire which passion struck even from his dull eyes been effectual, and yet which had in it a strange mixture of love and hate. He was not clever enough, however, to note that in Janet’s smile there was a mixture, too, of malicious triumph and of mortification; for, notwithstanding all that she had said, it would no doubt have been more agreeable to Janet’s pride to have been told that the sudden assault was entirely on her own account from fierce jealousy and passion. She was a little girl who was full of reason, and understood the complication of things, yet there was enough of the primitive in her to have been pleased, even had she not fully believed it, by such an asseveration as that.
“In that case,” she said, “I don’t know what you have to find fault with me. I did my best to smooth it all away that nobody might have known anything. What use is there in telling things that are so easily misrepresented? If it would shock anyone who trusted in him to know that Mr. Meredith had walked home with the governess——”
“Oh,” cried Dolff, “you will drive me out of my senses! who calls you the governess, Miss Summerhayes?”
“I do myself,” said Janet, “it is my right title. I never have been one of those who despise it; but if it would vex anyone—who trusted in him—to hear that Mr. Meredith had walked home because it was dark and late with the——”
“You are very anxious to defend Meredith,” said Dolff, bitterly.
“Am I?” cried Janet. There was a dart out of her eyes at that moment that was more powerful than any dull spark that could come from Dolff’s. “If I am,” she added, with a laugh, “it is only for the sake of those who, as you say, trust in him, Mr. Harwood. For me I find those old-fashioned ways of his intolerable. He is like a man in an old novel,” cried Janet, “who kisses the maid and gives her half-a-crown, and is what is called civil to every girl. It is eighteenth-century—it is mock Lovelace—it is the most antiquated vanity and conceit. And he thinks that he takes people in by it, which shows how foolish and imbecile it is, besides being the worst taste in the world!”
Dolff stared open-eyed at this tirade. He had a faint idea that Lovelace meant a seductive villain, but what Meredith had to do with the eighteenth century, or how he was old-fashioned, this young man, devoid of literature, understood not at all. He did understand, however, that Janet was angry with Meredith, and this went to his heart. The dull yellow sky began to look a little clearer. It became a possibility that things might brighten, that a new world might arise, that these misty shadows might blow away.
“If I could think,” he said, “that you ever could forget all this, Miss Summerhayes. I heard you taking my mother’s part with Ju: and you are thinking of Gussy, who doesn’t deserve it very much, perhaps, and you have saved me: for I never could have faced it out but for what you said to me—though I have seemed so ungrateful: and if you think it possible that we could all forget what has happened—in time——”
“No,” said Janet, “I think there are several things in it which neither you nor I could ever forget.”
“I am not so sure,” said Dolff. “It would depend upon you. If you would promise never to see or speak to——”
“Whom?” said Janet, rising several inches out of her shoes, and looking down upon him with a glance that froze Dolff; and then she added, interrogatively, “For you?” and, turning round upon her heel, walked away into the house without a glance behind.
Janetwas passing quickly through the hall, coming from the garden by the long passage which led past the kitchen and pantry, and turning round to go upstairs, when she found herself suddenly caught as she went along. Some one took hold of the end of the long boa which was round her neck and detained her. She was a little startled and frightened at first, thinking instinctively of the mad tenant of the wing, and that now the door was no longer fastened between him and the house. Her fears, however, were instantly put to flight, and feelings very different substituted in their stead, when a voice said,
“Janet! stop a moment and speak to me, I am very lonely here.”
“You have no need to be here, or to be lonely unless you like,” she cried, hurriedly; “and call me by my proper name, please. I can be only Miss Summerhayes to you.”
“Don’t say so. You were not so hard upon me the other night. Ah! I forgot; it’s not the other night, it’s three weeks ago. Stop a moment; don’t pass without saying a word. You ought to pay me a little attention, considering all that I have suffered since—for you.”
“For me!” she cried. “I am sorry that you have suffered, but it was not for me.”
“Do you think for a moment that that lout would have sprung on me as he did if it hadn’t been for you? You know better, Janet. I owe it to you, my dear, that I was beaten flat like a pancake, and had my head dashed against the stones, as they did, you know, in the psalm. No, Janet; be quiet and listen to me. I’ve paid dear for one bit of an interview, and you ought to give me some recompense. I’ve lain upon my back all these many days for you, and it’s for you that I grin at that fellow, instead of taking him by the throat!”
“That does me no good,” said Janet, panting with excitement and alarm. “Let me go, please. I would rather die than be found talking to you here. Take him by the throat if you please. What is that to me?”
“To save you from trouble,” said the other. “Don’t you think I have felt how unpleasant it would be to have your name coming out? That is why I have let him off, for that reason and no other. Come, talk to me a moment, I deserve it. Nobody will hear us; Gussy is out, and the mother shut up in her room. I’m very forlorn in this house, which I had better leave, I think, at once; I’m well enough, I suppose, to do so now——”
“Don’t you want to leave it? Shall you not be glad to get away?” cried Janet, under her breath.
“Glad to get away! when you are here, you little witch. Do you think it has been pleasant to go on all the time purred over by the others, and never getting a word with you.”
“You will not,” said Janet, with perhaps a certain revengeful pleasure, “be purred over by the others any more.”
“You think so?” he said. “Don’t you be too sure. If you disdain me, and refuse to hear me, there is no telling, they may purr again.”
“One way or other,” said Janet, “it has nothing to do with me.”
“Why do you say so? Are you going to be sent away?”
“Sent away!” Janet breathed forth the words as in a gale of indignation. “Nobody,” she cried, “except myself, shall send me away.”
“Well,” he said, “and yourself will not, I hope? It would be a changed house if you were gone. All the spirit and the understanding and the mischief—don’t be angry, Janet; there is nothing so enchanting as mischief, and you know you are full of it—would be gone. I doubt if I should ever come back to the place again.”
“Mr. Meredith,” said Janet, “you have no right to speak to me so. It is unpardonable in a man. Who is to believe you? Miss Harwood, whom I believe you are engaged to all this time—or me, whom you venture to take hold of and—talk to, when you think nobody sees? Oh, it is quite unpardonable, Mr. Meredith! Is it her or is it me whom you want to please? You ought to know.”
“That sounds very like asking me my intentions,” he said, with a laugh, “as the father does in novels, or sometimes the mother. But never, so far as I recollect, the young lady herself.”
Janet was angry, and she was sore. She had been made of no account among them; she who was very well aware of her own value, and had never been ignored by those around her before, had been lately treated as if she were nobody in this house. It had been necessary for her to conceal her own movements, to be prudent, to take the most urgent measures that her name should not suffer. But it had galled her to the very heart that Meredith should have spoken of her as a mere means of receiving information, and even that Dolff should have ignored her part in the matter, though it was what she wished him most to do. She was full of inconsistency in this respect, as most human natures are, and as women in particular are expected to be. Not to be mixed up in it was her most urgent desire, but to be ignored, though it was what she desired most, was bitter to her heart. It had given her a certain amount of satisfaction to assert her superiority to Dolff, and she would have been still more pleased now could she have done the same with Meredith, and issued from the double complication triumphant, setting both men in “their proper place,” and proving that she was not deceived by either, but above both. But it was not so easy with Meredith as withDolff. She had played with the youth who was not so clever as she, nor her equal in anything, but alas! it was she who had been played with in the other case, and her attempt to change therôlewas not likely to be very effectual.
She did not love Meredith—she was angry with him, and more or less despised him: but he had a charm for her which some men have for women, and some women for men, not only without merit on the part of the enchanter, but even with a distinct feeling of disapproval and almost contempt on that of the enchanted. This was her feeling towards Gussy’s lover. HewasGussy’s lover, probably for all she knew Gussy’s betrothed; yet he had dared to play with her, to set up a secret understanding, to persuade her that he loved her best.
He did not love her at all, she declared to herself indignantly; he loved nobody except himself, he cared for nothing except to be amused, to have the best of everything, to gather sweetness on every side. She had thrown him aside indignantly in the moment of trial when he had been found wanting, and when she, too, had found herself wanting, and instinctively defended herself by dropping him. And yet now when Janet was suddenly brought face to face with him again, and there was a moment given her in which to express her final sentiments, one of those curious returns upon herself which come in every such history came over her. It was always possible that in the human mind there should be a complete change of sentiment, that the balance should turn at a touch, and truth and love vanquish all evil. The most conventional and the most lively and imaginative of minds acknowledge this possibility. It is called conversion in religion, in other matters it bears a less important title: yet it is always a possibility. A man who has been an egotist may become suddenly generous and tender; a man who has resisted every inducement to do well, and broken every heart that loved him, may by some more subtle touch be changed, and turned from his evil ways. Such a thing is always possible: and Janet, when she addressed Meredith in her indignation, had some such feeling in her mind. He had a charm for her notwithstanding her anger against him, her sense of wrong, and the no-faith she had in him; but yet he had a charm: and it was possible that something she might say, some argument struck out in the heat of the moment, might still convert him to honor and to truth.
That was, to Janet’s version of honor and truth, which was, perhaps, a one-sided one. It was according to all her canons that the man finding himself not to love hisfiancéebut to love another, should sacrifice everything to that other, and leave thefiancéeto bear it as she might. This would have been thetriumph of love over worldliness and conventionality in Janet’s eyes. She would not have felt it wrong for him to prefer herself, to give up Gussy: and it was quite in his power to hold by Gussy and give up herself; but one thing she felt must be done, and that at once. She would not allow him to go on, detaining her, making love to her, telling her in words and otherwise that he loved her best, if he meant after all to marry Gussy. It had to be now decided once for all.
“Since you say so,” she said, with her heart beating, “I will not object to the word. I am not frightened by words: and I have neither father nor mother. Oh, don’t think I forget what you said about that last time you asked me to meet you in the shop, that it was to receive information. And now you stop me and want to begin again, in a way very different from getting information. Yes, I want to know what you mean. It is quite true: which of us is it you want to please? Answer me!” cried Janet, stamping upon the floor with her foot. “Is it her, or is it me?”
“Alas, that it can’t be both! My dear child, I should like to please you both, if that is how you put it,” said Meredith.
It was so dark that she could scarcely see his face, but he had twisted the long boa round his arm, so as to bring her nearer to him.
She stamped her foot again upon the ground, and began to loosen her boa.
“Answer me!” she said.
“Don’t put a poor fellow in a corner, Janet. I have to temporize like other people. You have almost made me lose my head; but I can’t afford it, don’t you know. I can’t throw things up like that: and there’s no hurry—we’re all young enough; let us wait and see what may turn up.”
“Is that all you have got to say?” said Janet, uncoiling the boa from her throat.
“What can any one say more? You women have the most confounded way of putting a fellow in a corner. There’s no need for any such desperate decision. Let us wait a bit and enjoy ourselves as much as we can in the meantime,” said Meredith, manipulating the boa on his side.
She left it suddenly in his hand, and quickly and noiselessly turned away, flying upstairs almost before he could call her back: and Meredith did not venture to call “Janet, Janet!” in more than a subdued tone. He dared not follow her, he did not want anybody to know of that colloquy in the hall, though he had risked it, and would have prolonged it, perhaps, to the very edge of discovery. When he felt the boa dropped upon his hands he laughed to himself, with amusement mingled with a certain discomfiture, to think how much in earnest these girls were—and he was not at all in earnest. He liked to take the goods the gods had provided, and get all the pleasure he could out of them; but to compromise his own future and bind himself forever was what he would not do for anyone: and perhaps he was half pleased to have got through the dangerous amusement of that interview, though it was he who had sought it and prolonged it, so easily upon the whole. He had not been made to commit himself to anything, and yet he flattered himself he had made no breach. Things were just as they had been before. He was not like a married man, or one who had come under solemn engagements; there was no reason that he should give up what was agreeable to him, yet, at least; but it amused him to see Janet’s high spirit, her impatience, and even those questions which it was ludicrous, yet a little confusing, to be asked by her—about “his intentions,” as he said. Even the sudden conclusion of the interview by which she betrayed her impatience, her displeasure was amusing to him. He felt all the more fond of her, amused and flattered by her anxiety to know what he meant, and pleased that she had not made much of her bold attempt.
“The little vixen!” he said to himself. He gathered up the boa, which was of a kind which slips through unused fingers, and laid it carefully upon the table. It escaped him once, as its mistress had done, and had to be caught again, and laid in soft, dark coils on the table, which was a thing that pleased him, and made him laugh again. Janet was in a great fright lest her conversation with him should be discovered, and she would by no means have liked it to be discovered, yet it gave him a pungent pleasure to linger and keep her there, and feel that she had fled on the very eve of detection, and get away himself to the shelter of his room, just as Gussy outside put her latch-key in the door.
He laughed as he heard her come in and call to Priscilla to light the lamps, and that the hall was so dark she could scarcely see her way upstairs. Janet had found her way upstairs like a bird a minute before. He chuckled at the thought that in another moment it might have been too late: and yet he had no desire at all that Gussy should find out that meeting in the dark.
As for Janet, she hurried to her room with hot indignation in her heart and the water in her eyes. Oh, it was not that she expected it to have ended in any other way! She had known exactly how it would be. He was not a man to behave like a man, to love one and no more. What he wanted washis own pleasure and advantage, not Gussy and not Janet. She despised him for it all, for the subdued tone in which he had attempted to call her back, for his way of putting off everything that was serious: and she half despised herself for having asked, as he said, “his intentions,” and allowed him to see that she cared.
She did care, she said to herself, dashing the tears from her eyes. She had a contempt for him, and penetrated his character with the keenest perception, and to say that she loved him would have been a great exaggeration: and yet he had a charm for Janet—his mockery, his laugh, the tone of his voice, almost his want of respect and bold appropriation of her, whether she wished it or not, had a charm. Her heart would have danced with pleasure had he given her an assurance of love (which he might very well have done, she knew, without in the least meaning it), and yet she had penetrated him through and through, and had no illusion as to his character. All motives are mingled, but Janet’s were so mingled that she did not understand them. She was humiliated by the result of her endeavor, yet highly excited, her heart leaping in her breast: she sat down as she was, in her hat and coat, to think it all over. Dolff and Meredith had both revealed their affection more or less—they had both allowed her to see into their hearts. And Janet, though she had provoked it in both cases, was angry, mortified, full of fury and pain. That was what men were incapable of, she thought—any real feeling, but for themselves and themselves only. Even Dolff, who had been her slave, would have consented now to forget everything, if she would give him her promise. She to him! as if he would give any promise or act otherwise than as pleased himself!
Janet sat for a long time pondering over the half-extinguished fire, her heart full of anger, disappointment, and contempt. It was themselves they had both thought of, never of her! At one time they had made her believe that she was everything, queen of their hearts, and for a moment she had been so silly as to be half-intoxicated, believing in it, accepting the high compliment, but now——. She suddenly sprang up under the impulse of the shock at the dictation of a new idea. They might be unworthy, but there were some who were worthy. Oh, what did it matter that they should have youth and a fair appearance, or any of those adventitious gifts. It was better to be true and real. It occurred to her suddenly that instead of going away to another family to exercise the mystery of a governess, instead of being liable to be dismissed, as Meredith so coarsely had suggested, instead of the state which was offensive to Janet’s own good taste and feeling, of covert hostility to her employers, which she had fallen into so readily,and which in another house it was horribly possible she might fall into again—how much better it would be to go out proudly in the eye of day, as good as any of them, as independent, with a life of her own to fall back upon!
Janet flew to her writing-table at this new thought, and wrote, as quick as the pen would form the letters, a hasty letter. It was all done at flying speed, without taking time to think, a hurried, blurred, as she felt unladylike production. She thrust it into an envelope, directed it, and rushed downstairs with it to take it herself to the post, not to lose a moment. The hall was now lighted but abandoned—nobody there to call to her, to bid her pause, to stop her on the way. Her boa lay on the table carefully coiled round and round. Janet snatched it up, as if that had been an additional reason for speed, and rushed out to decide her fate.
Inthe evening they were all assembled in the drawing-room once more.
The same party with so many differences. There were only Mrs. Harwood and Meredith who were unchanged. She sat in the usual warm corner, with the usual white fleecy knitting, which never changed, in her lace cap and white shawl, with her pretty complexion and her smiling looks, the woman of whom people said that she must have lain in the lilies and fed on the roses of life to preserve that wonderful complexion and eyes so clear and so bright. And he, looking so much better—really assured in his health, the tints of weakness going off, the high color which was at once his characteristic and the drawback to his good looks coming back, and his high spirits as if they had never had any check. It was only last night that he had been following up that discovery with the eagerness of a bloodhound, forgetting everything but the scent on which he was following on to the end. All that had now flown away. He was the Charley Meredith of old, playful and ready to “chaff” everybody round, talking of the new songs and what would suit “our” voices, and lamenting the interrupted “practisings.” Charley was as if nothing had happened, full of fun, eager for amusement, calling upon the mother for sympathy and encouragement.
“They have all become so grave,” he said. “It is you and I, Mrs. Harwood, that will have to perform our duet.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Harwood, “if I had been twenty yearsyounger, there is no telling what might have happened. I should not have kept you waiting, Charley. I wish, Gussy, you would not look as if you had been to a funeral this afternoon.”
“Not this afternoon—but something a little like it, mamma.”
“You are talking great nonsense, my dear. If there is anybody that ought to be cast down, it is surely me. All my troubles have been forced back upon me; but I have the comfort of knowing,” said Mrs. Harwood, with a slightly raised voice, “that I never meant any harm—and that I have done none—and that the last people in the world to criticise me are my children: so I desire that there shall be an end of this. I have been summoned, as I expected, to explain everything: and Charley has kindly promised to appear for me and clear it all up—and secure permission for me to look after my poor dear upstairs, as I have done ever since he was afflicted. When I have made it all clear with the Lunacy commissioners I may perhaps be supposed to have done enough, though one can never know.”
“Mamma,” said Gussy, “there was no need for anything but to be frank and open. You have not been open—not to me, who was taken more or less into your confidence. I suppose you were compelled to tell me something, but not all, or nearly all. A child could see there is more in it than meets the eye. And now I presume you have taken Mr. Meredith into your confidence, but none of your children.”
“WhyMr.Meredith?” said he, with a smile, putting out his hand for hers.
Gussy made no reply. She gave him a look of indignant reproach. In point of fact, when he asked her thus, she could not have told why—after all. The truth began to steal into her mind, like the influence of a thaw, that after all he had done nothing. He had been curious to fathom the secret in the house. So would any one have been. And there was something about information that he had received—where or from whence could he have received information? But even that, she suddenly reflected, could not be his fault. If he had been told anything it would be difficult not to listen. Thus, though she gave him a look of reproach and drew away her hand, it suddenly occurred to Gussy that after all there was no particular reason why she should call him Mr. Meredith, or consider him as deeply to blame. The thaw had begun.
Dolff had kept behind backs all the evening. He took no seat, he attached himself to none of the party. For some time he had been seated in a large easy-chair which almost swallowed him up, in the other part of the room, reading, orpretending to read. Then when the conversation began he had risen from that place, and walked about in the half-light like an uneasy ghost. Now he came into the talk with a voice that sounded far off, partly because of the length of the room, and partly because of the boyish gruffness which, as a token of high contrariety and offence, he had brought into his voice.
“I don’t see,” he said, “what Lunacy commissioners have to do with it in comparison with the people in the house.”
Mrs. Harwood turned her chair round as much as she was capable of doing, and cast a look into the dim depths of the other room.
“It is a pity,” she said, “that the commissioners could not be of your opinion, Dolff; it would have saved me a great deal of trouble.”
“I can’t see,” he said, irritably, “why you should have taken such trouble upon you at all. What is the man to you? Who is he that you should have taken such trouble for him? You have no brother that I ever heard of. Mother,” said Dolff, coming forward out of the gloom, “I have cudgelled my brains to think who it could be. Is it possible that for a mere stranger—a man who is no relation to us—you should have risked all our comfort and separated us from you? I have heard of such things,” said the young man, working himself up, “but to find them out in one’s mother whom one has always respected——”
She gave a wondering look round upon them all and then burst into a strange confused laugh.
“In the name of wonder,” she cried, “can anybody tell me what the boy has got in his head? what does he mean?”
What did he mean? They all looked at each other with perplexity; even Janet, rousing from the rigid unmeaningness to which she had condemned herself, to take share in the glance of amazement which ran round. Only Meredith did not share that amazement. He laughed, which was a sound that made Dolff frantic, and brought him a step forward with his hand clenched.
“Dolff, my good fellow,” he said, with an air of superior experience which still further irritated the furious lad, “don’t fly upon me again: for that sort of argument doesn’t do much good in a discussion. And don’t bring your ideas out of French novels here. Such things are a great deal worse when they are translated than when they are at home.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” cried Dolff, “with your French novels! nor what right you have to be here, in the midst of us all, discussing a subject—a subject which—a subject that—makes me,” cried the young man, “that I cannotendure myself, nor the house, nor so much as my mother’s name.”
“What does he mean?” said the ladies to each other, looking all round with perturbed looks. They were all united, from Julia to her mother, in the wonder to which they had no clue. Englishwomen, brought up in the very lap of respectability, not knowing even the alphabet of shame, full of faults, no doubt of their own kind, but utterly incapable even of imagining the secret horror and suspicion that lurked in Dolff’s words, they could do nothing but send round that troubled look of consultation. Was Dolff going out of his senses,too? Was it perhaps in the family, this dreadful thing, and had it assailed the boy? Mrs. Harwood grew pale with sheer fright and horror as she looked back upon her son, and then pitifully consulted his sisters with her eyes.
“Dolff,” cried Meredith, in a warning tone, “mind what you are about, my boy. I tell you to bring none of your French novels here. They don’t explain the situation. Strike me if you like then; but don’t be such an everlasting fool. Pierre et Jean, eh,here!” cried the elder man, with a half shriek of derisive laughter. He sat with a sort of careless courage, not putting himself even into an attitude of defence, but on his guard, looking towards the enraged youth—an air which transported both the young feminine hearts beside him into an ecstasy of admiration, though Gussy was so deeply offended (she began to think more and more without reason), and Janet more deeply still, hating and despising him as she thought.
Gussy darted forward between her brother, who had the air of springing upon his senior, and Meredith, warning Dolff in her turn with a loud cry.
“Mind,” she exclaimed, “what you are about! As Charley says, enough has happened already. We will tolerate no more in this house.”
Janet rose too, scarcely knowing why she did it, she who had so solemnly made up her mind that on no provocation would she take any part.
“I don’t know,” she said, “what Mr. Dolff means; but I hope no one will be angry if I say I found some papers torn in little pieces under the windows of the wing. I thought they were from an old copy-book and that they were Mr. Dolff’s. I am sure now they belonged to the poor gentleman upstairs. They were signed ‘Adolphus Charles Harwood.’ I have no right to be here at all, and I am going away.”
Dolff stood breathless, feeling the light fail in his eyes. He saw Meredith spring up and open the door for her, and with apang watched while the little dark figure disappeared. For the moment he was only aware of her disappearance, of the final going out as he thought in eternal darkness of the little light which had made his life so different. He came back to himself with a gasp when the door closed, but scarcely knew what had been said to him for the beating of the pulses in his head.
“‘Adolphus Charles Harwood’?” said Julia, thoughtfully; “then that, I suppose, is the poor gentleman’s name; so, Dolff, you see I was right, and it was a relation after all.”
“What is Pierre et Jean, Charley?” said Mrs. Harwood, sitting up a little more erect than usual, with a kindling in her eyes.
“It is a very clever French novel—far more clever and better than most—a very fine piece of work.”
“But with something in it,” said Mrs. Harwood, “like our circumstances? You must bring it to me to read it, Dolff. If I did not burden your minds with a secret, which would have done you no good, and been hard, hard to keep——”
“Then,” he said, interrupting her abruptly, “it is a relation? but even that I never heard of before. How is it that there should be a man of that name in the family, and I should never have heard of him before?”
He still stood on the defensive, his face flushed with anger, and a sense of being wrong and inferior to all the rest somehow, though he could not tell how.
It is strange how difficult it sometimes is in such a discussion, when there is one whose invincible ignorance holds out in face of all argument and proof, to say the single word which will cut the knot. It was on Gussy’s lips to say it; but she did not, perhaps because Dolff’s want of comprehension was so curious to them all. And at this moment, almost before he could be replied to, there arose a little commotion in the hall. Janet’s voice was heard in a faint cry, and there was a shuffling of feet, and another unknown male voice rising in the quiet. Julia, who was awake like a dog to all new sounds, rushed to the door and flung it open, and then there became visible the strangest sight.
There stood upon the threshold an old man in a strange dress, something between a long coat and a gown, with a white beard on his breast, long white hair streaming on his shoulders, and a long pallid face. His appearance was so sudden, so unlooked-for, like a stage entrance without warning, that the effect was more startling and wild than could be imagined. It was as if the conversation, in which so many complications, so many misunderstandings, were involved, had been suddenlyembodied in this bizarre and extraordinary figure which was its cause. And, as if to make it more extraordinary still, this strange apparition held by the hand, with her arm drawn through his, Janet, pale, terrified, and faintly struggling, who had left the room but a moment before.
Janet was evidently wild with terror, yet did not dare even to try to escape except by the strain of reluctance in her whole figure, drawing back while he drew her forward. The most benignant aspect that is compatible with a disordered brain was in the madman’s face. He smiled as he held her, dividing the fingers of the hand he held with his own, as if he were caressing and playing with a child. He stood for a moment contemplating them all, taking in the details of the picture which on their side they made, with that pleased, half-bewildered, half-imbecile look, and nodding his head from one to another, like one of those nodding figures that go on indefinitely. The weakness of the smile, the glow of foolish satisfaction in his face, the endless nodding, took much from the majesty of the venerable patriarchal figure, and made him look more like a silly old man than a picturesque and tragical lunatic. While they all stood thunderstruck, he advanced into the room with a buoyant, almost dancing step.
“Well,” he said, “here I am, Julia. I suppose that you expected me? This is a merry meeting: here’s to our merry meeting. Vicars says I am so much better—and so I am, quite well—don’t you see I have a color in my cheeks—that I may come downstairs. He is a very good fellow, Vicars; but I want society. Julia, see what I’ve got here.”
He drew Janet forward, nodding at her with the most complacent looks, while the poor little girl, deadly pale, trembling with terror, hung upon his arm as if suspended by a hook, holding back, yet not daring to struggle, shutting her eyes for very terror. He waved his hand, releasing hers for a moment, but holding it tight within his arm.