But Janet did not want to be talked to by Dolff. She would not let him off a single round, but danced till the very last bar. And poor Dolff got out of breath easily, and could not talk while he was dancing. He did not dance very well. He was not very fond of it, he allowed, on ordinary occasions, and he was most anxious to break off now. When at last the waltz was over, he hurried her off to find a corner somewhere—one of those which he had himself arranged so carefully for the accommodation of stray pairs of wanderers, and in which he had imagined himself pouring out his heart to Janet. But, to his wrath and dismay, Dolff found that every one was filled. He made a hurried round, holding Janet’s hand tightly within his arm, to keep her from slipping away. But wherever Dolff had placed a couple of chairs consecrated to himself and the lady of his affections there were a frivolous pair established before him—the gentleman lolling with his legs crossed, the lady sitting prim beside him—the most uninteresting, the most prosaic of couples. Dolff set his teeth when he came to the end and found no place.
“Will you come and have some tea?” he said, dolefully, “or an ice, or something? As every nook is filled, it must be quiet there. Oh, Miss Summerhayes, this is not what I hoped: I have been looking forward to it so long, and there is not a spot where you can sit down.”
“Really. I don’t want at all to sit down,” said Janet; “let us walk about. We can talk just as well as if we were sitting down. And I am not tired.”
“No, it is not all the same,” said Dolff. “We can talk, I suppose; but not about what I wanted, Miss Summerhayes—about the ladies in white and the ladies in blue, perhaps, and who is flirting and who is not, and the man with the red hair, and all that. That is what ladies talk about between the dances; but that’s not my style, Miss Summerhayes.”
“Is it not?” said Janet, “it seems very innocent talk.”
“Innocent enough—meaning nothing,” said Dolff, with scorn; “like what we talk about in the evenings, when we’re all together, and you scarcely say anything at all. I hoped we might have had a little real conversation to-night.”
“I am very sorry,” said Janet. “I fear it was my fault, but I forgot. I am very fond of dancing. Who is that lady that looked at you so significantly, Mr. Harwood?”
“Oh,” said Dolff, with a groan, “I am booked to her for the next dance. And there are those infernal fellows—I beg your pardon, Miss Summerhayes—beginning to tune up!”
Charley Meredithwalked home from St. John’s Wood to his chambers, which were in one of the streets about Berkeley Square, between two and three o’clock in the morning. It was in the week between Christmas and the New Year, when the fashionable parts of London were very quiet, but the other parts—the domestic quarters, so to speak, where people live all the year round—more lively than usual. Yet it is needless to say that he had on the whole a quiet walk; and it was a long one—a capital opportunity for thinking, which is an exercise that often goes on best when it is accompanied by physical movement, and the sensation of the fresh air in one’s face.
Meredith had spent an exciting night. Had it been nothing but the two interviews above recorded, he would not have been without something to think of, and the consideration of the fertile crop of embarrassments and conflicting questions which no doubt would spring from them might have occupied him not unprofitably for an hour or two. He had gone further in one way than he had ever done before, having deliberately deceived Gussy and given her to understand that within a definite period he would present himself as an avowed suitor for—nay, claimant of her hand. In the passing thought he gave to this subject he said to himself that it was silly to have indicated a definite time. Yet, as nobody could prophesy what a year might bring forth, there was perhaps but little harm, and a hundred things might happen in the meantime to blow all that nonsense away. And he had also committed himself in respect to Janet, for whom he felt a real inclination as much resembling love as anything he knew of. Yes, if circumstances permitted, if it should turn out to be anything but the last folly to a man in his position, he felt that he should like to carry off that little girl, to marry her, and pet her, and be amused by her quick understanding and her piquant looks. She was not too rigid about duty and so forth, though she took upon her that little schoolmistress’s manner and reproved him for his levity.
It was perhaps not quite the most appropriate thing she could have done to betray the secrets of the house, and help him to the means of satisfying a long-smouldering curiosity; but it was very clever of her to find out, and, very engaging as well as serviceable to choose him for the confidant of her discoveries. Poor little thing! He felt that henceforward his attentions to Gussy, which it would now less than ever suit him to break off, would plant thorns in the bosom of the governess, which was a pity, for she was a nice little thing, far more tempting than—— But these thoughts were all disposed of before Mr. Charles Meredith got to the end of the street; or at least before he got to the boundaries of St. John’s Wood: and a much more important matter filled the foreground of his thoughts.
To enter into a history of the Harwood family at this period of our story would be too great a tax upon the reader, and it may be enough to say that this most respectable family had not been altogether so spotless as was supposed by the respectable inhabitants of St. John’s Wood. There was a break in the tradition, and that a very recent and important one. The husband of Mrs. Harwood and father of her children had been one of those bold speculators who often ruin wholecommunities. When a number of bubbles burst which he had been instrumental in blowing about the world it had been necessary for Mr. Adolphus Harwood to disappear; and he had done so, leaving but one feeling of pity for his wife and young children, and for his father—an old man, who was said to be bowed down to the dust by his son’s iniquities.
After a while, though the interval was one of several years, information was received that he had died in Spain, and imperceptibly things mended for the family. His father being dead, Dolff became without any trouble the legitimate heir of the little entailed property upon which his grandfather lived, and the money matters of the house in general were cleared up, though I cannot explain how, having small knowledge of such subjects. It was found that Mrs. Harwood was not so badly off as had been supposed. She had some money of her own, which it was said formed the greater part of her living, and there were other resources of which nobody knew any particulars except, it is to be hoped, her man of business. She had at once rejected any quixotic notion of giving up what she had for herself and her children to satisfy the creditors of her husband. It would not have been enough to give them a pittance all round, and in the meantime she and her son and the girls would be added to the army of the destitute without doing anybody good. Some people think differently on such matters, but Mrs. Harwood had never wavered in her determination, and in general her conduct was at least not disapproved by her friends, who thought her an excellent woman of business and as full of integrity and steadiness as her husband had been the reverse.
These things had happened when the children were very young, and they were now forgotten, save in the tenacious memories of a few who had suffered through the failure of Mr. Adolphus Harwood, and who did not fail to bear a certain grudge against his family. It had all taken place at a distance, in Liverpool, where his business was, and where failures and ruin are commonplace matters such as occur every day; and their home where old Mr. Harwood lived was in North Wales, far away from any communication with St. John’s Wood.
Mrs. Harwood had never lived in that house, which had been let from the period of her father-in-law’s death, and was not known much in the neighborhood. She had been nearly fifteen years in St. John’s Wood, where she had soon become known as a liberal supporter of the parish charities and an acquisition to the neighborhood in every sense of the word; and where nobody inquired into the family history of anagreeable widow, very well off, and with nice children. Now the description of the household was changed—nice young people with an agreeable mother was how they now presented themselves to the knowledge of the world; and any little episodes that had happened in Liverpool or in the wilds of North Wales were totally unknown.
Meredith, however, was an exception to this ignorance. He was a Welshman. He had known them all his life, and he knew everything about them. It had been at first unpleasant to Mrs. Harwood to acknowledge his claims, for she preferred to ignore altogether their previous circumstances. But, seeing that it was impossible to shake him off, she had taken the part of making the best of him and speaking freely to him of relations and connections like a woman who had nothing to conceal. Meredith had friends who were well off, if he was not, for the present, very well off himself; and when it became apparent that there was a mutual inclination between him and Gussy, Mrs. Harwood was glad of it, partly because his father had been one of the sufferers by her husband’s failure, and might thus be partially recouped for his losses, and partly because Meredith’s mouth would thus be effectually stopped, and no revelations need be apprehended from him—though, as she sensibly remarked, “What does any scandal matter after fifteen years?”
Meredith’s motives were perhaps more difficult to read. They had indeed been easy enough at first, for he had really liked Gussy, and had felt her to be as good a match as he could aspire to. Latterly, however, several circumstances had struck him as strange in the house with which he was so familiar. They had been scarcely of note enough to call for any consideration singly; but put together they had awakened a suspiciousness not unnatural in a mind trained to the complexities of the law.
Had he been ignorant of the history of the Harwoods; had he been altogether without the tradition of animosity which lingers in the mind of a man who has a hereditary injury in his thoughts, it is probable he would not have remarked these little incidents. The chief of them was Vicars, whose countenance seemed one of evil omen to the young man. He had come by degrees to the belief that there was something in the house to be found out.
Nothing, however, had prepared him for Janet’s extraordinary revelations and for the discovery more extraordinary still which he had himself made. It was this which he turned over in his mind, viewing it from every side, considering it inevery possible light, as he walked briskly along the long line of silent streets. It seemed a thing almost incredible that an unsuspecting family could have a man hidden in their house with such elaborate precautions, shut up in rooms which were given out to be uninhabitable, yet surrounded with comforts, kept from all air and vision yet manifestly cared for—a mystery in the midst of the commonest matter-of-fact details of life.
The face which he had seen, though but for a moment, communicated no idea to Meredith’s mind. It was not like anyone whom he had ever seen before. The long white hair, the long pallid countenance, was more like those of a hermit in the desert than of a dweller in an ordinary English house.
The eagerness with which the young man had followed up the mystery had fallen somewhat blank when he got to the climax and saw the cause of all. The thread which he had seemed to hold in his hand broke off short. He had not known or been able to imagine to what it might lead, yet had associated it somehow with the story of the family, and expected it to throw some light upon that. But the light he had been hoping for seemed suddenly to go out as he gazed through the curtains at this strange old man. Who was he? What connection could he have with the family in whose house he was hidden? Was it Vicars who was responsible—Vicars, who was the representative of mystery in the house—the old servant who was no longer a servant? Could this be some private undertaking of his own of which not even Mrs. Harwood was aware?
But when Meredith thought of the curtains, the softly-moving noiseless spring doors, all left, no doubt, that Vicars at a moment’s warning might rush back to his patient, or his prisoner, or his victim—which was it? he was again stopped suddenly as by a blank wall of impossibility. Vicars could not have fitted up the rooms with all those elaborate precautions. He could not without Mrs. Harwood’s knowledge have arranged everything for secrecy and at the same time for comfort in that way. Was it then some one whom Mrs. Harwood was hiding? But whom? But whom?
Gussy and Janet and all the embarrassments connected with them died away from Meredith’s mind as this problem presented itself to his intelligence. Who was it? That curious curtained room—it suddenly flashed upon his mind that it might be a padded room prepared for a lunatic: and this seemed for a moment to throw an illusive light upon the problem, but only for a moment: for he could not think that Mrs.Harwood would permit Vicars to harbor a lunatic in her house, in the near neighborhood of her children; and who could it be whom she could shut up like that in lawless disregard of all rules? Nobody. There was not a madman in the family that he had ever heard of.
This last idea, however, seized upon Meredith with greater force as he considered. He remembered the cry which he himself had heard more than once, and which had been put aside with careless explanations as something which was to be heard from time to time from a neighboring house, or from the streets, or a shriek from the railway, or the effect of the wind when it blew in certain directions. He remembered even to have asked, “Is there any private asylum near?” and how it had been suggested by some one that there was somebody out of his mind next door. He had said that in that case he hoped the people next door were aware that it was unlawful to keep a maniac capable of uttering cries like that in an unauthorized house.
This forgotten conversation suddenly surged up before him as if it had been laid up in his memory for future use. Was the man mad? Was it Vicars who had him in charge, backed up by his mistress, injudiciously kind, or was it she who was the prime mover and Vicars only the instrument? He puzzled about this insolvable question, turning it a long time over and over in his brain, until at last he came back to the fact that even were this matter solved to his full satisfaction it would leave him as much in the dark as before. For who was the man? This, after all, was the only thing that it was of any importance to know.
Meredith made a long excursion as he walked along into all the connections of the Harwood family of whom he had ever heard. He was something of a genealogist, and he had the excellent memory of a country-bred individual for all the cousins, and brothers-in-law, and connections generally of people near home. No; he could think of nobody related to the family on either side who had been mad or who had disappeared or failed to be accounted for. There was nobody. It could not be a mere connection, a far-off friend, who was thus cared for. It must be some one whose life was of importance, for whom secrecy was necessary; whose madness was either to be concealed under a pretence of absence, or who was so near in love that to retain his custody the law was transgressed and defied.
But there was no such person, none. Everybody that had to do with the Harwoods was respectable, known, above suspicion, except the scoundrel of a husband who had died so many years ago. Could it be that the widow, already in middle age when her husband died, had loved some other man, and perhaps secretly married, or at least taken him into her house when attacked by the dreadful malady?
Meredith was in a very silent bit of the way when he came to this hypothesis, and its effect upon him was such that he stopped short and laughed aloud. Mrs. Harwood, the most irreproachable of women and mothers, more than middle-aged, never moving out of her wheeled chair! That she should have a postscriptal romance—a love-affair in her fifties: and that the man should go mad—of love probably—and be guarded thus as the apple of her eye! She seemed to rise before him in all her comfortable ease and motherliness—poor lady! not able to walk—to rebuke the wild imagination. He laughed, but then all at once became grave again: for that same easy-minded woman, the respectable mother, the elderly mistress of so correct a household, must be in the mystery one way or another. She it must be who had settled and arranged the whole elaborate business. It could not be Vicars, who was a man-servant in no way above the level of his class. He could not have done it; could not have the means to do it, or the knowledge. The mistress of the house must be involved. Her purse and her brain must be in it, whoever the mysterious patient or prisoner was. Who was the man? Beyond that question Meredith, with all his acuteness, could not go.
What a strange sight it was, looking in at him through the curtains! Meredith said to himself that the man must have been drugged to lie in such a deep stupor of sleep. Something must have been given to him to keep him quiet, to make it possible to fill a house in which such an inmate was, with music and the sound of the dancers’ feet and the hum of a lively crowd. And the incredible rashness, temerity, of doing so—of carrying on all the gayeties of life in a house occupied by such a spectre, on the other side of the wall only from the unconscious merrymakers! It was like a woman to do that, with a regardlessness of all consequences, a want of natural logic which belonged only to women: for everybody surely must see that one time or other such a thing must be found out. Nothing in the whole matter was so certain as that—that one time or other it was bound to be found out. It was like a woman to do it: but even a woman, one would have thought, possessing such a secret would shut her house up and keep society at least at arm’s length. But no; on the contrary, all sorts of pleasant things went on in the house. It was open toall the friends of the young people, who visited it, stayed in it, came there as freely as to the most commonplace of houses. And all the time that man shut up in the wing! Any one of them might have pushed open the door at some careless moment as Janet and he had done, and found his or her way upstairs. Any one of them might have seen the spectre, so notable as he was in appearance; not a face to forget. And what then?
But Mrs. Harwood, with the incredible inconsequence of a woman, had ignored all that. No doubt Vicars, to spare himself trouble, had got into a way of leaving the door unfastened, the spring uncaught, to save himself trouble. And they thought they never would be found out. They gave dinners and dances and asked all sorts of people to come and pass within sound of the maniac. They might drug him, but they could not drug the spectators, who, one time or other, as sure as Nemesis, must have found out—as Charley had done.
But who was the man?
Janethad been so quickly summoned downstairs after her strange adventure that she had no leisure to think it over, until, about the time when Mr. Meredith set out on his walk, she escaped upstairs. Meredith had been the very last to go away, he had stayed for the little family supper which the house-party had made after the guests were gone. He was evidently regarded, in short, entirely as one of the family, and in that capacity claimed Mrs. Harwood’s applause for his exertions in making everything “go off.”
“I have danced with all the plainest women,” he said, “and taken at least three dowagers in to supper. I ought to be very much petted now to make up.”
Mrs. Harwood looked from him to Gussy uncertain what to reply. But Gussy did not meet her mother’s eyes, as she most certainly would have done had there been anything to tell.
“Oh, yes, you have been of great use,” she said, “I don’t know what we should have done without you. But I don’t believe in such magnanimity as that. And you ought to be more civil about the dowagers when you are talking to me.”
“You are not a dowager—you are the head of the house,” Meredith said, bending over her affectionately to say good-night.
It was not possible that Janet could be otherwise than on the watch, considering her own share of his attentions during the evening. He had cast a laughing glance at her when he spoke of the plain women, and when he turned to leave the house he shot another look of leave-taking, tender yet laughing too, over the head of Julia, who was still at supper, consuming as many forbidden dainties as was possible in the short space of time that remained. Meredith put his hand on Julia’s shoulder, which she flung off with a rapid twist, and said good-night to Janet with his eyes, so that nobody could see; and then he turned round with a laugh, complaining that all his civilities to Ju were without effect. Gussy, who was pleased by this supposed attempt to conciliate her young sister, accompanied him with Dolff to the floor. And Janet could not but wonder what kind of farewell would take place there, with something between mirth and misery in her heart.
Oh, he was not true. It was certain that he was not true; but we do not somehow condemn the man who cheats another on our account, as we denounce him when he deceives us on account of another. The two things are different. He should not perhaps have pretended to be affectionate to Julia in order to be at liberty to look love at Janet; but the expedient prompted Janet to laugh. There is always something that tempts the lookers-on to laugh in a lover’s wiles. And the person who is preferred is apt to pardon and take such deceits lightly. How could he otherwise have found it possible to give her that parting look? And Julia’s wrench of her shoulder made Janet laugh in spite of herself. How ridiculous of the girl to suppose that it was for her he did that!
And, to tell the truth, Janet could not think of the leading incident of the night for the shadow of these other things which pushed in front as if they were more important. What he had said to her—what he had looked, which was more than what he had said, the touch of his hand, the curious union that had been formed between them by their mutual discovery, that discovery which was owing to Janet, and which her observations had alone made possible—all these things were in her mind rather than the discovery itself. When she tried to think of it she found herself thinking of him, and going over and over his words and his looks, and every particular of that so confidential and lover-like talk which had taken place under the shadow of the evergreens. What would Gussy have said if she had seen them sitting there? What would she have thought if she had heard them?
It gave Janet a keen prick of pleasure, of gratification, andtrouble to think that the governess should be placed so much above the young lady of the house. Janet did not know what would come of it, or if anything would come of it, or if she were to blame or not. But, in the meantime, she could not help enjoying the triumph. It was not Gussy he cared about, who was so much better off, but her, little Janet the governess. She forgave him his falseness—was not everything to be forgiven to a sudden love springing up in a man’s heart when hitherto he had been giving himself up to consideration of what was best to be done in the way of a respectable marriage? She could not get these incidents out of her mind.
When she tried to think of the other matter, the thing which Meredith was studying so intently on his way home, her mind eluded that subject and came back and back to the other, the more interesting, the subject which made her youthful heart beat. She had been much excited once by her own discoveries, by the face at the window, and indeed by the scraps of paper, until she had discovered as she thought that they were only from a copy-book; and it was inconceivable how little she cared now for this far more important discovery. But then there were things more important, events more exciting to Janet’s little self, which came in the way. Her heart had suddenly been roused within her, a new life had opened before her. It was not noble, nor did it come with that elevating and purifying effect which a first love so often exercises, making all beautiful and excellent things congenial to the awakening spirit in the first fervor of that new emotion.
Janet felt guilty, she had a breathless sense of something secret, forbidden, in her excitement and happiness. The best she could feel was the mischievous clandestine pleasure of a child in balking some little rival, and triumphing over some one who had been elevated above her. She did not dare to think of Gussy, save in a ludicrous sense, as being so silly as to be taken in. Oh, how silly she was not to see that his looks, his secret inclinations, were not for her, that ever since Janet appeared upon the scene it was towards her that his thoughts had turned! She thought of Gussy only in this way, scorning her for being deceived; and there was nothing softening, ameliorating, or ennobling in Janet’svita nuova. It was made up of clandestine communications, secret looks, communings in dark corners. There had been only one of these, and yet she felt as if it had been going on for years. And she did not know what would come of it, or if anything could come of it. He had stepped into a lover’s place without, in so many words, telling her that he loved her; without that proposal ofmarriage which is the inevitable formula of love to an English girl. He had said nothing about all that. Janet did not know what he intended, or if he intended anything; but this only made her heart beat all the more.
Thus two young women in that seemingly tranquil house retired to their rooms with hearts high-beating, moved to their inmost depths by Charley Meredith, who was not in the least worthy of the agitation of either, not even of Janet’s half-guilty agitated excitement which she thought love, and certainly not of the emotion which made Gussy Harwood hide her face in her hands, in humiliation and misery which all the sweetness of their recent interview could not overcome. It was sweet: and his implied assurance of the cause that kept him silent, and certainty of a definite term to the suspense, had flooded her being with happiness for the moment; but by the time she had gained the privacy of her own room, and the excitement was over, Gussy’s heart once more had sunk into the depths. To wait in this humiliating way till he should signify his pleasure, to be dependent upon him for something like life itself, to attend like a handmaiden on his leisure and his choice of a time and manner of signifying his will—all this filled Gussy with humiliation and shame, still more deeply felt in that her consciousness was pervaded by it, and she felt, even while she revolted, that her happiness was in his hands, and that she could not escape. He was not a man of great qualities, there was nothing in him to make him worthy of being the arbiter of a life. And yet, so he was.
Janet went to bed, but she found that, with all these fumes of excitement hanging about her, she could not sleep. If she dozed for a few minutes she was again with Meredith, walking along wonderful dark passages, peering through half-opened doors, seeing dreadful visions—sometimes of coffins and dead people, sometimes of threatening faces looking out upon her.
In the end Janet jumped out of bed again and lighted a candle. She had suddenly thought she heard some one touch the handle of her door, and a sudden vision—the face of the old man with his white beard seemed to spring out of the darkness before her. After all, there were but a few doors between them, doors which were sometimes left unsecured. What if, waking like herself in the middle of the night, the prisoner should find a practicable way as she had done, and come out and pass through her door as she had done through his? The impression of some one standing beside her bed was so strong upon her in the dark, that Janet made but one spring to theopposite side, and trembling, managed, though with difficulty, to strike a match.
The light relieved her from that sickening spasm of terror. There was nobody there—of course she knew there could be nobody there: but it was impossible to think of going to sleep again, thrice impossible to return to the darkness and once more imagine stealthy steps about the room and the pallid face bending over her. She put on a dressing-gown, and, taking out the scraps of paper, began with more leisure and real pains to put them together. Now that she knew it was not Dolff’s name that was written at the bottom of the page, the sense of mystery returned to her mind. It seemed impossible that his father’s copy-books should be still in being, or that it could be of any importance who saw them.
Janet shivered with cold, but it was better than lying trembling in the dark, thinking that the old man of the wing was walking about the room. And she had promised to send the bits of paper to Meredith. She put them all together, piecing them as well as she could. Sometimes she could only join a triangular or oblong scrap to a square one. Sometimes there was an absolute break which in no way could be filled out. She succeeded in making out something like this:
“I can’t get—— I want to get out. I can’t get out. I can’t g—get out: could pay—could p——can’t get——can’t get—out, out, out——Money, plenty money. Could pay, could p——but can’t, can’t, can’t get out.”
It was mere gibberish Janet thought. She knew no meaning in it. After she had worked for an hour at it, she had almost thrown it away again, feeling that it was mere nonsense; whether written by the prisoner, whether, as was more likely, some childish repetitions out of a copybook, she could not tell; but at all events nonsense, throwing no light upon anything, doing no one any good. She fixed the scraps on a sheet of paper, however, as well as she could piece them together, and especially the sprawling, childish signature “Adol——Char—es Har—w——.”
She was very cold, very tired, and sleepy by the time this task was done. She would put it in an envelope sincehehad asked her to do so. It would make him none the wiser, still it should be done, because he had desired it. She forgot altogether the central incident of the night as she went back to bed with little, cold feet, shivering and sleepy. The foolishness of the words she had been so carefully picking out and pasting together somehow emancipated her from her terror, they were so silly and without meaning. She did not believe, afterall, they could have any connection with the mystery in the wing. But as she thought of the address, and that she must take it herself to the post lest any one should see it and think it a communication of a different kind, a thrill ran through her, and she could not help thinking of perhaps a time to come when there might be other communications that would not be so colorless. Janet’s heart felt the lifting tide of a secret happiness. She fell into a delicious drowsiness, in which all his words and looks and movements came back upon her in a maze of pleasant confusion: and then, with the privilege of her age, she fell fast asleep.
Janet posted her letter next day, glad to be rid of it; for she could not, all the morning, get over the terror in her mind lest she should pull the letter out of her pocket with her pocket-handkerchief, or somehow expose it to be looked at, and so call forth the comment which she felt already ringing in her ears, as if any one she met in the street might come up and call it out to her:
“Oh, are you in correspondence with Charley Meredith?” “What have you to say to Charley Meredith?”
She thought she could see Gussy’s look if that dreadful contingency should come to pass. It would not be she that would make that exclamation—wonder would be the sentiment in her face, wonder and a sort of mild haughtiness which Miss Harwood knew how to put on. She would take no notice. But she would never forget; she would go on wondering, perhaps divining at last: proudly and entirely ignoring that strange incident—but she would not forget it. Henceforward her eyes would have another aspect towards Janet, and even perhaps towards her lover.
Janet breathed more freely when it was safely out of her pocket and in the post-office box. Nobody could see it now; she was safe, at least for the time. It is needless to say that she added not a word, explanatory or otherwise, to that curious piece of paper. She wrote the address with the greatest care in her neatest hand. She was so girlish as to think that her pretty handwriting, the fresh glossy envelope which she selected so carefully, rejecting one which had a small speck upon it, and which was a little brown at one corner—would go to his heart, and that he would remark those signs of her care to please him. Poor little Janet! She was not a girl of lofty sentiments, nor a very loyal soul; but she was very young, and had a world of foolish expectation still in her inexperienced heart.
Thus her former terror about the mystery which she haddiscovered so close to her was quieted in her mind almost entirely by the coming in of something more powerful. Sometimes a vague thrill of terror would pass through her when she looked at the door so hermetically closed, the door which had once trembled and given way under her slight fingers. In the middle of the night she sometimes woke with a start thinking she heard some one at her door, afraid to open her eyes lest she should see the whiteness in her room of the white beard and pallid face.
She took to locking her door from that time, a practice for which she was much scoffed at by Julia, who discovered it at once and wished to know, satirically, what she was afraid of? Was it robbers, and did Janet think they would come up all the way to the second floor for her, instead of going at once to the pantry for the plate? Janet could not make an answer to this assault, but she continued to lock her door and to look carefully around her room every night to make sure that no one was there.
This, however, was the only effect that the vision in the wing had upon her. Another matter, far closer and more urgent, was introduced into her thoughts. There were now two people whose whole attention was bent on the sounds outside in the still evenings when they sat over their needlework, listening intently for a step, for the sound of the bell. To meet him and Gussy within the same four walls, to see his eyes turn to her, and know that Miss Harwood looked on, this was far more difficult than any mystery for Janet to bear.
Gussy Harwoodawoke next morning with a sense of exhilaration in her mind, as if, during the night, some burden had rolled off her shoulders. Had any burden been rolled off? The first sensation in the morning of pain or pleasure is not always a true one, but there is none so poignant or which leaves so much impression on the mind.
A year—she said to herself—what was a year? If it were two years, what would it matter so long as all doubts were removed and she was assured that as she thought of him so he thought of her? How much better would it have been, in that point of view, if he had opened his heart to her at once!—not waiting for business or wealth or the means of setting up ahouse which he could ask her to share. All these were secondary matters. The thing she desired to know was his heart and what was in it. If he really loved her, as she sometimes believed he did, yet sometimes doubted, how happy it would be to watch the growth of the practice, the coming of the time when prudence and good sense would permit them to set up a new household together!
Gussy did not desire in the least to forestall that moment, to reject the guidance of prudence. Far from that. Her own actions were always regulated by that rule. All that she wanted was the full understanding, the power to believe that she knew his heart as he knew hers. But she said to herself, with a sigh,
“Men do not understand this. They think it not honorable to engage a woman before they are able to carry their engagement out, not knowing, not guessing, how very different is the woman’s view—how that what she wants is the understanding, the link between heart and heart, the privilege of sharing their thoughts and being bound to them.”
She sighed, and there was impatience and weariness in her sigh. How was it that they would not understand—that he would not understand? She would wait for him for years if it were necessary, so long as there was no doubt left upon the mutual sentiment, so long as the bond was made which he thought it more honorable not to make till it could be quickly fulfilled.
And this feeling went on growing stronger every hour of the day. The first exhilaration departed, and the weariness came back. A year! And who could tell that in a year there might not be some new drawback, some further suspense necessary. If men would but understand that it is not to be married that the woman wants, but to know the lover’s heart, to be assured of his love!
When Molière made hisPrécieusescontemn the vulgar haste with which their suitors would have jumped to the last accomplished fact of marriage, he had (perhaps) touched a secret of the feminine heart which few men divine.
Gussy, who was not poetical, still lessprécieuse, who was indeed a very matter-of-fact and most sensible person, would have been like the foolish Cathon and Madelon, quite pleased with thepays du tendre, so long as her lover had led her with a faithful hand into that enchanted country. She did not insist upon the new establishment, the immediate conclusion. She only wanted him to say frankly half-a-dozen words, and so to bind them together forever. It was half an injury to herthat he should feel it necessary to wait for such a practical reason. Did he think that her love was a less thing than her word, and that so long as she had not audibly pledged that, she was free? Did he think himself free because he had not said to her, “Be my wife!”
These questions flitted through Gussy’s mind, drifting across the sky like clouds, throughout the day. She shook her head at the vanity and shortsightedness of the thought. She free, when she loved him! Would a mere promise bind her more than the devotion of her whole being? And then there came a cold shiver over Gussy’s heart. Did he think perhaps thathewas free so long as he had made no promise—that all the silent fascination which bound them together and the link that had been growing for years, and which he had woven by so many tender words and looks and fond regards, was nothing, so long as no pledge had been given or received?
Gussy would not allow herself to think this. She shook her head over the defects in men, the absence of a finer feeling, the want of that intuition which everybody said women possessed in a higher degree. He could not see that there was a more delicate honor in avowal than in silence. It was strange, but she was obliged to conclude that this was how men felt, and that they did not understand.
Gussy was also a little cast down, ashamed, almost humbled, by the thought that he was in no such doubt of her sentiments as she was of his. But, then, she asked herself—for such a problem awakens metaphysical tendencies in the most simple mind—whether perhaps her doubt of him was not as much the weakness of the woman’s point of view as his reticence was of the man’s? Perhaps it had never entered into his mind that she could doubt him after all that had come and gone. Perhaps he felt the bond between them to be so assured and true that no declaration could make it stronger. Perhaps, just as he did not understand her, she did not understand him, and exemplified the woman’s deficiency just as he exemplified the man’s. This thought sufficed to clear Gussy’s brow for the whole afternoon.
She told her mother, who was very eager for news, and had also expected much from the dance, that Charley had been talking about his profession, and that he was now really getting on, and felt, he believed, the ball at his feet.
“He thinks that in another year or so he will be able to think of a house of his own,” said Gussy.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Harwood, with somewhat blank looks, “in a year or so!”
“Yes, mamma; did you expect him to jump to the heights of his profession in a moment? A silk gown in six months and the woolsack perhaps in——”
Gussy broke off with a laugh. She had replied to her mother with a look equally blank, incapable of understanding (as it seemed) what could be looked for more.
“I am not so silly as that,” said the mother. “I know it is very slow work getting on at the Bar. Still, I thought——”
“What did you think?” asked Gussy, with a certain scorn in the corners of her mouth.
“My dear, if you take that tone I shall say nothing more. I had thought nothing that was not quite reasonable, whatever you may think; but I shall say no more about it. You young people have your own ways of managing matters. I don’t think much of them, but that, I suppose, is because I am old-fashioned and can’t understand anything so superfine as your modes of action. You are a great deal too superior for me.”
“I notice,” said Gussy, “that whenever people are arguing, and don’t know what to say, they call those who think differently superfine and superior. It is as good an argument as another, I suppose.”
Thus Gussy punished her mother for putting into words the troubled intuition of her own heart. It was enough, however, to put a stop to the discussion, which was what she desired most. Mrs. Harwood was so much moved that, wanting an outlet somewhere, she was driven to confiding in Janet, who came down to the drawing-room earlier than usual. Gussy had gone out somewhere to tea.
“I don’t seem to understand the simplest questions nowadays,” she said, fretfully; “they all think me so old-fashioned that I am not worth considering. Do you think it an honorable thing, Janet, or right, or wise for a man to flutter for years about a girl, always coming after her, never letting her alone, so that everybody has remarked it, and yet never saying a word that could compromise him, though he has quite compromised her? Do you think there is any sense in which that could be called right?”
“No,” said Janet, in a very low tone, smitten by sudden compunction.
She had her back to Mrs. Harwood, pouring out the tea.
“What do you say? Oh, I suppose you are just like the rest, and don’t see any harm in it. But I assure you I do. If anyone haunted you like that, my dear, under my roof, I should certainly think it my duty to interfere.”
“Oh, I hope not, Mrs Harwood; isn’t that surely the very worst thing that can be done—to interfere——”
“Interfere!” said Mrs. Harwood, indignantly; “I should soon interfere. I should not let anything like that go on, I promise you. The worst is,” she went on, with a troubled countenance, “that with one’s own——”
She stopped here, finding further revelation, perhaps, injudicious; but apparently the mere suggestion of interference in one case showed the possibility of doing so in another. She had taken the cup of tea from Janet’s hand, who sat down opposite her, in a way which was very familiar and home-like, and Mrs. Harwood’s mouth was opened. After a pause she began, with a little laugh,
“My son is not of that kind. I wonder, by the way, what has become of him that he is not in for tea? He is rather the other way. He goes a great deal too fast. If ever he thinks he is in love he will blurt out everything at once, and perhaps find himself bound for life to some one whom he has only known for a few days.”
“That is even more dangerous than the other way,” said Janet, with exceeding demureness, in the half light.
“Worse for the man, but not for the woman, who gets everything she wants. The other is a great deal better for the man, who holds off until he is quite sure——”
“One would think, then, that you rather approve of that last way, though I thought you had condemned it; but perhaps it is only for your son you would like it, and not for other people——”
“I don’t approve it at all,” cried Mrs. Harwood, hotly. “A girl’s best years may be wasted like that—always waiting and waiting—and perhaps some other cut her out in the end. You can’t think I should approve of that, my dear. I only say that Dolff, poor boy, is all the other way, and will most likely fling himself at the head of the first girl he fancies, which would be a pity for the girl too, for Dolff will not be very well off. He has got his grandfather’s little property in Wales, which is entailed on him, but he has in reality nothing more: though perhaps people might think otherwise, seeing him always treated as if he were the master of the house.”
Janet made no answer for a minute or two, and then, with a not unnatural instinct of combativeness, it occurred to her to carry the war into the enemy’s country.
She asked: “Have you been very long in this house, Mrs. Harwood?” in her most childlike voice.
“Eh? Oh! in this house? We came about fifteen years ago when Julia was a baby,” she answered, briefly.
“You must have done a great deal to it to make it so pretty. And have you really never used the wing?”
“The wing?”
Mrs. Harwood, in the first impulse of astonishment, raised her eyes and stared at Janet, but said no more.
“It looks,” said Janet, “as if it must be such a nice, well-shaped room—or perhaps there is more than one room? Many people would be so glad to have that little additional space.”
“You seem to know a great deal about it,” said Mrs. Harwood, “though I don’t quite know how, for it has been shut up for years, and none of the servants even have ever been in. It is full of old furniture from my home in Wales—and other lumber.”
“To be sure,” said Janet, “a nice lumber-room where you can put everything is of great use.”
“Yes, it is of great use; and, as it happens it would be of no particular use in any other way; for we have as many rooms as we want, and two or three for visitors—which is as much as anybody could desire in London. Of course it is a different thing in a country house. How is it that you have formed such a very clear idea of the wing, Janet? Many people never find it out.”
“I suppose,” said Janet, “because I have been walking so much in the garden lately, and one goes all the round of the house, and one speculates——”
“On what, I should like to know?” cried Mrs. Harwood, sitting bolt upright in her chair.
“Oh, nothing; only on the shape of the house, and what a nice corner it seems, and so much sun. Perhaps I was so bold as to think it would make a nice school-room,” said Janet, with a little laugh, “and so shut off from the rest of the house.”
“Oh, if that is all!” said Mrs. Harwood. She resumed, after a moment, “I would not advise it for that use. Of course I don’t myself believe in anything of the kind, but there are curious stories about it, about things that have been heard—and seen too, I believe. The last people who lived here were very queer people. I can’t tell you all that was said of them. The door of communication used to be open, but the servants in a body begged that it might be shut up. You have noticed, perhaps, that it is quite done away with.”
“Is it built up?” asked Janet, with great innocence.
“Built up? oh, no, that’s a strong step to take. After us there might come somebody who would want to use it, and building up is a strong step. But it’s almost the same—it is fastened up very effectually, so that no one can either come orgo—not even,” said Mrs. Harwood, with an abrupt laugh, “a ghost.”
“But Vicars,” said Janet, pursuing the investigation, “can go out and in, I suppose?”
“Vicars?” cried Mrs. Harwood. “What do you suppose he has to do with it? Oh, I know now. You have heard that he lives on the ground-floor. So he does; but his rooms open from outside, as you may have seen. You must keep your eyes very well about you, Janet, to have found out all that.”
“No,” said Janet; “I only can’t help seeing things—that is, some things. And, to tell the truth, I have heard once or twice a curious noise which has frightened me very much. And I never had heard any of the stories, so it was all the more strange.”
Mrs. Harwood looked at her for a few moments with a fixed look; veiling her face, however, by means of the cup of tea which she had raised to her lips. Then she relapsed again into a laugh.
“You must not take such foolish fancies into your head, my dear.Idon’t believe in anything of the kind. You may be sure there is some quite simple explanation of it—the wind in a chimney, or some other trick of acoustics, as they call it. You are far too sensible to believe in ghosts or mysterious noises. There is Dolff, I think, at the door.”
“I hope the tea is strong enough for him. He likes it strong,” said Janet.
“Oh, I am sure it will do very well. Janet! be careful how you mention such a thing to Dolff. He is very imaginative and impressionable. I don’t want his mind to be disturbed about the house. Pay a little attention to me, my dear; I am quite in earnest in what I say.”
“I shall certainly pay attention to whatever you tell me, Mrs. Harwood.”
“I know you will. I know you will! Not another word about it, as he is just coming in—nor to anyone, if you please, my dear. The servants get hold of such things, and make a story out of them, however small the incident may be; and there is a continual fuss, with their frights and their imaginations. You may mention it to Gussy if you like, but to no one else. Well, Dolff, we were just wondering what kept you so late for tea. Gussy and Ju have gone out to a tea-party, but I always calculate upon you to hand me my piece of cake.”
“You have got Miss Summerhayes, mother,” said Dolff, as if that was all that anyone could require.
Janetwithdrew as quickly as she could from the drawing-room when she had given Dolff the tea which he now took so regularly, and which his family considered such a sign of mental and moral reformation. There was indeed no chance of being left alone with him, which was the thing of all others she most wished to avoid, for Mrs. Harwood could not go away, and was always present when she had once been wheeled into the room; but Janet knew that Dolff would ask her to come to the piano, and take advantage of the withdrawal there to say things to her which made it very difficult to keep him at arm’s length as she wished. She turned away while he was talking to his mother, stealing out of the room, knowing that her absence would be felt by both, but longing to escape, feeling the agitation and excitement more than she could bear. And there could be no doubt that to-night that agitation would be stronger than ever, for Meredith was sure to come to talk over the dance, as was almost necessary considering his intimacy in the house; and her heart beat wildly when she thought of meeting him again in the presence of them all, Gussy and Dolff, and the mother whose secret they had discovered. All of the three were more or less wronged in that secret alliance which had been formed between Meredith and Janet; an alliance, was it, or a conspiracy? The girl shrank into herself for a moment when she thought of this, and of the unsuspecting family who knew nothing of it, and would receive Meredith with such warm kindness, and was so good to herself. She shrank—but then forgot everything else in the consciousness that she should meet him to-night—that once more they would be in the same room, and that with his eyes at least he would say to her many wonderful agitating things.
Perhaps this secrecy, and the absorbing excitement there was in meeting him under the eyes of those who were so deceived, who were so little aware of what was going on beneath, held Janet’s interest more than anything else. A conspiracy has always a strange fascination in it, and to carry on secret communications in the face of every scrutiny, and balk suspicion, and baffle watchfulness, has, especially to the very young, a piquancy which legitimate intercourse often does not have. Janet could not escape the sense of guilt, but the interest, the dramatic combinations that would be gone through in the evening, her own position as the heroine of the situation, a place which Gussy thought was hers, but which was not hers, was too strong, or Janet’s conscience too weak to conquer. Everything yielded to the thought of what he would say. How he would manage all the conflicting elements, whether he would be able to say a word to her to tell her if he had received her letter. It was far more engrossing, far more absorbing than any play.
And it may be imagined what a party it was that sat awaiting Meredith in the bright room where Mrs. Harwood sat, with the dimmer one beyond, where all the light centred in the white keys of the piano. Gussy was full of an expectation, not quite serene indeed, but calmer than might have been supposed; for, now that she knew all immediate change to be impossible, she had schooled herself to think that what had been said about a year was in itself a sort of decision upon which, since better could not be, her position for the future might be founded. She awaited his coming, accordingly, with more composure than usual, with a sort of secret assurance, as almost her betrothed—kept from being so only by that exaggerated sense of honor which made her impatient sometimes, yet was nevertheless, in its way, in the mistaken way of men, a high quality. To be able to think highly of the man she loves, although she may think him mistaken, or even wrong—to believe that he is wrong in what is, according to his lights, a chivalrous and high-minded way, is always delightful to a woman. She had reasoned herself into this view of the matter, and she sat accordingly in what poor Gussy thought was her most becoming dress, with a countenance full of light and a heart full of trembling comfort, awaiting her lover.
Dolff was a little sulky: he was disappointed and troubled that Janet had run away from him after tea, just when they might have had, he said to himself, a quiet hour, undisturbed by anyone, either for music or talk. Now that fellow Meredith would come and take possession of the piano, and make an exhibition of himself and his singing all night—keeping everybody else out in the cold. Dolff thought that it was not fair. He ought to be the first to be considered in the house; not a fellow who has not even the pluck to speak out, who was dangling on forever without coming to anything. That would never be Dolff’s case. Difficulty in making up his mind was not a fault of his. He knew what he wanted, and, by Jove, he would have it, too, whatever his mother might say. They would want him to marry somebody with money, he knew;but there was only one woman in the world whom he would ever marry, and what did it matter to him whether they gave their consent or not?
Thus he mused, sitting as near as he could to Janet, talking to her about the music. Talking about music threw dust in the eyes of his mother and sister, and stopped any interference on their part—andsheunderstood well enough what he meant. She was so quick—at the first word, almost before you were aware yourself, she knew what you meant. She was the most wonderful creature that had ever been born; there was none like her, none.
I wonder if Mrs. Harwood, sitting by the side of the fire, had any idea what was going on in the minds of the young people who surrounded her, and who were ready to start, at a word from her, to do anything she wanted. They all thought she had not. Gussy believed that her mother, save for the momentary surprise she had expressed, was entirely satisfied with Meredith, and calmly considered him as one of the family. Dolff thought that his rising passion for Janet would burst upon his mother as a great discovery, calling forth her wrath and (ineffectual) resistance when he should announce it to her. And Janet? Janet was the only one who was not so sure. She was quicker in perception than either of them; and there were looks in Mrs. Harwood’s eyes sometimes which did not consist with the quiescence of herrôleas a mere good-natured mother of a family, living only to humor her children. Besides, Janet was aware of the secret in this genial woman’s life. She knew that there must have been something deeper, something more tragical in it than anybody suspected.
Mrs. Harwood, motionless in her chair, taking every accident with such perfect good-humor, smoothing everybody down, no doubt observing everything, was the one in the party of whom Janet was afraid. But her children were so well accustomed to her, so dutifully, habitually disregardful of her, taking her for granted, as children do, that they made little account of her watchfulness and knowledge. “Mamma takes no notice,” they said and thought.
“I wish you’d just try over this thing with me, Miss Summerhayes. I want to have it perfect,” said Dolff.
“Oh, please do give us a little respite, Dolff—we know all your songs by heart.”
“I did not ask you,” said Dolff, with fraternal rudeness. “So do I know all your songs by heart—and Meredith’s—and I don’t think much of them. Besides, this is none of my old songs,” he said, with a little shyness. “It’s one MissSummerhayes looked up for me, and I know you’ll like it, mother—something old and nice—not classical, which is not in my way——”
“I should think not, indeed,” said Gussy, with scorn.
“Or the other, which I used to like: but I don’t care for them now. Miss Summerhayes—oh,” he continued, rudely, “here’s that fellow; I suppose we shall have to give it up for to-night?”
“There is no reason why you should give up, Dolff. You speak as if Charley—who has far more sense—would ever interfere with you.”
“Oh, I know!” said Dolff, digging his hands into his pockets. He brought the song he had intended to sing to Janet, and standing behind her chair showed her how he had marked it in consonance with her teachings. “You said this was to be verypiano” said Dolff, “it’s not how the stupid printers have done it, but I am sure you know best.”
This appeal to her, though she felt it almost intolerable, carried Janet through the moment of Meredith’s entrance. Gussy rose to meet him, going forward a step involuntarily with the instinctive air of being the person most concerned. He shook hands with Janet as with the rest, pressing her hand as she hoped he did not press the others, till she had nearly cried out, and giving her a look under his eyebrows, which she felt to mean that he had received her communication. And then he sat down, and Dolff retreated, giving up to the superior influence. Meredith brought in with him a changed atmosphere altogether. The humdrum family routine, with all its little subdued oppositions and disagreements, but dull surface of unity, quickened into interest. He divided his smiling looks, his little flattering bantering speeches, among them all.
“Well,” he said, “let’s talk of last night. I suppose that’s still uppermost in all our minds. I hope that you are all quite convinced that it was the greatest possible success.”
“You know,” said Gussy, “we are not very sanguine people in this family. We are always seized with secret doubts afterwards whether all our friends were not making believe to enjoy themselves.”
“I cannot say that is my frame of mind,” said her mother; “yes, I thought it went off very well. Everybody looked pleased; they ate a very good supper, and there was no getting them out of the house. I don’t at all think they were making believe.”
“Ah, mamma, but you’re not quite a Harwood, as I often tell you.”
“You are the best judge, Mrs. Harwood,” said Meredith, “for you look on and see the game. We are all so much engaged in thinking of our own parts that we never take in the whole.”
“I see, perhaps, more that I am supposed to see; but I don’t pretend to be omniscient, Charley, as you give me credit for.”
“With an eye for everything,” he said, laughing—“for our vagaries, all and sundry, and for the supper, and for Vicars and who knows how many private matters besides.”
“Vicars,” said Gussy; “he is the least of mamma’s cares, I should think. He is the most invaluable person for such a party as we had last night. He is the best servant I ever saw, though one might think, as he does so little household work, that he would get out of the way. But he doesn’t. He never forgets anything——”
“Oh, that’s a great deal to say,” said Meredith, again with a laugh. “I think I’ve seen occasions on which he has been caught out.”
Mrs. Harwood took no notice of this, though her attention quickened.
“Vicars,” she said, tranquilly, “is a very old servant; but I think you may give me some credit, for I superintended everything last night.”
Meredith gave Janet a look. Did anybody see it, could anyone notice it, but herself? The secret that they both knew seemed to burn between them like a link of fire.
“Everything,” he said, “is a big word.”
The laugh with which he accompanied this seemed to Janet full of suggestion, and as if he intended his hearers to understand that there was something beneath; but this was probably only her excited consciousness, for he began at once to plunge into details of how Miss Robinson danced all the evening with Mr. Green, and the hard ado he himself had to prevent two rival mothers from coming to blows.
“For I hope you all saw how I devoted myself to supper and the old ladies,” he said.
“You did not dance very much, I perceived,” said Gussy.
“No; and chiefly with the plain people, the people who had no partners.” He sent a laughing glance towards Janet. “Indeed, I think I may give myself credit for having quite fulfilled myrôleof the next friend—the next after the son of the house.”
“Dolff does not understand his duties in that way,” said Mrs. Harwood. “He dances with all the prettiest people, andnever goes near the dowagers; but Charley, I think, is taking too much credit to himself.”
“You seem to me,” said Dolff, returning from the outer room still with his hands in his pockets, “to be making a great deal of talk about nothing. I didn’t see that it required such dreadful exertions to make the dance go off. It went off of itself, as dances usually do, so far as I can see.”
“Dolff settles the matter like a Daniel come to judgment. Well, I can only say for myself that last night is one that I shall remember all my life. For finding out more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in anyone’s philosophy, commend me to a dance.”
“Finding out?” said Gussy, with a look of surprise.
“Oh, yes; the hearts are uncovered like the shoulders, and all the corners of the house open. Don’t you agree with me, Miss Summerhayes?”
Janet fell a thrill of terror come over her. What did he mean? Was he going to disclose their discovery, to demand explanations?
“I don’t think,” she said, faltering, “that I—wanted to find out anything. It was a very nice dance.”
“That’s what I say,”, said Dolff. “I don’t understand metaphysics. But it was not quite such a nice dance as I hoped,” he said once more, stooping over Janet’s chair.
It is probable that this last little speech was not intended to be heard, but there was a pause at this moment, and as a matter of fact it was audible enough. Mrs. Harwood and Gussy both looked towards the speaker, whose boyish face was a little flushed as he looked down upon the governess. It diverted their attention from the fact that there was something strange, not quite comprehensible, in what Meredith had said. They were not susceptible about the discoveries that could be made in their house; perhaps, Gussy thought, though his language was a little strange, that all he said was directed to herself, to impress upon her the communications of last night, and to make it more and more evident to her that, little as had been said then, he considered the evening a turning-point in his life. She was very willing to adopt this view. It flattered all her feelings, and confirmed her wishes. He was wrong, oh, very wrong, in that point of honor of his; but he was very anxious. And that, notwithstanding the visionary necessity that sealed his lips, she should fully understand him she threw herself into the discussion and led him on to the gossip of which he was a master, and which amused Mrs. Harwood. They took all the ladies and their toilets to pieces, andMeredith had various stories, funny and otherwise, to tell of the men.
In society of every kind the characters of the absent are often torn to pieces with no particular motive, or one which is half good, to divert the minds of the audience from more important things. The friends of the Harwoods suffered in this way, because the situation had become, nobody knew how, somewhat strained, and the conversation, no one could understand wherefore, uncomfortably significant—and this holocaust was offered up with the usual advantageous results.