Lady Janet’s high breeding restrained her from saying anything until the police officer was out of hearing. Then, and not till then, she appealed to Julian.
“I presume you are in the secret of this?” she said. “I suppose you have some reason for setting my authority at defiance in my own house?”
“I have never yet failed to respect your ladyship,” Julian answered. “Before long you will know that I am not failing in respect toward you now.”
Lady Janet looked across the room. Grace was listening eagerly, conscious that events had taken some mysterious turn in her favor within the last minute.
“Is it part of your new arrangement of my affairs,” her ladyship continued, “that this person is to remain in the house?”
The terror that had daunted Grace had not lost all hold of her yet. She left it to Julian to reply. Before he could speak Mercy crossed the room and whispered to her, “Give me time to confess it in writing. I can’t own it before them—with this round my neck.” She pointed to the necklace. Grace cast a threatening glance at her, and suddenly looked away again in silence.
Mercy answered Lady Janet’s question. “I beg your ladyship to permit her to remain until the half hour is over,” she said. “My request will have explained itself by that time.”
Lady Janet raised no further obstacles. For something in Mercy’s face, or in Mercy’s tone, seemed to have silenced her, as it had silenced Grace. Horace was the next who spoke. In tones of suppressed rage and suspicion he addressed himself to Mercy, standing fronting him by Julian’s side.
“Am I included,” he asked, “in the arrangement which engages you to explain your extraordinary conduct in half an hour?”
His hand had placed his mother’s wedding present round Mercy’s neck. A sharp pang wrung her as she looked at Horace, and saw how deeply she had already distressed and offended him. The tears rose in her eyes; she humbly and faintly answered him.
“If you please,” was all she could say, before the cruel swelling at her heart rose and silenced her.
Horace’s sense of injury refused to be soothed by such simple submission as this.
“I dislike mysteries and innuendoes,” he went on, harshly. “In my family circle we are accustomed to meet each other frankly. Why am I to wait half an hour for an explanation which might be given now? What am I to wait for?”
Lady Janet recovered herself as Horace spoke.
“I entirely agree with you,” she said. “I ask, too, what are we to wait for?”
Even Julian’s self-possession failed him when his aunt repeated that cruelly plain question. How would Mercy answer it? Would her courage still hold out?
“You have asked me what you are to wait for,” she said to Horace, quietly and firmly. “Wait to hear something more of Mercy Merrick.”
Lady Janet listened with a look of weary disgust.
“Don’t return to that!” she said. “We know enough about Mercy Merrick already.”
“Pardon me—your ladyship does not know. I am the only person who can inform you.”
“You?”
She bent her head respectfully.
“I have begged you, Lady Janet, to give me half an hour,” she went on. “In half an hour I solemnly engage myself to produce Mercy Merrick in this room. Lady Janet Roy, Mr. Horace Holmcroft, you are to wait for that.”
Steadily pledging herself in those terms to make her confession, she unclasped the pearls from her neck, put them away in their cases and placed it in Horace’s hand. “Keep it,” she said, with a momentary faltering in her voice, “until we meet again.”
Horace took the case in silence; he looked and acted like a man whose mind was paralyzed by surprise. His hand moved mechanically. His eyes followed Mercy with a vacant, questioning look. Lady Janet seemed, in her different way, to share the strange oppression that had fallen on him. A vague sense of dread and distress hung like a cloud over her mind. At that memorable moment she felt her age, she looked her age, as she had never felt it or looked it yet.
“Have I your ladyship’s leave,” said Mercy, respectfully, “to go to my room?”
Lady Janet mutely granted the request. Mercy’s last look, before she went out, was a look at Grace. “Are you satisfied now?” the grand gray eyes seemed to say, mournfully. Grace turned her head aside, with a quick, petulant action. Even her narrow nature opened for a moment unwillingly, and let pity in a little way, in spite of itself.
Mercy’s parting words recommended Grace to Julian’s care:
“You will see that she is allowed a room to wait in? You will warn her yourself when the half hour has expired?”
Julian opened the library door for her.
“Well done! Nobly done!” he whispered. “All my sympathy is with you—all my help is yours.”
Her eyes looked at him, and thanked him, through her gathering tears. His own eyes were dimmed. She passed quietly down the room, and was lost to him before he had shut the door again.
CHAPTER XXI. THE FOOTSTEP IN THE CORRIDOR.
MERCY was alone.
She had secured one half hour of retirement in her own room, designing to devote that interval to the writing of her confession, in the form of a letter addressed to Julian Gray.
No recent change in her position had, as yet, mitigated her horror of acknowledging to Horace and to Lady Janet that she had won her way to their hearts in disguise. Through Julian only could she say the words which were to establish Grace Roseberry in her right position in the house.
How was her confession to be addressed to him? In writing? or by word of mouth?
After all that had happened, from the time when Lady Janet’s appearance had interrupted them, she would have felt relief rather than embarrassment in personally opening her heart to the man who had so delicately understood her, who had so faithfully befriended her in her sorest need. But the repeated betrayals of Horace’s jealous suspicion of Julian warned her that she would only be surrounding herself with new difficulties, and be placing Julian in a position of painful embarrassment, if she admitted him to a private interview while Horace was in the house.
The one course left to take was the course that she had adopted. Determining to address the narrative of the Fraud to Julian in the form of a letter, she arranged to add, at the close, certain instructions, pointing out to him the line of conduct which she wished him to pursue.
These instructions contemplated the communication of her letter to Lady Janet and to Horace in the library, while Mercy—self-confessed as the missing woman whom she had pledged herself to produce—awaited in the adjoining room whatever sentence it pleased them to pronounce on her. Her resolution not to screen herself behind Julian from any consequences which might follow the confession had taken root in her mind from the moment when Horace had harshly asked her (and when Lady Janet had joined him in asking) why she delayed her explanation, and what she was keeping them waiting for. Out of the very pain which those questions inflicted, the idea of waiting her sentence in her own person in one room, while her letter to Julian was speaking for her in another, had sprung to life. “Let them break my heart if they like,” she had thought to herself, in the self-abasement of that bitter moment; “it will be no more than I have deserved.”
She locked her door and opened her writing-desk. Knowing what she had to do, she tried to collect herself and do it.
The effort was in vain. Those persons who study writing as an art are probably the only persons who can measure the vast distance which separates a conception as it exists in the mind from the reduction of that conception to form and shape in words. The heavy stress of agitation that had been laid on Mercy for hours together had utterly unfitted her for the delicate and difficult process of arranging the events of a narrative in their due sequence and their due proportion toward each other. Again and again she tried to begin her letter, and again and again she was baffled by the same hopeless confusion of ideas. She gave up the struggle in despair.
A sense of sinking at her heart, a weight of hysterical oppression on her bosom, warned her not to leave herself unoccupied, a prey to morbid self-investigation and imaginary alarms.
She turned instinctively, for a temporary employment of some kind, to the consideration of her own future. Here there were no intricacies or entanglements. The prospect began and ended with her return to the Refuge, if the matron would receive her. She did no injustice to Julian Gray; that great heart would feel for her, that kind hand would be held out to her, she knew. But what would happen if she thoughtlessly accepted all that his sympathy might offer? Scandal would point to her beauty and to his youth, and would place its own vile interpretation on the purest friendship that could exist between them. And he would be the sufferer, for he had a character—a clergyman’s character—to lose. No. For his sake, out of gratitude to him, the farewell to Mablethorpe House must be also the farewell to Julian Gray.
The precious minutes were passing. She resolved to write to the matron and ask if she might hope to be forgiven and employed at the Refuge again. Occupation over the letter that was easy to write might have its fortifying effect on her mind, and might pave the way for resuming the letter that was hard to write. She waited a moment at the window, thinking of the past life to which she was soon to return, before she took up the pen again.
Her window looked eastward. The dusky glare of lighted London met her as her eyes rested on the sky. It seemed to beckon her back to the horror of the cruel streets—to point her way mockingly to the bridges over the black river—to lure her to the top of the parapet, and the dreadful leap into God’s arms, or into annihilation—who knew which?
She turned, shuddering, from the window. “Will it end in that way,” she asked herself, “if the matron says No?”
She began her letter.
“DEAR MADAM—So long a time has passed since you heard from me that I almost shrink from writing to you. I am afraid you have already given me up in your own mind as a hard-hearted, ungrateful woman.
“I have been leading a false life; I have not been fit to write to you before to-day. Now, when I am doing what I can to atone to those whom I have injured—now, when I repent with my whole heart—may I ask leave to return to the friend who has borne with me and helped me through many miserable years? Oh, madam, do not cast me off! I have no one to turn to but you.
“Will you let me own everything to you? Will you forgive me when you know what I have done? Will you take me back into the Refuge, if you have any employment for me by which I may earn my shelter and my bread?
“Before the night comes I must leave the house from which I am now writing. I have nowhere to go to. The little money, the few valuable possessions I have, must be left behind me: they have been obtained under false pretenses; they are not mine. No more forlorn creature than I am lives at this moment. You are a Christian woman. Not for my sake—for Christ’s sake—pity me and take me back.
“I am a good nurse, as you know, and I am a quick worker with my needle. In one way or the other can you not find occupation for me?
“I could also teach, in a very unpretending way. But that is useless. Who would trust their children to a woman without a character? There is no hope for me in this direction. And yet I am so fond of children! I think I could be, not happy again, perhaps, but content with my lot, if I could be associated with them in some way. Are there not charitable societies which are trying to help and protect destitute children wandering about the streets? I think of my own wretched childhood—and oh! I should so like to be employed in saving other children from ending as I have ended. I could work, for such an object as that, from morning to night, and never feel weary. All my heart would be in it; and I should have this advantage over happy and prosperous women—I should have nothing else to think of. Surely they might trust me with the poor little starving wanderers of the streets—if you said a word for me? If I am asking too much, please forgive me. I am so wretched, madam—so lonely and so weary of my life.
“There is only one thing more. My time here is very short. Will you please reply to this letter (to say yes or no) by telegram?
“The name by which you know me is not the name by which I have been known here. I must beg you to address the telegram to ‘The Reverend Julian Gray, Mablethorpe House, Kensington.’ He is here, and he will show it to me. No words of mine can describe what I owe to him. He has never despaired of me—he has saved me from myself. God bless and reward the kindest, truest, best man I have ever known!
“I have no more to say, except to ask you to excuse this long letter, and to believe me your grateful servant, ——.”
She signed and inclosed the letter, and wrote the address. Then, for the first time, an obstacle which she ought to have seen before showed itself, standing straight in her way.
There was no time to forward her letter in the ordinary manner by post. It must be taken to its destination by a private messenger. Lady Janet’s servants had hitherto been, one and all, at her disposal. Could she presume to employ them on her own affairs, when she might be dismissed from the house, a disgraced woman, in half an hour’s time? Of the two alternatives it seemed better to take her chance, and present herself at the Refuge without asking leave first.
While she was still considering the question she was startled by a knock at her door. On opening it she admitted Lady Janet’s maid, with a morsel of folded note-paper in her hand.
“From my lady, miss,” said the woman, giving her the note. “There is no answer.”
Mercy stopped her as she was about to leave the room. The appearance of the maid suggested an inquiry to her. She asked if any of the servants were likely to be going into town that afternoon.
“Yes, miss. One of the grooms is going on horseback, with a message to her ladyship’s coach-maker.”
The Refuge was close by the coach-maker’s place of business. Under the circumstances, Mercy was emboldened to make use of the man. It was a pardonable liberty to employ his services now.
“Will you kindly give the groom that letter for me?” she said. “It will not take him out of his way. He has only to deliver it—nothing more.”
The woman willingly complied with the request. Left once more by herself, Mercy looked at the little note which had been placed in her hands.
It was the first time that her benefactress had employed this formal method of communicating with her when they were both in the house. What did such a departure from established habits mean? Had she received her notice of dismissal? Had Lady Janet’s quick intelligence found its way already to a suspicion of the truth? Mercy’s nerves were unstrung. She trembled pitiably as she opened the folded note.
It began without a form of address, and it ended without a signature. Thus it ran:
“I must request you to delay for a little while the explanation which you have promised me. At my age, painful surprises are very trying things. I must have time to compose myself, before I can hear what you have to say. You shall not be kept waiting longer than I can help. In the meanwhile everything will go on as usual. My nephew Julian, and Horace Holmcroft, and the lady whom I found in the dining-room, will, by my desire, remain in the house until I am able to meet them, and to meet you, again.”
There the note ended. To what conclusion did it point?
Had Lady Janet really guessed the truth? or had she only surmised that her adopted daughter was connected in some discreditable manner with the mystery of “Mercy Merrick”? The line in which she referred to the intruder in the dining-room as “the lady” showed very remarkably that her opinions had undergone a change in that quarter. But was the phrase enough of itself to justify the inference that she had actually anticipated the nature of Mercy’s confession? It was not easy to decide that doubt at the moment—and it proved to be equally difficult to throw any light on it at an aftertime. To the end of her life Lady Janet resolutely refused to communicate to any one the conclusions which she might have privately formed, the griefs which she might have secretly stifled, on that memorable day.
Amid much, however, which was beset with uncertainty, one thing at least was clear. The time at Mercy’s disposal in her own room had been indefinitely prolonged by Mercy’s benefactress. Hours might pass before the disclosure to which she stood committed would be expected from her. In those hours she might surely compose her mind sufficiently to be able to write her letter of confession to Julian Gray.
Once more she placed the sheet of paper before her. Resting her head on her hand as she sat at the table, she tried to trace her way through the labyrinth of the past, beginning with the day when she had met Grace Roseberry in the French cottage, and ending with the day which had brought them face to face, for the second time, in the dining-room at Mablethorpe House.
The chain of events began to unroll itself in her mind clearly, link by link.
She remarked, as she pursued the retrospect, how strangely Chance, or Fate, had paved the way for the act of personation, in the first place.
If they had met under ordinary circumstances, neither Mercy nor Grace would have trusted each other with the confidences which had been exchanged between them. As the event had happened, they had come together, under those extraordinary circumstances of common trial and common peril, in a strange country, which would especially predispose two women of the same nation to open their hearts to each other. In no other way could Mercy have obtained at a first interview that fatal knowledge of Grace’s position and Grace’s affairs which had placed temptation before her as the necessary consequence that followed the bursting of the German shell.
Advancing from this point through the succeeding series of events which had so naturally and yet so strangely favored the perpetration of the fraud, Mercy reached the later period when Grace had followed her to England. Here again she remarked, in the second place, how Chance, or Fate, had once more paved the way for that second meeting which had confronted them with one another at Mablethorpe House.
She had, as she well remembered, attended at a certain assembly (convened by a charitable society) in the character of Lady Janet’s representative, at Lady Janet’s own request. For that reason she had been absent from the house when Grace had entered it. If her return had been delayed by a few minutes only, Julian would have had time to take Grace out of the room, and the terrible meeting which had stretched Mercy senseless on the floor would never have taken place. As the event had happened, the period of her absence had been fatally shortened by what appeared at the time to be, the commonest possible occurrence. The persons assembled at the society’s rooms had disagreed so seriously on the business which had brought them together as to render it necessary to take the ordinary course of adjourning the proceedings to a future day. And Chance, or Fate, had so timed that adjournment as to bring Mercy back into the dining-room exactly at the moment when Grace Roseberry insisted on being confronted with the woman who had taken her place.
She had never yet seen the circumstances in this sinister light. She was alone in her room, at a crisis in her life. She was worn and weakened by emotions which had shaken her to the soul.
Little by little she felt the enervating influences let loose on her, in her lonely position, by her new train of thought. Little by little her heart began to sink under the stealthy chill of superstitious dread. Vaguely horrible presentiments throbbed in her with her pulses, flowed through her with her blood. Mystic oppressions of hidden disaster hovered over her in the atmosphere of the room. The cheerful candle-light turned traitor to her and grew dim. Supernatural murmurs trembled round the house in the moaning of the winter wind. She was afraid to look behind her. On a sudden she felt her own cold hands covering her face, without knowing when she had lifted them to it, or why.
Still helpless, under the horror that held her, she suddenly heard footsteps—a man’s footsteps—in the corridor outside. At other times the sound would have startled her: now it broke the spell. The footsteps suggested life, companionship, human interposition—no matter of what sort. She mechanically took up her pen; she found herself beginning to remember her letter to Julian Gray.
At the same moment the footsteps stopped outside her door. The man knocked.
She still felt shaken. She was hardly mistress of herself yet. A faint cry of alarm escaped her at the sound of the knock. Before it could be repeated she had rallied her courage, and had opened the door.
The man in the corridor was Horace Holmcroft.
His ruddy complexion had turned pale. His hair (of which he was especially careful at other times) was in disorder. The superficial polish of his manner was gone; the undisguised man, sullen, distrustful, irritated to the last degree of endurance, showed through. He looked at her with a watchfully suspicious eye; he spoke to her, without preface or apology, in a coldly angry voice.
“Are you aware,” he asked, “of what is going on downstairs?”
“I have not left my room,” she answered. “I know that Lady Janet has deferred the explanation which I had promised to give her, and I know no more.”
“Has nobody told you what Lady Janet did after you left us? Has nobody told you that she politely placed her own boudoir at the disposal of the very woman whom she had ordered half an hour before to leave the house? Do you really not know that Mr. Julian Gray has himself conducted this suddenly-honored guest to her place of retirement? and that I am left alone in the midst of these changes, contradictions, and mysteries—the only person who is kept out in the dark?”
“It is surely needless to ask me these questions,” said Mercy, gently. “Who could possibly have told me what was going on below stairs before you knocked at my door?”
He looked at her with an ironical affectation of surprise.
“You are strangely forgetful to-day,” he said. “Surely your friend Mr. Julian Gray might have told you? I am astonished to hear that he has not had his private interview yet.”
“I don’t understand you, Horace.”
“I don’t want you to understand me,” he retorted, irritably. “The proper person to understand me is Julian Gray. I look to him to account to me for the confidential relations which seem to have been established between you behind my back. He has avoided me thus far, but I shall find my way to him yet.”
His manner threatened more than his words expressed. In Mercy’s nervous condition at the moment, it suggested to her that he might attempt to fasten a quarrel on Julian Gray.
“You are entirely mistaken,” she said, warmly. “You are ungratefully doubting your best and truest friend. I say nothing of myself. You will soon discover why I patiently submit to suspicions which other women would resent as an insult.”
“Let me discover it at once. Now! Without wasting a moment more!”
There had hitherto been some little distance between them. Mercy had listened, waiting on the threshold of her door; Horace had spoken, standing against the opposite wall of the corridor. When he said his last words he suddenly stepped forward, and (with something imperative in the gesture) laid his hand on her arm. The strong grasp of it almost hurt her. She struggled to release herself.
“Let me go!” she said. “What do you mean?”
He dropped her arm as suddenly as he had taken it.
“You shall know what I mean,” he replied. “A woman who has grossly outraged and insulted you—whose only excuse is that she is mad—is detained in the house at your desire, I might almost say at your command, when the police officer is waiting to take her away. I have a right to know what this means. I am engaged to marry you. If you won’t trust other people, you are bound to explain yourself to Me. I refuse to wait for Lady Janet’s convenience. I insist (if you force me to say so)—I insist on knowing the real nature of your connection with this affair. You have obliged me to follow you here; it is my only opportunity of speaking to you. You avoid me; you shut yourself up from me in your own room. I am not your husband yet—I have no right to follow you in. But there are other rooms open to us. The library is at our disposal, and I will take care that we are not interrupted. I am now going there, and I have a last question to ask. You are to be my wife in a week’s time: will you take me into your confidence or not?”
To hesitate was, in this case, literally to be lost. Mercy’s sense of justice told her that Horace had claimed no more than his due. She answered instantly:
“I will follow you to the library, Horace, in five minutes.”
Her prompt and frank compliance with his wishes surprised and touched him. He took her hand.
She had endured all that his angry sense of injury could say. His gratitude wounded her to the quick. The bitterest moment she had felt yet was the moment in which he raised her hand to his lips, and murmured tenderly, “My own true Grace!” She could only sign to him to leave her, and hurry back into her own room.
Her first feeling, when she found herself alone again, was wonder—wonder that it should never have occurred to her, until he had himself suggested it, that her betrothed husband had the foremost right to her confession. Her horror at owning to either of them that she had cheated them out of their love had hitherto placed Horace and Lady Janet on the same level. She now saw for the first time that there was no comparison between the claims which they respectively had on her. She owned an allegiance to Horace to which Lady Janet could assert no right. Cost her what it might to avow the truth to him with her own lips, the cruel sacrifice must be made.
Without a moment’s hesitation she put away her writing materials. It amazed her that she should ever have thought of using Julian Gray as an interpreter between the man to whom she was betrothed and herself. Julian’s sympathy (she thought) must have made a strong impression on her indeed to blind her to a duty which was beyond all compromise, which admitted of no dispute!
She had asked for five minutes of delay before she followed Horace. It was too long a time.
Her one chance of finding courage to crush him with the dreadful revelation of who she really was, of what she had really done, was to plunge headlong into the disclosure without giving herself time to think. The shame of it would overpower her if she gave herself time to think.
She turned to the door to follow him at once.
Even at that terrible moment the most ineradicable of all a woman’s instincts—the instinct of personal self-respect—brought her to a pause. She had passed through more than one terrible trial since she had dressed to go downstairs. Remembering this, she stopped mechanically, retraced her steps, and looked at herself in the glass.
There was no motive of vanity in what she now did. The action was as unconscious as if she had buttoned an unfastened glove, or shaken out a crumpled dress. Not the faintest idea crossed her mind of looking to see if her beauty might still plead for her, and of trying to set it off at its best.
A momentary smile, the most weary, the most hopeless, that ever saddened a woman’s face, appeared in the reflection which her mirror gave her back. “Haggard, ghastly, old before my time!” she said to herself. “Well! better so. He will feel it less—he will not regret me.”
With that thought she went downstairs to meet him in the library.
CHAPTER XXII. THE MAN IN THE DINING-ROOM.
IN the great emergencies of life we feel, or we act, as our dispositions incline us. But we never think. Mercy’s mind was a blank as she descended the stairs. On her way down she was conscious of nothing but the one headlong impulse to get to the library in the shortest possible space of time. Arrived at the door, the impulse capriciously left her. She stopped on the mat, wondering why she had hurried herself, with time to spare. Her heart sank; the fever of her excitement changed suddenly to a chill as she faced the closed door, and asked herself the question, Dare I go in?
Her own hand answered her. She lifted it to turn the handle of the lock. It dropped again helplessly at her side.
The sense of her own irresolution wrung from her a low exclamation of despair. Faint as it was, it had apparently not passed unheard. The door was opened from within—and Horace stood before her.
He drew aside to let her pass into the room. But he never followed her in. He stood in the doorway, and spoke to her, keeping the door open with his hand.
“Do you mind waiting here for me?” he asked.
She looked at him, in vacant surprise, doubting whether she had heard him aright.
“It will not be for long,” he went on. “I am far too anxious to hear what you have to tell me to submit to any needless delays. The truth is, I have had a message from Lady Janet.”
(From Lady Janet! What could Lady Janet want with him, at a time when she was bent on composing herself in the retirement of her own room?)
“I ought to have said two messages,” Horace proceeded. “The first was given to me on my way downstairs. Lady Janet wished to see me immediately. I sent an excuse. A second message followed. Lady Janet would accept no excuse. If I refused to go to her I should be merely obliging her to come to me. It is impossible to risk being interrupted in that way; my only alternative is to get the thing over as soon as possible. Do you mind waiting?”
“Certainly not. Have you any idea of what Lady Janet wants with you?”
“No. Whatever it is, she shall not keep me long away from you. You will be quite alone here; I have warned the servants not to show any one in.” With those words he left her.
Mercy’s first sensation was a sensation of relief—soon lost in a feeling of shame at the weakness which could welcome any temporary relief in such a position as hers. The emotion thus roused merged, in its turn, into a sense of impatient regret. “But for Lady Janet’s message,” she thought to herself, “I might have known my fate by this time!”
The slow minutes followed each other drearily. She paced to and fro in the library, faster and faster, under the intolerable irritation, the maddening uncertainty, of her own suspense. Ere long, even the spacious room seemed to be too small for her. The sober monotony of the long book-lined shelves oppressed and offended her. She threw open the door which led into the dining-room, and dashed in, eager for a change of objects, athirst for more space and more air.
At the first step she checked herself; rooted to the spot, under a sudden revulsion of feeling which quieted her in an instant.
The room was only illuminated by the waning fire-light. A man was obscurely visible, seated on the sofa, with his elbows on his knees and his head resting on his hands. He looked up as the open door let in the light from the library lamps. The mellow glow reached his face and revealed Julian Gray.
Mercy was standing with her back to the light; her face being necessarily hidden in deep shadow. He recognized her by her figure, and by the attitude into which it unconsciously fell. That unsought grace, that lithe long beauty of line, belonged to but one woman in the house. He rose, and approached her.
“I have been wishing to see you,” he said, “and hoping that accident might bring about some such meeting as this.”
He offered her a chair. Mercy hesitated before she took her seat. This was their first meeting alone since Lady Janet had interrupted her at the moment when she was about to confide to Julian the melancholy story of the past. Was he anxious to seize the opportunity of returning to her confession? The terms in which he had addressed her seemed to imply it. She put the question to him in plain words,
“I feel the deepest interest in hearing all that you have still to confide to me,” he answered. “But anxious as I may be, I will not hurry you. I will wait, if you wish it.”
“I am afraid I must own that I do wish it,” Mercy rejoined. “Not on my account—but because my time is at the disposal of Horace Holmcroft. I expect to see him in a few minutes.”
“Could you give me those few minutes?” Julian asked. “I have something on my side to say to you which I think you ought to know before you see any one—Horace himself included.”
He spoke with a certain depression of tone which was not associated with her previous experience of him. His face looked prematurely old and careworn in the red light of the fire. Something had plainly happened to sadden and to disappoint him since they had last met.
“I willingly offer you all the time that I have at my own command,” Mercy replied. “Does what you have to tell me relate to Lady Janet?”
He gave her no direct reply. “What I have to tell you of Lady Janet,” he said, gravely, “is soon told. So far as she is concerned you have nothing more to dread. Lady Janet knows all.”
Even the heavy weight of oppression caused by the impending interview with Horace failed to hold its place in Mercy’s mind when Julian answered her in those words.
“Come into the lighted room,” she said, faintly. “It is too terrible to hear you say that in the dark.”
Julian followed her into the library. Her limbs trembled under her. She dropped into a chair, and shrank under his great bright eyes, as he stood by her side looking sadly down on her.
“Lady Janet knows all!” she repeated, with her head on her breast, and the tears falling slowly over her cheeks. “Have you told her?”
“I have said nothing to Lady Janet or to any one. Your confidence is a sacred confidence to me, until you have spoken first.”
“Has Lady Janet said anything to you?”
“Not a word. She has looked at you with the vigilant eyes of love; she has listened to you with the quick hearing of love—and she has found her own way to the truth. She will not speak of it to me—she will not speak of it to any living creature. I only know now how dearly she loved you. In spite of herself she clings to you still. Her life, poor soul, has been a barren one; unworthy, miserably unworthy, of such a nature as hers. Her marriage was loveless and childless. She has had admirers, but never, in the higher sense of the word, a friend. All the best years of her life have been wasted in the unsatisfied longing for something to love. At the end of her life You have filled the void. Her heart has found its youth again, through You. At her age—at any age—is such a tie as this to be rudely broken at the mere bidding of circumstances? No! She will suffer anything, risk anything, forgive anything, rather than own, even to herself, that she has been deceived in you. There is more than her happiness at stake; there is pride, a noble pride, in such love as hers, which will ignore the plainest discovery and deny the most unanswerable truth. I am firmly convinced—from my own knowledge of her character, and from what I have observed in her to-day—that she will find some excuse for refusing to hear your confession. And more than that, I believe (if the exertion of her influence can do it) that she will leave no means untried of preventing you from acknowledging your true position here to any living creature. I take a serious responsibility on myself in telling you this—and I don’t shrink from it. You ought to know, and you shall know, what trials and what temptations may yet lie before you.”
He paused—leaving Mercy time to compose herself, if she wished to speak to him.
She felt that there was a necessity for her speaking to him. He was plainly not aware that Lady Janet had already written to her to defer her promised explanation. This circumstance was in itself a confirmation of the opinion which he had expressed. She ought to mention it to him; she tried to mention it to him. But she was not equal to the effort. The few simple words in which he had touched on the tie that bound Lady Janet to her had wrung her heart. Her tears choked her. She could only sign to him to go on.
“You may wonder at my speaking so positively,” he continued, “with nothing better than my own conviction to justify me. I can only say that I have watched Lady Janet too closely to feel any doubt. I saw the moment in which the truth flashed on her, as plainly as I now see you. It did not disclose itself gradually—it burst on her, as it burst on me. She suspected nothing—she was frankly indignant at your sudden interference and your strange language—until the time came in which you pledged yourself to produce Mercy Merrick. Then (and then only) the truth broke on her mind, trebly revealed to her in your words, your voice, and your look. Then (and then only) I saw a marked change come over her, and remain in her while she remained in the room. I dread to think of what she may do in the first reckless despair of the discovery that she has made. I distrust—though God knows I am not naturally a suspicious man—the most apparently trifling events that are now taking place about us. You have held nobly to your resolution to own the truth. Prepare yourself, before the evening is over, to be tried and tempted again.”
Mercy lifted her head. Fear took the place of grief in her eyes, as they rested in startled inquiry on Julian’s face.
“How is it possible that temptation can come to me now?” she asked.
“I will leave it to events to answer that question,” he said. “You will not have long to wait. In the meantime I have put you on your guard.” He stooped, and spoke his next words earnestly, close at her ear. “Hold fast by the admirable courage which you have shown thus far,” he went on. “Suffer anything rather than suffer the degradation of yourself. Be the woman whom I once spoke of—the woman I still have in my mind—who can nobly reveal the noble nature that is in her. And never forget this—my faith in you is as firm as ever!”
She looked at him proudly and gratefully.
“I am pledged to justify your faith in me,” she said. “I have put it out of my own power to yield. Horace has my promise that I will explain everything to him, in this room.”
Julian started.
“Has Horace himself asked it of you?” he inquired. “He, at least, has no suspicion of the truth.”
“Horace has appealed to my duty to him as his betrothed wife,” she answered. “He has the first claim to my confidence—he resents my silence, and he has a right to resent it. Terrible as it will be to open his eyes to the truth, I must do it if he asks me.”
She was looking at Julian while she spoke. The old longing to associate with the hard trial of the confession the one man who had felt for her, and believed in her, revived under another form. If she could only know, while she was saying the fatal words to Horace, that Julian was listening too, she would be encouraged to meet the worst that could happen! As the idea crossed her mind, she observed that Julian was looking toward the door through which they had lately passed. In an instant she saw the means to her end. Hardly waiting to hear the few kind expressions of sympathy and approval which he addressed to her, she hinted timidly at the proposal which she had now to make to him.
“Are you going back into the next room?” she asked.
“Not if you object to it,” he replied.
“I don’t object. I want you to be there.”
“After Horace has joined you?”
“Yes. After Horace has joined me.”
“Do you wish to see me when it is over?”
She summoned her resolution, and told him frankly what she had in her mind.
“I want you to be near me while I am speaking to Horace,” she said. “It will give me courage if I can feel that I am speaking to you as well as to him. I can count on your sympathy—and sympathy is so precious to me now! Am I asking too much, if I ask you to leave the door unclosed when you go back to the dining-room? Think of the dreadful trial—to him as well as to me! I am only a woman; I am afraid I may sink under it, if I have no friend near me. And I have no friend but you.”
In those simple words she tried her powers of persuasion on him for the first time.
Between perplexity and distress Julian was, for the moment, at a loss how to answer her. The love for Mercy which he dared not acknowledge was as vital a feeling in him as the faith in her which he had been free to avow. To refuse anything that she asked of him in her sore need—and, more even than that, to refuse to hear the confession which it had been her first impulse to make to him—these were cruel sacrifices to his sense of what was due to Horace and of what was due to himself. But shrink as he might, even from the appearance of deserting her, it was impossible for him (except under a reserve which was almost equivalent to a denial) to grant her request.
“All that I can do I will do,” he said. “The doors shall be left unclosed, and I will remain in the next room, on this condition, that Horace knows of it as well as you. I should be unworthy of your confidence in me if I consented to be a listener on any other terms. You understand that, I am sure, as well as I do.”
She had never thought of her proposal to him in this light. Woman-like, she had thought of nothing but the comfort of having him near her. She understood him now. A faint flush of shame rose on her pale cheeks as she thanked him. He delicately relieved her from her embarrassment by putting a question which naturally occurred under the circumstances.
“Where is Horace all this time?” he asked. “Why is he not here?”
“He has been called away,” she answered, “by a message from Lady Janet.”
The reply more than astonished Julian; it seemed almost to alarm him. He returned to Mercy’s chair; he said to her, eagerly, “Are you sure?”
“Horace himself told me that Lady Janet had insisted on seeing him.”
“When?”
“Not long ago. He asked me to wait for him here while he went upstairs.”
Julian’s face darkened ominously.
“This confirms my worst fears,” he said. “Have you had any communication with Lady Janet?”
Mercy replied by showing him his aunt’s note. He read it carefully through.
“Did I not tell you,” he said, “that she would find some excuse for refusing to hear your confession? She begins by delaying it, simply to gain time for something else which she has it in her mind to do. When did you receive this note? Soon after you went upstairs?”
“About a quarter of an hour after, as well as I can guess.”
“Do you know what happened down here after you left us?”
“Horace told me that Lady Janet had offered Miss Roseberry the use of her boudoir.”
“Any more?”
“He said that you had shown her the way to the room.”
“Did he tell you what happened after that?”
“No.”
“Then I must tell you. If I can do nothing more in this serious state of things, I can at least prevent your being taken by surprise. In the first place, it is right you should know that I had a motive for accompanying Miss Roseberry to the boudoir. I was anxious (for your sake) to make some appeal to her better self—if she had any better self to address. I own I had doubts of my success—judging by what I had already seen of her. My doubts were confirmed. In the ordinary intercourse of life I should merely have thought her a commonplace, uninteresting woman. Seeing her as I saw her while we were alone—in other words, penetrating below the surface—I have never, in all my sad experience, met with such a hopelessly narrow, mean, and low nature as hers. Understanding, as she could not fail to do, what the sudden change in Lady Janet’s behavior toward her really meant, her one idea was to take the cruelest possible advantage of it. So far from feeling any consideration for you, she was only additionally imbittered toward you. She protested against your being permitted to claim the merit of placing her in her right position here by your own voluntary avowal of the truth. She insisted on publicly denouncing you, and on forcing Lady Janet to dismiss you, unheard, before the whole household! ‘Now I can have my revenge! At last Lady Janet is afraid of me!’ Those were her own words—I am almost ashamed to repeat them—those, on my honor, were her own words! Every possible humiliation to be heaped on you; no consideration to be shown for Lady Janet’s age and Lady Janet’s position; nothing, absolutely nothing, to be allowed to interfere with Miss Roseberry’s vengeance and Miss Roseberry’s triumph! There is this woman’s shameless view of what is due to her, as stated by herself in the plainest terms. I kept my temper; I did all I could to bring her to a better frame of mind. I might as well have pleaded—I won’t say with a savage; savages are sometimes accessible to remonstrance, if you know how to reach them—I might as well have pleaded with a hungry animal to abstain from eating while food was within its reach. I had just given up the hopeless effort in disgust, when Lady Janet’s maid appeared with a message for Miss Roseberry from her mistress: ‘My lady’s compliments, ma’am, and she will be glad to see you at your earliest convenience, in her room.’”
Another surprise! Grace Roseberry invited to an interview with Lady Janet! It would have been impossible to believe it, if Julian had not heard the invitation given with his own ears.
“She instantly rose,” Julian proceeded. “‘I won’t keep her ladyship waiting a moment,’ she said; ‘show me the way.’ She signed to the maid to go out of the room first, and then turned round and spoke to me from the door. I despair of describing the insolent exultation of her manner. I can only repeat her words: ‘This is exactly what I wanted! I had intended to insist on seeing Lady Janet: she saves me the trouble. I am infinitely obliged to her.’ With that she nodded to me, and closed the door. I have not seen her, I have not heard of her, since. For all I know, she may be still with my aunt, and Horace may have found her there when he entered the room.”
“What can Lady Janet have to say to her?” Mercy asked, eagerly.
“It is impossible even to guess. When you found me in the dining-room I was considering that very question. I cannot imagine that any neutral ground can exist on which it is possible for Lady Janet and this woman to meet. In her present frame of mind she will in all probability insult Lady Janet before she has been five minutes in the room. I own I am completely puzzled. The one conclusion I can arrive at is that the note which my aunt sent to you, the private interview with Miss Roseberry which has followed, and the summons to Horace which has succeeded in its turn, are all links in the same chain of events, and are all tending to that renewed temptation against which I have already warned you.”
Mercy held up her hand for silence. She looked toward the door that opened on the hall; had she heard a footstep outside? No. All was still. Not a sign yet of Horace’s return.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “what would I not give to know what is going on upstairs!”
“You will soon know it now,” said Julian. “It is impossible that our present uncertainty can last much longer.”
He turned away, intending to go back to the room in which she had found him. Looking at her situation from a man’s point of view, he naturally assumed that the best service he could now render to Mercy would be to leave her to prepare herself for the interview with Horace. Before he had taken three steps away from her she showed him the difference between the woman’s point of view and the man’s. The idea of considering beforehand what she should say never entered her mind. In her horror of being left by herself at that critical moment, she forgot every other consideration. Even the warning remembrance of Horace’s jealous distrust of Julian passed away from her, for the moment, as completely as if it never had a place in her memory. “Don’t leave me!” she cried. “I can’t wait here alone. Come back—come back!”
She rose impulsively while she spoke, as if to follow him into the dining-room, if he persisted in leaving her.
A momentary expression of doubt crossed Julian’s face as he retraced his steps and signed to her to be seated a gain. Could she be depended on (he asked himself) to sustain the coming test of her resolution, when she had not courage enough to wait for events in a room by herself? Julian had yet to learn that a woman’s courage rises with the greatness of the emergency. Ask her to accompany you through a field in which some harmless cattle happen to be grazing, and it is doubtful, in nine cases out of ten, if she will do it. Ask her, as one of the passengers in a ship on fire, to help in setting an example of composure to the rest, and it is certain, in nine cases out of ten, that she will do it. As soon as Julian had taken a chair near her, Mercy was calm again.
“Are you sure of your resolution?” he asked.
“I am certain of it,” she answered, “as long as you don’t leave me by myself.”
The talk between them dropped there. They sat together in silence, with their eyes fixed on the door, waiting for Horace to come in.
After the lapse of a few minutes their attention was attracted by a sound outside in the grounds. A carriage of some sort was plainly audible approaching the house.
The carriage stopped; the bell rang; the front door was opened. Had a visitor arrived? No voice could be heard making inquiries. No footsteps but the servant’s footsteps crossed the hall. Along pause followed, the carriage remaining at the door. Instead of bringing some one to the house, it had apparently arrived to take some one away.
The next event was the return of the servant to the front door. They listened again. Again no second footstep was audible. The door was closed; the servant recrossed the hall; the carriage was driven away. Judging by sounds alone, no one had arrived at the house, and no one had left the house.
Julian looked at Mercy. “Do you understand this?” he asked.
She silently shook her head.
“If any person has gone away in the carriage,” Julian went on, “that person can hardly have been a man, or we must have heard him in the hall.”
The conclusion which her companion had just drawn from the noiseless departure of the supposed visitor raised a sudden doubt in Mercy’s mind.
“Go and inquire!” she said, eagerly.
Julian left the room, and returned again, after a brief absence, with signs of grave anxiety in his face and manner.
“I told you I dreaded the most trifling events that were passing about us,” he said. “An event, which is far from being trifling, has just happened. The carriage which we heard approaching along the drive turns out to have been a cab sent for from the house. The person who has gone away in it—”
“Is a woman, as you supposed?”
“Yes.”
Mercy rose excitedly from her chair.
“It can’t be Grace Roseberry?” she exclaimed.
“It is Grace Roseberry.”
“Has she gone away alone?”
“Alone—after an interview with Lady Janet.”
“Did she go willingly?”
“She herself sent the servant for the cab.”
“What does it mean?”
“It is useless to inquire. We shall soon know.”
They resumed their seats, waiting, as they had waited already, with their eyes on the library door.