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The New Magdalen
by Wilkie Collins
February, 1999 [Etext #1623]
*Project Gutenberg Etext of The New Magdalen, by Wilkie Collins*
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[Italics are indicatedby underscores
James Rusk, jrusk@cyberramp.net.]
THE NEW MAGDALEN
by Wilkie Collins
TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES ALLSTON COLLINS. (9th April, 1873.)
FIRST SCENE.
The Cottage on the Frontier.
PREAMBLE.
THE place is France.
The time is autumn, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy--the
year of the war between France and Germany.
The persons are, Captain Arnault, of the French army; Surgeon
Surville, of the French ambulance; Surgeon Wetzel, of the German
army; Mercy Merrick, attached as nurse to the French ambulance;
and Grace Roseberry, a traveling lady on her way to England.
CHAPTER I.
THE TWO WOMEN.
IT was a dark night. The rain was pouring in torrents.
Late in the evening a skirmishing party of the French and a
skirmishing party of the Germans had met, by accident, near the
little village of Lagrange, close to the German frontier. In the
struggle that followed, the French had (for once) got the better
of the enemy. For the time, at least, a few hundreds out of the
host of the invaders had been forced back over the frontier. It
was a trifling affair, occurring not long after the great German
victory of Weissenbourg, and the newspapers took little or no
notice of it.
Captain Arnault, commanding on the French side, sat alone in one
of the cottages of the village, inhabited by the miller of the
district. The Captain was reading, by the light of a solitary
tallow-candle, some intercepted dispatches taken from the
Germans. He had suffered the wood fire, scattered over the large
open grate, to burn low; the red embers only faintly illuminated
a part of the room. On the floor behind him lay some of the
miller's empty sacks. In a corner opposite to him was the
miller's solid walnut-wood bed. On the walls all around him were
the miller's colored prints, representing a happy mixture of
devotional and domestic subjects. A door of communication leading
into the kitchen of the cottage had been torn from its hinges,
and used to carry the men wounded in the skirmish from the field.
They were now comfortably laid at rest in the kitchen, under the
care of the French surgeon and the English nurse attached to the
ambulance. A piece of coarse canvas screened the opening between
the two rooms in place of the door. A second door, leading from
the bed-chamber into the yard, was locked; and the wooden shutter
protecting the one window of the room was carefully barred.
Sentinels, doubled in number, were placed at all the outposts.
The French commander had neglected no precaution which could
reasonably insure for himself and for his men a quiet and
comfortable night.
Still absorbed in his perusal of the dispatches, and now and then
making notes of what he read by the help of writing materials
placed at his side, Captain Arnault was interrupted by the
appearance of an intruder in the room. Surgeon Surville, entering
from the kitchen, drew aside the canvas screen, and approached
the little round table at which his superior officer was sitting.
"What is it?" said the captain, sharply.
"A question to ask," replied the surgeon. "Are we safe for the
night?"
"Why do you want to know?" inquired the captain, suspiciously.
The surgeon pointed to the kitchen, now the hospital devoted to
the wounded men.
"The poor fellows are anxious about the next few hours," he
replied. "They dread a surprise, and they ask me if there is any
reasonable hope of their having one night's rest. What do you
think of the chances?"
The captain shrugged his shoulders. The surgeon persisted.
"Surely you ought to know?" he said.
"I know that we are in possession of the village for the
present," retorted Captain Arnault, "and I know no more. Here are
the papers of the enemy." He held them up and shook them
impatiently as he spoke. "They give me no information that I can
rely on. For all I can tell to the contrary, the main body of the
Germans, outnumbering us ten to one, may be nearer this cottage
than the main body of the French. Draw your own conclusions. I
have nothing more to say."
Having answered in those discouraging terms, Captain Arnault got
on his feet, drew the hood of his great-coat over his head, and
lit a cigar at the candle.
"Where are you going?" asked the surgeon.
"To visit the outposts."
"Do you want this room for a little while?"
"Not for some hours to come. Are you thinking of moving any of
your wounded men in here?"
"I was thinking of the English lady," answered the surgeon. "The
kitchen is not quite the place for her. She would be more
comfortable here; and the English nurse might keep her company."
Captain Arnault smiled, not very pleasantly. "They are two fine
women," he said, "and Surgeon Surville is a ladies' man. Let them
come in, if they are rash enough to trust themselves here with
you." He checked himself on the point of going out, and looked
back distrustfully at the lighted candle. "Caution the women," he
said, "to limit the exercise of their curiosity to the inside of
this room."
"What do you mean?"
The captain's forefinger pointed significantly to the closed
window-shutter.
"Did you ever know a woman who could resist looking out of
window?" he asked. "Dark as it is, sooner or later these ladies
of yours will feel tempted to open that shutter. Tell them I
don't want the light of the candle to betray my headquarters to
the German scouts. How is the weather? Still raining?"
"Pouring."
"So much the better. The Germans won't see us." With that
consolatory remark he unlocked the door leading into the yard,
and walked out.
The surgeon lifted the canvas screen and called into the kitchen:
"Miss Merrick, have you time to take a little rest?"
"Plenty of time," answered a soft voice with an underlying
melancholy in it, plainly distinguishable though it had only
spoken three words.
"Come in, then," continued the surgeon, "and bring the English
lady with you. Here is a quiet room all to yourselves."
He held back the canvas, and the two women appeared.
The nurse led the way--tall, lithe, graceful--attired in her
uniform dress of neat black stuff, with plain linen collar and
cuffs, and with the scarlet cross of the Geneva Convention
embroidered on her left shoulder. Pale and sad, her expression
and manner both eloquently suggestive of suppressed suffering and
sorrow, there was an innate nobility in the carriage of this
woman's head, an innate grandeur in the gaze of her large gray
eyes and in the lines of her finely proportioned face, which made
her irresistibly striking and beautiful, seen under any
circumstances and clad in any dress. Her companion, darker in
complexion and smaller in stature, possessed attractions which
were quite marked enough to account for the surgeon's polite
anxiety to shelter her in the captain's room. The common consent
of mankind would have declared her to be an unusually pretty
woman. She wore the large gray cloak that covered her from head
to foot with a grace that lent its own attractions to a plain and
even a shabby article of dress. The languor in her movements, and
the uncertainty of tone in her voice as she thanked the surgeon
suggested that she was suffering from fatigue. Her dark eyes
searched the dimly-lighted room timidly, and she held fast by the
nurse's arm with the air of a woman whose nerves had been
severely shaken by some recent alarm.
"You have one thing to remember, ladies," said the surgeon.
"Beware of opening the shutter, for fear of the light being seen
through the window. For the rest, we are free to make ourselves
as comfortable here as we can. Compose yourself, dear madam, and
rely on the protection of a Frenchman who is devoted to you!" He
gallantly emphasized his last words by raising the hand of the
English lady to his lips. At the moment when he kissed it the
canvas screen was again drawn aside. A person in the service of
the ambulance appeared, announcing that a bandage had slipped,
and that one of the wounded men was to all appearance bleeding to
death. The surgeon, submitting to destiny with the worst possible
grace, dropped the charming Englishwoman's hand, and returned to
his duties in the kitchen. The two ladies were left together in
the room.
"Will you take a chair, madam?" asked the nurse.
"Don't call
me 'madam,'" returned the young lady, cordially. "My name is
Grace Roseberry. What is your name?"
The nurse hesitated. "Not a pretty name, like yours," she said,
and hesitated again. "Call me 'Mercy Merrick,' " she added, after
a moment's consideration.
Had she given an assumed name? Was there some unhappy celebrity
attached to her own name? Miss Roseberry did not wait to ask
herself these questions. "How can I thank you," she exclaimed,
gratefully, "for your sisterly kindness to a stranger like me?"
"I have only done my duty," said Mercy Merrick, a little coldly.
"Don't speak of it."
"I must speak of it. What a situation you found me in when the
French soldiers had driven the Germans away! My
traveling-carriage stopped; the horses seized; I myself in a
strange country at nightfall, robbed of my money and my luggage,
and drenched to the skin by the pouring rain! I am indebted to
you for shelter in this place--I am wearing your clothes--I
should have died of the fright and the exposure but for you. What
return can I make for such services as these?"
Mercy placed a chair for her guest near the captain's table, and
seated herself, at some little distance, on an old chest in a
corner of the room. "May I ask you a question?" she said,
abruptly.
"A hundred questions," cried Grace, "if you like." She looked at
the expiring fire, and at the dimly visible figure of her
companion seated in the obscurest corner of the room. "That
wretched candle hardly gives any light," she said, impatiently.
"It won't last much longer. Can't we make the place more
cheerful? Come out of your corner. Call for more wood and more
lights."
Mercy remained in her corner and shook her head. "Candles and
wood are scarce things here," she answered. "We must be patient,
even if we are left in the dark. Tell me," she went on, raising
her quiet voice a little, "how came you to risk crossing the
frontier in wartime?"
Grace's voice dropped when she answered the question. Grace's
momentary gayety of manner suddenly left her.
"I had urgent reasons," she said, "for returning to England."
"Alone?" rejoined the other. "Without any one to protect you?"
Grace's head sank on her bosom. "I have left my only
protector--my father--in the English burial-ground at Rome," she
answered simply. "My mother died, years since, in Canada."
The shadowy figure of the nurse suddenly changed its position on
the chest. She had started as the last word passed Miss
Roseberry's lips.
"Do you know Canada?" asked Grace.
"Well," was the brief answer--reluctantly given, short as it was.
"Were you ever near Port Logan?"
"I once lived within a few miles of Port Logan."
"When?"
"Some time since." With those words Mercy Merrick shrank back
into her corner and changed the subject. "Your relatives in
England must be very anxious about you," she said.
Grace sighed. "I have no relatives in England. You can hardly
imagine a person more friendless than I am. We went away from
Canada, when my father's health failed, to try the climate of
Italy, by the doctor's advice. His death has left me not only
friendless but poor." She paused, and took a leather letter-case
from the pocket of the large gray cloak which the nurse had lent
to her. "My prospects in life," she resumed, "are all contained
in this little case. Here is the one treasure I contrived to
conceal when I was robbed of my other things."
Mercy could just see the letter-case as Grace held it up in the
deepening obscurity of the room. "Have you got money in it?" she
asked.
"No; only a few family papers, and a letter from my father,
introducing me to an elderly lady in England--a connection of his
by marriage, whom I have never seen. The lady has consented to
receive me as her companion and reader. If I don't return to
England soon, some other person may get the place."
"Have you no other resource?"
"None. My education has been neglected--we led a wild life in the
far West. I am quite unfit to go out as a governess. I am
absolutely dependent on this stranger, who receives me for my
father's sake." She put the letter-case back in the pocket of her
cloak, and ended her little narrative as unaffectedly as she had
begun it. "Mine is a sad story, is it not?" she said.
The voice of the nurse answered her suddenly and bitterly in
these strange words:
"There are sadder stories than yours. There are thousands of
miserable women who would ask for no greater blessing than to
change places with you."
Grace started. "What can there possibly be to envy in such a lot
as mine?"
"Your unblemished character, and your prospect of being
established honorably in a respectable house."
Grace turned in her chair, and looked wonderingly into the dim
corner of the room.
"How strangely you say that!" she exclaimed. There was no answer;
the shadowy figure on the chest never moved. Grace rose
impulsively, and drawing her chair after her, approached the
nurse. "Is there some romance in your life?" she asked. "Why have
you sacrificed yourself to the terrible duties which I find you
performing here? You interest me indescribably. Give me your
hand."
Mercy shrank back, and refused the offered hand.
"Are we not friends?" Grace asked, in astonishment.
"We can never be friends."
"Why not?"
The nurse was dumb. Grace called to mind the hesitation that she
had shown when she had mentioned her name, and drew a new
conclusion from it. "Should I be guessing right," she asked,
eagerly, "if I guessed you to be some great lady in disguise?"
Mercy laughed to herself--low and bitterly. "I a great lady!" she
said, contemptuously. "For Heaven's sake, let us talk of
something else!"
Grace's curiosity was thoroughly roused. She persisted. "Once
more," she whispered, persuasively, "let us be friends." She
gently laid her hand as she spoke on Mercy's shoulder. Mercy
roughly shook it off. There was a rudeness in the action which
would have offended the most patient woman living. Grace drew
back indignantly. "Ah!" she cried, "you are cruel."
"I am kind," answered the nurse, speaking more sternly than ever.
"Is it kind to keep me at a distance? I have told you my story."
The nurse's voice rose excitedly. "Don't tempt me to speak out,"
she said; "you will regret it."
Grace declined to accept the warning. "I have placed confidence
in you," she went on. "It is ungenerous to lay me under an
obligation, and then to shut me out of your confidence in
return."
"You _will_ have it?" said Mercy Merrick. "You _shall_ have it!
Sit down again." Grace's heart began to quicken its beat in
expectation of the disclosure that was to come. She drew her
chair closer to the chest on which the nurse was sitting. With a
firm hand Mercy put the chair back to a distance from her. "Not
so near me!" she said, harshly.
"Why not?"
"Not so near," repeated the sternly resolute voice. "Wait till
you have heard what I have to say."
Grace obeyed without a word more. There was a momentary silence.
A faint flash of light leaped up from the expiring candle, and
showed Mercy crouching on the chest, with her elbows on her
knees, and her face hidden in her hands. The next instant the
room was buried in obscurity. As the darkness fell on the two
women the nurse spoke.
CHAPTER II.
MAGDALEN--IN MODERN TIMES.
"WHEN your mother was alive were you ever out with her after
nightfall in the streets of a great city?"
In those extraordinary terms Mercy Merrick opened the
confidential interview which Grace Roseberry had forced on her.
Grace answered, simply, "I don't understand you."
"I will put it in another way," said the nurse. Its unnatural
hardness and sternness of tone passed away from her voice, and
its native gentleness and sadness returned, as she made that
reply. "You read the newspapers like the rest of the world," she
went on; "have you ever read of your unhappy fellow- creatures
(the starving outcasts of the population) whom Want has driven
into Sin?"
Still wondering, Grace answered that she had read of such things
often, in newspapers and in books.
"Have you heard--when those starving and sinning fellow-creatures
happened to be women--of Refuges established to protect and
reclaim them?"
The wonder in Grace 's mind passed away, and a vague suspicion of
something painful to come took its place. "These are
extraordinary questions," she said, nervously. "What do you
mean?"
"Answer me," the nurse insisted. "Have you heard of the Refuges?
Have you heard of the Women?"
"Yes."
"Move your chair a little further away from me." She paused. Her
voice, without losing its steadiness, fell to its lowest tones."
_I_ was once of those women," she said, quietly.
Grace sprang to her feet with a faint cry. She stood
petrified--incapable of uttering a word.
"_I_ have been in a Refuge," pursued the sweet, sad voice of the
other woman." _I_ have been in a Prison. Do you still wish to be
my friend? Do you still insist on sitting close by me and taking
my hand?" She waited for a reply, and no reply came. "You see you
were wrong," she went on, gently, "when you called me cruel--and
I was right when I told you I was kind."
At that appeal Grace composed herself, and spoke. "I don't wish
to offend you--" she began, confusedly.
Mercy Merrick stopped her there.
"You don't offend me," she said, without the faintest note of
displeasure in her tone. "I am accustomed to stand in the pillory
of my own past life. I sometimes ask myself if it was all my
fault. I sometimes wonder if Society had no duties toward me when
I was a child selling matches in the street--when I was a
hard-working girl fainting at my needle for want of food." Her
voice faltered a little for the first time as it pronounced those
words; she waited a moment, and recovered herself. "It's too late
to dwell on these things now," she said, resignedly. "Society can
subscribe to reclaim me; but Society can't take me back. You see
me here in a place of trust--patiently, humbly, doing all the
good I can. It doesn't matter! Here, or elsewhere, what I _am_
can never alter what I _was_. For three years past all that a
sincerely penitent woman can do I have done. It doesn't matter!
Once let my past story be known, and the shadow of it covers me;
the kindest people shrink."
She waited again. Would a word of sympathy come to comfort her
from the other woman's lips? No! Miss Roseberry was shocked; Miss
Roseberry was confused. "I am very sorry for you," was all that
Miss Roseberry could say.
"Everybody is sorry for me," answered the nurse, as patiently as
ever; "everybody is kind to me. But the lost place is not to be
regained. I can't get back! I can't get back?" she cried, with a
passionate outburst of despair--checked instantly the moment it
had escaped her. "Shall I tell you what my experience has been?"
she resumed. "Will you hear the story of Magdalen--in modern
times?"
Grace drew back a step; Mercy instantly understood her.
"I am going to tell you nothing that you need shrink from
hearing," she said. "A lady in your position would not understand
the trials and the struggles that I have passed through. My story
shall begin at the Refuge. The matron sent me out to service with
the character that I had honestly earned--the character of a
reclaimed woman. I justified the confidence placed in me; I was a
faithful servant. One day my mistress sent for me--a kind
mistress, if ever there was one yet. 'Mercy, I am sorry for you;
it has come out that I took you from a Refuge; I shall lose every
servant in the house; you must go.' I went back to the
matron--another kind woman. She received me like a mother. 'We
will try again, Mercy; don't be cast down.' I told you I had been
in Canada?"
Grace began to feel interested in spite of herself. She answered
with something like warmth in her tone. She returned to her
chair--placed at its safe and significant distance from the
chest.
The nurse went on:
"My next place was in Canada, with an officer's wife: gentlefolks
who had emigrated. More kindness; and, this time, a pleasant,
peaceful life for me. I said to myself, 'Is the lost place
regained? _Have_ I got back?' My mistress died. New people came
into our neighborhood. There was a young lady among them--my
master began to think of another wife. I have the misfortune (in
my situation) to be what is called a handsome woman; I rouse the
curiosity of strangers. The new people asked questions about me;
my master's answers did not satisfy them. In a word, they found
me out. The old story again! 'Mercy, I am very sorry; scandal is
busy with you and with me; we are innocent, but there is no help
for it--we must part.' I left the place; having gained one
advantage during my stay in Canada, which I find of use to me
here."
"What is it?"
"Our nearest neighbors were French-Canadians. I learned to speak
the French language."
"Did you return to London?"
"Where else could I go, without a character?" said Mercy, sadly.
"I went back again to the matron. Sickness had broken out in the
Refuge; I made myself useful as a nurse. One of the doctors was
struck with me--'fell in love' with me, as the phrase is. He
would have married me. The nurse, as an honest woman, was bound
to tell him the truth. He never appeared again. The old story! I
began to be weary of saying to myself, 'I can't get back! I can't
get back!' Despair got hold of me, the despair that hardens the
heart. I might have committed suicide; I might even have drifted
back into my old life--but for one man."
At those last words her voice--quiet and even through the earlier
part of her sad story--began to falter once more. She stopped,
following silently the memories and associations roused in her by
what she had just said. Had she forgotten the presence of another
person in the room? Grace's curiosity left Grace no resource but
to say a word on her side.
"Who was the man?" she asked. "How did he befriend you?"
"Befriend me? He doesn't even know that such a person as I am is
in existence."
That strange answer, naturally enough, only strengthened the
anxiety of Grace to hear more. "You said just now--" she began.
"I said just now that he saved me. He did save me; you shall hear
how. One Sunday our regular clergyman at the Refuge was not able
to officiate. His place was taken by a stranger, quite a young
man. The matron told us the stranger's name was Julian Gray. I
sat in the back row of seats, under the shadow of the gallery,
where I could see him without his seeing me. His text was from
the words, 'Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which
need no repentance. 'What happier women might have thought of his
sermon I cannot say; there was not a dry eye among us at the
Refuge. As for me, he touched my heart as no man has touched it
before or since. The hard despair melted in me at the sound of
his voice; the weary round of my life showed its nobler side
again while he spoke. From that time I have accepted my hard lot,
I have been a patient woman. I might have been something more, I
might have been a happy woman, if I could have prevailed on
myself to speak to Julian Gray."
"What hindered you from speaking to him?"
"I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of making my hard life harder still."
A woman who could have sympathized with her would perhaps have
guessed what those words meant. Grace was simply embarrassed by
her; and Grace failed to guess.
"I don't understand you," she said.
There was no alternative for Mercy but to own the truth in plain
words. She sighed, and said the words. "I was afraid I might
interest him in my sorrows, and might set my heart on him in
return." The utter absence of any fellow-feeling with her on
Grace's side expressed itself unconsciously in the plainest
terms.
"You!" she exclaimed, in a tone of blank astonishment.
The nurse rose slowly to her feet. Grace's expression of surprise
told her plainly--almost brutally--that her confession had gone
far enough.
"I astonish you?" she said. "Ah, my young lady, you don't know
what rough usage a woman's heart can bear, and still beat truly!
Before I saw Julian Gray I only knew men as objects of horror to
me. Let us drop the subject. The preacher at the Refuge is
nothing but a remembrance now--the one welcome remembrance of my
life! I have nothing more to tell you. You insisted on hearing my
story--you have heard it."
"I have not
heard how you found employment here," said Grace, continuing the
conversation with uneasy politeness, as she best might.
Mercy crossed the room, and slowly raked together the last living
embers of the fire.
"The matron has friends in France," she answered, "who are
connected with the military hospitals. It was not difficult to
get me the place, under those circumstances. Society can find a
use for me here. My hand is as light, my words of comfort are as
welcome, among those suffering wretches" (she pointed to the room
in which the wounded men were lying) "as if I was the most
reputable woman breathing. And if a stray shot comes my way
before the war is over--well! Society will be rid of me on easy
terms."
She stood looking thoughtfully into the wreck of the fire--as if
she saw in it the wreck of her own life. Common humanity made it
an act of necessity to say something to her. Grace
considered--advanced a step toward her--stopped--and took refuge
in the most trivial of all the common phrases which one human
being can address to another.
"If there is anything I can do for you--" she began. The
sentence, halting there, was never finished. Miss Roseberry was
just merciful enough toward the lost woman who had rescued and
sheltered her to feel that it was needless to say more.
The nurse lifted her noble head and advanced slowly toward the
canvas screen to return to her duties. "Miss Roseberry might have
taken my hand!" she thought to herself, bitterly. No! Miss
Roseberry stood there at a distance, at a loss what to say next.
"What can you do for me?" Mercy asked, stung by the cold courtesy
of her companion into a momentary outbreak of contempt. "Can you
change my identity? Can you give me the name and the place of an
innocent woman? If I only had your chance! If I only had your
reputation and your prospects!" She laid one hand over her bosom,
and controlled herself. "Stay here," she resumed, "while I go
back to my work. I will see that your clothes are dried. You
shall wear my clothes as short a time as possible."
With those melancholy words--touchingly, not bitterly spoken--she
moved to pass into the kitchen, when she noticed that the
pattering sound of the rain against the window was audible no
more. Dropping the canvas for the moment, she retraced her steps,
and, unfastening the wooden shutter, looked out.
The moon was rising dimly in the watery sky; the rain had ceased;
the friendly darkness which had hidden the French position from
the German scouts was lessening every moment. In a few hours more
(if nothing happened) the English lady might resume her journey.
In a few hours more the morning would dawn.
Mercy lifted her hand to close the shutter. Before she could
fasten it the report of a rifle-shot reached the cottage from one
of the distant posts. It was followed almost instantly by a
second report, nearer and louder than the first. Mercy paused,
with the shutter in her hand, and listened intently for the next
sound.
CHAPTER III.
THE GERMAN SHELL.
A THIRD rifle-shot rang through the night air, close to the
cottage. Grace started and approached the window in alarm.
"What does that firing mean?" she asked.
"Signals from the outposts," the nurse quietly replied.
"Is there any danger? Have the Germans come back?"
Surgeon Surville answered the question. He lifted the canvas
screen, and looked into the room as Miss Roseberry spoke.
"The Germans are advancing on us," he said. "Their vanguard is in
sight."
Grace sank on the chair near her, trembling from head to foot.
Mercy advanced to the surgeon, and put the decisive question to
him.
"Do we defend the position?" she inquired.
Surgeon Surville ominously shook his head.
"Impossible! We are outnumbered as usual--ten to one."
The shrill roll of the French drums was heard outside.
"There is the retreat sounded!" said the surgeon. "The captain is
not a man to think twice about what he does. We are left to take
care of ourselves. In five minutes we must be out of this place."
A volley of rifle-shots rang out as he spoke. The German vanguard
was attacking the French at the outposts. Grace caught the
surgeon entreatingly by the arm. "Take me with you," she cried.
"Oh, sir, I have suffered from the Germans already! Don't forsake
me, if they come back!" The surgeon was equal to the occasion; he
placed the hand of the pretty Englishwoman on his breast. "Fear
nothing, madam," he said, looking as if he could have annihilated
the whole German force with his own invincible arm. "A
Frenchman's heart beats under your hand. A Frenchman's devotion
protects you." Grace's head sank on his shoulder. Monsieur
Surville felt that he had asserted himself; he looked round
invitingly at Mercy. She, too, was an attractive woman. The
Frenchman had another shoulder at _her_ service. Unhappily the
room was dark--the look was lost on Mercy. She was thinking of
the helpless men in the inner chamber, and she quietly recalled
the surgeon to a sense of his professional duties.
"What is to become of the sick and wounded?" she asked.
Monsieur Surville shrugged one shoulder--the shoulder that was
free.
"The strongest among them we can take away with us," he said.
"The others must be left here. Fear nothing for yourself, dear
lady. There will be a place for you in the baggage-wagon."
"And for me, too?" Grace pleaded, eagerly.
The surgeon's invincible arm stole round the young lady's waist,
and answered mutely with a squeeze.
"Take her with you," said Mercy. "My place is with the men whom
you leave behind."
Grace listened in amazement. "Think what you risk," she said "if
you stop here."
Mercy pointed to her left shoulder.
"Don't alarm yourself on my account," she answered; "the red
cross will protect me."
Another roll of the drum warned the susceptible surgeon to take
his place as director-general of the ambulance without any
further delay. He conducted Grace to a chair, and placed both her
hands on his heart this time, to reconcile her to the misfortune
of his absence. "Wait here till I return for you," he whispered.
"Fear nothing, my charming friend. Say to yourself, 'Surville is
the soul of honor! Surville is devoted to me!'" He struck his
breast; he again forgot the obscurity in the room, and cast one
look of unutterable homage at his charming friend. "A _bientot!_"
he cried, and kissed his hand and disappeared.
As the canvas screen fell over him the sharp report of the
rifle-firing was suddenly and grandly dominated by the roar of
cannon. The instant after a shell exploded in the garden outside,
within a few yards of the window.
Grace sank on her knees with a shriek of terror. Mercy, without
losing her self-possession, advanced to the window and looked
out.
"The moon has risen," she said. "The Germans are shelling the
village."
Grace rose, and ran to her for protection.
"Take me away!" she cried. "We shall be killed if we stay here."
She stopped, looking in astonishment at the tall black figure of
the nurse, standing immovably by the window. "Are you made of
iron?" she exclaimed. "Will nothing frighten you?"
Mercy smiled sadly. "Why should I be afraid of losing my life?"
she answered. "I have nothing worth living for!"
The roar of the cannon shook the cottage for the second time. A
second shell exploded in the courtyard, on the opposite side of
the building.
Bewildered by the noise, panic-stricken as the danger from the
shells threatened the cottage more and more nearly, Grace threw
her arms round the nurse, and clung, in the abject familiarity of
terror, to the woman whose hand she had shrunk from touching not
five minutes since. "Where is it safest?" she cried. "Where can I
hide myself?"
"How can I tell where the next shell will fall?" Mercy answered,
quietly.
The steady composure of the one woman seemed to madden the other.
Releasing the nurse, Grace looked wildly round for a way of
escape from the cottage. Making first for the kitchen, she was
driven back by the clamor and confusion attending the removal of
those among the wounded who were strong enough to be placed in
the wagon. A second look round showed her the door leading into
the yard. She rushed to it with a cry of relief. She had just
laid her hand on the lock when the third report of cannon burst
over the place.
Starting back a step, Grace lifted her hands mechanically to her
ears. At the same moment the third shell burst through the roof
of the cottage, and exploded in the room, just inside the door.
Mercy sprang forward, unhurt, from her place at the window. The
burning fragments of the shell were already firing the dry wooden
floor, and in the midst of them, dimly seen through the smoke,
lay the insensible body of her companion in the room. Even at
that dreadful moment the nurse's presence of mind did not fail
her. Hurrying back to the place that she had just left, near
which she had already noticed the miller's empty sacks lying in a
heap, she seized two of them, and, throwing them on the
smoldering floor, trampled out the fire. That done, she knelt by
the senseless woman, and lifted her head.
Was she wounded? or dead?
Mercy raised one helpless hand, and laid her fingers on the
wrist. While she was still vainly trying to feel for the beating
of the pulse, Surgeon Surville (alarmed for the ladies) hurried
in to inquire if any harm had been done.
Mercy called to him to approach. "I am afraid the shell has
struck her," she said, yielding her place to him. "See if she is
badly hurt."
The surgeon's anxiety for his charming patient expressed itself
briefly in an oath, with a prodigious emphasis laid on one of the
letters in it--the letter R. "Take off her cloak," he cried,
raising his hand to her neck. "Poor angel! She has turned in
falling; the string is twisted round her throat."
Mercy removed the cloak. It dropped on the floor as the surgeon
lifted Grace in his arms. "Get a candle," he said, impatiently;
"they will give you one in the kitchen." He tried to feel the
pulse: his hand trembled, the noise and confusion in the kitchen
bewildered him. "Just Heaven!" he exclaimed. "My emotions
overpower me!" Mercy approached him with the candle. The light
disclosed the frightful injury which a fragment of the shell had
inflicted on the Englishwoman's head. Surgeon Surville's manner
altered on the instant. The expression of anxiety left his face;
its professional composure covered it suddenly like a mask. What
was the object of his admiration now? An inert burden in his
arms--nothing more.
The change in his face was not lost on Mercy. Her large gray eyes
watched him attentively. "Is the lady seriously wounded?" she
asked.
"Don't trouble yourself to hold the light any longer," was the
cool reply. "It's all over--I can do nothing for her."
"Dead?"
Surgeon Surville nodded and shook his fist in the direction of
the outposts. "Accursed Germans!" he cried, and looked down at
the dead face on his arm, and shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
"The fortune of war!" he said as he lifted the body and placed it
on the bed in one corner of the room. "Next time, nurse, it may
be you or me. Who knows? Bah! the problem of human destiny
disgusts me." He turned from the bed, and illustrated his disgust
by spitting on the fragments of the exploded shell. "We must
leave her there," he resumed. "She was once a charming
person--she is nothing now. Come away, Miss Mercy, before it is
too late."
He offered his arm to the nurse; the creaking of the
baggage-wagon, starting on its journey, was heard outside, and
the shrill roll of the drums was renewed in the distance. The
retreat had begun.
Mercy drew aside the canvas, and saw the badly wounded men, left
helpless at the mercy of the enemy, on their straw beds. She
refused the offer of Monsieur Surville's arm.
"I have already told you that I shall stay here," she answered.
Monsieur Surville lifted his hands in polite remonstrance. Mercy
held back the curtain, and pointed to the cottage door.
"Go," she said. "My mind is made up."
Even at that final moment the Frenchman asserted himself. He made
his exit with unimpaired grace and dignity. "Madam," he said,
"you are sublime!" With that parting compliment the man of
gallantry--true to the last to his admiration of the sex--bowed,
with his hand on his heart, and left the cottage.
Mercy dropped the canvas over the doorway. She was alone with the
dead woman.
The last tramp of footsteps, the last rumbling of the wagon
wheels, died away in the distance. No renewal of firing from the
position occupied by the enemy disturbed the silence that
followed. The Germans knew that the French were in retreat. A few
minutes more and they would take possession of the abandoned
village: the tumult of their approach should become audible at
the cottage. In the meantime the stillness was terrible. Even the
wounded wretches who were left in the kitchen waited their fate
in silence.
Alone in the room, Mercy's first look was directed to the bed.
The two women had met in the confusion of the first skirmish at
the close of twilight. Separated, on their arrival at the
cottage, by the duties required of the nurse, they had only met
again in the captain's room. The acquaintance between them had
been a short one; and it had given no promise of ripening into
friendship. But the fatal accident had roused Mercy's interest in
the stranger. She took the candle, and approached the corpse of
the woman who had been literally killed at her side.
She stood by the bed, looking down in the silence of the night at
the stillness of the dead face.
It was a striking face--once seen (in life or in death) not to be
forgotten afterward. The forehead was unusually low and broad;
the eyes unusually far apart; the mouth and chin remarkably
small. With tender hands Mercy smoothed the disheveled hair and
arranged the crumpled dress. "Not five minutes since," she
thought to herself, "I was longing to change places with _you!_"
She turned from the bed with a sigh. "I wish I could change
places now!"
The silence began to oppress her. She walked slowly to the other
end of the room.
The cloak on the floor--her own cloak, which she had lent to Miss
Roseberry--attracted her attention as she passed it. She picked
it up and brushed the dust from it, and laid it across a chair.
This done, she put the light back on the table, and going to the
window, listened for the first sounds of the German advance. The
faint passage of the wind through some trees near at hand was the
only sound that caught her ears. She turned from the window, and
seated herself at the table, thinking. Was there any duty still
left undone that Christian charity owed to the dead? Was there
any further service that pressed for performance in the interval
before the Germans appeared?
Mercy recalled the conversation that had passed between her ill-
fated companion and herself . Miss Roseberry had spoken of her
object in returning to England. She had mentioned a lady--a
connection by marriage, to whom she was personally a
stranger--who was waiting to receive her. Some one capable of
stating how the poor creature had met with her death ought to
write to her only friend. Who was to do it? There was nobody to
do it but the one witness of the catastrophe now left in the
cottage--Mercy herself.
She lifted the cloak from the chair on which she had placed it,
and took from the pocket the leather letter-case which Grace had
shown to her. The only way of discovering the address to write to
in England was to open the case and examine the papers inside.
Mercy opened the case--and stopped, feeling a strange reluctance
to carry the investigation any farther.
A moment's consideration satisfied her that her scruples were
misplaced. If she respected the case as inviolable, the Germans
would certainly not hesitate to examine it, and the Germans would
hardly trouble themselves to write to England. Which were the
fittest eyes to inspect the papers of the deceased lady--the eyes
of men and foreigners, or the eyes of her own countrywoman?
Mercy's hesitation left her. She emptied the contents of the case
on the table.
That trifling action decided the whole future course of her life.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TEMPTATION.
Some letters, tied together with a ribbon, attracted Mercy's
attention first. The ink in which the addresses were written had
faded with age. The letters, directed alternately
to Colonel Roseberry and to the Honorable Mrs. Roseberry,
contained a correspondence between the husband and wife at a time
when the Colonel's military duties had obliged him to be absent
from home. Mercy tied the letters up again, and passed on to the
papers that lay next in order under her hand.
These consisted of a few leaves pinned together, and headed (in a
woman's handwriting) "My Journal at Rome." A brief examination
showed that the journal had been written by Miss Roseberry, and
that it was mainly devoted to a record of the last days of her
father's life.
After replacing the journal and the correspondence in the case,
the one paper left on the table was a letter. The envelope, which
was unclosed, bore this address: "Lady Janet Roy, Mablethorpe
House, Kensington, London." Mercy took the inclosure from the
open envelope. The first lines she read informed her that she had
found the Colonel's letter of introduction, presenting his
daughter to her protectress on her arrival in England
Mercy read the letter through. It was described by the writer as
the last efforts of a dying man. Colonel Roseberry wrote
affectionately of his daughter's merits, and regretfully of her
neglected education--ascribing the latter to the pecuniary losses
which had forced him to emigrate to Canada in the character of a
poor man. Fervent expressions of gratitude followed, addressed to
Lady Janet. "I owe it to you," the letter concluded, "that I am
dying with my mind at ease about the future of my darling girl.
To your generous protection I commit the one treasure I have left
to me on earth. Through your long lifetime you have nobly used
your high rank and your great fortune as a means of doing good. I
believe it will not be counted among the least of your virtues
hereafter that you comforted the last hours of an old soldier by
opening your heart and your home to his friendless child."
So the letter ended. Mercy laid it down with a heavy heart. What
a chance the poor girl had lost! A woman of rank and fortune
waiting to receive her--a woman so merciful and so generous that
the father's mind had been easy about the daughter on his
deathbed--and there the daughter lay, beyond the reach of Lady
Janet's kindness, beyond the need of Lady Janet's help!
The French captain's writing-materials were left on the table.
Mercy turned the letter over so that she might write the news of
Miss Roseberry's death on the blank page at the end. She was
still considering what expressions she should use, when the sound
of complaining voices from the next room caught her ear. The
wounded men left behind were moaning for help--the deserted
soldiers were losing their fortitude at last.
She entered the kitchen. A cry of delight welcomed her
appearance--the mere sight of her composed the men. From one
straw bed to another she passed with comforting words that gave
them hope, with skilled and tender hands that soothed their pain.
They kissed the hem of her black dress, they called her their
guardian angel, as the beautiful creature moved among them, and
bent over their hard pillows her gentle, compassionate face. "I
will be with you when the Germans come," she said, as she left
them to return to her unwritten letter. "Courage, my poor
fellows! you are not deserted by your nurse."
"Courage, madam!" the men replied; "and God bless you!"
If the firing had been resumed at that moment--if a shell had
struck her dead in the act of succoring the afflicted, what
Christian judgment would have hesitated to declare that there was
a place for this woman in heaven? But if the war ended and left
her still living, where was the place for her on earth? Where
were her prospects? Where was her home?
She returned to the letter. Instead, however, of seating herself
to write, she stood by the table, absently looking down at the
morsel of paper.
A strange fancy had sprung to life in her mind on re-entering the
room; she herself smiled faintly at the extravagance of it. What
if she were to ask Lady Janet Roy to let her supply Miss
Roseberry's place? She had met with Miss Roseberry under critical
circumstances, and she had done for her all that one woman could
do to help another. There was in this circumstance some little
claim to notice, perhaps, if Lady Janet had no other companion
and reader in view. Suppose she ventured to plead her own
cause--what would the noble and merciful lady do? She would write
back, and say, "Send me references to your character, and I will
see what can be done." Her character! Her references! Mercy
laughed bitterly, and sat down to write in the fewest words all
that was needed from her--a plain statement of the facts.
No! Not a line could she put on the paper. That fancy of hers was
not to be dismissed at will. Her mind was perversely busy now
with an imaginative picture of the beauty of Mablethorpe House
and the comfort and elegance of the life that was led there. Once
more she thought of the chance which Miss Roseberry had lost.
Unhappy creature! what a home would have been open to her if the
shell had only fallen on the side of the window, instead of on
the side of the yard!
Mercy pushed the letter away from her, and walked impatiently to
and fro in the room.
The perversity in her thoughts was not to be mastered in that
way. Her mind only abandoned one useless train of reflection to
occupy itself with another. She was now looking by anticipation
at her own future. What were her prospects (if she lived through
it) when the war was over? The experience of the past delineated
with pitiless fidelity the dreary scene. Go where she might, do
what she might, it would always end in the same way. Curiosity
and admiration excited by her beauty; inquiries made about her;
the story of the past discovered; Society charitably sorry for
her; Society generously subscribing for her; and still, through
all the years of her life, the same result in the end--the shadow
of the old disgrace surrounding her as with a pestilence,
isolating her among other women, branding her, even when she had
earned her pardon in the sight of God, with the mark of an
indelible disgrace in the sight of man: there was the prospect!
And she was only five-and-twenty last birthday; she was in the
prime of her health and her strength; she might live, in the
course of nature, fifty years more!
She stopped again at the bedside; she looked again at the face of
the corpse.
To what end had the shell struck the woman who had some hope in
her life, and spared the woman who had none? The words she had
herself spoken to Grace Roseberry came back to her as she thought
of it. "If I only had your chance! If I only had your reputation
and your prospects!" And there was the chance wasted! there were
the enviable prospects thrown away! It was almost maddening to
contemplate that result, feeling her own position as she felt it.
In the bitter mockery of despair she bent over the lifeless
figure, and spoke to it as if it had ears to hear her. "Oh!" she
said, longingly, "if you could be Mercy Merrick, and if I could
be Grace Roseberry, _now!_"
The instant the words passed her lips she started into an erect
position. She stood by the bed with her eyes staring wildly into
empty space; with her brain in a flame; with her heart beating as
if it would stifle her. "If you could be Mercy Merrick, and if I
could be Grace Roseberry, now!" In one breathless moment the
thought assumed a new development in her mind. In one breathless
moment the conviction struck her like an electric shock. _She
might be Grace Roseberry if she dared!_ There was absolutely
nothing to stop her from presenting herself to Lady Janet Roy
under Grace's name and in Grace's place!
What were the risks? Where was the weak point in the scheme?
Grace had said it herself in so many words--she and Lady Janet
had never seen each other. Her friends were in Canada; her
relations in England were dead. Mercy knew the place in which she
had lived--the place called Port Logan--as well as she had known
it herself. Mercy had only to read the manuscript journal to be
able to answer any questions relating to the visit to Rome and to
Colonel Roseberry's death. She had no accompl ished lady to
personate: Grace had spoken herself--her father's letter spoke
also in the plainest terms--of her neglected education.
Everything, literally everything, was in the lost woman's favor.
The people with whom she had been connected in the ambulance had
gone, to return no more. Her own clothes were on Miss Roseberry
at that moment--marked with her own name. Miss Roseberry's
clothes, marked with _her_ name, were drying, at Mercy's
disposal, in the next room. The way of escape from the
unendurable humiliation of her present life lay open before her
at last. What a prospect it was! A new identity, which she might
own anywhere! a new name, which was beyond reproach! a new past
life, into which all the world might search, and be welcome! Her
color rose, her eyes sparkled; she had never been so irresistibly
beautiful as she looked at the moment when the new future
disclosed itself, radiant with new hope.
She waited a minute, until she could look at her own daring
project from another point of view. Where was the harm of it?
what did her conscience say?
As to Grace, in the first place. What injury was she doing to a
woman who was dead? The question answered itself. No injury to
the woman. No injury to her relations. Her relations were dead
also.
As to Lady Janet, in the second place. If she served her new
mistress faithfully, if she filled her new sphere honorably, if
she was diligent under instruction and grateful for kindness--if,
in one word, she was all that she might be and would be in the
heavenly peace and security of that new life--what injury was she
doing to Lady Janet? Once more the question answered itself. She
might, and would, give Lady Janet cause to bless the day when she
first entered the house.
She snatched up Colonel Roseberry's letter, and put it into the
case with the other papers. The opportunity was before her; the
chances were all in her favor; her conscience said nothing
against trying the daring scheme. She decided then and
there--"I'll do it!"
Something jarred on her finer sense, something offended her
better nature, as she put the case into the pocket of her dress.
She had decided, and yet she was not at ease; she was not quite
sure of having fairly questioned her conscience yet. What if she
laid the letter-case on the table again, and waited until her
excitement had all cooled down, and then put the contemplated
project soberly on its trial before her own sense of right and
wrong?
She thought once--and hesitated. Before she could think twice,
the distant tramp of marching footsteps and the distant clatter
of horses' hoofs were wafted to her on the night air. The Germans
were entering the village! In a few minutes more they would
appear in the cottage; they would summon her to give an account
of herself. There was no time for waiting until she was composed
again. Which should it be--the new life, as Grace Roseberry? or
the old life, as Mercy Merrick?
She looked for the last time at the bed. Grace's course was run;
Grace's future was at her disposal. Her resolute nature, forced
to a choice on the instant, held by the daring alternative. She
persisted in the determination to take Grace's place.
The tramping footsteps of the Germans came nearer and nearer. The
voices of the officers were audible, giving the words of command.
She seated herself at the table, waiting steadily for what was to
come.
The ineradicable instinct of the sex directed her eyes to her
dress, before the Germans appeared. Looking it over to see that
it was in perfect order, her eyes fell upon the red cross on her
left shoulder. In a moment it struck her that her nurse's costume
might involve her in a needless risk. It associated her with a
public position; it might lead to inquiries at a later time, and
those inquiries might betray her.
She looked round. The gray cloak which she had lent to Grace
attracted her attention. She took it up, and covered herself with
it from head to foot.
The cloak was just arranged round her when she heard the outer
door thrust open, and voices speaking in a strange tongue, and
arms grounded in the room behind her. Should she wait to be
discovered? or should she show herself of her own accord? It was
less trying to such a nature as hers to show herself than to
wait. She advanced to enter the kitchen. The canvas curtain, as
she stretched out her hand to it, was suddenly drawn back from
the other side, and three men confronted her in the open doorway.
CHAPTER V.
THE GERMAN SURGEON.
THE youngest of the three strangers--judging by features,
complexion, and manner--was apparently an Englishman. He wore a
military cap and military boots, but was otherwise dressed as a
civilian. Next to him stood an officer in Prussian uniform, and
next to the officer was the third and the oldest of the party. He
also was dressed in uniform, but his appearance was far from
being suggestive of the appearance of a military man. He halted
on one foot, he stooped at the shoulders, and instead of a sword
at his side he carried a stick in his hand. After looking sharply
through a large pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, first at
Mercy, then at the bed, then all round the room, he turned with a
cynical composure of manner to the Prussian officer, and broke
the silence in these words:
"A woman ill on the bed; another woman in attendance on her, and
no one else in the room. Any necessity, major, for setting a
guard here?"
"No necessity," answered the major. He wheeled round on his heel
and returned to the kitchen. The German surgeon advanced a
little, led by his professional instinct, in the direction of the
bedside. The young Englishman, whose eyes had remained riveted in
admiration on Mercy, drew the canvas screen over the doorway and
respectfully addressed her in the French language.
"May I ask if I am speaking to a French lady?" he said.
"I am an Englishwoman," Mercy replied.
The surgeon heard the answer. Stopping short on his way to the
bed, he pointed to the recumbent figure on it, and said to Mercy,
in good English, spoken with a strong German accent.
"Can I be of any use there?"
His manner was ironically courteous, his harsh voice was pitched
in one sardonic monotony of tone. Mercy took an instantaneous
dislike to this hobbling, ugly old man, staring at her rudely
through his great tortoiseshell spectacles.
"You can be of no use, sir," she said, shortly. "The lady was
killed when your troops shelled this cottage."
The Englishman started, and looked compassionately toward the
bed. The German refreshed himself with a pinch of snuff, and put
another question.
"Has the body been examined by a medical man?" he asked.
Mercy ungraciously limited her reply to the one necessary word
"Yes."
The present surgeon was not a man to be daunted by a lady's
disapproval of him. He went on with his questions.
"Who has examined the body?" he inquired next.
Mercy answered, "The doctor attached to the French ambulance."
The German grunted in contemptuous disapproval of all Frenchmen,
and all French institutions. The Englishman seized his first
opportunity of addressing himself to Mercy once more.
"Is the lady a countrywoman of ours?" he asked, gently.
Mercy considered before she answered him. With the object she had
in view, there might be serious reasons for speaking with extreme
caution when she spoke of Grace.
"I believe so," she said. "We met here by accident. I know
nothing of her."
"Not even her name?" inquired the German surgeon.
Mercy's resolution was hardly equal yet to giving her own name
openly as the name of Grace. She took refuge in flat denial.
"Not even her name," she repeated obstinately.
The old man stared at her more rudely than ever, considered with
himself, and took the candle from the table. He hobbled back to
the bed and examined the figure laid on it in silence. The
Englishman continued the conversation, no longer concealing the
interest that he felt in the beautiful woman who stood before
him.
"Pardon me, "he said, "you are very young to be alone in war-time
in such a place as this."
The sudden outbreak of a disturbance in the kitchen relieved
Mercy from any immediate necessity for answering him. She heard
the voices of the wounded men raised in feeble remonstrance, and
the harsh command of the foreign officers bidding them be silent.
The generous instincts of the woman instantly prevailed over
every personal consideration imposed on her by the position which
she had assumed. Reckless whether she betrayed herself or not as
nurse in the French ambulance, she instantly drew aside the
canvas to enter the kitchen. A German sentinel barred the way to
her, and announced, in his own language, that no strangers were
admitted. The Englishman politely interposing, asked if she had
any special object in wishing to enter the room.
"The poor Frenchmen!" she said, earnestly, her heart upbraiding
her for having forgotten them. "The poor wounded Frenchmen!"
The German surgeon advanced from the bedside, and took the matter
up before the Englishman could say a word more.
"You have nothing to do with the wounded Frenchmen," he croaked,
in the harshest notes of his voice. "The wounded Frenchmen are my
business, and not yours. They are _our_ prisoners, and they are
being moved to _our_ ambulance. I am Ingatius Wetzel, chief of
the medical staff--and I tell you this. Hold your tongue." He
turned to the sentinel and added in German, "Draw the curtain
again; and if the woman persists, put her back into this room
with your own hand."
Mercy attempted to remonstrate. The Englishman respectfully took
her arm, and drew her out of the sentinel's reach.
"It is useless to resist," he said. "The German discipline never
gives way. There is not the least need to be uneasy about the
Frenchmen. The ambulance under Surgeon Wetzel is admirably
administered. I answer for it, the men will be well treated." He
saw the tears in her eyes as he spoke; his admiration for her
rose higher and higher. "Kind as well as beautiful, "he thought.
"What a charming creature!"
"Well!" said Ignatius Wetzel, eying Mercy sternly through his
spectacles. "Are you satisfied? And will you hold your tongue?"
She yielded: it was plainly useless to resist. But for the
surgeon's resistance, her devotion to the wounded men might have
stopped her on the downward way that she was going. If she could
only have been absorbed again, mind and body, in her good work as
a nurse, the temptation might even yet have found her strong
enough to resist it. The fatal severity of the German discipline
had snapped asunder the last tie that bound her to her better
self. Her face hardened as she walked away proudly from Surgeon
Wetzel, and took a chair.
The Englishman followed her, and reverted to the question of her
present situation in the cottage.
"Don't suppose that I want to alarm you," he said. "There is, I
repeat, no need to be anxious about the Frenchmen, but there is
serious reason for anxiety on your own account. The action will
be renewed round this village by daylight; you ought really to be
in a place of safety. I am an officer in the English army--my
name is Horace Holmcroft. I shall be delighted to be of use to
you, and I _can_ be of use, if you will let me. May I ask if you
are traveling?"
Mercy gathered the cloak which concealed her nurse's dress more
closely round her, and committed herself silently to her first
overt act of deception. She bowed her head in the affirmative.
"Are you on your way to England?"
"Yes."
"In that case I can pass you through the German lines, and
forward you at once on your journey."
Mercy looked at him in unconcealed surprise. His strongly-felt
interest in her was restrained within the strictest limits of
good-breeding: he was unmistakably a gentleman. Did he really
mean what he had just said?
"You can pass me through the German lines?" she repeated. "You
must possess extraordinary influence, sir, to be able to do
that."
Mr. Horace Holmcroft smiled.
"I possess the influence that no one can resist," he
answered--"the influence of the Press. I am serving here as war
correspondent of one of our great English newspapers. If I ask
him, the commanding officer will grant you a pass. He is close to
this cottage. What do you say?"
She summoned her resolution--not without difficulty, even
now--and took him at his word.
"I gratefully accept your offer, sir."
He advanced a step toward the kitchen, and stopped.
"It may be well to make the application as privately as
possible," he said. "I shall be questioned if I pass through that
room. Is there no other way out of the cottage?"
Mercy showed him the door leading into the yard. He bowed--and
left her.
She looked furtively toward the German surgeon. Ignatius Wetzel
was still at the bed, bending over the body, and apparently
absorbed in examining the wound which had been inflicted by the
shell. Mercy's instinctive aversion to the old man increased
tenfold, now that she was left alone with him. She withdrew
uneasily to the window, and looked out at the moonlight.
Had she committed herself to the fraud? Hardly, yet. She had
committed herself to returning to England--nothing more. There
was no necessity, thus far, which forced her to present herself
at Mablethorpe House, in Grace's place. There was still time to
reconsider her resolution--still time to write the account of the
accident, as she had proposed, and to send it with the
letter-case to Lady Janet Roy. Suppose she finally decided on
taking this course, what was to become of her when she found
herself in England again? There was no alternative open but to
apply once more to her friend the matron. There was nothing for
her to do but to return to the Refuge!
The Refuge! The matron! What past association with these two was
now presenting itself uninvited, and taking the foremost place in
her mind? Of whom was she now thinking, in that strange place,
and at that crisis in her life? Of the man whose words had found
their way to her heart, whose influence had strengthened and
comforted her, in the chapel of the Refuge. One of the finest
passages in his sermon had been especially devoted by Julian Gray
to warning the congregation whom he addressed against the
degrading influences of falsehood and deceit. The terms in which
he had appealed to the miserable women round him--terms of
sympathy and encouragement never addressed to them before--came
back to Mercy Merrick as if she had heard them an hour since. She
turned deadly pale as they now pleaded with her once more. "Oh!"
she whispered to herself, as she thought of what she had proposed
and planned, "what have I done? what have I done?"
She turned from the window with some vague idea in her mind of
following Mr. Holmcroft and calling him back. As she faced the
bed again she also confronted Ignatius Wetzel. He was just
stepping forward to speak to her, with a white handkerchief--the
handkerchief which she had lent to Grace--held up in his hand.
"I have found this in her pocket," he said. "Here is her name
written on it. She must be a countrywoman of yours." He read the
letters marked on the handkerchief with some difficulty. "Her
name is--Mercy Merrick."
_His_ lips had said it--not hers! _He_ had given her the name.
"'Mercy Merrick' is an English name?" pursued Ignatius Wetzel,
with his eyes steadily fixed on her. "Is it not so?"
The hold on her mind of the past association with Julian Gray
began to relax. One present and pressing question now possessed
itself of the foremost place in her thoughts. Should she correct
the error into which the German had fallen? The time had come--to
speak, and assert her own identity; or to be silent, and commit
herself to the fraud.
Horace Holmcroft entered the room again at the moment when
Surgeon Wetzel's staring eyes were still fastened on her, waiting
for her reply.
"I have not overrated my interest," he said, pointing to a little
slip of paper in his hand. "Here is the pass. Have you got pen
and ink? I must fill up the form."
Mercy pointed to the writing materials on the table. Horace
seated himself, and dipped the pen in the ink.
"Pray don't think that I wish to intrude myself into your
affairs," he said. "I am obliged to ask you one or two plain
questions. What is your name?"
A sudden trembling seized her. She supported herself against the
foot of the bed. Her whol e future existence depended on her
answer. She was incapable of uttering a word.
Ignatius Wetzel stood her friend for once. His croaking voice
filled the empty gap of silence exactly at the right time. He
doggedly held the handkerchief under her eyes. He obstinately
repeated: "Mercy Merrick is an English name. Is it not so?"
Horace Holmcroft looked up from the table. "Mercy Merrick?" he
said. "Who is Mercy Merrick?"
Surgeon Wetzel pointed to the corpse on the bed.
"I have found the name on the handkerchief, "he said. "This lady,
it seems, had not curiosity enough to look for the name of her
own countrywoman." He made that mocking allusion to Mercy with a
tone which was almost a tone of suspicion, and a look which was
almost a look of contempt. Her quick temper instantly resented
the discourtesy of which she had been made the object. The
irritation of the moment--so often do the most trifling motives
determine the most serious human actions--decided her on the
course that she should pursue. She turned her back scornfully on
the rude old man, and left him in the delusion that he had
discovered the dead woman's name.
Horace returned to the business of filling up the form. "Pardon
me for pressing the question," he said. "You know what German
discipline is by this time. What is your name?"
She answered him recklessly, defiantly, without fairly realizing
what she was doing until it was done.
"Grace Roseberry," she said.
The words were hardly out of her mouth before she would have
given everything she possessed in the world to recall them.
"Miss?" asked Horace, smiling.
She could only answer him by bowing her head.
He wrote: "Miss Grace Roseberry"--reflected for a moment--and
then added, interrogatively, "Returning to her friends in
England?" Her friends in England? Mercy's heart swelled: she
silently replied by another sign. He wrote the words after the
name, and shook the sandbox over the wet ink. "That will be
enough," he said, rising and presenting the pass to Mercy; "I
will see you through the lines myself, and arrange for your being
sent on by the railway. Where is your luggage?"
Mercy pointed toward the front door of the building. "In a shed
outside the cottage," she answered. "It is not much; I can do
everything for myself if the sentinel will let me pass through
the kitchen."
Horace pointed to the paper in her hand. "You can go where you
like now," he said. "Shall I wait for you here or outside?"
Mercy glanced distrustfully at Ignatius Wetzel. He was again
absorbed in his endless examination of the body on the bed. If
she left him alone with Mr. Holmcroft, there was no knowing what
the hateful old man might not say of her. She answered:
"Wait for me outside, if you please."
The sentinel drew back with a military salute at the sight of the
pass. All the French prisoners had been removed; there were not
more than half-a-dozen Germans in the kitchen, and the greater
part of them were asleep. Mercy took Grace Roseberry's clothes
from the corner in which they had been left to dry, and made for
the shed--a rough structure of wood, built out from the cottage
wall. At the front door she encountered a second sentinel, and
showed her pass for the second time. She spoke to this man,
asking him if he understood French. He answered that he
understood a little. Mercy gave him a piece of money, and said:
"I am going to pack up my luggage in the shed. Be kind enough to
see that nobody disturbs me." The sentinel saluted, in token that
he understood. Mercy disappeared in the dark interior of the
shed.
Left alone with Surgeon Wetzel, Horace noticed the strange old
man still bending intently over the English lady who had been
killed by the shell.
"Anything remarkable," he asked, "in the manner of that poor
creature's death?"
"Nothing to put in a newspaper," retorted the cynic, pursuing his
investigations as attentively as ever.
"Interesting to a doctor--eh?" said Horace.
"Yes. Interesting to a doctor," was the gruff reply.
Horace good-humoredly accepted the hint implied in those words.
He quitted the room by the door leading into the yard, and waited
for the charming Englishwoman, as he had been instructed, outside
the cottage.
Left by himself, Ignatius Wetzel, after a first cautious look all
round him, opened the upper part of Grace's dress, and laid his
left hand on her heart. Taking a little steel instrument from his
waistcoat pocket with the other hand, he applied it carefully to
the wound, raised a morsel of the broken and depressed bone of
the skull, and waited for the result. "Aha!" he cried, addressing
with a terrible gayety the senseless creature under his hands.
"The Frenchman says you are dead, my dear--does he? The Frenchman
is a Quack! The Frenchman is an Ass!" He lifted his head, and
called into the kitchen. "Max!" A sleepy young German, covered
with a dresser's apron from his chin to his feet, drew the
curtain, and waited for his instructions. "Bring me my black
bag," said Ignatius Wetzel. Having given that order, he rubbed
his hands cheerfully, and shook himself like a dog. "Now I am
quite happy," croaked the terrible old man, with his fierce eyes
leering sidelong at the bed. "My dear, dead Englishwoman, I would
not have missed this meeting with you for all the money I have in
the world. Ha! you infernal French Quack, you call it death, do
you? I call it suspended animation from pressure on the brain!"
Max appeared with the black bag.
Ignatius Wetzel selected two fearful instruments, bright and new,
and hugged them to his bosom. "My little boys," he said,
tenderly, as if they were his children; "my blessed little boys,
come to work!" He turned to the assistant. "Do you remember the
battle of Solferino, Max--and the Austrian soldier I operated on
for a wound on the head?"
The assistant's sleepy eyes opened wide; he was evidently
interested. "I remember," he said. "I held the candle."
The master led the way to the bed.
"I am not satisfied with the result of that operation at
Solferino," he said; "I have wanted to try again ever since. It's
true that I saved the man's life, but I failed to give him back
his reason along with it. It might have been something wrong in
the operation, or it might have been something wrong in the man.
Whichever it was, he will live and die mad. Now look here, my
little Max, at this dear young lady on the bed. She gives me just
what I wanted; here is the case at Solferino once more. You shall
hold the candle again, my good boy; stand there, and look with
all your eyes. I am going to try if I can save the life and the
reason too this time."
He tucked up the cuffs of his coat and began the operation. As
his fearful instruments touched Grace's head, the voice of the
sentinel at the nearest outpost was heard, giving the word in
German which permitted Mercy to take the first step on her
journey to England:
"Pass the English lady!"
The operation proceeded. The voice of the sentinel at the next
post was heard more faintly, in its turn: " Pass the English
lady!"
The operation ended. Ignatius Wetzel held up his hand for silence
and put his ear close to the patient's mouth.
The first trembling breath of returning life fluttered over Grace
Roseberry's lips and touched the old man's wrinkled cheek. "Aha!"
he cried. "Good girl! you breathe--you live!" As he spoke, the
voice of the sentinel at the final limit of the German lines
(barely audible in the distance) gave the word for the last time:
"Pass the English lady!"
SECOND SCENE.
Mablethorpe House.
PREAMBLE.
THE place is England.
The time is winter, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy.
The persons are, Julian Gray, Horace Holmcroft, Lady Janet Roy,
Grace Roseberry, and Mercy Merrick.
CHAPTER VI.
LADY JANET'S COMPANION.
IT is a glorious winter's day. The sky is clear, the frost is
hard, the ice bears for skating.
The dining-room of the ancient mansion called Mablethorpe House,
situated in the London suburb of Kensington, is famous among
artists and other persons of taste for the carved wood-work, of
Italian origin, which covers the walls on three sides. On the
fourth side the march of modern improvement has broken in, and
has va ried and brightened the scene by means of a conservatory,
forming an entrance to the room through a winter-garden of rare
plants and flowers. On your right hand, as you stand fronting the
conservatory, the monotony of the paneled wall is relieved by a
quaintly patterned door of old inlaid wood, leading into the
library, and thence, across the great hall, to the other
reception-rooms of the house. A corresponding door on the left
hand gives access to the billiard-room, to the smoking-room next
to it, and to a smaller hall commanding one of the secondary
entrances to the building. On the left side also is the ample
fireplace, surmounted by its marble mantelpiece, carved in the
profusely and confusedly ornate style of eighty years since. To
the educated eye the dining-room, with its modern furniture and
conservatory, its ancient walls and doors, and its lofty
mantelpiece (neither very old nor very new), presents a
startling, almost a revolutionary, mixture of the decorative
workmanship of widely differing schools. To the ignorant eye the
one result produced is an impression of perfect luxury and
comfort, united in the friendliest combination, and developed on
the largest scale.
The clock has just struck two. The table is spread for luncheon.
The persons seated at the table are three in number. First, Lady
Janet Roy. Second, a young lady who is her reader and companion.
Third, a guest staying in the house, who has already appeared in
these pages under the name of Horace Holmcroft--attached to the
German army as war correspondent of an English newspaper.
Lady Janet Roy needs but little introduction. Everybody with the
slightest pretension to experience in London society knows Lady
Janet Roy.
Who has not heard of her old lace and her priceless rubies? Who
has not admired her commanding figure, her beautifully dressed
white hair, her wonderful black eyes, which still preserve their
youthful brightness, after first opening on the world seventy
years since? Who has not felt the charm of her frank, easily
flowing talk, her inexhaustible spirits, her good-humored,
gracious sociability of manner? Where is the modern hermit who is
not familiarly acquainted, by hearsay at least, with the
fantastic novelty and humor of her opinions; with her generous
encouragement of rising merit of any sort, in all ranks, high or
low; with her charities, which know no distinction between abroad
and at home; with her large indulgence, which no ingratitude can
discourage, and no servility pervert? Everybody has heard of the
popular old lady--the childless widow of a long-forgotten lord.
Everybody knows Lady Janet Roy.
But who knows the handsome young woman sitting on her right hand,
playing with her luncheon instead of eating it? Nobody really
knows her.
She is prettily dressed in gray poplin, trimmed with gray velvet,
and set off by a ribbon of deep red tied in a bow at the throat.
She is nearly as tall as Lady Janet herself, and possesses a
grace and beauty of figure not always seen in women who rise
above the medium height. Judging by a certain innate grandeur in
the carriage of her head and in the expression of her large
melancholy gray eyes, believers in blood and breeding will be apt
to guess that this is another noble lady. Alas! she is nothing
but Lady Janet's companion and reader. Her head, crowned with its
lovely light brown hair, bends with a gentle respect when Lady
Janet speaks. Her fine firm hand is easily and incessantly
watchful to supply Lady Janet's slightest wants. The old
lady--affectionately familiar with her--speaks to her as she
might speak to an adopted child. But the gratitude of the
beautiful companion has always the same restraint in its
acknowledgment of kindness; the smile of the beautiful companion
has always the same underlying sadness when it responds to Lady
Janet's hearty laugh. Is there something wrong here, under the
surface? Is she suffering in mind, or suffering in body? What is
the matter with her?
The matter with her is secret remorse. This delicate and
beautiful creature pines under the slow torment of constant
self-reproach.
To the mistress of the house, and to all who inhabit it or enter
it, she is known as Grace Roseberry, the orphan relative by
marriage of Lady Janet Roy. To herself alone she is known as the
outcast of the London streets; the inmate of the London Refuge;
the lost woman who has stolen her way back--after vainly trying
to fight her way back--to Home and Name. There she sits in the
grim shadow of her own terrible secret, disguised in another
person's identity, and established in another person's place.
Mercy Merrick had only to dare, and to become Grace Roseberry if
she pleased. She has dared, and she has been Grace Roseberry for
nearly four months past.
At this moment, while Lady Janet is talking to Horace Holmcroft,
something that has passed between them has set her thinking of
the day when she took the first fatal step which committed her to
the fraud.
How marvelously easy of accomplishment the act of personation had
been! At first sight Lady Janet had yielded to the fascination of
the noble and interesting face. No need to present the stolen
letter; no need to repeat the ready-made story. The old lady had
put the letter aside unopened, and had stopped the story at the
first words. "Your face is your introduction, my dear; your
father can say nothing for you which you have not already said
for yourself." There was the welcome which established her firmly
in her false identity at the outset. Thanks to her own
experience, and thanks to the "Journal" of events at Rome,
questions about her life in Canada and questions about Colonel
Roseberry's illness found her ready with answers which (even if
suspicion had existed) would have disarmed suspicion on the spot.
While the true Grace was slowly and painfully winning her way
back to life on her bed in a German hospital, the false Grace was
presented to Lady Janet's friends as the relative by marriage of
the Mistress of Mablethorpe House. From that time forward nothing
had happened to rouse in her the faintest suspicion that Grace
Roseberry was other than a dead-and-buried woman. So far as she
now knew--so far as any one now knew--she might live out her life
in perfect security (if her conscience would let her), respected,
distinguished, and beloved, in the position which she had
usurped.
She rose abruptly from the table. The effort of her life was to
shake herself free of the remembrances which haunted her
perpetually as they were haunting her now. Her memory was her
worst enemy; her one refuge from it was in change of occupation
and change of scene.
"May I go into the conservatory, Lady Janet?" she asked.
"Certainly, my dear."
She bent her head to her protectress, looked for a moment with a
steady, compassionate attention at Horace Holmcroft, and, slowly
crossing the room, entered the winter-garden. The eyes of Horace
followed her, as long as she was in view, with a curious
contradictory expression of admiration and disapproval. When she
had passed out of sight the admiration vanished, but the
disapproval remained. The face of the young man contracted into a
frown: he sat silent, with his fork in his hand, playing absently
with the fragments on his plate.
"Take some French pie, Horace," said Lady Janet.
"No, thank you."
"Some more chicken, then?"
"No more chicken."
"Will nothing tempt you?"
"I will take some more wine, if you will allow me."
He filled his glass (for the fifth or sixth time) with claret,
and emptied it sullenly at a draught. Lady Janet's bright eyes
watched him with sardonic attention; Lady Janet's ready tongue
spoke out as freely as usual what was passing in her mind at the
time.
"The air of Kensington doesn't seem to suit you, my young
friend," she said. "The longer you have been my guest, the
oftener you fill your glass and empty your cigar-case. Those are
bad signs in a young man. When you first came here you arrived
invalided by a wound. In your place, I should not have exposed
myself to be shot, with no other object in view than describing a
battle in a newspaper. I suppose tastes differ. Are you ill? Does
your wound sti ll plague you?"
"Not in the least."
"Are you out of spirits?"
Horace Holmcroft dropped his fork, rested his elbows on the
table, and answered:
"Awfully."
Even Lady Janet's large toleration had its limits. It embraced
every human offense except a breach of good manners. She snatched
up the nearest weapon of correction at hand--a tablespoon--and
rapped her young friend smartly with it on the arm that was
nearest to her.
"My table is not the club table," said the old lady. "Hold up
your head. Don't look at your fork--look at me. I allow nobody to
be out of spirits in My house. I consider it to be a reflection
on Me. If our quiet life here doesn't suit you, say so plainly,
and find something else to do. There is employment to be had, I
suppose--if you choose to apply for it? You needn't smile. I
don't want to see your teeth--I want an answer."
Horace admitted, with all needful gravity, that there was
employment to be had. The war between France and Germany, he
remarked, was still going on: the newspaper had offered to employ
him again in the capacity of correspondent.
"Don't speak of the newspapers and the war!" cried Lady Janet,
with a sudden explosion of anger, which was genuine anger this
time. "I detest the newspapers! I won't allow the newspapers to
enter this house. I lay the whole blame of the blood shed between
France and Germany at their door."
Horace's eyes opened wide in amazement. The old lady was
evidently in earnest. "What can you possibly mean?" he asked.
"Are the newspapers responsible for the war?"
"Entirely responsible, "answered Lady Janet. "Why, you don't
understand the age you live in! Does anybody do anything nowadays
(fighting included) without wishing to see it in the newspapers?
_I_ subscribe to a charity; _thou_ art presented with a
testimonial; _he_ preaches a sermon; _we_ suffer a grievance;
_you_ make a discovery; _they_ go to church and get married. And
I, thou, he; we, you, they, all want one and the same thing--we
want to see it in the papers. Are kings, soldiers, and
diplomatists exceptions to the general rule of humanity? Not
they! I tell you seriously, if the newspapers of Europe had one
and all decided not to take the smallest notice in print of the
war between France and Germany, it is my firm conviction the war
would have come to an end for want of encouragement long since.
Let the pen cease to advertise the sword, and I, for one, can see
the result. No report--no fighting."
"Your views have the merit of perfect novelty, ma'am," said
Horace. "Would you object to see them in the newspapers?"
Lady Janet worsted her young friend with his own weapons.
"Don't I live in the latter part of the nineteenth century?" she
asked. "In the newspapers, did you say? In large type, Horace, if
you love me!"
Horace changed the subject.
"You blame me for being out of spirits," he said; "and you seem
to think it is because I am tired of my pleasant life at
Mablethorpe House. I am not in the least tired, Lady Janet." He
looked toward the conservatory: the frown showed itself on his
face once more. "The truth is," he resumed, "I am not satisfied
with Grace Roseberry."
"What has Grace done?"
"She persists in prolonging our engagement. Nothing will persuade
her to fix the day for our marriage."
It was true! Mercy had been mad enough to listen to him, and to
love him. But Mercy was not vile enough to marry him under her
false character, and in her false name. Between three and four
months had elapsed since Horace had been sent home from the war,
wounded, and had found the beautiful Englishwoman whom he had
befriended in France established at Mablethorpe House. Invited to
become Lady Janet's guest (he had passed his holidays as a
school-boy under Lady Janet's roof)--free to spend the idle time
of his convalescence from morning to night in Mercy's
society--the impression originally produced on him in a French
cottage soon strengthened into love. Before the month was out
Horace had declared himself, and had discovered that he spoke to
willing ears. From that moment it was only a question of
persisting long enough in the resolution to gain his point. The
marriage engagement was ratified--most reluctantly on the lady's
side--and there the further progress of Horace Holmcroft's suit
came to an end. Try as he might, he failed to persuade his
betrothed wife to fix the day for the marriage. There were no
obstacles in her way. She had no near relations of her own to
consult. As a connection of Lady Janet's by marriage, Horace's
mother and sisters were ready to receive her with all the honors
due to a new member of the family. No pecuniary considerations
made it necessary, in this case, to wait for a favorable time.
Horace was an only son; and he had succeeded to his father's
estate with an ample income to support it. On both sides alike
there was absolutely nothing to prevent the two young people from
being married as soon as the settlements could be drawn. And yet,
to all appearance, here was a long engagement in prospect, with
no better reason than the lady's incomprehensible perversity to
explain the delay. "Can you account for Grace's conduct?" asked
Lady Janet. Her manner changed as she put the question. She
looked and spoke like a person who was perplexed and annoyed
"I hardly like to own it," Horace answered, "but I am afraid she
has some motive for deferring our marriage which she cannot
confide either to you or to me."
Lady Janet started.
"What makes you think that?" she asked.
"I have once or twice caught her in tears. Every now and
then--sometimes when she is talking quite gayly--she suddenly
changes color and becomes silent and depressed. Just now, when
she left the table (didn't you notice it?), she looked at me in
the strangest way--almost as if she was sorry for me. What do
these things mean?"
Horace's reply, instead of increasing Lady Janet's anxiety,
seemed to relieve it. He had observed nothing which she had not
noticed herself. "You foolish boy!" she said, "the meaning is
plain enough. Grace has been out of health for some time past.
The doctor recommends change of air. I shall take her away with
me."
"It would be more to the purpose," Horace rejoined, "if I took
her away with me. She might consent, if you would only use your
influence. Is it asking too much to ask you to persuade her? My
mother and my sisters have written to her, and have produced no
effect. Do me the greatest of all kindnesses--speak to her
to-day!" He paused, and possessing himself of Lady Janet's hand,
pressed it entreatingly. "You have always been so good to me," he
said, softly, and pressed it again.
The old lady looked at him. It was impossible to dispute that
there were attractions in Horace Holmcroft's face which made it
well worth looking at. Many a woman might have envied him his
clear complexion, his bright blue eyes, and the warm amber tint
in his light Saxon hair. Men--especially men skilled in observing
physiognomy--might have noticed in the shape of his forehead and
in the line of his upper lip the signs indicative of a moral
nature deficient in largeness and breadth--of a mind easily
accessible to strong prejudices, and obstinate in maintaining
those prejudices in the face of conviction itself.
To the observation of women these remote defects were too far
below the surface to be visible. He charmed the sex in general by
his rare personal advantages, and by the graceful deference of
his manner. To Lady Janet he was endeared, not by his own merits
only, but by old associations that were connected with him. His
father had been one of her many admirers in her young days.
Circumstances had parted them. Her marriage to another man had
been a childless marriage. In past times, when the boy Horace had
come to her from school, she had cherished a secret fancy (too
absurd to be communicated to any living creature) that he ought
to have been _her_ son, and might have been her son, if she had
married his father! She smiled charmingly, old as she was--she
yielded as his mother might have yielded--when the young man took
her hand and entreated her to interest herself in his marriage.
"Must I really speak to Grace?" she asked , with a gentleness of
tone and manner far from characteristic, on ordinary occasions,
of the lady of Mablethorpe House. Horace saw that he had gained
his point. He sprang to his feet; his eyes turned eagerly in the
direction of the conservatory; his handsome face was radiant with
hope. Lady Janet (with her mind full of his father) stole a last
look at him, sighed as she thought of the vanished days, and
recovered herself.
"Go to the smoking-room," she said, giving him a push toward the
door. "Away with you, and cultivate the favorite vice of the
nineteenth century." Horace attempted to express his gratitude.
"Go and smoke!" was all she said, pushing him out. "Go and
smoke!"
Left by herself, Lady Janet took a turn in the room, and
considered a little.
Horace's discontent was not unreasonable. There was really no
excuse for the delay of which he complained. Whether the young
lady had a special motive for hanging back, or whether she was
merely fretting because she did not know her own mind, it was, in
either case, necessary to come to a distinct understanding,
sooner or later, on the serious question of the marriage. The
difficulty was, how to approach the subject without giving
offense. "I don't understand the young women of the present
generation," thought Lady Janet. "In my time, when we were fond
of a man, we were ready to marry him at a moment's notice. And
this is an age of progress! They ought to be readier still."
Arriving, by her own process of induction, at this inevitable
conclusion, she decided to try what her influence could
accomplish, and to trust to the inspiration of the moment for
exerting it in the right way. "Grace!" she called out,
approaching the conservatory door. The tall, lithe figure in its
gray dress glided into view, and stood relieved against the green
background of the winter-garden.
"Did your ladyship call me?"
"Yes; I want to speak to you. Come and sit down by me."
With those words Lady Janet led the way to a sofa, and placed her
companion by her side.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MAN IS COMING.
"You look very pale this morning, my child."
Mercy sighed wearily. "I am not well," she answered. "The
slightest noises startle me. I feel tired if I only walk across
the room."
Lady Janet patted her kindly on the shoulder. "We must try what a
change will do for you. Which shall it be? the Continent or the
sea-side?"
"Your ladyship is too kind to me."
"It is impossible to be too kind to you."
Mercy started. The color flowed charmingly over her pale face.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, impulsively. "Say that again!"
"Say it again?" repeated Lady Janet, with a look of surprise.
"Yes! Don't think me presuming; only think me vain. I can't hear
you say too often that you have learned to like me. Is it really
a pleasure to you to have me in the house? Have I always behaved
well since I have been with you?"
(The one excuse for the act of personation--if excuse there could
be--lay in the affirmative answer to those questions. It would be
something, surely, to say of the false Grace that the true Grace
could not have been worthier of her welcome, if the true Grace
had been received at Mablethorpe House!)
Lady Janet was partly touched, partly amused, by the
extraordinary earnestness of the appeal that had been made to
her.
"Have you behaved well?" she repeated. "My dear, you talk as if
you were a child!" She laid her hand caressingly on Mercy's arm,
and continued, in a graver tone: "It is hardly too much to say,
Grace, that I bless the day when you first came to me. I do
believe I could be hardly fonder of you if you were my own
daughter."
Mercy suddenly turned her head aside, so as to hide her face.
Lady Janet, still touching her arm, felt it tremble. "What is the
matter with you?" she asked, in her abrupt, downright manner.
"I am only very grateful to your ladyship--that is all." The
words were spoken faintly, in broken tones. The face was still
averted from Lady Janet's view. "What have I said to provoke
this?" wondered the old lady. "Is she in the melting mood to-day?
If she is, now is the time to say a word for Horace!" Keeping
that excellent object in view, Lady Janet approached the delicate
topic with all needful caution at starting.
"We have got on so well together," she resumed, "that it will not
be easy for either of us to feel reconciled to a change in our
lives. At my age, it will fall hardest on me. What shall I do,
Grace, when the day comes for parting with my adopted daughter?"
Mercy started, and showed her face again. The traces of tears
were in her eyes. "Why should I leave you?" she asked, in a tone
of alarm.
"Surely you know!" exclaimed Lady Janet.
"Indeed I don't. Tell me why."
"Ask Horace to tell you."
The last allusion was too plain to be misunderstood. Mercy's head
drooped. She began to tremble again. Lady Janet looked at her in
blank amazement.
"Is there anything wrong between Horace and you?" she asked.
"No."
"You know your own heart, my dear child? You have surely not
encouraged Horace without loving him?"
"Oh no!"
"And yet--"
For the first time in their experience of each other Mercy
ventured to interrupt her benefactress. "Dear Lady Janet," she
interposed, gently, "I am in no hurry to be married. There will
be plenty of time in the future to talk of that. You had
something you wished to say to me. What is it?"
It was no easy matter to disconcert Lady Janet Roy. But that last
question fairly reduced her to silence. After all that had
passed, there sat her young companion, innocent of the faintest
suspicion of the subject that was to be discussed between them!
"What are the young women of the present time made of?" thought
the old lady, utterly at a loss to know what to say next. Mercy
waited, on her side, with an impenetrable patience which only
aggravated the difficulties of the position. The silence was fast
threatening to bring the interview to a sudden and untimely end,
when the door from the library opened, and a man-servant, bearing
a little silver salver, entered the room.
Lady Janet's rising sense of annoyance instantly seized on the
servant as a victim. "What do you want?" she asked, sharply. "I
never rang for you."
"A letter, my lady. The messenger waits for an answer."
The man presented his salver with the letter on it, and withdrew.
Lady Janet recognized the handwriting on the address with a look
of surprise. "Excuse me, my dear," she said, pausing, with her
old-fashioned courtesy, before she opened the envelope. Mercy
made the necessary acknowledgment, and moved away to the other
end of the room, little thinking that the arrival of the letter
marked a crisis in her life. Lady Janet put on her spectacles.
"Odd that he should have come back already!" she said to herself,
as she threw the empty envelope on the table.
The letter contained these lines, the writer of them being no
other than the man who had preached in the chapel of the Refuge:
"DEAR AUNT--I am back again in London before my time. My friend
the rector has shortened his holiday, and has resumed his duties
in the country. I am afraid you will blame me when you hear of
the reasons which have hastened his return. The sooner I make my
confession, the easier I shall feel. Besides, I have a special
object in wishing to see you as soon as possible. May I follow my
letter to Mablethorpe House? And may I present a lady to you--a
perfect stranger--in whom I am interested? Pray say Yes, by the
bearer, and oblige your affectionate nephew,
"JULIAN GRAY."
Lady Janet referred again suspiciously to the sentence in the
letter which alluded to the "lady."
Julian Gray was her only surviving nephew, the son of a favorite
sister whom she had lost. He would have held no very exalted
position in the estimation of his aunt--who regarded his views in
politics and religion with the strongest aversion--but for his
marked resemblance to his mother. This pleaded for him with the
old lady, aided as it was by the pride that she secretly felt in
the early celebrity which the young clergyman had achieved as a
writer and a preacher. Thanks to these mitigating circumstances,
and to Julian's inexhaustible good-humor, the aunt and the nephe
w generally met on friendly terms. Apart from what she called
"his detestable opinions," Lady Janet was sufficiently interested
in Julian to feel some curiosity about the mysterious "lady"
mentioned in the letter. Had he determined to settle in life? Was
his choice already made? And if so, would it prove to be a choice
acceptable to the family? Lady Janet's bright face showed signs
of doubt as she asked herself that last question. Julian's
liberal views were capable of leading him to dangerous extremes.
His aunt shook her head ominously as she rose from the sofa and
advanced to the library door.
"Grace," she said, pausing and turning round, "I have a note to
write to my nephew. I shall be back directly."
Mercy approached her, from the opposite extremity of the room,
with an exclamation of surprise.
"Your nephew?" she repeated. "Your ladyship never told me you had
a nephew."
Lady Janet laughed. "I must have had it on the tip of my tongue
to tell you, over and over again," she said. "But we have had so
many things to talk about--and, to own the truth, my nephew is
not one of my favorite subjects of conversation. I don't mean
that I dislike him; I detest his principles, my dear, that's all.
However, you shall form your own opinion of him; he is coming to
see me to-day. Wait here till I return; I have something more to
say about Horace."
Mercy opened the library door for her, closed it again, and
walked slowly to and fro alone in the room, thinking.
Was her mind running on Lady Janet's nephew? No. Lady Janet's
brief allusion to her relative had not led her into alluding to
him by his name. Mercy was still as ignorant as ever that the
preacher at the Refuge and the nephew of her benefactress were
one and the same man. Her memory was busy now with the tribute
which Lady Janet had paid to her at the outset of the interview
between them: "It is hardly too much to say, Grace, that I bless
the day when you first came to me." For the moment there was balm
for her wounded spirit in the remembrance of those words. Grace
Roseberry herself could surely have earned no sweeter praise than
the praise that she had won. The next instant she was seized with
a sudden horror of her own successful fraud. The sense of her
degradation had never been so bitterly present to her as at that
moment. If she could only confess the truth--if she could
innocently enjoy her harmless life at Mablethorpe House--what a
grateful, happy woman she might be! Was it possible (if she made
the confession) to trust to her own good conduct to plead her
excuse? No! Her calmer sense warned her that it was hopeless. The
place she had won--honestly won--in Lady Janet's estimation had
been obtained by a trick. Nothing could alter, nothing could
excuse, _that_. She took out her handkerchief and dashed away the
useless tears that had gathered in her eyes, and tried to turn
her thoughts some other way. What was it Lady Janet had said on
going into the library? She had said she was coming back to speak
about Horace. Mercy guessed what the object was; she knew but too
well what Horace wanted of her. How was she to meet the
emergency? In the name of Heaven, what was to be done? Could she
let the man who loved her--the man whom she loved--drift
blindfold into marriage with such a woman as she had been? No! it
was her duty to warn him. How? Could she break his heart, could
she lay his life waste by speaking the cruel words which might
part them forever? "I can't tell him! I won't tell him!" she
burst out, passionately. "The disgrace of it would kill me!" Her
varying mood changed as the words escaped her. A reckless
defiance of her own better nature--that saddest of all the forms
in which a woman's misery can express itself--filled her heart
with its poisoning bitterness. She sat down again on the sofa
with eyes that glittered and cheeks suffused with an angry red.
"I am no worse than another woman!" she thought. "Another woman
might have married him for his money." The next moment the
miserable insufficiency of her own excuse for deceiving him
showed its hollowness, self-exposed. She covered her face with
her hands, and found refuge--where she had often found refuge
before--in the helpless resignation of despair. "Oh, that I had
died before I entered this house! Oh, that I could die and have
done with it at this moment!" So the struggle had ended with her
hundreds of times already. So it ended now.
The door leading into the billiard-room opened softly. Horace
Holmcroft had waited to hear the result of Lady Janet's
interference in his favor until he could wait no longer.
He looked in cautiously, ready to withdraw again unnoticed if the
two were still talking together. The absence of Lady Janet
suggested that the interview had come to an end. Was his
betrothed wife waiting alone to speak to him on his return to the
room? He advanced a few steps. She never moved; she sat heedless,
absorbed in her thoughts. Were they thoughts of _him?_ He
advanced a little nearer, and called to her.
"Grace!"
She sprang to her feet, with a faint cry. "I wish you wouldn't
startle me," she said, irritably, sinking back on the sofa. "Any
sudden alarm sets my heart beating as if it would choke me."
Horace pleaded for pardon with a lover's humility. In her present
state of nervous irritation she was not to be appeased. She
looked away from him in silence. Entirely ignorant of the
paroxysm of mental suffering through which she had just passed,
he seated himself by her side, and asked her gently if she had
seen Lady Janet. She made an affirmative answer with an
unreasonable impatience of tone and manner which would have
warned an older and more experienced man to give her time before
he spoke again. Horace was young, and weary of the suspense that
he had endured in the other room. He unwisely pressed her with
another question.
"Has Lady Janet said anything to you--"
She turned on him angrily before he could finish the sentence.
"You have tried to make her hurry me into marrying you," she
burst out. "I see it in your face!"
Plain as the warning was this time, Horace still failed to
interpret it in the right way. "Don't be angry!" he said,
good-humoredly. "Is it so very inexcusable to ask Lady Janet to
intercede for me? I have tried to persuade you in vain. My mother
and my sisters have pleaded for me, and you turn a deaf ear--"
She could endure it no longer. She stamped her foot on the door
with hysterical vehemence. "I am weary of hearing of your mother
and your sisters!" she broke in violently. "You talk of nothing
else."
It was just possible to make one more mistake in dealing with
her--and Horace made it. He took offense, on his side, and rose
from the sofa. His mother and sisters were high authorities in
his estimation; they variously represented his ideal of
perfection in women. He withdrew to the opposite extremity of the
room, and administered the severest reproof that he could think
of on the spur of the moment.
"It would be well, Grace, if you followed the example set you by
my mother and my sisters," he said. "_They_ are not in the habit
of speaking cruelly to those who love them."
To all appearance the rebuke failed to produce the slightest
effect. She seemed to be as indifferent to it as if it had not
reached her ears. There was a spirit in her--a miserable spirit,
born of her own bitter experience--which rose in revolt against
Horace's habitual glorification of the ladies of his family. "It
sickens me," she thought to herself, "to hear of the virtues of
women who have never been tempted! Where is the merit of living
reputably, when your life is one course of prosperity and
enjoyment? Has his mother known starvation? Have his sisters been
left forsaken in the street?" It hardened her heart--it almost
reconciled her to deceiving him--when he set his relatives up as
patterns for her. Would he never understand that women detested
having other women exhibited as examples to them? She looked
round at him with a sense of impatient wonder. He was sitting at
the luncheon-table, with his back turned on her, and his head
resting on his hand. If he had attempted to rejoin her, she would
have repelled him ; if he had spoken, she would have met him with
a sharp reply. He sat apart from her, without uttering a word. In
a man's hands silence is the most terrible of all protests to the
woman who loves him. Violence she can endure. Words she is always
ready to meet by words on her side. Silence conquers her. After a
moment's hesitation, Mercy left the sofa and advanced
submissively toward the table. She had offended him--and she
alone was in fault. How should he know it, poor fellow, when he
innocently mortified her? Step by step she drew closer and
closer. He never looked round; he never moved. She laid her hand
timidly on his shoulder. "Forgive me, Horace," she whispered in
his ear. "I am suffering this morning; I am not myself. I didn't
mean what I said. Pray forgive me." There was no resisting the
caressing tenderness of voice and manner which accompanied those
words. He looked up; he took her hand. She bent over him, and
touched his forehead with her lips. "Am I forgiven?" she asked.
"Oh, my darling," he said, "if you only knew how I loved you!"
"I do know it," she answered, gently, twining his hair round her
finger, and arranging it over his forehead where his hand had
ruffled it.
They were completely absorbed in each other, or they must, at
that moment, have heard the library door open at the other end of
the room.
Lady Janet had written the necessary reply to her nephew, and had
returned, faithful to her engagement, to plead the cause of
Horace. The first object that met her view was her client
pleading, with conspicuous success, for himself! "I am not
wanted, evidently," thought the old lady. She noiselessly closed
the door again and left the lovers by themselves.
Horace returned, with unwise persistency, to the question of the
deferred marriage. At the first words that he spoke she drew back
directly--sadly, not angrily.
"Don't press me to-day," she said; "I am not well to-day."
He rose and looked at her anxiously. "May l speak about it
to-morrow?"
"Yes, to-morrow." She returned to the sofa, and changed the
subject. "What a time Lady Janet is away!" she said. "What can be
keeping her so long?"
Horace did his best to appear interested in the question of Lady
Janet's prolonged absence. "What made her leave you?" he asked,
standing at the back of the sofa and leaning over her.
"She went into the library to write a note to her nephew.
By-the-by, who is her nephew?"
"Is it possible you don't know?"
"Indeed, I don't."
"You have heard of him, no doubt," said Horace. "Lady Janet's
nephew is a celebrated man." He paused, and stooping nearer to
her, lifted a love-lock that lay over her shoulder and pressed it
to his lips. "Lady Janet's nephew," he resumed, "is Julian Gray."
She started off her seat, and looked round at him in blank,
bewildered terror, as if she doubted the evidence of her own
senses.
Horace was completely taken by surprise. "My dear Grace!" he
exclaimed; "what have I said or done to startle you this time?"
She held up her hand for silence. "Lady Janet's nephew is Julian
Gray," she repeated; "and I only know it now!"
Horace's perplexity increased. "My darling, now you do know it,
what is there to alarm you?" he asked.
(There was enough to alarm the boldest woman living--in such a
position, and with such a temperament as hers. To her mind the
personation of Grace Roseberry had suddenly assumed a new aspect:
the aspect of a fatality. It had led her blindfold to the house
in which she and the preacher at the Refuge were to meet. He was
coming--the man who had reached her inmost heart, who had
influenced her whole life! Was the day of reckoning coming with
him?)
"Don't notice me," she said, faintly. "I have been ill all the
morning. You saw it yourself when you came in here; even the
sound of your voice alarmed me. I shall be better directly. I am
afraid I startled you?"
"My dear Grace, it almost looked as if you were terrified at the
sound of Julian's name! He is a public celebrity, I know; and I
have seen ladies start and stare at him when he entered a room.
But _you_ looked perfectly panic-stricken."
She rallied her courage by a desperate effort; she laughed--a
harsh, uneasy laugh--and stopped him by putting her hand over his
mouth. "Absurd!" she said, lightly. "As if Mr. Julian Gray had
anything to do with my looks! I am better already. See for
yourself!" She looked round at him again with a ghastly gayety;
and returned, with a desperate assumption of indifference, to the
subject of Lady Janet's nephew. "Of course I have heard of him,"
she said. "Do you know that he is expected here to-day? Don't
stand there behind me--it's so hard to talk to you. Come and sit
down."
He obeyed--but she had not quite satisfied him yet. His face had
not lost its expression of anxiety and surprise. She persisted in
playing her part, determined to set at rest in him any possible
suspicion that she had reasons of her own for being afraid of
Julian Gray. "Tell me about this famous man of yours," she said,
putting her arm familiarly through his arm. "What is he like?"
The caressing action and the easy tone had their effect on
Horace. His face began to clear; he answered her lightly on his
side.
"Prepare yourself to meet the most unclerical of clergymen," he
said. "Julian is a lost sheep among the parsons, and a thorn in
the side of his bishop. Preaches, if they ask him, in Dissenters'
chapels. Declines to set up any pretensions to priestly authority
and priestly power. Goes about doing good on a plan of his own.
Is quite resigned never to rise to the high places in his
profession. Says it's rising high enough for _him_ to be the
Archdeacon of the afflicted, the Dean of the hungry, and the
Bishop of the poor. With all his oddities, as good a fellow as
ever lived. Immensely popular with the women. They all go to him
for advice. I wish you would go, too."
Mercy changed color. "What do you mean?" she asked, sharply.
"Julian is famous for his powers of persuasion," said Horace,
smiling. "If _he_ spoke to you, Grace, he would prevail on you to
fix the day. Suppose I ask Julian to plead for me?"
He made the proposal in jest. Mercy's unquiet mind accepted it as
addressed to her in earnest. "He will do it," she thought, with a
sense of indescribable terror, "if I don't stop him!" There is
but one chance for her. The only certain way to prevent Horace
from appealing to his friend was to grant what Horace wished for
before his friend entered the house. She laid her hand on his
shoulder; she hid the terrible anxieties that were devouring her
under an assumption of coquetry painful and pitiable to see.
"Don't talk nonsense!" she said, gayly. "What were we saying just
now--before we began to speak of Mr. Julian Gray?"
"We were wondering what had become of Lady Janet," Horace
replied.
She tapped him impatiently on the shoulder. "No! no! It was
something you said before that."
Her eyes completed what her words had left unsaid. Horace's arm
stole round her waist.
"I was saying that I loved you," he answered, in a whisper.
"Only that?"
"Are you tired of hearing it?"
She smiled charmingly . "Are you so very much in earnest
about--about--" She stopped, and looked away from him.
"About our marriage?"
"Yes."
"It is the one dearest wish of my life."
"Really?"
"Really."
There was a pause. Mercy's fingers toyed nervously with the
trinkets at her watch-chain. "When would you like it to be?" she
said, very softly, with her whole attention fixed on the
watch-chain.
She had never spoken, she had never looked, as she spoke and
looked now. Horace was afraid to believe in his own good fortune.
"Oh, Grace!" he exclaimed, "you are not trifling with me?"
"What makes you think I am trifling with you?"
Horace was innocent enough to answer her seriously. "You would
not even let me speak of our marriage just now, "he said.
"Never mind what I did just now," she retorted, petulantly. "They
say women are changeable. It is one of the defects of the sex."
"Heaven be praised for the defects of the sex!" cried Horace,
with devout sincerity. "Do you really leave me to decide?"
"If you insist on it."
Horace considered for a moment--the subject being the law of
marriage. "We may be married by license in a fortnight," he said.
"I fix this day fortnight."
She held up her hands in protest.
"Why not? My lawyer is ready. There are no preparations to make.
You said when you accepted me that it was to be a private
marriage."
Mercy was obliged to own that she had certainly said that.
"We might be married at once--if the law would only let us. This
day fortnight! Say--Yes!" He drew her closer to him. There was a
pause. The mask of coquetry--badly worn from the first--dropped
from her. Her sad gray eyes rested compassionately on his eager
face. "Don't look so serious!" he said. "Only one little word,
Grace! Only Yes."
She sighed, and said it. He kissed her passionately. It was only
by a resolute effort that she released herself.
"Leave me!" she said, faintly. "Pray leave me by myself!"
She was in earnest--strangely in earnest. She was trembling from
head to foot. Horace rose to leave her. "I will find Lady Janet,"
he said; "I long to show the dear old lady that I have recovered
my spirits, and to tell her why." He turned round at the library
door. "You won't go away? You will let me see you again when you
are more composed?"
"I will wait here," said Mercy.
Satisfied with that reply, he left the room.
Her hands dropped on her lap; her head sank back wearily on the
cushions at the head of the sofa. There was a dazed sensation in
her: her mind felt stunned. She wondered vacantly whether she was
awake or dreaming. Had she really said the word which pledged her
to marry Horace Holmcroft in a fortnight? A fortnight! Something
might happen in that time to prevent it: she might find her way
in a fortnight out of the terrible position in which she stood.
Anyway, come what might of it, she had chosen the preferable
alternative to a private interview with Julian Gray. She raised
herself from her recumbent position with a start, as the idea of
the interview--dismissed for the last few minutes--possessed
itself again of her mind. Her excited imagination figured Julian
Gray as present in the room at that moment, speaking to her as
Horace had proposed. She saw him seated close at her side--this
man who had shaken her to the soul when he was in the pulpit, and
when she was listening to him (unseen) at the other end of the
chapel--she saw him close by her, looking her searchingly in the
face; seeing her shameful secret in her eyes; hearing it in her
voice; feeling it in her trembling hands; forcing it out of her
word by word, till she fell prostrate at his feet with the
confession of the fraud. Her head dropped again on the cushions;
she hid her face in horror of the scene which her excited fancy
had conjured up. Even now, when she had made that dreaded
interview needless, could she feel sure (meeting him only on the
most distant terms) of not betraying herself? She could _not_
feel sure. Something in her shuddered and shrank at the bare idea
of finding herself in the same room with him. She felt it, she
knew it: her guilty conscience owned and feared its master in
Julian Gray!
The minutes passed. The violence of her agitation began to tell
physically on her weakened frame.
She found herself crying silently without knowing why. A weight
was on her head, a weariness was in all her limbs. She sank lower
on the cushions--her eyes closed--the monotonous ticking of the
clock on the mantelpiece grew drowsily fainter and fainter on her
ear. Little by little she dropped into slumber--slumber so light
that she started when a morsel of coal fell into the grate, or
when the birds chirped and twittered in their aviary in the
winter-garden.
Lady Janet and Horace came in. She was faintly conscious of
persons in the room. After an interval she opened her eyes, and
half rose to speak to them. The room was empty again. They had
stolen out softly and left her to repose. Her eyes closed once
more. She dropped back into slumber, and from slumber, in the
favoring warmth and quiet of the place, into deep and dreamless
sleep.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MAN APPEARS.
After an interval of rest Mercy was aroused by the shutting of a
glass door at the far end of the conservatory. This door, leading
into the garden, was used only by the inmates of the house, or by
old friends privileged to enter the reception-rooms by that way.
Assuming that either Horace or Lady Janet was returning to the
dining-room, Mercy raised herself a little on the' sofa and
listened.
The voice of one of the men-servants caught her ear. It was
answered by another voice, which instantly set her trembling in
every limb.
She started up, and listened again in speechless terror. Yes!
there was no mistaking it. The voice that was answering the
servant was the unforgotten voice which she had heard at the
Refuge. The visitor who had come in by the glass door was--Julian
Gray!
His rapid footsteps advanced nearer and nearer to the
dining-room. She recovered herself sufficiently to hurry to the
library door. Her hand shook so that she failed at first to open
it. She had just succeeded when she heard him again--speaking to
her.
"Pray don't run away! I am nothing very formidable. Only Lady
Janet's nephew--Julian Gray."
She turned slowly, spell-bound by his voice, and confronted him
in silence.
He was standing, hat in hand, at the entrance to the
conservatory, dressed in black, and wearing a white cravat, but
with a studious avoidance of anything specially clerical in the
make and form of his clothes. Young as he was, there were marks
of care already on his face, and the hair was prematurely thin
and scanty over his forehead. His slight, active figure was of no
more than the middle height. His complexion was pale. The lower
part of his face, without beard or whiskers, was in no way
remarkable. An average observer would have passed him by without
notice but for his eyes. These alone made a marked man of him.
The unusual size of the orbits in which they were set was enough
of itself to attract attention; it gave a grandeur to his head,
which the head, broad and firm as it was, did not possess. As to
the eyes themselves, the soft, lustrous brightness of them defied
analysis No two people could agree about their color; divided
opinion declaring alternately that they were dark gray or black.
Painters had tried to reproduce them, and had given up the
effort, in despair of seizing any one expression in the
bewildering variety of expressions which they presented to view.
They were eyes that could charm at one moment and terrify at
another; eyes that could set people laughing or crying almost at
will. In action and in repose they were irresistible alike. When
they first descried Mercy running to the door, they brightened
gayly with the merriment of a child. When she turned and faced
him, they changed instantly, softening and glowing as they mutely
owned the interest and the admiration which the first sight of
her had roused in him. His tone and manner altered at the same
time. He addressed her with the deepest respect when he spoke his
next words.
"Let me entreat you to favor me by resuming your seat," he said.
"And let me ask your pardon if I have thoughtlessly intruded on
you."
He paused, waiting for her reply before he advanced into the
room. Still spell-bound by his voice, she recovered self-control
enough to bow to him and to resume her place on the sofa. It was
impossible to leave him now. After looking at her for a moment,
he entered the room without speaking to her again. She was
beginning to perplex as well as to interest him. "No common
sorrow," he thought, "has set its mark on that woman's face; no
common heart beats in that woman's breast. Who can she be?"
Mercy rallied her courage, and forced herself to speak to him.
"Lady Janet is in the library, I believe," she said, timidly.
"Shall I tell her you are here?"
"Don't disturb Lady Janet, and don't disturb yourself." With that
answer he approached the luncheon-table, delicately giving her
time to feel more at her ease. He took up what Horace had left of
the bottle of claret, and poured it into a glass. "My aunt's
claret shall represent my aunt for the present," he said,
smiling, as he turned toward her once more. "I have had a long
walk, and I may venture to help myself in this house without
invitation. Is it useless to offer you anything?"
Mercy made the necessary reply. She was beginning already, after
her remarkable experience of him, to wonder at his easy manners
and his light way of talking.
He emptied his glass with the air of a man who thoroughly
understood and enjoyed good wine. "My aunt's claret is worthy of
my aunt," he said, with comic gravity, as he set down the glass.
"Both are the genuine products of Nature." He seated himself at
the table and looked critically at the different dishes left on
it. One dish especially attracted his attention. "What is this?"
he went on. "A French pie! It seems grossly unfair to taste
French wine and to pass over French pie without notice." He took
up a knife and fork, and enjoyed the pie as critically as he had
enjoyed the wine. "Worthy of the Great Nation!" he exclaimed,
with enthusiasm. "_Vive la France!_"
Mercy listened and looked, in inexpressible astonishment. He was
utterly unlike the picture which her fancy had drawn of him in
everyday life. Take off his white cravat, and nobody would have
discovered that this famous preacher was a clergyman!
He helped himself to another plateful of the pie, and spoke more
directly to Mercy, alternately eating and talking as composedly
and pleasantly as if they had known each other for years.
"I came here by way of Kensington Gardens," he said. "For some
time past I have been living in a flat, ugly, barren,
agricultural district. You can't think how pleasant I found the
picture presented by the Gardens, as a contrast. The ladies in
their rich winter dresses, the smart nursery maids, the lovely
children, the ever moving crowd skating on the ice of the Round
Pond; it was all so exhilarating after what I have been used to,
that I actually caught myself whistling as I walked through the
brilliant scene! (In my time boys used always to whistle when
they were in good spirits, and I have not got over the habit
yet.) Who do you think I met when I was in full song?"
As well as her amazement would let her, Mercy excused herself
from guessing. She had never in all her life before spoken to any
living being so confusedly and so unintelligently as she now
spoke to Julian Gray!
He went on more gayly than ever, without appearing to notice the
effect that he had produced on her.
"Whom did I meet," he repeated, "when I was in full song? My
bishop! If I had been whistling a sacred melody, his lordship
might perhaps have excused my vulgarity out of consideration for
my music. Unfortunately, the composition I was executing at the
moment (I am one of the loudest of living whistlers) was by
Verdi--" La Donna e Mobile"--familiar, no doubt, to his lordship
on the street organs. He recognized the tune, poor man, and when
I took off my hat to him he looked the other way. Strange, in a
world that is bursting with sin and sorrow, to treat such a
trifle seriously as a cheerful clergyman whistling a tune!" He
pushed away his plate as he said the last words, and went on
simply and earnestly in an altered tone. "I have never been
able," he said, "to see why we should assert ourselves among
other men as belonging to a particular caste, and as being
forbidden, in any harmless thing, to do as other people do. The
disciples of old set us no such example; they were wiser and
better than we are. I venture to say that one of the worst
obstacles in the way of our doing good among our fellow-creatures
is raised by the mere assumption of the clerical manner and the
clerical voice. For my part, I set up no claim to be more sacred
and more reverend than any other Christian man who does what good
he can." He glanced brightly at Mercy, looking at him in helpless
perplexity. The spirit of fun took possession of him again. "Are
you a Radical?" he asked, with a humorous twinkle in his large
lustrous eyes. "I am!"
Mercy tried hard to understand him, and tried in vain. Could this
be the preacher whose words had charmed, purified, ennobled her?
Was this the man whose sermon had drawn tears from women about
her whom she knew to be shameless and hardened in crime? Yes! The
eyes that now rested on her humorously were the beautiful eyes
which had once looked into her soul. The voice that had just
addressed a jesting question to her was the deep and mellow voice
which had once thrilled her to the heart. In the pulpit he was an
angel of mercy; out of the pulpit he was a boy let loose from
school.
"Don't let me startle you," he said, good-naturedly, noticing her
confusion. "Public opinion has called me by harder names than the
name of 'Radical.' I have been spending my time lately--as I told
you just now--in an agricultural district. My business there was
to perform the duty for the rector of the place, who wanted a
holiday. How do you think the experiment has ended? The Squire of
the parish calls me a Communist; the farmers denounce me as an
Incendiary; my friend the rector has been recalled in a hurry,
and I have now the honor of speaking to you in the character of a
banished man who has made a respectable neighborhood too hot to
hold him."
With that frank avowal he left the luncheon table, and took a
chair near Mercy.
"You will naturally be anxious," he went on, "to know what my
offense was. Do you understand Political Economy and the Laws of
Supply and Demand?"
Mercy owned that she did _not_ understand them.
"No more do I--in a Christian country," he said. "That was my
offense. You shall hear my confession (just as my aunt will hear
it) in two words." He paused for a little while; his variable
manner changed again. Mercy, shyly looking at him, saw a new
expression in his eyes--an expression which recalled her first
remembrance of him as nothing had recalled it yet. "I had no
idea," he resumed, "of what the life of a farm-laborer really
was, in some parts of England, until I undertook the rector's
duties. Never before had I seen such dire wretchedness as I saw
in the cottages. Never before had I met with such noble patience
under suffering as I found among the people. The martyrs of old
could endure, and die. I asked myself if they could endure, and
_live_, like the martyrs whom I saw round me?--live, week after
week, month after month, year after year, on the brink of
starvation; live, and see their pining children growing up round
them, to work and want in their turn; live, with the poor man's
parish prison to look to as the end, when hunger and labor have
done their worst! Was God's beautiful earth made to hold such
misery as this? I can hardly think of it, I can hardly speak of
it, even now, with dry eyes!"
His head sank on his breast. He waited--mastering his emotion
before he spoke again. Now, at last, she knew him once more. Now
he was the man, indeed, whom she had expected to see.
Unconsciously she sat listening, with her eyes fixed on his face,
with his heart hanging on his words, in the very attitude of the
by-gone day when she had heard him for the first time!
"I did all I could to plead for the helpless ones," he resumed.
"I went round among the holders of the land to say a word for the
tillers of the land. 'These patient people don't want much' (I
said); 'in the name of Christ, give them enough to live on!'
Political Economy shrieked at the horrid proposal; the Laws of
Supply and Demand veiled their majestic faces in dismay.
Starvation wages were the right wages, I was told. And why?
Because the laborer was obliged to accept them! I determined, so
far as one man could do it, that the laborer should _not_ be
obliged to accept them. I collected my own resources--I wrote to
my friends--and I removed some of the poor fellows to parts of
England where their work was better paid. Such was the conduct
which made the neighborhood too hot to hold me. So let it be! I
mean to go on. I am known in London; I can raise subscriptions.
The vile Laws of Supply and Demand shall find labor scarce in
that agricultural district; and pitiless Political Economy shall
spend a few extra shillings on the poor, as certainly as I am
that Radical, Communist, and Incendiary--Julian Gray!"
He rose--making a li ttle gesture of apology for the warmth with
which he had spoken--and took a turn in the room. Fired by _his_
enthusiasm, Mercy followed him. Her purse was in her hand, when
he turned and faced her.
"Pray let me offer my little tribute--such as it is!" she said,
eagerly.
A momentary flush spread over his pale cheeks as he looked at the
beautiful compassionate face pleading with him.
"No! no!" he said, smiling; "though I am a parson, I don't carry
the begging-box everywhere." Mercy attempted to press the purse
on him. The quaint humor began to twinkle again in his eyes as he
abruptly drew back from it. "Don't tempt me!" he said. "The
frailest of all human creatures is a clergyman tempted by a
subscription." Mercy persisted, and conquered; she made him prove
the truth of his own profound observation of clerical human
nature by taking a piece of money from the purse. "If I must take
it--I must!" he remarked. "Thank you for setting the good
example! thank you for giving the timely help! What name shall I
put down on my list?"
Mercy's eyes looked confusedly away from him. "No name," she
said, in a low voice. "My subscription is anonymous."
As she replied, the library door opened. To her infinite
relief--to Julian's secret disappointment--Lady Janet Roy and
Horace Holmcroft entered the room together.
"Julian!" exclaimed Lady Janet, holding up her hands in
astonishment.
He kissed his aunt on the cheek. "Your ladyship is looking
charmingly." He gave his hand to Horace. Horace took it, and
passed on to Mercy. They walked away together slowly to the other
end of the room. Julian seized on the chance which left him free
to speak privately to his aunt.
"I came in through the conservatory," he said. "And I found that
young lady in the room. Who is she?"
"Are you very much interested in her?" asked Lady Janet, in her
gravely ironical way.
Julian answered in one expressive word. "Indescribably!"
Lady Janet called to Mercy to join her.
"My dear," she said, "let me formally present my nephew to you.
Julian, this is Miss Grace Roseberry--" She suddenly checked
herself. The instant she pronounced the name, Julian started as
if it was a surprise to him. "What is it?" she asked, sharply.
"Nothing," he answered, bowing to Mercy, with a marked absence of
his former ease of manner. She returned the courtesy a little
restrainedly on her side. She, too, had seen him start when Lady
Janet mentioned the name by which she was known. The start meant
something. What could it be? Why did he turn aside, after bowing
to her, and address himself to Horace, with an absent look in his
face, as if his thoughts were far away from his words? A complete
change had come over him; and it dated from the moment when his
aunt had pronounced the name that was not _her_ name---the name
that she had stolen!
Lady Janet claimed Julian's attention, and left Horace free to
return to Mercy. "Your room is ready for you," she said. "You
will stay here, of course?" Julian accepted the
invitation---still with the air of a man whose mind was
preoccupied. Instead of looking at his aunt when he made his
reply, he looked round at Mercy with a troubled curiosity in his
face, very strange to see. Lady Janet tapped him impatiently on
the shoulder. "I expect people to look at me when people speak to
me," she said. "What are you staring at my adopted daughter for?"
"Your adopted daughter?" Julian repeated--looking at his aunt
this time, and looking very earnestly.
"Certainly! As Colonel Roseberry's daughter, she is connected
with me by marriage already. Did you think I had picked up a
foundling?"
Julian's face cleared; he looked relieved. "I had forgotten the
Colonel," he answered. "Of course the young lady is related to
us, as you say."
"Charmed, I am sure, to have satisfied you that Grace is not an
impostor," said Lady Janet, with satirical humility. She took
Julian's arm and drew him out of hearing of Horace and Mercy.
"About that letter of yours?" she proceeded. "There is one line
in it that rouses my curiosity. Who is the mysterious 'lady' whom
you wish to present to me?"
Julian started, and changed color.
"I can't tell you now," he said, in a whisper.
"Why not?"
To Lady Janet's unutterable astonishment, instead of replying,
Julian looked round at her adopted daughter once more.
"What has _she_ got to do with it?" asked the old lady, out of
all patience with him.
"It is impossible for me to tell you," he answered, gravely,
"while Miss Roseberry is in the room."
CHAPTER IX.
NEWS FROM MANNHEIM.
LADY JANET'S curiosity was by this time thoroughly aroused.
Summoned to explain who the nameless lady mentioned in his letter
could possibly be, Julian had looked at her adopted daughter.
Asked next to explain what her adopted daughter had got to do
with it, he had declared that he could not answer while Miss
Roseberry was in the room.
What did he mean? Lady Janet determined to find out.
"I hate all mysteries," she said to Julian. "And as for secrets,
I consider them to be one of the forms of ill-breeding. People in
our rank of life ought to be above whispering in corners. If you
_must_ have your mystery, I can offer you a corner in the
library. Come with me."
Julian followed his aunt very reluctantly. Whatever the mystery
might be, he was plainly embarrassed by being called upon to
reveal it at a moment's notice. Lady Janet settled herself in her
chair, prepared to question and cross-question her nephew, when
an obstacle appeared at the other end of the library, in the
shape of a man-servant with a message. One of Lady Janet's
neighbors had called by appointment to take her to the meeting of
a certain committee which assembled that day. The servant
announced that the neighbor--an elderly lady--was then waiting in
her carriage at the door.
Lady Janet's ready invention set the obstacle aside without a
moment's delay. She directed the servant to show her visitor into
the drawing-room, and to say that she was unexpectedly engaged,
but that Miss Roseberry would see the lady immediately. She then
turned to Julian, and said, with her most satirical emphasis of
tone and manner: "Would it be an additional convenience if Miss
Roseberry was not only out of the room before you disclose your
secret, but out of the house?"
Julian gravely answered: "It may possibly be quite as well if
Miss Roseberry is out of the house."
Lady Janet led the way back to the dining-room.
"My dear Grace, "she said, "you looked flushed and feverish when
I saw you asleep on the sofa a little while since. It will do you
no harm to have a drive in the fresh air. Our friend has called
to take me to the committee meeting. I have sent to tell her that
I am engaged--and I shall be much obliged if you will go in my
place."
Mercy looked a little alarmed. "Does your ladyship mean the
committee meeting of the Samaritan Convalescent Home? The
members, as I understand it, are to decide to-day which of the
plans for the new building they are to adopt. I cannot surely
presume to vote in your place?"
"You can vote, my dear child, just as well as I can," replied the
old lady. "Architecture is one of the lost arts. You know nothing
about it; I know nothing about it; the architects themselves know
nothing about it. One plan is, no doubt, just as bad as the
other. Vote, as I should vote, with the majority. Or as poor dear
Dr. Johnson said, 'Shout with the loudest mob.' Away with
you--and don't keep the committee waiting."
Horace hastened to open the door for Mercy.
"How long shall you be away?" he whispered, confidentially. "I
had a thousand things to say to you, and they have interrupted
us."
"I shall be back in an hour."
"We shall have the room to ourselves by that time. Come here when
you return. You will find me waiting for you."
Mercy pressed his hand significantly and went out. Lady Janet
turned to Julian, who had thus far remained in the background,
still, to all appearance, as unwilling as ever to enlighten his
aunt.
"Well?" she said. "What is tying your tongue now? Grace is out of
the room; why won't you begin? Is Horace in the way?"
"Not in the least. I am only a little uneasy--"
"Uneasy about what?"
"I am afra id you have put that charming creature to some
inconvenience in sending her away just at this time "
Horace looked up suddenly, with a flush on his face.
"When you say 'that charming creature,'" he asked, sharply, "I
suppose you mean Miss Roseberry?"
"Certainly," answered Julian. "Why not?"
Lady Janet interposed. "Gently, Julian," she said. "Grace has
only been introduced to you hitherto in the character of my
adopted daughter--"
"And it seems to be high time," Horace added, haughtily, "that I
should present her next in the character of my engaged wife."
Julian looked at Horace as if he could hardly credit the evidence
of his own ears. "Your wife!" he exclaimed, with an irrepressible
outburst of disappointment and surprise.
"Yes. My wife," returned Horace. "We are to be married in a
fortnight. May I ask," he added, with angry humility, "if you
disapprove of the marriage?"
Lady Janet interposed once more. "Nonsense, Horace," she said.
"Julian congratulates you, of course."
Julian coldly and absently echoed the words. "Oh, yes! I
congratulate you, of course."
Lady Janet returned to the main object of the interview.
"Now we thoroughly understand one another," she said, "let us
speak of a lady who has dropped out of the conversation for the
last minute or two. I mean, Julian, the mysterious lady of your
letter. We are alone, as you desired. Lift the veil, my reverend
nephew, which hides her from mortal eyes! Blush, if you like--and
can. Is she the future Mrs. Julian Gray?"
"She is a perfect stranger to me," Julian answered, quietly.
"A perfect stranger! You wrote me word you were interested in
her."
"I _am_ interested in her. And, what is more, you are interested
in her, too."
Lady Janet's fingers drummed impatiently on the table. "Have I
not warned you, Julian, that I hate mysteries? Will you, or will
you not, explain yourself?"
Before it was possible to answer, Horace rose from his chair.
"Perhaps I am in the way?" he said.
Julian signed to him to sit down again.
"I have already told Lady Janet that you are not in the way," he
answered. "I now tell you--as Miss Roseberry's future
husband--that you, too, have an interest in hearing what I have
to say."
Horace resumed his seat with an air of suspicious surprise.
Julian addressed himself to Lady Janet.
"You have often heard me speak," he began, "of my old friend and
school-fellow, John Cressingham?"
"Yes. The English consul at Mannheim?"
"The same. When I returned from the country I found among my
other letters a long letter from the consul. I have brought it
with me, and I propose to read certain passages from it, which
tell a very strange story more plainly and more credibly than I
can tell it in my own words."
"Will it be very long?" inquired Lady Janet, looking with some
alarm at the closely written sheets of paper which her nephew
spread open before him.
Horace followed with a question on his side.
"You are sure I am interested in it?" he asked. "The consul at
Mannheim is a total stranger to me."
"I answer for it, "replied Julian, gravely, "neither my aunt's
patience nor yours, Horace, will be thrown away if you will favor
me by listening attentively to what I am about to read."
With those words he began his first extract from the consul's
letter.
- * * "'My memory is a bad one for dates. But full three months
must have passed since information was sent to me of an English
patient, received at the hospital here, whose case I, as English
consul, might feel an interest in investigating.
"'I went the same day to the hospital, and was taken to the
bedside.
"'The patient was a woman--young, and (when in health), I should
think, very pretty. When I first saw her she looked, to my
uninstructed eye, like a dead woman. I noticed that her head had
a bandage over it, and I asked what was the nature of the injury
that she had received. The answer informed me that the poor
creature had been present, nobody knew why or wherefore, at a
skirmish or night attack between the Germans and the French, and
that the injury to her head had been inflicted by a fragment of a
German shell.'"
Horace--thus far leaning back carelessly in his chair--suddenly
raised himself and exclaimed, "Good heavens! can this be the
woman I saw laid out for dead in the French cottage?"
"It is impossible for me to say," replied Julian. "Listen to the
rest of it. The consul's letter may answer your question."
He went on with his reading:
"'The wounded woman had been reported dead, and had been left by
the French in their retreat, at the time when the German forces
took possession of the enemy's position. She was found on a bed
in a cottage by the director of the German ambulance--"
"Ignatius Wetzel?" cried Horace.
"Ignatius Wetzel," repeated Julian, looking at the letter.
"It _is_ the same!" said Horace. "Lady Janet, we are really
interested in this. You remember my telling you how I first met
with Grace? And you have heard more about it since, no doubt,
from Grace herself?"
"She has a horror of referring to that part of her journey home,"
replied Lady Janet. "She mentioned her having been stopped on the
frontier, and her finding herself accidentally in the company of
another Englishwoman, a perfect stranger to her. I naturally
asked questions on my side, and was shocked to hear that she had
seen the woman killed by a German shell almost close at her side.
Neither she nor I have had any relish for returning to the
subject since. You were quite right, Julian, to avoid speaking of
it while she was in the room. I understand it all now. Grace, I
suppose, mentioned my name to her fellow-traveler. The woman is,
no doubt, in want of assistance, and she applies to me through
you. I will help her; but she must not come here until I have
prepared Grace for seeing her again, a living woman. For the
present there is no reason why they should meet."
"I am not sure about that," said Julian, in low tones, without
looking up at his aunt.
"What do you mean? Is the mystery not at an end yet?"
"The mystery has not even begun yet. Let my friend the consul
proceed."
Julian returned for the second time to his extract from the
letter:
"'After a careful examination of the supposed corpse, the German
surgeon arrived at the conclusion that a case of suspended
animation had (in the hurry of the French retreat) been mistaken
for a case of death. Feeling a professional interest in the
subject, he decided on putting his opinion to the test. He
operated on the patient with complete success. After performing
the operation he kept her for some days under his own care, and
then transferred her to the nearest hospital--the hospital at
Mannheim. He was obliged to return to his duties as army surgeon,
and he left his patient in the condition in which I saw her,
insensible on the bed. Neither he nor the hospital authorities
knew anything whatever about the woman. No papers were found on
her. All the doctors could do, when I asked them for information
with a view to communicating with her friends, was to show me her
linen marked with her, name. I left the hospital after taking
down the name in my pocket-book. It was "Mercy Merrick."'"
Lady Janet produced _her_ pocket-book. "Let me take the name down
too," she said. "I never heard it before, and I might otherwise
forget it. Go on, Julian."
Julian advanced to his second extract from the consul 's letter:
"'Under these circumstances, I could only wait to hear from the
hospital when the patient was sufficiently recovered to be able
to speak to me. Some weeks passed without my receiving any
communication from the doctors. On calling to make inquiries I
was informed that fever had set in, and that the poor creature's
condition now alternated between exhaustion and delirium. In her
delirious moments the name of your aunt, Lady Janet Roy,
frequently escaped her. Otherwise her wanderings were for the
most part quite unintelligible to the people at her bedside. I
thought once or twice of writing to you, and of begging you to
speak to Lady Janet. But as the doctors informed me that the
chances of life or death were at this time almost equally
balanced, I decided to wait until time should
determine whether it was necessary to trouble you or not.'"
"You know best, Julian," said Lady Janet. "But I own I don't
quite see in what way I am interested in this part of the story."
"Just what I was going to say," added Horace. "It is very sad, no
doubt. But what have _we_ to do with it?"
"Let me read my third extract," Julian answered, "and you will
see."
He turned to the third extract, and read as follows:
"'At last I received a message from the hospital informing me
that Mercy Merrick was out of danger, and that she was capable
(though still very weak) of answering any questions which I might
think it desirable to put to her. On reaching the hospital, I was
requested, rather to my surprise, to pay my first visit to the
head physician in his private room. "I think it right," said this
gentleman, "to warn you, before you see the patient, to be very
careful how you speak to her, and not to irritate her by showing
any surprise or expressing any doubts if she talks to you in an
extravagant manner. We differ in opinion about her here. Some of
us (myself among the number) doubt whether the recovery of her
mind has accompanied the recovery of her bodily powers. Without
pronouncing her to be mad--she is perfectly gentle and
harmless--we are nevertheless of opinion that she is suffering
under a species of insane delusion. Bear in mind the caution
which I have given you--and now go and judge for yourself." I
obeyed, in some little perplexity and surprise. The sufferer,
when I approached her bed, looked sadly weak and worn; but, so
far as I could judge, seemed to be in full possession of herself.
Her tone and manner were unquestionably the tone and manner of a
lady. After briefly introducing myself, I assured her that I
should be glad, both officially and personally, if I could be of
any assistance to her. In saying these trifling words I happened
to address her by the name I had seen marked on her clothes. The
instant the words "Miss Merrick" passed my lips a wild,
vindictive expression appeared in her eyes. She exclaimed
angrily, "Don't call me by that hateful name! It's not my name.
All the people here persecute me by calling me Mercy Merrick. And
when I am angry with them they show me the clothes. Say what I
may, they persist in believing they are my clothes. Don't you do
the same, if you want to be friends with me." Remembering what
the physician had said to me, I made the necessary excuses and
succeeded in soothing her. Without reverting to the irritating
topic of the name, I merely inquired what her plans were, and
assured her that she might command my services if she required
them. "Why do you want to know what my plans are?" she asked,
suspiciously. I reminded her in reply that I held the position of
English consul, and that my object was, if possible, to be of
some assistance to her. "You can be of the greatest assistance to
me," she said, eagerly. "Find Mercy Merrick!" I saw the
vindictive look come back into her eyes, and an angry flush
rising on her white cheeks. Abstaining from showing any surprise,
I asked her who Mercy Merrick was. "A vile woman, by her own
confession," was the quick reply. "How am I to find her?" I
inquired next. "Look for a woman in a black dress, with the Red
Geneva Cross on her shoulder; she is a nurse in the French
ambulance." "What has she done?" "I have lost my papers; I have
lost my own clothes; Mercy Merrick has taken them." "How do you
know that Mercy Merrick has taken them?" "Nobody else could have
taken them--that's how I know it. Do you believe me or not?" She
as beginning to excite herself again; I assured her that I would
at once send to make inquiries after Mercy Merrick. She turned
round contented on the pillow. "There's a good man!" she said.
"Come back and tell me when you have caught her." Such was my
first interview with the English patient at the hospital at
Mannheim. It is needless to say that I doubted the existence of
the absent person described as a nurse. However, it was possible
to make inquiries by applying to the surgeon, Ignatius Wetzel,
whose whereabouts was known to his friends in Mannheim. I wrote
to him, and received his answer in due time. After the night
attack of the Germans had made them masters of the French
position, he had entered the cottage occupied by the French
ambulance. He had found the wounded Frenchmen left behind, but
had seen no such person in attendance on them as the nurse in the
black dress with the red cross on her shoulder. The only living
woman in the place was a young English lady, in a gray traveling
cloak, who had been stopped on the frontier, and who was
forwarded on her way home by the war correspondent of an English
journal.'"
"That was Grace," said Lady Janet.
"And I was the war correspondent," added Horace.
"A few words more," said Julian, "and you will understand my
object in claiming your attention."
He returned to the letter for the last time, and concluded his
extracts from it as follows:
"'Instead of attending at the hospital myself, I communicated by
letter the failure of my attempt to discover the missing nurse.
For some little time afterward I heard no more of the sick woman,
whom I shall still call Mercy Merrick. It was only yesterday that
I received another summons to visit the patient. She had by this
time sufficiently recovered to claim her discharge, and she had
announced her intention of returning forthwith to England. The
head physician, feeling a sense of responsibility, had sent for
me. It was impossible to detain her on the ground that she was
not fit to be trusted by herself at large, in consequence of the
difference of opinion among the doctors on the case. All that
could be done was to give me due notice, and to leave the matter
in my hands. On seeing her for the second time, I found her
sullen and reserved. She openly attributed my inability to find
the nurse to want of zeal for her interests on my part. I had, on
my side, no authority whatever to detain her. I could only
inquire whether she had money enough to pay her traveling
expenses. Her reply informed me that the chaplain of the hospital
had mentioned her forlorn situation in the town, and that the
English residents had subscribed a small sum of money to enable
her to return to her own country. Satisfied on this head, I asked
next if she had friends to go to in England. "I have one friend,"
she answered, "who is a host in herself--Lady Janet Roy." You may
imagine my surprise when I heard this. I found it quite useless
to make any further inquiries as to how she came to know your
aunt, whether your aunt expected her, and so on. My questions
evidently offended her; they were received in sulky silence.
Under these circumstances, well knowing that I can trust
implicitly to your humane sympathy for misfortune, I have decided
(after careful reflection) to insure the poor creature's safety
when she arrives in London by giving her a letter to you. You
will hear what she says, and you will be better able to discover
than I am whether she really has any claim on Lady Janet Roy. One
last word of information, which it may be necessary to add, and I
shall close this inordinately long letter. At my first interview
with her I abstained, as I have already told you, from irritating
her by any inquiries on the subject of her name. On this second
occasion, however, I decided on putting the question.'"
As he read those last words, Julian became aware of a sudden
movement on the part of his aunt. Lady Janet had risen softly
from her chair and had passed behind him with the purpose of
reading the consul's letter for herself over her nephew's
shoulder. Julian detected the action just in time to frustrate
Lady Janet's intention by placing his hand over the last two
lines of the letter.
"What do you do that for?" inquired his aunt, sharply.
"You are welcome, Lady Janet, to read the close of the letter for
yourself," Julian replied. "But before you do so I am anxious to
prepare you for a very great surprise. Compose yourself and let
me read on slowly, with your eye on me, until I uncover the last
two words which close my friend's letter."
He read the end of the letter, as he h ad proposed, in these
terms:
"'I looked the woman straight in the face, and I said to her,
"You have denied that the name marked on the clothes which you
wore when you came here was your name. If you are not Mercy
Merrick, who are you?" She answered, instantly, "My name is--"'"
Julian removed his hand from the page. Lady Janet looked at the
next two words, and started back with a loud cry of astonishment,
which brought Horace instantly to his feet.
"Tell me, one of you!" he cried. "What name did she give?"
Julian told him.
"GRACE ROSEBERRY."
CHAPTER X.
A COUNCIL OF THREE.
FOR a moment Horace stood thunderstruck, looking in blank
astonishment at Lady Janet. His first words, as soon as he had
recovered himself, were addressed to Julian. "Is this a joke?" he
asked, sternly. "If it is, I for one don't see the humor of it."
Julian pointed to the closely written pages of the consul's
letter. "A man writes in earnest," he said, "when he writes at
such length as this. The woman seriously gave the name of Grace
Roseberry, and when she left Mannheim she traveled to England for
the express purpose of presenting herself to Lady Janet Roy." He
turned to his aunt. "You saw me start," he went on, "when you
first mentioned Miss Roseberry's name in my hearing. Now you know
why." He addressed himself once more to Horace. "You heard me say
that you, as Miss Roseberry's future husband, had an interest in
being present at my interview with Lady Janet. Now _you_ know
why."
"The woman is plainly mad," said Lady Janet. "But it is certainly
a startling form of madness when one first hears of it. Of course
we must keep the matter, for the present at least, a secret from
Grace."
"There can be no doubt," Horace agreed, "that Grace must be kept
in the dark, in her present state of health. The servants had
better be warned beforehand, in case of this adventuress or
madwoman, whichever she may be, attempting to make her way into
the house."
"It shall be done immediately," said Lady Janet. "What surprises
_me_ Julian (ring the bell, if you please), is that you should
describe yourself in your letter as feeling an interest in this
person."
Julian answered--without ringing the bell.
"I am more interested than ever," he said, "now I find that Miss
Roseberry herself is your guest at Mablethorpe House."
'You were always perverse, Julian, as a child, in your likings
and dislikings," Lady Janet rejoined. "Why don't you ring the
bell?"
"For one good reason, my dear aunt. I don't wish to hear you tell
your servants to close the door on this friendless creature."
Lady Janet cast a look at her nephew which plainly expressed that
she thought he had taken a liberty with her.
"You don't expect me to see the woman?" she asked, in a tone of
cold surprise.
"I hope you will not refuse to see her," Julian answered,
quietly. "I was out when she called. I must hear what she has to
say--and I should infinitely prefer hearing it in your presence.
When I got your reply to my letter, permitting me to present her
to you, I wrote to her immediately, appointing a meeting here."
Lady Janet lifted her bright black eyes in mute expostulation to
the carved Cupids and wreaths on the dining-room ceiling.
"When am I to have the honor of the lady's visit?" she inquired,
with ironical resignation.
"To-day," answered her nephew, with impenetrable patience.
"At what hour?"
Julian composedly consulted his watch. "She is ten minutes after
her time," he said, and put his watch back in his pocket again.
At the same moment the servant appeared, and advanced to Julian,
carrying a visiting card on his little silver tray.
"A lady to see you, sir."
Julian took the card, and, bowing, handed it to his aunt.
"Here she is, "he said, just as quietly as ever.
Lady Janet looked at the card, and tossed it indignantly back to
her nephew. "Miss Roseberry!" she exclaimed. "Printed--actually
printed on her card! Julian, even MY patience has its limits. I
refuse to see her!"
The servant was still waiting--not like a human being who took an
interest in the proceedings, but (as became a perfectly bred
footman) like an article of furniture artfully constructed to
come and go at the word of command. Julian gave the word of
command, addressing the admirably constructed automaton by the
name of "James."
"Where is the lady now?" he asked.
"In the breakfast-room, sir."
"Leave her there, if you please, and wait outside within hearing
of the bell."
The legs of the furniture-footman acted, and took him noiselessly
out of the room. Julian turned to his aunt.
"Forgive me," he said, "for venturing to give the man his orders
in your presence. I am very anxious that you should not decide
hastily. Surely we ought to hear what this lady has to say?"
Horace dissented widely from his friend's opinion. "It's an
insult to Grace," he broke out, warmly, "to hear what she has to
say!"
Lady Janet nodded her head in high approval. "I think so, too,"
said her ladyship, crossing her handsome old hands resolutely on
her lap.
Julian applied himself to answering Horace first.
"Pardon me," he said. "I have no intention of presuming to
reflect on Miss Roseberry, or of bringing her into the matter at
all.--The consul's letter," he went on, speaking to his aunt,
"mentions, if you remember, that the medical authorities of
Mannheim were divided in opinion on their patient's case. Some of
them--the physician-in-chief being among the number--believe that
the recovery of her mind has not accompanied the recovery of her
body."
"In other words," Lady Janet remarked, "a madwoman is in my
house, and I am expected to receive her!"
"Don't let us exaggerate," said Julian, gently. "It can serve no
good interest, in this serious matter, to exaggerate anything.
The consul assures us, on the authority of the doctor, that she
is perfectly gentle and harmless. If she is really the victim of
a mental delusion, the poor creature is surely an object of
compassion, and she ought to be placed under proper care. Ask
your own kind heart, my dear aunt, if it would not be downright
cruelty to turn this forlorn woman adrift in the world without
making some inquiry first."
Lady Janet's inbred sense of justice admitted not over
willingly--the reasonableness as well as the humanity of the view
expressed in those words. "There is some truth in that, Julian,"
she said, shifting her position uneasily in her chair, and
looking at Horace. "Don't you think so, too?" she added.
"I can't say I do," answered Horace, in the positive tone of a
man whose obstinacy is proof against every form of appeal that
can be addressed to him.
The patience of Julian was firm enough to be a match for the
obstinacy of Horace. "At any rate," he resumed, with undiminished
good temper," we are all three equally interested in setting this
matter at rest. I put it to you, Lady Janet, if we are not
favored, at this lucky moment, with the very opportunity that we
want? Miss Roseberry is not only out of the room, but out of the
house. If we let this chance slip, who can say what awkward
accident may not happen in the course of the next few days?"
"Let the woman come in," cried Lady Janet, deciding headlong,
with her customary impatience of all delay. "At once,
Julian--before Grace can come back. Will you ring the bell this
time?"
This time Julian rang it. "May I give the man his orders?" he
respectfully inquired of his aunt.
"Give him anything you like, and have done with it!" retorted the
irritable old lady, getting briskly on her feet, and taking a
turn in the room to compose herself.
The servant withdrew, with orders to show the visitor in.
Horace crossed the room at the same time--apparently with the
intention of leaving it by the door at the opposite end.
"You are not going away?" exclaimed Lady Janet.
"I see no use in my remaining here," replied Horace, not very
graciously.
"In that case," retorted Lady Janet, "remain here because I wish
it."
"Certainly--if you wish it. Only remember," he added, more
obstinately than ever," that I differ entirely from Julian's
view. In my opinion the woman has no claim on us."
A passing movement of irritation escaped Julian for the fir st
time. "Don't be hard, Horace," he said, sharply. "All women have
a claim on us."
They had unconsciously gathered together, in the heat of the
little debate, turning their backs on the library door. At the
last words of the reproof administered by Julian to Horace, their
attention was recalled to passing events by the slight noise
produced by the opening and closing of the door. With one accord
the three turned and looked in the direction from which the
sounds had come.
CHAPTER XI.
THE DEAD ALIVE.
JUST inside the door there appeared the figure of a small woman
dressed in plain and poor black garments. She silently lifted her
black net veil and disclosed a dull, pale, worn, weary face. The
forehead was low and broad; the eyes were unusually far apart;
the lower features were remarkably small and delicate. In health
(as the consul at Mannheim had remarked) this woman must have
possessed, if not absolute beauty, at least rare attractions
peculiarly her own. As it was now, suffering--sullen, silent,
self-contained suffering--had marred its beauty. Attention and
even curiosity it might still rouse. Admiration or interest it
could excite no longer.
The small, thin, black figure stood immovably inside the door.
The dull, worn, white face looked silently at the three persons
in the room.
The three persons in the room, on their side, stood for a moment
without moving, and looked silently at the stranger on the
threshold. There was something either in the woman herself, or in
the sudden and stealthy manner of her appearance in the room,
which froze, as if with the touch of an invisible cold hand, the
sympathies of all three. Accustomed to the world, habitually at
their ease in every social emergency, they were now silenced for
the first time in their lives by the first serious sense of
embarrassment which they had felt since they were children in the
presence of a stranger.
Had the appearance of the true Grace Roseberry aroused in their
minds a suspicion of the woman who had stolen her name, and taken
her place in the house?
Not so much as the shadow of a suspicion of Mercy was at the
bottom of the strange sense of uneasiness which had now deprived
them alike of their habitual courtesy and their habitual presence
of mind. It was as practically impossible for any one of the
three to doubt the identity of the adopted daughter of the house
as it would be for you who read these lines to doubt the identity
of the nearest and dearest relative you have in the world.
Circumstances had fortified Mercy behind the strongest of all
natural rights--the right of first possession. C!circumstances
had armed her with the most irresistible of all natural
forces--the force of previous association and previous habit. Not
by so much as a hair-breadth was the position of the false Grace
Roseberry shaken by the first appearance of the true Grace
Roseberry within the doors of Mablethorpe House. Lady Janet felt
suddenly repelled, without knowing why. Julian and Horace felt
suddenly repelled, without knowing why. Asked to describe their
own sensations at the moment, they would have shaken their heads
in despair, and would have answered in those words. The vague
presentiment of some misfortune to come had entered the room with
the entrance of the woman in black. But it moved invisibly; and
it spoke as all presentiments speak, in the Unknown Tongue.
A moment passed. The crackling of the fire and the ticking of the
clock were the only sounds audible in the room.
The voice of the visitor--hard, clear, and quiet--was the first
voice that broke the silence.
"Mr. Julian Gray?" she said, looking interrogatively from one of
the two gentlemen to the other.
Julian advanced a few steps, instantly recovering his
self-possession. "I am sorry I was not at home," he said, "when
you called with your letter from the consul. Pray take a chair."
By way of setting the example, Lady Janet seated herself at some
little distance, with Horace in attendance standing near. She
bowed to the stranger with studious politeness, but without
uttering a word, before she settled herself in her chair. "I am
obliged to listen to this person," thought the old lady. "But I
am _not_ obliged to speak to her. That is Julian's business--not
mine. Don't stand, Horace! You fidget me. Sit down." Armed
beforehand in her policy of silence, Lady Janet folded her
handsome hands as usual, and waited for the proceedings to begin,
like a judge on the bench.
"Will you take a chair?" Julian repeated, observing that the
visitor appeared neither to heed nor to hear his first words of
welcome to her.
At this second appeal she spoke to him. "Is that Lady Janet Roy?"
she asked, with her eyes fixed on the mistress of the house.
Julian answered, and drew back to watch the result.
The woman in the poor black garments changed her position for the
first time. She moved slowly across the room to the place at
which Lady Janet was sitting, and addressed her respectfully with
perfect self-possession of manner. Her whole demeanor, from the
moment when she had appeared at the door, had expressed--at once
plainly and becomingly--confidence in the reception that awaited
her.
"Almost the last words my father said to me on his death-bed,
"she began, "were words, madam, which told me to expect
protection and kindness from you."
It was not Lady Janet's business to speak. She listened with the
blandest attention. She waited with the most exasperating silence
to hear more.
Grace Roseberry drew back a step--not intimidated--only mortified
and surprised. "Was my father wrong?" she asked, with a simple
dignity of tone and manner which forced Lady Janet to abandon her
policy of silence, in spite of herself.
"Who was your father?" she asked, coldly.
Grace Roseberry answered the question in a tone of stern
surprise.
"Has the servant not given you my card?" she said. "Don't you
know my name?"
"Which of your names?" rejoined Lady Janet.
"I don't understand your ladyship."
"I will make myself understood. You asked me if I knew your name.
I ask you, in return, which name it is? The name on your card is
'Miss Roseberry.' The name marked on your clothes, when you were
in the hospital, was 'Mercy Merrick.'"
The self-possession which Grace had maintained from the moment
when she had entered the dining-room, seemed now, for the first
time, to be on the point of failing her. She turned, and looked
appealingly at Julian, who had thus far kept his place apart,
listening attentively.
"Surely," she said, "your friend, the consul, has told you in his
letter about the mark on the clothes?"
Something of the girlish hesitation and timidity which had marked
her demeanor at her interview with Mercy in the French cottage
re-appeared in her tone and manner as she spoke those words. The
changes--mostly changes for the worse--wrought in her by the
suffering through which she had passed since that time were now
(for the moment) effaced. All that was left of the better and
simpler side of her character asserted itself in her brief appeal
to Julian. She had hitherto repelled him. He began to feel a
certain compassionate interest in her now.
"The consul has informed me of what you said to him," he
answered, kindly. "But, if you will take my advice, I recommend
you to tell your story to Lady Janet in your own words."
Grace again addressed herself with submissive reluctance to Lady
Janet.
"The clothes your ladyship speaks of," she said, "were the
clothes of another woman. The rain was pouring when the soldiers
detained me on the frontier. I had been exposed for hours to the
weather--I was wet to the skin. The clothes marked 'Mercy
Merrick' were the clothes lent to me by Mercy Merrick herself
while my own things were drying. I was struck by the shell in
those clothes. I was carried away insensible in those clothes
after the operation had been performed on me."
Lady Janet listened to perfection--and did no more. She turned
confidentially to Horace, and said to him, in her gracefully
ironical way: "She is ready with her explanation."
Horace answered in the same tone: "A great deal too ready."
Grace looked from one of them to the other. A faint flush o f
color showed itself in her face for the first time.
"Am I to understand," she asked, with proud composure, "that you
don't believe me?"
Lady Janet maintained her policy of silence. She waved one hand
courteously toward Julian, as if to say, "Address your inquiries
to the gentleman who introduces you." Julian, noticing the
gesture, and observing the rising color in Grace's cheeks,
interfered directly in the interests of peace
"Lady Janet asked you a question just now," he said; "Lady Janet
inquired who your father was."
"My father was the late Colonel Roseberry."
Lady Janet made another confidential remark to Horace. "Her
assurance amazes me!" she exclaimed.
Julian interposed before his aunt could add a word more. "Pray
let us hear her," he said, in a tone of entreaty which had
something of the imperative in it this time. He turned to Grace.
"Have you any proof to produce," he added, in his gentler voice,
"which will satisfy us that you are Colonel Roseberry's
daughter?"
Grace looked at him indignantly. "Proof!" she repeated. "Is my
word not enough?"
Julian kept his temper perfectly. "Pardon me," he rejoined, "you
forget that you and Lady Janet meet now for the first time. Try
to put yourself in my aunt's place. How is she to know that you
are the late Colonel Roseberry's daughter?"
Grace's head sunk on her breast; she dropped into the nearest
chair. The expression of her face changed instantly from anger to
discouragement. "Ah," she exclaimed, bitterly, "if I only had the
letters that have been stolen from me!"
"Letters, "asked Julian, "introducing you to Lady Janet?"
"Yes." She turned suddenly to Lady Janet. "Let me tell you how I
lost them," she said, in the first tones of entreaty which had
escaped her yet.
Lady Janet hesitated. It was not in her generous nature to resist
the appeal that had just been made to her. The sympathies of
Horace were far less easily reached. He lightly launched a new
shaft of satire--intended for the private amusement of Lady
Janet. "Another explanation!" he exclaimed, with a look of comic
resignation.
Julian overheard the words. His large lustrous eyes fixed
themselves on Horace with a look of unmeasured contempt.
"The least you can do," he said, sternly, "is not to irritate
her. It is so easy to irritate her!" He addressed himself again
to Grace, endeavoring to help her through her difficulty in a new
way. "Never mind explaining yourself for the moment," he said.
"In the absence of your letters, have you any one in London who
can speak to your identity?"
Grace shook her head sadly. "I have no friends in London," she
answered.
It was impossible for Lady Janet--who had never in her life heard
of anybody without friends in London--to pass this over without
notice. "No friends in London!" she repeated, turning to Horace.
Horace shot another shaft of light satire. "Of course not!" he
rejoined.
Grace saw them comparing notes. "My friends are in Canada," she
broke out, impetuously. "Plenty of friends who could speak for
me, if I could only bring them here."
As a place of reference--mentioned in the capital city of
England--Canada, there is no denying it, is open to objection on
the ground of distance. Horace was ready with another shot. "Far
enough off, certainly," he said.
"Far enough off, as you say," Lady Janet agreed.
Once more Julian's inexhaustible kindness strove to obtain a
hearing for the stranger who had been confided to his care. "A
little patience, Lady Janet," he pleaded. "A little
consideration, Horace, for a friendless woman."
"Thank you, sir," said Grace. "It is very kind of you to try and
help me, but it is useless. They won't even listen to me." She
attempted to rise from her chair as she pronounced the last
words. Julian gently laid his hand on her shoulder and obliged
her to resume her seat.
"_I_ will listen to you," he said. "You referred me just now to
the consul's letter. The consul tells me you suspected some one
of taking your papers and your clothes."
"I don't suspect," was the quick reply; "I am certain! I tell you
positively Mercy Merrick was the thief. She was alone with me
when I was struck down by the shell. She was the only person who
knew that I had letters of introduction about me. She confessed
to my face that she had been a bad woman--she had been in a
prison--she had come out of a refuge--"
Julian stopped her there with one plain question, which threw a
doubt on the whole story.
"The consul tells me you asked him to search for Mercy Merrick,"
he said. "Is it not true that he caused inquiries to be made, and
that no trace of any such person was to be heard of?"
"The consul took no pains to find her," Grace answered, angrily.
"He was, like everybody else, in a conspiracy to neglect and
misjudge me."
Lady Janet and Horace exchanged looks. This time it was
impossible for Julian to blame them. The further the stranger's
narrative advanced, the less worthy of serious attention he felt
it to be. The longer she spoke, the more disadvantageously she
challenged comparison with the absent woman, whose name she so
obstinately and so audaciously persisted in assuming as her own.
"Granting all that you have said," Julian resumed, with a last
effort of patience, "what use could Mercy Merrick make of your
letters and your clothes?"
"What use?" repeated Grace, amazed at his not seeing the position
as she saw it. "My clothes were marked with my name. One of my
papers was a letter from my father, introducing me to Lady Janet.
A woman out of a refuge would be quite capable of presenting
herself here in my place."
Spoken entirely at random, spoken without so much as a fragment
of evidence to support them, those last words still had their
effect. They cast a reflection on Lady Janet's adopted daughter
which was too outrageous to be borne. Lady Janet rose instantly.
"Give me your arm, Horace," she said, turning to leave the room.
"I have heard enough."
Horace respectfully offered his arm. "Your ladyship is quite
right," he answered. "A more monstrous story never was invented."
He spoke, in the warmth of his indignation, loud enough for Grace
to hear him. "What is there monstrous in it?" she asked,
advancing a step toward him, defiantly.
Julian checked her. He too--though he had only once seen
Mercy--felt an angry sense of the insult offered to the beautiful
creature who had interested him at his first sight of her.
"Silence!" he said, speaking sternly to Grace for the first time.
"You are offending--justly offending--Lady Janet. You are talking
worse than absurdly--you are talking offensively--when you speak
of another woman presenting herself here in your place."
Grace's blood was up. Stung by Julian's reproof, she turned on
him a look which was almost a look of fury.
"Are you a clergyman? Are you an educated man?" she asked. "Have
you never read of cases of false personation, in newspapers and
books? I blindly confided in Mercy Merrick before I found out
what her character really was. She left the cottage--I know it,
from the surgeon who brought me to life again--firmly persuaded
that the shell had killed me. My papers and my clothes
disappeared at the same time. Is there nothing suspicious in
these circumstances? There were people at the Hospital who
thought them highly suspicious--people who warned me that I might
find an impostor in my place." She suddenly paused. The rustling
sound of a silk dress had caught her ear. Lady Janet was leaving
the room, with Horace, by way of the conservatory. With a last
desperate effort of resolution, Grace sprung forward and placed
herself in front of them.
"One word, Lady Janet, before you turn your back on me," she
said, firmly. "One word, and I will be content. Has Colonel
Roseberry's letter found its way to this house or not? If it has,
did a woman bring it to you?"
Lady Janet looked--as only a great lady can look, when a person
of inferior rank has presumed to fail in respect toward her.
"You are surely not aware," she said, with icy composure, "that
these questions are an insult to Me?"
"And worse than an insult," Horace added, warmly, "to Grace!"
The little resolute black figure (still barring the way to the co
nservatory) was suddenly shaken from head to foot. The woman's
eyes traveled backward and forward between Lady Janet and Horace
with the light of a new suspicion in them.
"Grace!" she exclaimed. "What Grace? That's my name. Lady Janet,
you _have_ got the letter! The woman is here!"
Lady Janet dropped Horace's arm, and retraced her steps to the
place at which her nephew was standing.
"Julian, "she said. "You force me, for the first time in my life,
to remind you of the respect that is due to me in my own house.
Send that woman away."
Without waiting to be answered, she turned back again, and once
more took Horace's arm.
"Stand back, if you please," she said, quietly, to Grace.
Grace held her ground.
"The woman is here!" she repeated. "Confront me with her--and
then send me away, if you like."
Julian advanced, and firmly took her by the arm. "You forget what
is due to Lady Janet," he said, drawing her aside. "You forget
what is due to yourself."
With a desperate effort, Grace broke away from him, and stopped
Lady Janet on the threshold of the conservatory door.
"Justice!" she cried, shaking her clinched hand with hysterical
frenzy in the air. "I claim my right to meet that woman face to
face! Where is she? Confront me with her! Confront me with her!"
While those wild words were pouring from her lips, the rumbling
of carriage wheels became audible on the drive in front of the
house. In the all-absorbing agitation of the moment, the sound of
the wheels (followed by the opening of the house door) passed
unnoticed by the persons in the dining-room. Horace's voice was
still raised in angry protest against the insult offered to Lady
Janet; Lady Janet herself (leaving him for the second time) was
vehemently ringing the bell to summon the servants; Julian had
once more taken the infuriated woman by the arms and was trying
vainly to compose her--when the library door was opened quietly
by a young lady wearing a mantle and a bonnet. Mercy Merrick
(true to the appointment which she had made with Horace) entered
the room.
The first eyes that discovered her presence on the scene were the
eyes of Grace Roseberry. Starting violently in Julian's grasp,
she pointed toward the library door. "Ah!" she cried, with a
shriek of vindictive delight. "There she is!"
Mercy turned as the sound of the scream rang through the room,
and met--resting on her in savage triumph--the living gaze of the
woman whose identity she had stolen, whose body she had left laid
out for dead. On the instant of that terrible discovery--with her
eyes fixed helplessly on the fierce eyes that had found her--she
dropped senseless on the floor.
CHAPTER XII.
EXIT JULIAN.
JULIAN happened to be standing nearest to Mercy. He was the first
at her side when she fell.
In the cry of alarm which burst from him, as he raised her for a
moment in his arms, in the expression of his eyes when he looked
at her death-like face, there escaped the plain--too
plain--confession of the interest which he felt in her, of the
admiration which she had aroused in him. Horace detected it.
There was the quick suspicion of jealousy in the movement by
which he joined Julian; there was the ready resentment of
jealousy in the tone in which he pronounced the words, "Leave her
to me." Julian resigned her in silence. A faint flush appeared on
his pale face as he drew back while Horace carried her to the
sofa. His eyes sunk to the ground; he seemed to be meditating
self-reproachfully on the tone in which his friend had spoken to
him. After having been the first to take an active part in
meeting the calamity that had happened, he was now, to all
appearance, insensible to everything that was passing in the
room.
A touch on his shoulder roused him.
He turned and looked round. The woman who had done the
mischief--the stranger in the poor black garments--was standing
behind him. She pointed to the prostrate figure on the sofa, with
a merciless smile.
"You wanted a proof just now," she said. "There it is!"
Horace heard her. He suddenly left the sofa and joined Julian.
His face, naturally ruddy, was pale with suppressed fury.
"Take that wretch away!" he said. "Instantly! or I won't answer
for what I may do."
Those words recalled Julian to himself. He looked round the room.
Lady Janet and the housekeeper were together, in attendance on
the swooning woman. The startled servants were congregated in the
library doorway. One of them offered to run to the nearest
doctor; another asked if he should fetch the police. Julian
silenced them by a gesture, and turned to Horace. "Compose
yourself," he said. "Leave me to remove her quietly from the
house." He took Grace by the hand as he spoke. She hesitated, and
tried to release herself. Julian pointed to the group at the
sofa, and to the servants looking on. "You have made an enemy of
every one in this room," he said, "and you have not a friend in
London. Do you wish to make an enemy of _me?_ Her head drooped;
she made no reply; she waited, dumbly obedient to the firmer will
than her own. Julian ordered the servants crowding together in
the doorway to withdraw. He followed them into the library,
leading Grace after him by the hand. Before closing the door he
paused, and looked back into the dining-room.
"Is she recovering?" he asked, after a moment's hesitation.
Lady Janet's voice answered him. "Not yet."
"Shall I send for the nearest doctor?"
Horace interposed. He declined to let Julian associate himself,
even in that indirect manner, with Mercy's recovery.
"If the doctor is wanted," he said, "I will go for him myself."
Julian closed the library door. He absently released Grace; he
mechanically pointed to a chair. She sat down in silent surprise,
following him with her eyes as he walked slowly to and fro in the
room.
For the moment his mind was far away from her, and from all that
had happened since her appearance in the house. It was impossible
that a man of his fineness of perception could mistake the
meaning of Horace's conduct toward him. He was questioning his
own heart, on the subject of Mercy, sternly and unreservedly as
it was his habit to do. "After only once seeing her," he thought,
"has she produced such an impression on me that Horace can
discover it, before I have even suspected it myself? Can the time
have come already when I owe it to my friend to see her no more?"
He stopped irritably in his walk. As a man devoted to a serious
calling in life, there was something that wounded his
self-respect in the bare suspicion that he could be guilty of the
purely sentimental extravagance called "love at first sight."
He had paused exactly opposite to the chair in which Grace was
seated. Weary of the silence, she seized the opportunity of
speaking to him.
"I have come here with you as you wished," she said. "Are you
going to help me? Am I to count on you as my friend?"
He looked at her vacantly. It cost him an effort before he could
give her the attention that she had claimed.
"You have been hard on me," Grace went on. "But you showed me
some kindness at first; you tried to make them give me a fair
hearing. I ask you, as a just man, do you doubt now that the
woman on the sofa in the next room is an impostor who has taken
my place? Can there be any plainer confession that she is Mercy
Merrick than the confession she has made? _You_ saw it; _they_
saw it. She fainted at the sight of me."
Julian crossed the room--still without answering her--and rang
the bell. When the servant appeared, he told the man to fetch a
cab.
Grace rose from her chair. "What is the cab for?" she asked,
sharply.
"For you and for me," Julian replied. "I am going to take you
back to your lodgings."
"I refuse to go. My place is in this house. Neither Lady Janet
nor you can get over the plain facts. All I asked was to be
confronted with her. And what did she do when she came into the
room? She fainted at the sight of me."
Reiterating her one triumphant assertion, she fixed her eyes on
Julian with a look which said plainly: Answer that if you can. In
mercy to her, Julian answered it on the spot.
"As far as I understand," he said, "you appear to take it for
granted that no innocent woma n would have fainted on first
seeing you. I have something to tell you which will alter your
opinion. On her arrival in England this lady informed my aunt
that she had met with you accidentally on the French frontier,
and that she had seen you (so far as she knew) struck dead at her
side by a shell. Remember that, and recall what happened just
now. Without a word to warn her of your restoration to life, she
finds herself suddenly face to face with you, a living woman--and
this at a time when it is easy for any one who looks at her to
see that she is in delicate health. What is there wonderful, what
is there unaccountable, in her fainting under such circumstances
as these?"
The question was plainly put. Where was the answer to it?
There was no answer to it. Mercy's wisely candid statement of the
manner in which she had first met with Grace, and of the accident
which had followed had served Mercy's purpose but too well. It
was simply impossible for persons acquainted with that statement
to attach a guilty meaning to the swoon. The false Grace
Roseberry was still as far beyond the reach of suspicion as ever,
and the true Grace was quick enough to see it. She sank into the
chair from which she had risen; her hands fell in hopeless
despair on her lap.
"Everything is against me," she said. "The truth itself turns
liar, and takes _her_ side." She paused, and rallied her sinking
courage. "No!" she cried, resolutely, "I won't submit to have my
name and my place taken from me by a vile adventuress! Say what
you like, I insist on exposing her; I won't leave the house!"
The servant entered the room, and announced that the cab was at
the door.
Grace turned to Julian with a defiant wave of her hand. "Don't
let me detain you," she said. "I see I have neither advice nor
help to expect from Mr. Julian Gray."
Julian beckoned to the servant to follow him into a corner of the
room.
"Do you know if the doctor has been sent for?" he asked.
"I believe not, sir. It is said in the servants' hall that the
doctor is not wanted."
Julian was too anxious to be satisfied with a report from the
servants' hall. He hastily wrote on a slip of paper: "Has she
recovered?" and gave the note to the man, with directions to take
it to Lady Janet.
"Did you hear what I said?" Grace inquired, while the messenger
was absent in the dining room.
"I will answer you directly," said Julian.
The servant appeared again as he spoke, with some lines in pencil
written by Lady Janet on the back of Julian's note. "Thank God,
we have revived her. In a few minutes we hope to be able to take
her to her room."
The nearest way to Mercy's room was through the library. Grace's
immediate removal had now become a necessity which was not to be
trifled with. Julian addressed himself to meeting the difficulty
the instant he was left alone with Grace.
"Listen to me," he said. "The cab is waiting, and I have my last
words to say to you. You are now (thanks to the consul's
recommendation) in my care. Decide at once whether you will
remain under my charge, or whether you will transfer yourself to
the charge of the police."
Grace started. "What do you mean?" she asked, angrily.
"If you wish to remain under my charge," Julian proceeded, "you
will accompany me at once to the cab. In that case I will
undertake to give you an opportunity of telling your story to my
own lawyer. He will be a fitter person to advise you than I am.
Nothing will induce we to believe that the lady whom you have
accused has committed, or is capable of committing, such a fraud
as you charge her with. You will hear what the lawyer thinks, if
you come with me. If you refuse, I shall have no choice but to
send into the next room, and tell them that you are still here.
The result will be that you will find yourself in charge of the
police. Take which course you like: I will give you a minute to
decide in. And remember this--if I appear to express myself
harshly, it is your conduct which forces me to speak out. I mean
kindly toward you; I am advising you honestly for your good."
He took out his watch to count the minute.
Grace stole one furtive glance at his steady, resolute face. She
was perfectly unmoved by the manly consideration for her which
Julian's last words had expressed. All she understood was that he
was not a man to be trifled with. Future opportunities would
offer themselves of returning secretly to the house. She
determined to yield--and deceive him.
"I am ready to go," she said, rising with dogged submission.
"Your turn now," she muttered to herself, as she turned to the
looking-glass to arrange her shawl. "My turn will come."
Julian advanced toward her, as if to offer her his arm, and
checked himself. Firmly persuaded as he was that her mind was
deranged--readily as he admitted that she claimed, in virtue of
her affliction, every indulgence that he could extend to
her--there was something repellent to him at that moment in the
bare idea of touching her. The image of the beautiful creature
who was the object of her monstrous accusation--the image of
Mercy as she lay helpless for a moment in his arms--was vivid in
his mind while he opened the door that led into the hall, and
drew back to let Grace pass out before him. He left the servant
to help her into the cab. The man respectfully addressed him as
he took his seat opposite to Grace.
"I am ordered to say that your room is ready, sir, and that her
ladyship expects you to dinner."
Absorbed in the events which had followed his aunt's invitation,
Julian had forgotten his engagement to stay at Mablethorpe House.
Could he return, knowing his own heart as he now knew it? Could
he honorably remain, perhaps for weeks together, in Mercy's
society, conscious as he now was of the impression which she had
produced on him? No. The one honorable course that he could take
was to find an excuse for withdrawing from his engagement. "Beg
her ladyship not to wait dinner for me," he said. "I will write
and make my apologies." The cab drove off. The wondering servant
waited on the doorstep, looking after it. "I wouldn't stand in
Mr. Julian's shoes for something," he thought, with his mind
running on the difficulties of the young clergyman's position.
"There she is along with him in the cab. What is he going to do
with her after that?"
Julian himself, if it had been put to him at the moment, could
not have answered the question.
Lady Janet's anxiety was far from being relieved when Mercy had
been restored to her senses and conducted to her own room.
Mercy's mind remained in a condition of unreasoning alarm, which
it was impossible to remove. Over and over again she was told
that the woman who had terrified her had left the house, and
would never be permitted to enter it more; over and over again
she was assured that the stranger's frantic assertions were
regarded by everybody about her as unworthy of a moment's serious
attention. She persisted in doubting whether they were telling
her the truth. A shocking distrust of her friends seemed to
possess her. She shrunk when Lady Janet approached the bedside.
She shuddered when Lady Janet kissed her. She flatly refused to
let Horace see her. She asked the strangest questions about
Julian Gray, and shook her head suspiciously when they told her
that he was absent from the house. At intervals she hid her face
in the bedclothes and murmured to herself piteously, "Oh, what
shall I do? What shall I do?" At other times her one petition was
to be left alone. "I want nobody in my room"--that was her sullen
cry--"nobody in my room."
The evening advanced, and brought with it no change for the
better. Lady Janet, by the advice of Horace, sent for her own
medical adviser.
The doctor shook his head. The symptoms, he said, indicated a
serious shock to the nervous system. He wrote a sedative
prescription; and he gave (with a happy choice of language) some
sound and safe advice. It amounted briefly to this: "Take her
away, and try the sea-side." Lady Janet's customary energy acted
on the advice, without a moment's needless delay. She gave the
necessary directions for packing the trunks overnight, and
decided on leaving Mablethorpe Hous e with Mercy the next
morning.
Shortly after the doctor had taken his departure a letter from
Julian, addressed to Lady Janet, was delivered by private
messenger.
Beginning with the necessary apologies for the writer's absence,
the letter proceeded in these terms:
"Before I permitted my companion to see the lawyer, I felt the
necessity of consulting him as to my present position toward her
first.
"I told him--what I think it only right to repeat to you--that I
do not feel justified in acting on my own opinion that her mind
is deranged. In the case of this friendless woman I want medical
authority, and, more even than that, I want some positive proof,
to satisfy my conscience as well as to confirm my view.
"Finding me obstinate on this point, the lawyer undertook to
consult a physician accustomed to the treatment of the insane, on
my behalf.
"After sending a message and receiving the answer, he said,
'Bring the lady here--in half an hour; she shall tell her story
to the doctor instead of telling it to me.' The proposal rather
staggered me; I asked how it was possible to induce her to do
that. He laughed, and answered, 'I shall present the doctor as my
senior partner; my senior partner will be the very man to advise
her.' You know that I hate all deception, even where the end in
view appears to justify it. On this occasion, however, there was
no other alternative than to let the lawyer take his own course,
or to run the risk of a delay which might be followed by serious
results.
"I waited in a room by myself (feeling very uneasy, I own) until
the doctor joined me, after the interview was over.
"His opinion is, briefly, this:
"After careful examination of the unfortunate creature, he thinks
that there are unmistakably symptoms of mental aberration. But
how far the mischief has gone, and whether her case is, or is
not, sufficiently grave to render actual restraint necessary, he
cannot positively say, in our present state of ignorance as to
facts.
"'Thus far,' he observed, 'we know nothing of that part of her
delusion which relates to Mercy Merrick. The solution of the
difficulty, in this case, is to be found there. I entirely agree
with the lady that the inquiries of the consul at Mannheim are
far from being conclusive. Furnish me with satisfactory evidence
either that there is, or is not, such a person really in
existence as Mercy Merrick, and I will give you a positive
opinion on the case whenever you choose to ask for it.'
"Those words have decided me on starting for the Continent and
renewing the search for Mercy Merrick.
"My friend the lawyer wonders jocosely whether _I_ am in my right
senses. His advice is that I should apply to the nearest
magistrate, and relieve you and myself of all further trouble in
that way.
"Perhaps you agree with him? My dear aunt (as you have often
said), I do nothing like other people. I am interested in this
case. I cannot abandon a forlorn woman who has been confided to
me to the tender mercies of strangers, so long as there is any
hope of my making discoveries which may be instrumental in
restoring her to herself--perhaps, also, in restoring her to her
friends.
"I start by the mail-train of to-night. My plan is to go first to
Mannheim and consult with the consul and the hospital doctors;
then to find my way to the German surgeon and to question _him_;
and, that done, to make the last and hardest effort of all--the
effort to trace the French ambulance and to penetrate the mystery
of Mercy Merrick.
"Immediately on my return I will wait on you, and tell you what I
have accomplished, or how I have failed.
"In the meanwhile, pray be under no alarm about the reappearance
of this unhappy woman at your house. She is fully occupied in
writing (at my suggestion) to her friends in Canada; and she is
under the care of the landlady at her lodgings--an experienced
and trustworthy person, who has satisfied the doctor as well as
myself of her fitness for the charge that she has undertaken.
"Pray mention this to Miss Roseberry (whenever you think it
desirable), with the respectful expression of my sympathy, and of
my best wishes for her speedy restoration to health. And once
more forgive me for failing, under stress of necessity, to enjoy
the hospitality of Mablethorpe House."
Lady Janet closed Julian's letter, feeling far from satisfied
with it. She sat for a while, pondering over what her nephew had
written to her.
"One of two things," thought the quick-witted old lady. "Either
the lawyer is right, and Julian is a fit companion for the
madwoman whom he has taken under his charge, or he has some
second motive for this absurd journey of his which he has
carefully abstained from mentioning in his letter. What can the
motive be?"
At intervals during the night that question recurred to her
ladyship again and again. The utmost exercise of her ingenuity
failing to answer it, her one resource left was to wait patiently
for Julian's return, and, in her own favorite phrase, to "have it
out of him" then.
The next morning Lady Janet and her adopted daughter left
Mablethorpe House for Brighton; Horace (who had begged to be
allowed to accompany them) being sentenced to remain in London by
Mercy's express desire. Why--nobody could guess; and Mercy
refused to say.
CHAPTER XIII.
ENTER JULIAN.
A WEEK has passed. The scene opens again in the dining-room at
Mablethorpe House.
The hospitable table bears once more its burden of good things
for lunch. But on this occasion Lady Janet sits alone. Her
attention is divided between reading her newspaper and feeding
her cat. The cat is a sleek and splendid creature. He carries an
erect tail. He rolls luxuriously on the soft carpet. He
approaches his mistress in a series of coquettish curves. He
smells with dainty hesitation at the choicest morsels that can be
offered to him. The musical monotony of his purring falls
soothingly on her ladyship's ear. She stops in the middle of a
leading article and looks with a careworn face at the happy cat.
"Upon my honor," cries Lady Janet, thinking, in her inveterately
ironical manner, of the cares that trouble her, "all things
considered, Tom, I wish I was You!"
The cat starts--not at his mistress's complimentary apostrophe,
but at a knock at the door, which follows close upon it. Lady
Janet says, carelessly enough, "Come in;" looks round listlessly
to see who it is; and starts, like the cat, when the door opens
and discloses--Julian Gray!
"You--or your ghost?" she exclaims.
She has noticed already that Julian is paler than usual, and that
there is something in his manner at once uneasy and
subdued--highly uncharacteristic of him at other times. He takes
a seat by her side, and kisses her hand. But--for the first time
in his aunt's experience of him--he refuses the good things on
the luncheon table, and he has nothing to say to the cat! That
neglected animal takes refuge on Lady Janet's lap. Lady Janet,
with her eyes fixed expectantly on her nephew (determining to
"have it out of him" at the first opportunity), waits to hear
what he has to say for himself. Julian has no alternative but to
break the silence, and tell his story as he best may.
"I got back from the Continent last night," he began. "And I come
here, as I promised, to report myself on my return. How does your
ladyship do? How is Miss Roseberry?"
Lady Janet laid an indicative finger on the lace pelerine which
ornamented the upper part of her dress. "Here is the old lady,
well," she answered--and pointed next to the room above them.
"And there," she added, "is the young lady, ill. Is anything the
matter with _you_, Julian?"
"Perhaps I am a little tired after my journey. Never mind me. Is
Miss Roseberry still suffering from the shock?"
"What else should she be suffering from? I will never forgive
you, Julian, for bringing that crazy impostor into my house."
"My dear aunt, when I was the innocent means of bringing her here
I had no idea that such a person as Miss Roseberry was in
existence. Nobody laments what has happened more sincerely than I
do. Have you had medical advice?"
"I took her to the sea-side a week since by medical advice."
"Has the change of air don e her no good?"
"None whatever. If anything, the change of air has made her
worse. Sometimes she sits for hours together, as pale as death,
without looking at anything, and without uttering a word.
Sometimes she brightens up, and seems as if she was eager to say
something; and then Heaven only knows why, checks herself
suddenly as if she was afraid to speak. I could support that. But
what cuts me to the heart, Julian, is, that she does not appear
to trust me and to love me as she did. She seems to be doubtful
of me; she seems to be frightened of me. If I did not know that
it was simply impossible that such a thing could be, I should
really think she suspected me of believing what that wretch said
of her. In one word (and between ourselves), I begin to fear she
will never get over the fright which caused that fainting-fit.
There is serious mischief somewhere; and, try as I may to
discover it, it is mischief beyond my finding."
"Can the doctor do nothing?"
Lady Janet's bright black eyes answered before she replied in
words, with a look of supreme contempt.
"The doctor!" she repeated, disdainfully. "I brought Grace back
last night in sheer despair, and I sent for the doctor this
morning. He is at the head of his profession; he is said to be
making ten thousand a year; and he knows no more about it than I
do. I am quite serious. The great physician has just gone away
with two guineas in his pocket. One guinea, for advising me to
keep her quiet; another guinea for telling me to trust to time.
Do you wonder how he gets on at this rate? My dear boy, they all
get on in the same way. The medical profession thrives on two
incurable diseases in these modern days--a He-disease and a
She-disease. She-disease--nervous depression;
He-disease--suppressed gout. Remedies, one guinea, if _you_ go to
the doctor; two guineas if the doctor goes to _you_. I might have
bought a new bonnet," cried her ladyship, indignantly, "with the
money I have given to that man! Let us change the subject. I lose
my temper when I think of it. Besides, I want to know something.
Why did you go abroad?"
At that plain question Julian looked unaffectedly surprised. "I
wrote to explain," he said. "Have you not received my letter?"
"Oh, I got your letter. It was long enough, in all conscience;
and, long as it was, it didn't tell me the one thing I wanted to
know."
"What is the 'one thing'?"
Lady Janet's reply pointed--not too palpably at first--at that
second motive for Julian's journey which she had suspected Julian
of concealing from her.
"I want to know," she said, "why you troubled yourself to make
your inquiries on the Continent _in person?_ You know where my
old courier is to be found. You have yourself pronounced him to
be the most intelligent and trustworthy of men. Answer me
honestly--could you not have sent him in your place?"
"I _might_ have sent him," Julian admitted, a little reluctantly.
"You might have sent the courier--and you were under an
engagement to stay here as my guest. Answer me honestly once
more. Why did you go away?"
Julian hesitated. Lady Janet paused for his reply, with the air
of a women who was prepared to wait (if necessary) for the rest
of the afternoon.
"I had a reason of my own for going," Julian said at last.
"Yes?" rejoined Lady Janet, prepared to wait (if necessary) till
the next morning.
"A reason," Julian resumed, "which I would rather not mention."
"Oh!" said Lady Janet. "Another mystery--eh? And another woman at
the bottom of it, no doubt. Thank you--that will do--I am
sufficiently answered. No wonder, as a clergyman, that you look a
little confused. There is, perhaps, a certain grace, under the
circumstances, in looking confused. We will change the subject
again. You stay here, of course, now you have come back?"
Once more the famous pulpit orator seemed to find himself in the
inconceivable predicament of not knowing what to say. Once more
Lady Janet looked resigned to wait (if necessary) until the
middle of next week.
Julian took refuge in an answer worthy of the most commonplace
man on the face of the civilized earth.
"I beg your ladyship to accept my thanks and my excuses," he
said.
Lady Janet's many-ringed fingers, mechanically stroking the cat
in her lap, began to stroke him the wrong way.
Lady Janet's inexhaustible patience showed signs of failing her
at last.
"Mighty civil, I am sure," she said. "Make it complete. Say, Mr.
Julian Gray presents his compliments to Lady Janet Roy, and
regrets that a previous engagement-- Julian!" exclaimed the old
lady, suddenly pushing the cat off her lap, and flinging her last
pretense of good temper to the winds--"Julian, I am not to be
trifled with! There is but one explanation of your conduct--you
are evidently avoiding my house. Is there somebody you dislike in
it? Is it me?"
Julian intimated by a gesture that his aunt's last question was
absurd. (The much-injured cat elevated his back, waved his tail
slowly, walked to the fireplace, and honored the rug by taking a
seat on it.)
Lady Janet persisted. "Is it Grace Roseberry?" she asked next.
Even Julian's patience began to show signs of yielding. His
manner assumed a sudden decision, his voice rose a tone louder.
"You insist on knowing?" he said. "It _is_ Miss Roseberry."
"You don't like her?" cried Lady Janet, with a sudden burst of
angry surprise.
Julian broke out, on his side: "If I see any more of her," he
answered, the rare color mounting passionately in his cheeks, "I
shall be the unhappiest man living. If I see any more of her, I
shall be false to my old friend, who is to marry her. Keep us
apart. If you have any regard for my peace of mind, keep us
apart."
Unutterable amazement expressed itself in his aunt's lifted
hands. Ungovernable curiosity uttered itself in his aunt's next
words.
"You don't mean to tell me you are in love with Grace?"
Julian sprung restlessly to his feet, and disturbed the cat at
the fireplace. (The cat left the room.)
"I don't know what to tell you," he said; "I can't realize it to
myself. No other woman has ever roused the feeling in me which
this woman seems to have called to life in an instant. In the
hope of forgetting her I broke my engagement here; I purposely
seized the opportunity of making those inquiries abroad. Quite
useless. I think of her, morning, noon, and night. I see her and
hear her, at this moment, as plainly as I see and hear you. She
has made _her_self a part of _my_self. I don't understand my life
without her. My power of will seems to be gone. I said to myself
this morning, 'I will write to my aunt; I won't go back to
Mablethorpe House.' Here I am in Mablethorpe House, with a mean
subterfuge to justify me to my own conscience. 'I owe it to my
aunt to call on my aunt.' That is what I said to myself on the
way here; and I was secretly hoping every step of the way that
she would come into the room when I got here. I am hoping it now.
And she is engaged to Horace Holmcroft--to my oldest friend, to
my best friend! Am I an infernal rascal? or am I a weak fool? God
knows--I don't. Keep my secret, aunt. I am heartily ashamed of
myself; I used to think I was made of better stuff than this.
Don't say a word to Horace. I must, and will, conquer it. Let me
go."
He snatched up his hat. Lady Janet, rising with the activity of a
young woman, pursued him across the room, and stopped him at the
door.
"No," answered the resolute old lady, "I won't let you go. Come
back with me."
As she said those words she noticed with a certain fond pride the
brilliant color mounting in his cheeks--the flashing brightness
which lent an added luster to his eyes. He had never, to her
mind, looked so handsome before. She took his arm, and led him to
the chairs which they had just left. It was shocking, it was
wrong (she mentally admitted) to look on Mercy, under the
circumstances, with any other eye than the eye of a brother or a
friend. In a clergyman (perhaps) doubly shocking, doubly wrong.
But, with all her respect for the vested interests of Horace,
Lady Janet could not blame Julian. Worse still, she was privately
conscious that he had, somehow or other, risen, rather than
fallen, in her estima tion within the last minute or two. Who
could deny that her adopted daughter was a charming creature? Who
could wonder if a man of refined tastes admired her? Upon the
whole, her ladyship humanely decided that her nephew was rather
to be pitied than blamed. What daughter of Eve (no matter whether
she was seventeen or seventy) could have honestly arrived at any
other conclusion? Do what a man may--let him commit anything he
likes, from an error to a crime--so long as there is a woman at
the bottom of it, there is an inexhaustible fund of pardon for
him in every other woman's heart. "Sit down," said Lady Janet,
smiling in spite of herself; "and don't talk in that horrible way
again. A man, Julian--especially a famous man like you--ought to
know how to control himself."
Julian burst out laughing bitterly.
"Send upstairs for my self-control," he said. "It's in _her_
possession--not in mine. Good morning, aunt."
He rose from his chair. Lady Janet instantly pushed him back into
it.
"I insist on your staying here," she said, "if it is only for a
few minutes longer. I have something to say to you."
"Does it refer to Miss Roseberry?"
"It refers to the hateful woman who frightened Miss Roseberry.
Now are you satisfied?"
Julian bowed, and settled himself in his chair.
"I don't much like to acknowledge it," his aunt went on. "But I
want you to understand that I have something really serious to
speak about, for once in a way. Julian! that wretch not only
frightens Grace--she actually frightens me."
"Frightens you? She is quite harmless, poor thing."
"'Poor thing'!" repeated Lady Janet. "Did you say 'poor thing'?"
"Yes."
"Is it possible that you pity her?"
"From the bottom of my heart."
The old lady's temper gave way again at that reply. "I hate a man
who can't hate anybody!" she burst out. "If you had been an
ancient Roman, Julian, I believe you would have pitied Nero
himself."
Julian cordially agreed with her. "I believe I should," he said,
quietly. "All sinners, my dear aunt, are more or less miserable
sinners. Nero must have been one of the wretchedest of mankind."
"Wretched!" exclaimed Lady Janet. "Nero wretched! A man who
committed robbery, arson and murder to his own violin
accompaniment--_only_ wretched! What next, I wonder? When modern
philanthropy begins to apologize for Nero, modern philanthropy
has arrived at a pretty pass indeed! We shall hear next that
Bloody Queen Mary was as playful as a kitten; and if poor dear
Henry the Eighth carried anything to an extreme, it was the
practice of the domestic virtues. Ah, how I hate cant! What were
we talking about just now? You wander from the subject, Julian;
you are what I call bird-witted. I protest I forget what I wanted
to say to you. No, I won't be reminded of it. I may be an old
woman, but I am not in my dotage yet! Why do you sit there
staring? Have you nothing to say for yourself? Of all the people
in the world, have _you_ lost the use of your tongue?"
Julian's excellent temper and accurate knowledge of his aunt's
character exactly fitted him to calm the rising storm. He
contrived to lead Lady Janet insensibly back to the lost subject
by dexterous reference to a narrative which he had thus far left
untold--the narrative of his adventures on the Continent.
"I have a great deal to say, aunt," he replied. "I have not yet
told you of my discoveries abroad."
Lady Janet instantly took the bait.
"I knew there was something forgotten," she said. "You have been
all this time in the house, and you have told me nothing. Begin
directly."
Patient Julian began.
CHAPTER XIV.
COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE.
"I WENT first to Mannheim, Lady Janet, as I told you I should in
my letter, and I heard all that the consul and the hospital
doctors could tell me. No new fact of the slightest importance
turned up. I got my directions for finding the German surgeon,
and I set forth to try what I could make next of the man who
performed the operation. On the question of his patient's
identity he had (as a perfect stranger to her) nothing to tell
me. On the question of her mental condition, however, he made a
very important statement. He owned to me that he had operated on
another person injured by a shell-wound on the head at the battle
of Solferino, and that the patient (recovering also in this case)
recovered--mad. That is a remarkable admission; don't you think
so?"
Lady Janet's temper had hardly been allowed time enough to
subside to its customary level.
"Very remarkable, I dare say," she answered, "to people who feel
any doubt of this pitiable lady of yours being mad. I feel no
doubt--and, thus far, I find your account of yourself, Julian,
tiresome in the extreme. Go on to the end. Did you lay your hand
on Mercy Merrick?"
"No."
"Did you hear anything of her?"
"Nothing. Difficulties beset me on every side. The French
ambulance had shared in the disasters of France--it was broken
up. The wounded Frenchmen were prisoners somewhere in Germany,
nobody knew where. The French surgeon had been killed in action.
His assistants were scattered--most likely in hiding. I began to
despair of making any discovery, when accident threw in my way
two Prussian soldiers who had been in the French cottage. They
confirmed what the German surgeon told the consul, and what
Horace himself told _me_--namely, that no nurse in a black dress
was to be seen in the place. If there had been such a person, she
would certainly (the Prussians inform me) have been found in
attendance on the injured Frenchmen. The cross of the Geneva
Convention would have been amply sufficient to protect her: no
woman wearing that badge of honor would have disgraced herself by
abandoning the wounded men before the Germans entered the place."
"In short, "interposed Lady Janet, "there is no such person as
Mercy Merrick."
"I can draw no other conclusion, "said Julian, "unless the
English doctor's idea is the right one. After hearing what I have
just told you, he thinks the woman herself is Mercy Merrick."
Lady Janet held up her hand as a sign that she had an objection
to make here.
"You and the doctor seem to have settled everything to your
entire satisfaction on both sides," she said. "But there is one
difficulty that you have neither of you accounted for yet."
"What is it, aunt?"
"You talk glibly enough, Julian, about this woman's mad assertion
that Grace is the missing nurse, and that she is Grace. But you
have not explained yet how the idea first got into her head; and,
more than that, how it is that she is acquainted with my name and
address, and perfectly familiar with Grace's papers and Grace's
affairs. These things are a puzzle to a person of my average
intelligence. Can your clever friend, the doctor, account for
them?"
"Shall I tell you what he said when I saw him this morning?"
"Will it take long?"
"It will take about a minute."
"You agreeably surprise me. Go on."
"You want to know how she gained her knowledge of your name and
of Miss Roseberry's affairs," Julian resumed. "The doctor says in
one of two ways. Either Miss Roseberry must have spoken of you
and of her own affairs while she and the stranger were together
in the French cottage, or the stranger must have obtained access
privately to Miss Roseberry's papers. Do you agree so far?"
Lady Janet began to feel interested for the first time.
"Perfectly," she said. "I have no doubt Grace rashly talked of
matters which an older and wiser person would have kept to
herself."
"Very good. Do you also agree that the last idea in the woman's
mind when she was struck by the shell might have been (quite
probably) the idea of Miss Roseberry's identity and Miss
Roseberry's affairs? You think it likely enough? Well, what
happens after that? The wounded woman is brought to life by an
operation, and she becomes delirious in the hospital at Mannheim.
During her delirium the idea of Miss Roseberry's identity
ferments in her brain, and assumes its present perverted form. In
that form it still remains. As a necessary consequence, she
persists in reversing the two identities. She says she is Miss
Roseberry, and declares Miss Roseberry to be Mercy Merrick. There
is the doctor 's explanation. What do you think of it?"
"Very ingenious, I dare say. The doctor doesn't quite satisfy me,
however, for all that. I think--"
What Lady Janet thought was not destined to be expressed. She
suddenly checked herself, and held up her hand for the second
time.
"Another objection?" inquired Julian.
"Hold your tongue!" cried the old lady. "If you say a word more I
shall lose it again."
"Lose what, aunt?"
"What I wanted to say to you ages ago. I have got it back
again--it begins with a question. (No more of the doctor--I have
had enough of him!) Where is she--_your_ pitiable lady, _my_
crazy wretch--where is she now? Still in London?"
"Yes."
"And still at large?"
"Still with the landlady, at her lodgings."
"Very well. Now answer me this! What is to prevent her from
making another attempt to force her way (or steal her way) into
my house? How am I to protect Grace, how am I to protect myself,
if she comes here again?"
"Is that really what you wished to speak to me about?"
"That, and nothing else."
They were both too deeply interested in the subject of their
conversation to look toward the conservatory, and to notice the
appearance at that moment of a distant gentleman among the plants
and flowers, who had made his way in from the garden outside.
Advancing noiselessly on the soft Indian matting, the gentleman
ere long revealed himself under the form and features of Horace
Holmcroft. Before entering the dining-room he paused, fixing his
eyes inquisitively on the back of Lady Janet's visitor--the back
being all that he could see in the position he then occupied.
After a pause of an instant the visitor spoke, and further
uncertainty was at once at an end. Horace, nevertheless, made no
movement to enter the room. He had his own jealous distrust of
what Julian might be tempted to say at a private interview with
his aunt; and he waited a little longer on the chance that his
doubts might be verified.
"Neither you nor Miss Roseberry need any protection from the poor
deluded creature," Julian went on. "I have gained great influence
over her--and I have satisfied her that it is useless to present
herself here again."
"I beg your pardon," interposed Horace, speaking from the
conservatory door. "You have done nothing of the sort."
(He had heard enough to satisfy him that the talk was not taking
the direction which his Suspicions had anticipated. And, as an
additional incentive to show himself, a happy chance had now
offered him the opportunity of putting Julian in the wrong.)
"Good heavens, Horace!" exclaimed Lady Janet. "Where did you come
from? And what do you mean?"
"I heard at the lodge that your ladyship and Grace had returned
last night. And I came in at once without troubling the servants,
by the shortest way." He turned to Julian next. "The woman you
were speaking of just now," he proceeded, "has been here again
already--in Lady Janet's absence."
Lady Janet immediately looked at her nephew. Julian reassured her
by a gesture.
"Impossible," he said. "There must be some mistake."
"There is no mistake," Horace rejoined. "I am repeating what I
have just heard from the lodge-keeper himself. He hesitated to
mention it to Lady Janet for fear of alarming her. Only three
days since this person had the audacity to ask him for her
ladyship's address at the sea-side. Of course he refused to give
it."
"You hear that, Julian?" said Lady Janet.
No signs of anger or mortification escaped Julian. The expression
in his face at that moment was an expression of sincere distress.
"Pray don't alarm yourself," he said to his aunt, in his quietest
tones. "If she attempts to annoy you or Miss Roseberry again, I
have it in my power to stop her instantly."
"How?" asked Lady Janet.
"How, indeed!" echoed Horace. "If we give her in charge to the
police, we shall become the subject of a public scandal."
"I have managed to avoid all danger of scandal," Julian answered;
the expression of distress in his face becoming more and more
marked while he spoke. "Before I called here to-day I had a
private consultation with the magistrate of the district, and I
have made certain arrangements at the police station close by. On
receipt of my card, an experienced man, in plain clothes, will
present himself at any address that I indicate, and will take her
quietly away. The magistrate will hear the charge in his private
room, and will examine the evidence which I can produce, showing
that she is not accountable for her actions. The proper medical
officer will report officially on the case, and the law will
place her under the necessary restraint."
Lady Janet and Horace looked at each other in amazement. Julian
was, in their opinion, the last man on earth to take the
course--at once sensible and severe--which Julian had actually
adopted. Lady Janet insisted on an explanation.
"Why do I hear of this now for the first time?" she asked. "Why
did you not tell me you had taken these precautions before?"
Julian answered frankly and sadly.
"Because I hoped, aunt, that there would be no necessity for
proceeding to extremities. You now force me to acknowledge that
the lawyer and the doctor (both of whom I have seen this morning)
think, as you do, that she is not to be trusted. It was at their
suggestion entirely that I went to the magistrate. They put it to
me whether the result of my inquiries abroad--unsatisfactory as
it may have been in other respects--did not strengthen the
conclusion that the poor woman's mind is deranged. I felt
compelled in common honesty to admit that it was so. Having owned
this, I was bound to take such precautions as the lawyer and the
doctor thought necessary. I have done my duty--sorely against my
own will. It is weak of me, I dare say; but I can _not_ bear the
thought of treating this afflicted creature harshly. Her delusion
is so hopeless! her situation is such a pitiable one!"
His voice faltered. He turned away abruptly and took up his hat.
Lady Janet followed him, and spoke to him at the door. Horace
smiled satirically, and went to warm himself at the fire.
"Are you going away, Julian?"
"I am only going to the lodge-keeper. I want to give him a word
of warning in case of his seeing her again."
"You will come back here?" (Lady Janet lowered her voice to a
whisper.) "There is really a reason, Julian, for your not leaving
the house now."
"I promise not to go away, aunt, until I have provided for your
security. If you, or your adopted daughter, are alarmed by
another intrusion, I give you my word of honor my card shall go
to the police station, however painfully I may feel it myself."
(He, too, lowered his voice at the next words ) "In the meantime,
remember what I confessed to you while we were alone. For my
sake, let me see as little of Miss Roseberry as possible. Shall I
find you in this room when I come back?"
"Yes."
"Alone?"
He laid a strong emphasis, of look as well as of tone, on that
one word. Lady Janet understood what the emphasis meant.
"Are you really," she whispered, "as much in love with Grace as
that?"
Julian laid one hand on his aunt's arm, and pointed with the
other to Horace--standing with his back to them, warming his feet
on the fender.
"Well?" said Lady Janet.
"Well," said Julian, with a smile on his lip and a tear in his
eye, "I never envied any man as I envy _him!_"
With those words he left the room.
CHAPTER XV.
A WOMAN'S REMORSE.
HAVING warmed his feet to his own entire satisfaction, Horace
turned round from the fireplace, and discovered that he and Lady
Janet were alone.
"Can I see Grace?" he asked.
The easy tone in which he put the question--a tone, as it were,
of proprietorship in "Grace"--jarred on Lady Janet at the moment.
For the first time in her life she found herself comparing Horace
with Julian--to Horace's disadvantage. He was rich; he was a
gentleman of ancient lineage; he bore an unblemished character.
But who had the strong brain? who had the great heart? Which was
the Man of the two?
"Nobody can see her," answered Lady Janet. "Not even you!"
The tone of the reply was sharp, with a dash of irony in it. But
where is the modern young man, possessed of health and an
independ ent income, who is capable of understanding that irony
can be presumptuous enough to address itself to _him?_ Horace
(with perfect politeness) declined to consider himself answered.
"Does your ladyship mean that Miss Roseberry is in bed?" he
asked.
"I mean that Miss Roseberry is in her room. I mean that I have
twice tried to persuade Miss Roseberry to dress and come
downstairs, and tried in vain. I mean that what Miss Roseberry
refuses to do for Me, she is not likely to do for You--"
How many more meanings of her own Lady Janet might have gone on
enumerating, it is not easy to calculate. At her third sentence a
sound in the library caught her ear through the incompletely
closed door and suspended the next words on her lips. Horace
heard it also. It was the rustling sound (traveling nearer and
nearer over the library carpet) of a silken dress.
(In the interval while a coming event remains in a state of
uncertainty, what is it the inevitable tendency of every
Englishman under thirty to do? His inevitable tendency is to ask
somebody to bet on the event. He can no more resist it than he
can resist lifting his stick or his umbrella, in the absence of a
gun, and pretending to shoot if a bird flies by him while he is
out for a walk.)
"What will your ladyship bet that this is not Grace?" cried
Horace.
Her ladyship took no notice of the proposal; her attention
remained fixed on the library door. The rustling sound stopped
for a moment. The door was softly pushed open. The false Grace
Roseberry entered the room.
Horace advanced to meet her, opened his lips to speak, and
stopped--struck dumb by the change in his affianced wife since he
had seen her last. Some terrible oppression seemed to have
crushed her. It was as if she had actually shrunk in height as
well as in substance. She walked more slowly than usual; she
spoke more rarely than usual, and in a lower tone. To those who
had seen her before the fatal visit of the stranger from
Mannheim, it was the wreck of the woman that now appeared instead
of the woman herself. And yet there was the old charm still
surviving through it all; the grandeur of the head and eyes, the
delicate symmetry of the features, the unsought grace of every
movement--in a word, the unconquerable beauty which suffering
cannot destroy, and which time itself is powerless to wear out.
Lady Janet advanced, and took her with hearty kindness by both
hands.
"My dear child, welcome among us again! You have come down stairs
to please me?"
She bent her head in silent acknowledgment that it was so. Lady
Janet pointed to Horace: "Here is somebody who has been longing
to see you, Grace."
She never looked up; she stood submissive, her eyes fixed on a
little basket of colored wools which hung on her arm. "Thank you,
Lady Janet," she said, faintly. "Thank you, Horace."
Horace placed her arm in his, and led her to the sofa. She
shivered as she took her seat, and looked round her. It was the
first time she had seen the dining-room since the day when she
had found herself face to face with the dead-alive.
"Why do you come here, my love?" asked Lady Janet. "The
drawing-room would have been a warmer and a pleasanter place for
you."
"I saw a carriage at the front door. I was afraid of meeting with
visitors in the drawing-room."
As she made that reply, the servant came in, and announced the
visitors' names. Lady Janet sighed wearily. "I must go and get
rid of them," she said, resigning herself to circumstances. "What
will _you_ do, Grace?"
"I will stay here, if you please."
"I will keep her company," added Horace.
Lady Janet hesitated. She had promised to see her nephew in the
dining-room on his return to the house--and to see him alone.
Would there be time enough to get rid of the visitors and to
establish her adopted daughter in the empty drawing-room before
Julian appeared? It was ten minutes' walk to the lodge, and he
had to make the gate-keeper understand his instructions. Lady
Janet decided that she had time enough at her disposal. She
nodded kindly to Mercy, and left her alone with her lover.
Horace seated himself in the vacant place on the sofa. So far as
it was in his nature to devote himself to any one he was devoted
to Mercy. "I am grieved to see how you have suffered," he said,
with honest distress in his face as he looked at her. "Try to
forget what has happened."
"I am trying to forget. Do _you_ think of it much?"
"My darling, it is too contemptible to be thought of."
She placed her work-basket on her lap. Her wasted fingers began
absently sorting the wools inside.
"Have you seen Mr. Julian Gray?" she asked, suddenly.
"Yes."
"What does _he_ say about it?" She looked at Horace for the first
time, steadily scrutinizing his face. Horace took refuge in
prevarication.
"I really haven't asked for Julian's opinion," he said.
She looked down again, with a sigh, at the basket on her
lap--considered a little--and tried him once more.
"Why has Mr. Julian Gray not been here for a whole week?" she
went on. "The servants say he has been abroad. Is that true?"
It was useless to deny it. Horace admitted that the servants were
right.
Her fingers, suddenly stopped at their restless work among the
wools; her breath quickened perceptibly. What had Julian Gray
been doing abroad? Had he been making inquiries? Did he alone, of
all the people who saw that terrible meeting, suspect her? Yes!
His was the finer intelligence; his was a clergyman's (a London
clergyman's) experience of frauds and deceptions, and of the
women who were guilty of them. Not a doubt of it now! Julian
suspected her.
"When does he come back?" she asked, in tones so low that Horace
could barely hear her.
"He has come back already. He returned last night."
A faint shade of color stole slowly over the pallor of her face.
She suddenly put her basket away, and clasped her hands together
to quiet the trembling of them, before she asked her next
question.
"Where is--" She paused to steady her voice. "Where is the
person," she resumed, "who came here and frightened me?"
Horace hastened to re-assure her. "The person will not come
again," he said. "Don't talk of her! Don't think of her!"
She shook her head. "There is something I want to know," she
persisted. "How did Mr. Julian Gray become acquainted with her?"
This was easily answered. Horace mentioned the consul at
Mannheim, and the letter of introduction. She listened eagerly,
and said her next words in a louder, firmer tone.
"She was quite a stranger, then, to Mr. Julian Gray--before
that?"
"Quite a stranger," Horace replied. "No more questions--not
another word about her, Grace! I forbid the subject. Come, my own
love!" he said, taking her hand and bending over her tenderly,
"rally your spirits! We are young--we love each other--now is our
time to be happy!"
Her hand turned suddenly cold, and trembled in his. Her head sank
with a helpless weariness on her breast. Horace rose in alarm.
"You are cold--you are faint, "he said. "Let me get you a glass
of wine!--let me mend the fire!"
The decanters were still on the luncheon-table. Horace insisted
on her drinking some port-wine. She barely took half the contents
of the wine-glass. Even that little told on her sensitive
organization; it roused her sinking energies of body and mind.
After watching her anxiously, without attracting her notice,
Horace left her again to attend to the fire at the other end of
the room. Her eyes followed him slowly with a hard and tearless
despair. "Rally your spirits," she repeated to herself in a
whisper. "My spirits! O God!" She looked round her at the luxury
and beauty of the room, as those look who take their leave of
familiar scenes. The moment after, her eyes sank, and rested on
the rich dress that she wore a gift from Lady Janet. She thought
of the past; she thought of the future. Was the time near when
she would be back again in the Refuge, or back again in the
streets?--she who had been Lady Janet's adopted daughter, and
Horace Holmcroft's betrothed wife! A sudden frenzy of
recklessness seized on her as she thought of the coming end.
Horace was right! Why not rally her spirits? Why not make the
most of her time? The l ast hours of her life in that house were
at hand. Why not enjoy her stolen position while she could?
"Adventuress!" whispered the mocking spirit within her, "be true
to your character. Away with your remorse! Remorse is the luxury
of an honest woman." She caught up her basket of wools, inspired
by a new idea. "Ring the bell!" she cried out to Horace at the
fire-place.
He looked round in wonder. The sound of her voice was so
completely altered that he almost fancied there must have been
another woman in the room.
"Ring the bell!" she repeated. "I have left my work upstairs. If
you want me to be in good spirits, I must have my work."
Still looking at her, Horace put his hand mechanically to the
bell and rang. One of the men-servants came in.
"Go upstairs and ask my maid for my work," she said, sharply.
Even the man was taken by surprise: it was her habit to speak to
the servants with a gentleness and consideration which had long
since won all their hearts. "Do you hear me?" she asked,
impatiently. The servant bowed, and went out on his errand. She
turned to Horace with flashing eyes and fevered cheeks.
"What a comfort it is," she said, "to belong to the upper
classes! A poor woman has no maid to dress her, and no footman to
send upstairs. Is life worth having, Horace, on less than five
thousand a year?"
The servant returned with a strip of embroidery. She took it with
an insolent grace, and told him to bring her a footstool. The man
obeyed. She tossed the embroidery away from her on the sofa. "On
second thoughts, I don't care about my work," she said. "Take it
upstairs again." The perfectly trained servant, marveling
privately, obeyed once more. Horace, in silent astonishment,
advanced to the sofa to observe her more nearly. "How grave you
look!" she exclaimed, with an air of flippant unconcern. "You
don't approve of my sitting idle, perhaps? Anything to please
you! _I_ haven't got to go up and downstairs. Ring the bell
again."
"My dear Grace," Horace remonstrated, gravely, "you are quite
mistaken. I never even thought of your work."
"Never mind; it's inconsistent to send for my work, and then send
it away again. Ring the bell."
Horace looked at her without moving. "Grace," he said, "what has
come to you?"
"How should I know?" she retorted, carelessly. "Didn't you tell
me to rally my spirits? Will you ring the bell, or must I?"
Horace submitted. He frowned as he walked back to the bell. He
was one of the many people who instinctively resent anything that
is new to them. This strange outbreak was quite new to him. For
the first time in his life he felt sympathy for a servant, when
the much-enduring man appeared once more.
"Bring my work back; I have changed my mind." With that brief
explanation she reclined luxuriously on the soft sofa-cushions,
swinging one of her balls of wool to and fro above her head, and
looking at it lazily as she lay back. "I have a remark to make,
Horace," she went on, when the door had closed on her messenger.
"It is only people in our rank of life who get good servants. Did
you notice? Nothing upsets that man's temper. A servant in a poor
family should have been impudent; a maid-of-all-work would have
wondered when I was going to know my own mind." The man returned
with the embroidery. This time she received him graciously; she
dismissed him with her thanks. "Have you seen your mother lately,
Horace?" she asked, suddenly sitting up and busying herself with
her work.
"I saw her yesterday," Horace answered.
"She understands, I hope, that I am not well enough to call on
her? She is not offended with me?"
Horace recovered his serenity. The deference to his mother
implied in Mercy's questions gently flattered his self-esteem. He
resumed his place on the sofa.
"Offended with you!" he answered, smiling." My dear Grace, she
sends you her love. And, more than that, she has a wedding
present for you."
Mercy became absorbed in her work; she stooped close over the
embroidery--so close that Horace could not see her face. "Do you
know what the present is?" she asked, in lowered tones, speaking
absently.
"No. I only know it is waiting for you. Shall I go and get it
to-day?"
She neither accepted nor refused the proposal--she went on with
her work more industriously than ever.
"There is plenty of time," Horace persisted. "I can go before
dinner."
Still she took no notice: still she never looked up. "Your mother
is very kind to me," she said, abruptly. "I was afraid, at one
time, that she would think me hardly good enough to be your
wife."
Horace laughed indulgently: his self-esteem was more gently
flattered than ever.
"Absurd!" he exclaimed. "My darling, you are connected with Lady
Janet Roy. Your family is almost as good as ours."
"Almost?" she repeated. "Only almost?"
The momentary levity of expression vanished from Horace's face.
The family question was far too serious a question to be lightly
treated A becoming shadow of solemnity stole over his manner. He
looked as if it was Sunday, and he was just stepping into church.
"In OUR family," he said, "we trace back--by my father, to the
Saxons; by my mother, to the Normans. Lady Janet's family is an
old family--on her side only."
Mercy dropped her embroidery, and looked Horace full in the face.
She, too, attached no common importance to what she had next to
say.
"If I had not been connected with Lady Janet," she began, "would
you ever have thought of marrying me?"
"My love! what is the use of asking? You _are_ connected with
Lady Janet."
She refused to let him escape answering her in that way.
"Suppose I had not been connected with Lady Janet?" she
persisted. "Suppose I had only been a good girl, with nothing but
my own merits to speak for me. What would your mother have said
then?"
Horace still parried the question--only to find the point of it
pressed home on him once more.
"Why do you ask?" he said.
"I ask to be answered," she rejoined. "Would your mother have
liked you to marry a poor girl, of no family--with nothing but
her own virtues to speak for her?"
Horace was fairly pressed back to the wall.
"If you must know," he replied, "my mother would have refused to
sanction such a marriage as that."
"No matter how good the girl might have been?"
There was something defiant--almost threatening--in her tone.
Horace was annoyed--and he showed it when he spoke.
"My mother would have respected the girl, without ceasing to
respect herself," he said. "My mother would have remembered what
was due to the family name."
"And she would have said, No?"
"She would have said, No."
"Ah!"
There was an undertone of angry contempt in the exclamation which
made Horace start. "What is the matter?" he asked.
"Nothing," she answered, and took up her embroidery again. There
he sat at her side, anxiously looking at her--his hope in the
future centered in his marriage! In a week more, if she chose,
she might enter that ancient family of which he had spoken so
proudly, as his wife. "Oh!" she thought, "if I didn't love him!
if I had only his merciless mother to think of!"
Uneasily conscious of some estrangement between them, Horace
spoke again. "Surely I have not offended you?" he said.
She turned toward him once more. The work dropped unheeded on her
lap. Her grand eyes softened into tenderness. A smile trembled
sadly on her delicate lips. She laid one hand caressingly on his
shoulder. All the beauty of her voice lent its charm to the next
words that she said to him. The woman's heart hungered in its
misery for the comfort that could only come from his lips.
"_You_ would have loved me, Horace--without stopping to think of
the family name?"
The family name again! How strangely she persisted in coming back
to that! Horace looked at her without answering, trying vainly to
fathom what was passing in her mind.
She took his hand, and wrung it hard--as if she would wring the
answer out of him in that way.
"_You_ would have loved me?" she repeated.
The double spell of her voice and her touch was on him. He
answered, warmly, "Under any circumstances! under any name!"
She put one arm round his neck, and fixed her eyes on his. "Is
that true?" she asked.
"True as t he heaven above us!"
She drank in those few commonplace words with a greedy delight.
She forced him to repeat them in a new form.
"No matter who I might have been? For myself alone?"
"For yourself alone."
She threw both arms round him, and laid her head passionately on
his breast. "I love you! I love you!! I love you!!!" Her voice
rose with hysterical vehemence at each repetition of the
words--then suddenly sank to a low hoarse cry of rage and
despair. The sense of her true position toward him revealed
itself in all its horror as the confession of her love escaped
her lips. Her arms dropped from him; she flung herself back on
the sofa-cushions, hiding her face in her hands. "Oh, leave me!"
she moaned, faintly. "Go! go!"
Horace tried to wind his arm round her, and raise her. She
started to her feet, and waved him back from her with a wild
action of her hands, as if she was frightened of him. "The
wedding present!" she cried, seizing the first pretext that
occurred to her. "You offered to bring me your mother's present.
I am dying to see what it is. Go and get it!"
Horace tried to compose her. He might as well have tried to
compose the winds and the sea.
"Go!" she repeated, pressing one clinched hand on her bosom. "I
am not well. Talking excites me--I am hysterical; I shall be
better alone. Get me the present. Go!"
"Shall I send Lady Janet? Shall I ring for your maid?"
"Send for nobody! ring for nobody! If you love me--leave me here
by myself! leave me instantly!"
"I shall see you when I come back?"
"Yes! yes!"
There was no alternative but to obey her. Unwillingly and
forebodingly, Horace left the room.
She drew a deep breath of relief, and dropped into the nearest
chair. If Horace had stayed a moment longer--she felt it, she
knew it--her head would have given way; she would have burst out
before him with the terrible truth. "Oh!" she thought, pressing
her cold hands on her burning eyes, "if I could only cry, now
there is nobody to see me!"
The room was empty: she had every reason for concluding that she
was alone. And yet at that very moment there were ears that
listened--there were eyes waiting to see her.
Little by little the door behind her which faced the library and
led into the billiard-room was opened noiselessly from without,
by an inch at a time. As the opening was enlarged a hand in a
black glove, an arm in a black sleeve, appeared, guiding the
movement of the door. An interval of a moment passed, and the
worn white face of Grace Roseberry showed itself stealthily,
looking into the dining-room.
Her eyes brightened with vindictive pleasure as they discovered
Mercy sitting alone at the further end of the room. Inch by inch
she opened the door more widely, took one step forward, and
checked herself. A sound, just audible at the far end of the
conservatory, had caught her ear.
She listened--satisfied herself that she was not mistaken--and
drawing back with a frown of displeasure, softly closed the door
again, so as to hide herself from view. The sound that had
disturbed her was the distant murmur of men's voices (apparently
two in number) talking together in lowered tones, at the garden
entrance to the conservatory.
Who were the men? and what would they do next? They might do one
of two things: they might enter the drawing-room, or they might
withdraw again by way of the garden. Kneeling behind the door,
with her ear at the key-hole, Grace Roseberry waited the event.
CHAPTER XVI.
THEY MEET AGAIN.
ABSORBED in herself, Mercy failed to notice the opening door or
to hear the murmur of voices in the conservatory.
The one terrible necessity which had been present to her mind at
intervals for a week past was confronting her at that moment. She
owed to Grace Roseberry the tardy justice of owning the truth.
The longer her confession was delayed, the more cruelly she was
injuring the woman whom she had robbed of her identity--the
friendless woman who had neither witnesses nor papers to produce,
who was powerless to right her own wrong. Keenly as she felt
this, Mercy failed, nevertheless, to conquer the horror that
shook her when she thought of the impending avowal. Day followed
day, and still she shrank from the unendurable ordeal of
confession--as she was shrinking from it now!
Was it fear for herself that closed her lips?
She trembled--as any human being in her place must have
trembled--at the bare idea of finding herself thrown back again
on the world, which had no place in it and no hope in it for
_her_. But she could have overcome that terror--she could have
resigned herself to that doom.
No! it was not the fear of the confession itself, or the fear of
the consequences which must follow it, that still held her
silent. The horror that daunted her was the horror of owning to
Horace and to Lady Janet that she had cheated them out of their
love.
Every day Lady Janet was kinder and kinder. Every day Horace was
fonder and fonder of her. How could she confess to Lady Janet?
how could she own to Horace that she had imposed upon him? "I
can't do it. They are so good to me--I can't do it!" In that
hopeless way it had ended during the seven days that had gone by.
In that hopeless way it ended again now.
The murmur of the two voices at the further end of the
conservatory ceased. The billiard-room door opened again slowly,
by an inch at a time.
Mercy still kept her place, unconscious of the events that were
passing round her. Sinking under the hard stress laid on it, her
mind had drifted little by little into a new train of thought.
For the first time she found the courage to question the future
in a new way. Supposing her confession to have been made, or
supposing the woman whom she had personated to have discovered
the means of exposing the fraud, what advantage, she now asked
herself, would Miss Roseberry derive from Mercy Merrick's
disgrace?
Could Lady Janet transfer to the woman who was really her
relative by marriage the affection which she had given to the
woman who had pretended to be her relative? No! All the right in
the world would not put the true Grace into the false Grace's
vacant place. The qualities by which Mercy had won Lady Janet's
love were the qualities which were Mercy's won. Lady Janet could
do rigid justice--but hers was not the heart to give itself to a
stranger (and to give itself unreservedly) a second time. Grace
Roseberry would be formally acknowledged--and there it would end.
Was there hope in this new view?
Yes! There was the false hope of making the inevitable atonement
by some other means than by the confession of the fraud.
What had Grace Roseberry actually lost by the wrong done to her?
She had lost the salary of Lady Janet's "companion and reader."
Say that she wanted money, Mercy had her savings from the
generous allowance made to her by Lady Janet; Mercy could offer
money. Or say that she wanted employment, Mercy's interest with
Lady Janet could offer employment, could offer anything Grace
might ask for, if she would only come to terms.
Invigorated by the new hope, Mercy rose excitedly, weary of
inaction in the empty room. She, who but a few minutes since had
shuddered at the thought of their meeting again, was now eager to
devise a means of finding her way privately to an interview with
Grace. It should be done without loss of time--on that very day,
if possible; by the next day at latest. She looked round her
mechanically, pondering how to reach the end in view. Her eyes
rested by chance on the door of the billiard-room.
Was it fancy? or did she really see the door first open a little,
then suddenly and softly close again?
Was it fancy? or did she really hear, at the same moment, a sound
behind her as of persons speaking in the conservatory?
She paused; and, looking back in that direction, listened
intently. The sound--if she had really heard it--was no longer
audible. She advanced toward the billiard-room to set her first
doubt at rest. She stretched out her hand to open the door, when
the voices (recognizable now as the voices of two men) caught her
ear once more.
This time she was able to distinguish the words that were spoken.
"Any further orders, sir?" inquired one of the men.
"Nothing more," replied the other.
Mercy started, and faintly flushed, as the second voice answered
the first. She stood irresolute close to the billiard-room,
hesitating what to do next.
After an interval the second voice made itself heard again,
advancing nearer to the dining-room: "Are you there, aunt?" it
asked cautiously. There was a moment's pause. Then the voice
spoke for the third time, sounding louder and nearer. "Are you
there?" it reiterated; "I have something to tell you." Mercy
summoned her resolution and answered: "Lady Janet is not here."
She turned as she spoke toward the conservatory door, and
confronted on the threshold Julian Gray.
They looked at one another without exchanging a word on either
side. The situation--for widely different reasons--was equally
embarrassing to both of them.
There--as Julian saw _her_--was the woman forbidden to him, the
woman whom he loved.
There--as Mercy saw _him_--was the man whom she dreaded, the man
whose actions (as she interpreted them) proved that he suspected
her.
On the surface of it, the incidents which had marked their first
meeting were now exactly repeated, with the one difference that
the impulse to withdraw this time appeared to be on the man's
side and not on the woman's. It was Mercy who spoke first.
"Did you expect to find Lady Janet here?" she asked,
constrainedly. He answered, on his part, more constrainedly
still.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "Another time will do."
He drew back as he made the reply. She advanced desperately, with
the deliberate intention of detaining him by speaking again.
The attempt which he had made to withdraw, the constraint in his
manner when he had answered, had instantly confirmed her in the
false conviction that he, and he alone, had guessed the truth! If
she was right--if he had secretly made discoveries abroad which
placed her entirely at his mercy--the attempt to induce Grace to
consent to a compromise with her would be manifestly useless. Her
first and foremost interest now was to find out how she really
stood in the estimation of Julian Gray. In a terror of suspense,
that turned her cold from head to foot, she stopped him on his
way out, and spoke to him with the piteous counterfeit of a
smile.
"Lady Janet is receiving some visitors," she said. "If you will
wait here, she will be back directly."
The effort of hiding her agitation from him had brought a passing
color into her cheeks. Worn and wasted as she was, the spell of
her beauty was strong enough to hold him against his own will.
All he had to tell Lady Janet was that he had met one of the
gardeners in the conservatory, and had cautioned him as well as
the lodge-keeper. It would have been easy to write this, and to
send the note to his aunt on quitting the house. For the sake of
his own peace of mind, for the sake of his duty to Horace, he was
doubly bound to make the first polite excuse that occurred to
him, and to leave her as he had found her, alone in the room. He
made the attempt, and hesitated. Despising himself for doing it,
he allowed himself to look at her. Their eyes met. Julian stepped
into the dining-room.
"If I am not in the way," he said, confusedly, "I will wait, as
you kindly propose."
She noticed his embarrassment; she saw that he was strongly
restraining himself from looking at her again. Her own eyes
dropped to the ground as she made the discovery. Her speech
failed her; her heart throbbed faster and faster.
"If I look at him again" (was the thought in _her_ mind) "I shall
fall at his feet and tell him all that I have done!"
"If I look at her again" (was the thought in _his_ mind) "I shall
fall at her feet and own that I am in love with her!"
With downcast eyes he placed a chair for her. With downcast eyes
she bowed to him and took it. A dead silence followed. Never was
any human misunderstanding more intricately complete than the
misunderstanding which had now established itself between those
two.
Mercy's work-basket was near her. She took it, and gained time
for composing herself by pretending to arrange the colored wools.
He stood behind her chair, looking at the graceful turn of her
head, looking at the rich masses of her hair. He reviled himself
as the weakest of men, as the falsest of friends, for still
remaining near her--and yet he remained.
The silence continued. The billiard-room door opened again
noiselessly. The face of the listening woman appeared stealthily
behind it.
At the same moment Mercy roused herself and spoke: "Won't you sit
down?" she said, softly, still not looking round at him, still
busy with her basket of wools.
He turned to get a chair--turned so quickly that he saw the
billiard-room door move, as Grace Roseberry closed it again.
"Is there any one in that room?" he asked, addressing Mercy.
"I don't know," she answered. "I thought I saw the door open and
shut again a little while ago."
He advanced at once to look into the room. As he did so Mercy
dropped one of her balls of wool. He stopped to pick it up for
her--then threw open the door and looked into the billiard-room.
It was empty.
Had some person been listening, and had that person retreated in
time to escape discovery? The open door of the smoking-room
showed that room also to be empty. A third door was open--the
door of the side hall, leading into the grounds. Julian closed
and locked it, and returned to the dining-room.
"I can only suppose," he said to Mercy, "that the billiard-room
door was not properly shut, and that the draught of air from the
hall must have moved it."
She accepted the explanation in silence. He was, to all
appearance, not quite satisfied with it himself. For a moment or
two he looked about him uneasily. Then the old fascination
fastened its hold on him again. Once more he looked at the
graceful turn of her head, at the rich masses of her hair. The
courage to put the critical question to him, now that she had
lured him into remaining in the room, was still a courage that
failed her. She remained as busy as ever with her work--too busy
to look at him; too busy to speak to him. The silence became
unendurable. He broke it by making a commonplace inquiry after
her health. "I am well enough to be ashamed of the anxiety I have
caused and the trouble I have given," she answered. "To-day I
have got downstairs for the first time. I am trying to do a
little work." She looked into the basket. The various specimens
of wool in it were partly in balls and partly in loose skeins.
The skeins were mixed and tangled. "Here is sad confusion!" she
exclaimed, timidly, with a faint smile. "How am I to set it right
again?"
"Let me help you," said Julian.
"You!"
"Why not?" he asked, with a momentary return of the quaint humor
which she remembered so well. "You forget that I am a curate.
Curates are privileged to make themselves useful to young ladies.
Let me try."
He took a stool at her feet, and set himself to unravel one of
the tangled skeins. In a minute the wool was stretched on his
hands, and the loose end was ready for Mercy to wind. There was
something in the trivial action, and in the homely attention that
it implied, which in some degree quieted her fear of him. She
began to roll the wool off his hands into a ball. Thus occupied,
she said the daring words which were to lead him little by little
into betraying his suspicions, if he did indeed suspect the
truth.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.
"You were here when I fainted, were you not?" Mercy began. "You
must think me a sad coward, even for a woman."
He shook his head. "I am far from thinking that, "he replied. "No
courage could have sustained the shock which fell on you. I don't
wonder that you fainted. I don't wonder that you have been ill."
She paused in rolling up the ball of wool. What did those words
of unexpected sympathy mean? Was he laying a trap for her? Urged
by that serious doubt, she questioned him more boldly.
"Horace tells me you have been abroad," she said. "Did you enjoy
your holiday?"
"It was no holiday. I went abroad because I thought it right to
make certain inquiries--" He stopped there, unwilling to return
to a subject that was painful to her.
Her v oice sank, her fingers trembled round the ball of wool; but
she managed to go on.
"Did you arrive at any results?" she asked.
"At no results worth mentioning."
The caution of that reply renewed her worst suspicions of him. In
sheer despair, she spoke out plainly.
"I want to know your opinion--" she began.
"Gently!" said Julian. "You are entangling the wool again."
"I want to know your opinion of the person who so terribly
frightened me. Do you think her--"
"Do I think her--what?"
"Do you think her an adventuress?"
(As she said those words the branches of a shrub in the
conservatory were noiselessly parted by a hand in a black glove.
The face of Grace Roseberry appeared dimly behind the leaves.
Undiscovered, she had escaped from the billiard-room, and had
stolen her way into the conservatory as the safer hiding-place of
the two. Behind the shrub she could see as well as listen. Behind
the shrub she waited as patiently as ever.)
"I take a more merciful view," Julian answered. "I believe she is
acting under a delusion. I don't blame her: I pity her."
"You pity her?" As Mercy repeated the words, she tore off
Julian's hands the last few lengths of wool left, and threw the
imperfectly wound skein back into the basket. "Does that mean,"
she resumed, abruptly, "that you believe her?"
Julian rose from his seat, and looked at Mercy in astonishment.
"Good heavens, Miss Roseberry! what put such an idea as that into
your head?"
"I am little better than a stranger to you," she rejoined, with
an effort to assume a jesting tone. "You met that person before
you met with me. It is not so very far from pitying her to
believing her. How could I feel sure that you might not suspect
me?"
"Suspect _you!_" he exclaimed. "You don't know how you distress,
how you shock me. Suspect _you!_ The bare idea of it never
entered my mind. The man doesn't live who trusts you more
implicitly, who believes in you more devotedly, than I do."
His eyes, his voice, his manner, all told her that those words
came from the heart. She contrasted his generous confidence in
her (the confidence of which she was unworthy) with her
ungracious distrust of him. Not only had she wronged Grace
Roseberry--she had wronged Julian Gray. Could she deceive him as
she had deceived the others? Could she meanly accept that
implicit trust, that devoted belief? Never had she felt the base
submissions which her own imposture condemned her to undergo with
a loathing of them so overwhelming as the loathing that she felt
now. In horror of herself, she turned her head aside in silence
and shrank from meeting his eye. He noticed the movement, placing
his own interpretation on it. Advancing closer, he asked
anxiously if he had offended her.
"You don't know how your confidence touches me," she said,
without looking up. "You little think how keenly I feel your
kindness."
She checked herself abruptly. Her fine tact warned her that she
was speaking too warmly--that the expression of her gratitude
might strike him as being strangely exaggerated. She handed him
her work-basket before he could speak again.
"Will you put it away for me?" she asked, in her quieter tones.
"I don't feel able to work just now."
His back was turned on her for a moment, while he placed the
basket on a side-table. In that moment her mind advanced at a
bound from present to future. Accident might one day put the true
Grace in possession of the proofs that she needed, and might
reveal the false Grace to him in the identity that was her own.
What would he think of her then? Could she make him tell her
without betraying herself? She determined to try.
"Children are notoriously insatiable if you once answer their
questions, and women are nearly as bad," she said, when Julian
returned to her. "Will your patience hold out if I go back for
the third time to the person whom we have been speaking of?"
"Try me," he answered, with a smile.
"Suppose you had _not_ taken your merciful view of her?"
"Yes?"
"Suppose you believed that she was wickedly bent on deceiving
others for a purpose of her own--would you not shrink from such a
woman in horror and disgust?"
"God forbid that I should shrink from any human creature!" he
answered, earnestly. "Who among us has a right to do that?"
She hardly dared trust herself to believe him. "You would still
pity her?" she persisted, "and still feel for her?"
"With all my heart."
"Oh, how good you are!"
He held up his hand in warning. The tones of his voice deepened,
the luster of his eyes brightened. She had stirred in the depths
of that great heart the faith in which the man lived--the steady
principle which guided his modest and noble life.
"No!" he cried. "Don't say that! Say that I try to love my
neighbor as myself. Who but a Pharisee can believe that he is
better than another? The best among us to-day may, but for the
mercy of God, be the worst among us tomorrow. The true Christian
virtue is the virtue which never despairs of a fellow-creature.
The true Christian faith believes in Man as well as in God. Frail
and fallen as we are, we can rise on the wings of repentance from
earth to heaven. Humanity is sacred. Humanity has its immortal
destiny. Who shall dare say to man or woman, 'There is no hope in
you?' Who shall dare say the work is all vile, when that work
bears on it the stamp of the Creator's hand?"
He turned away for a moment, struggling with the emotion which
she had roused in him.
Her eyes, as they followed him, lighted with a momentary
enthusiasm--then sank wearily in the vain regret which comes too
late. Ah! if he could have been her friend and her adviser on the
fatal day when she first turned her steps toward Mablethorpe
House! She sighed bitterly as the hopeless aspiration wrung her
heart. He heard the sigh; and, turning again, looked at her with
a new interest in his face.
"Miss Roseberry," he said.
She was still absorbed in the bitter memories of the past: she
failed to hear him.
"Miss Roseberry," he repeated, approaching her.
She looked up at him with a start.
"May I venture to ask you something?" he said, gently.
She shrank at the question.
"Don't suppose I am speaking out of mere curiosity," he went on.
"And pray don't answer me unless you can answer without betraying
any confidence which may have been placed in you."
"Confidence!" she repeated. "What confidence do you mean?"
"It has just struck me that you might have felt more than a
common interest in the questions which you put to me a moment
since," he answered. "Were you by any chance speaking of some
unhappy woman--not the person who frightened you, of course--but
of some other woman whom you know?"
Her head sank slowly on her bosom. He had plainly no suspicion
that she had been speaking of herself: his tone and manner both
answered for it that his belief in her was as strong as ever.
Still those last words made her tremble; she could not trust
herself to reply to them.
He accepted the bending of her head as a reply.
"Are you interested in her?" he asked next.
She faintly answered this time. "Yes."
"Have you encouraged her?"
"I have not dared to encourage her."
His face lighted up suddenly with enthusiasm. "Go to her," he
said, "and let me go with you and help you!"
The answer came faintly and mournfully. "She has sunk too low for
that!"
He interrupted her with a gesture of impatience.
"What has she done?" he asked.
"She has deceived--basely deceived--innocent people who trusted
her. She has wronged--cruelly wronged--another woman."
For the first time Julian seated himself at her side. The
interest that was now roused in him was an interest above
reproach. He could speak to Mercy without restraint; he could
look at Mercy with a pure heart.
"You judge her very harshly," he said. "Do _you_ know how she may
have been tried and tempted?"
There was no answer.
"Tell me," he went on, "is the person whom she has injured still
living?"
"Yes."
"If the person is still living, she may atone for the wrong. The
time may come when this sinner, too, may win our pardon and
deserve our respect."
"Could _you_ respect her?" Mercy asked, sadly. "Can such a mind
as yours understand what she has gone t hrough?"
A smile, kind and momentary, brightened his attentive face.
"You forget my melancholy experience," he answered. "Young as I
am, I have seen more than most men of women who have sinned and
suffered. Even after the little that you have told me, I think I
can put myself in her place. I can well understand, for instance,
that she may have been tempted beyond human resistance. Am I
right?"
"You are right."
"She may have had nobody near at the time to advise her, to warn
her, to save her. Is that true?"
"It is true."
"Tempted and friendless, self-abandoned to the evil impulse of
the moment, this woman may have committed herself headlong to the
act which she now vainly repents. She may long to make atonement,
and may not know how to begin. All her energies may be crushed
under the despair and horror of herself, out of which the truest
repentance grows. Is such a woman as this all wicked, all vile? I
deny it! She may have a noble nature; and she may show it nobly
yet. Give her the opportunity she needs, and our poor fallen
fellow-creature may take her place again among the best of
us--honored, blameless, happy, once more!"
Mercy's eyes, resting eagerly on him while he was speaking,
dropped again despondingly when he had done.
"There is no such future as that," she answered, "for the woman
whom I am thinking of. She has lost her opportunity. She has done
with hope."
Julian gravely considered with himself for a moment.
"Let us understand each other," he said. "She has committed an
act of deception to the injury of another woman. Was that what
you told me?"
"Yes."
"And she has gained something to her own advantage by the act."
"Yes."
"Is she threatened with discovery?"
"She is safe from discovery--for the present, at least."
"Safe as long as she closes her lips?"
"As long as she closes her lips."
"There is her opportunity!" cried Julian. "Her future is before
her. She has not done with hope!"
With clasped hands, in breathless suspense, Mercy looked at that
inspiriting face, and listened to those golden words.
"Explain yourself," she said. "Tell her, through me, what she
must do."
"Let her own the truth," answered Julian, "without the base fear
of discovery to drive her to it. Let her do justice to the woman
whom she has wronged, while that woman is still powerless to
expose her. Let her sacrifice everything that she has gained by
the fraud to the sacred duty of atonement. If she can do
that--for conscience' sake, and for pity's sake--to her own
prejudice, to her own shame, to her own loss--then her repentance
has nobly revealed the noble nature that is in her; then she is a
woman to be trusted, respected, beloved! If I saw the Pharisees
and fanatics of this lower earth passing her by in contempt, I
would hold out my hand to her before them all. I would say to her
in her solitude and her affliction, 'Rise, poor wounded heart!
Beautiful, purified soul, God's angels rejoice over you! Take
your place among the noblest of God's creatures!'"
In those last sentences he unconsciously repeated the language in
which he had spoken, years since, to his congregation in the
chapel of the Refuge. With tenfold power and tenfold persuasion
they now found their way again to Mercy's heart. Softly,
suddenly, mysteriously, a change passed over her. Her troubled
face grew beautifully still. The shifting light of terror and
suspense vanished from her grand gray eyes, and left in them the
steady inner glow of a high and pure resolve.
There was a moment of silence between them. They both had need of
silence. Julian was the first to speak again.
"Have I satisfied you that her opportunity is still before her?"
he asked. "Do you feel, as I feel, that she has _not_ done with
hope?"
"You have satisfied me that the world holds no truer friend to
her than you," Mercy answered, gently and gratefully. "She shall
prove herself worthy of your generous confidence in her. She
shall show you yet that you have not spoken in vain."
Still inevitably failing to understand her, he led the way to the
door.
"Don't waste the precious time," he said. "Don't leave her
cruelly to herself. If you can't go to her, let me go as your
messenger, in your place."
She stopped him by a gesture. He took a step back into the room,
and paused, observing with surprise that she made no attempt to
move from the chair that she occupied.
"Stay here," she said to him, in suddenly altered tones.
"Pardon me, "he rejoined, "I don't understand you."
"You will understand me directly. Give me a little time."
He still lingered near the door, with his eyes fixed inquiringly
on her. A man of a lower nature than his, or a man believing in
Mercy less devotedly than he believed, would now have felt his
first suspicion of her. Julian was as far as ever from suspecting
her, even yet. "Do you wish to be alone?" he asked,
considerately. "Shall I leave you for a while and return again?"
She looked up with a start of terror. "Leave me?" she repeated,
and suddenly checked herself on the point of saying more. Nearly
half the length of the room divided them from each other. The
words which she was longing to say were words that would never
pass her lips unless she could see some encouragement in his
face. "No!" she cried out to him, on a sudden, in her sore need,
"don't leave me! Come back to me!"
He obeyed her in silence. In silence, on her side, she pointed to
the chair near her. He took it. She looked at him, and checked
herself again; resolute to make her terrible confession, yet
still hesitating how to begin. Her woman's instinct whispered to
her, "Find courage in his touch!" She said to him, simply and
artlessly said to him, "Give me encouragement. Give me strength.
Let me take your hand." He neither answered nor moved. His mind
seemed to have become suddenly preoccupied; his eyes rested on
her vacantly. He was on the brink of discovering her secret; in
another instant he would have found his way to the truth. In that
instant, innocently as his sister might have taken it, she took
his hand. The soft clasp of her fingers, clinging round his,
roused his senses, fired his passion for her, swept out of his
mind the pure aspirations which had filled it but the moment
before, paralyzed his perception when it was just penetrating the
mystery of her disturbed manner and her strange words. All the
man in him trembled under the rapture of her touch. But the
thought of Horace was still present to him: his hand lay passive
in hers; his eyes looked uneasily away from her.
She innocently strengthened her clasp of his hand. She innocently
said to him, "Don't look away from me. Your eyes give me
courage."
His hand returned the pressure of hers. He tasted to the full the
delicious joy of looking at her. She had broken down his last
reserves of self-control. The thought of Horace, the sense of
honor, became obscured in him. In a moment more he might have
said the words which he would have deplored for the rest of his
life, if she had not stopped him by speaking first. "I have more
to say to you," she resumed abruptly, feeling the animating
resolution to lay her heart bare before him at last; "more, far
more, than I have said yet. Generous, merciful friend, let me say
it _here!_"
She attempted to throw herself on her knees at his feet. He
sprung from his seat and checked her, holding her with both his
hands, raising her as he rose himself. In the words which had
just escaped her, in the startling action which had accompanied
them, the truth burst on him. The guilty woman she had spoken of
was herself!
While she was almost in his arms, while her bosom was just
touching his, before a word more had passed his lips or hers, the
library door opened.
Lady Janet Roy entered the room.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SEARCH IN THE GROUNDS.
GRACE ROSEBERRY, still listening in the conservatory, saw the
door open, and recognized the mistress of the house. She softly
drew back, and placed herself in safer hiding, beyond the range
of view from the dining-room.
Lady Janet advanced no further than the threshold. She stood
there and looked at her nephew and her adopted daughter in stern
silence.
Mercy dropped into the chair at her side. Julian kept his place
by her. His mind was still stunned by the discovery that had
burst on it; his eyes still rested on her in mute terror of
inquiry. He was as completely absorbed in the one act of looking
at her as if they had been still alone together in the room.
Lady Janet was the first of the three who spoke. She addressed
herself to her nephew.
"You were right, Mr. Julian Gray," she said, with her bitterest
emphasis of tone and manner. "You ought to have found nobody in
this room on your return but _me_. I detain you no longer. You
are free to leave my house."
Julian looked round at his aunt. She was pointing to the door. In
the excited state of his sensibilities at that moment the action
stung him to the quick. He answered without his customary
consideration for his aunt's age and his aunt's position toward
him.
"You apparently forget, Lady Janet, that you are not speaking to
one of your footmen," he said. "There are serious reasons (of
which you know nothing) for my remaining in your house a little
longer. You may rely upon my trespassing on your hospitality as
short a time as possible."
He turned again to Mercy as he said those words, and surprised
her timidly looking up at him. In the instant when their eyes
met, the tumult of emotions struggling in him became suddenly
stilled. Sorrow for her--compassionating sorrow--rose in the new
calm and filled his heart. Now, and now only, he could read in
the wasted and noble face how she had suffered. The pity which he
had felt for the unnamed woman grew to a tenfold pity for _her_.
The faith which he professed--honestly professed--in the better
nature of the unnamed woman strengthened into a tenfold faith in
_her_. He addressed himself again to his aunt, in a gentler tone.
"This lady," he resumed, "has something to say to me in private
which she has not said yet. That is my reason and my apology for
not immediately leaving the house."
Still under the impression of what she had seen on entering the
room, Lady Janet looked at him in angry amazement. Was Julian
actually ignoring Horace HolmcroftÕs claims, in the presence of
Horace HolmcroftÕs betrothed wife? She appealed to her adopted
daughter. "Grace!" she exclaimed, "have you heard him? Have you
nothing to say? Must I remind you--"
She stopped. For the first time in Lady Janet's experience of her
young companion, she found herself speaking to ears that were
deaf to her. Mercy was incapable of listening. Julian's eyes had
told her that Julian understood her at last!
Lady Janet turned to her nephew once more, and addressed him in
the hardest words that she had ever spoken to her sister's son.
"If you have any sense of decency," she said --"I say nothing of
a sense of honor--you will leave this house, and your
acquaintance with that lady will end here. Spare me your protests
and excuses; I can place but one interpretation on what I saw
when I opened that door."
"You entirely misunderstand what you saw when you opened that
door," Julian answered, quietly.
"Perhaps I misunderstand the confession which you made to me not
an hour ago?" retorted Lady Janet.
Julian cast a look of alarm at Mercy. "Don't speak of it!" he
said, in a whisper. "She might hear you."
"Do you mean to say she doesn't know you are in love with her?"
"Thank God, she has not the faintest suspicion of it!"
There was no mistaking the earnestness with which he made that
reply. It proved his innocence as nothing else could have proved
it. Lady Janet drew back a step--utterly bewildered; completely
at a loss what to say or what to do next.
The silence that followed was broken by a knock at the library
door. The man-servant--with news, and bad news, legibly written
in his disturbed face and manner--entered the room. In the
nervous irritability of the moment, Lady Janet resented the
servant's appearance as a positive offense on the part of the
harmless man. "Who sent for you?" she asked, sharply. "What do
you mean by interrupting us?"
The servant made his excuses in an oddly bewildered manner.
"I beg your ladyship's pardon. I wished to take the liberty--I
wanted to speak to Mr. Julian Gray."
"What is it?" asked Julian.
The man looked uneasily at Lady Janet, hesitated, and glanced at
the door, as if he wished himself well out of the room again.
"I hardly know if I can tell you, sir, before her ladyship," he
answered.
Lady Janet instantly penetrated the secret of her servant's
hesitation.
"I know what has happened," she said; "that abominable woman has
found her way here again. Am I right?"
The man's eyes helplessly consulted Julian.
"Yes, or no?" cried Lady Janet, imperatively.
"Yes, my lady."
Julian at once assumed the duty of asking the necessary
questions.
"Where is she?" he began.
"Somewhere in the grounds, as we suppose, sir."
"Did _you_ see her?"
"No, sir."
"Who saw her?"
"The lodge-keeper's wife."
This looked serious. The lodge-keeper's wife had been present
while Julian had given his instructions to her husband. She was
not likely to have mistaken the identity of the person whom she
had discovered.
"How long since?" Julian asked next.
"Not very long, sir."
"Be more particular. _How_ long?"
"I didn't hear, sir."
"Did the lodge-keeper's wife speak to the person when she saw
her?"
"No, sir: she didn't get the chance, as I understand it. She is a
stout woman, if you remember. The other was too quick for her--
discovered her, sir, and (as the saying is) gave her the slip."
"In what part of the grounds did this happen?"
The servant pointed in the direction of the side hall. "In that
part, sir. Either in the Dutch garden or the shrubbery. I am not
sure which."
It was plain, by this time, that the man's information was too
imperfect to be practically of any use. Julian asked if the
lodge-keeper's wife was in the house.
"No, sir. Her husband has gone out to search the grounds in her
place, and she is minding the gate. They sent their boy with the
message. From what I can make out from the lad, they would be
thankful if they could get a word more of advice from you, sir."
Julian reflected for a moment.
So far as he could estimate them, the probabilities were that the
stranger from Mannheim had already made her way into the house;
that she had been listening in the billiard-room; that she had
found time enough to escape him on his approaching to open the
door; and that she was now (in the servant's phrase) "somewhere
in the grounds," after eluding the pursuit of the lodgekeeper's
wife.
The matter was serious. Any mistake in dealing with it might lead
to very painful results.
If Julian had correctly anticipated the nature of the confession
which Mercy had been on the point of addressing to him, the
person whom he had been the means of introducing into the house
was--what she had vainly asserted herself to be--no other than
the true Grace Roseberry.
Taking this for granted, it was of the utmost importance that he
should speak to Grace privately, before she committed herself to
any rashly renewed assertion of her claims, and before she could
gain access to Lady Janet's adopted daughter. The landlady at her
lodgings had already warned him that the object which she held
steadily in view was to find her way to "Miss Roseberry" when
Lady Janet was not present to take her part, and when no
gentleman were at hand to protect her. "Only let me meet her face
to face" (she had said), "and I will make her confess herself the
impostor that she is!" As matters now stood, it was impossible to
estimate too seriously the mischief which might ensue from such a
meeting as this. Everything now depended on Julian's skillful
management of an exasperated woman; and nobody, at that moment,
knew where the woman was.
In this position of affairs, as Julian understood it, there
seemed to be no other alternative than to make his inquiries
instantly at the lodge and then to direct the search in person.
He looked toward Mercy's chair as he arrived at this resolution.
It was at a cruel sacrifice of his own anxieties and his own
wishes that he deferred continuing the conversation with her from
the critical point at which Lady Janet's appearance had inte
rrupted it.
Mercy had risen while he had been questioning the servant. The
attention which she had failed to accord to what had passed
between his aunt and himself she had given to the imperfect
statement which he had extracted from the man. Her face plainly
showed that she had listened as eagerly as Lady Janet had
listened; with this remarkable difference between there, that
Lady Janet looked frightened, and that Lady Janet's companion
showed no signs of alarm. She appeared to be interested; perhaps
anxious--nothing more.
Julian spoke a parting word to his aunt.
"Pray compose yourself," he said "I have little doubt, when I can
learn the particulars, that we shall easily find this person in
the grounds. There is no reason to be uneasy. I am going to
superintend the search myself. I will return to you as soon as
possible."
Lady Janet listened absently. There was a certain expression in
her eyes which suggested to Julian that her mind was busy with
some project of its own. He stopped as he passed Mercy, on his
way out by the billiard-room door. It cost him a hard effort to
control the contending emotions which the mere act of looking at
her now awakened in him. His heart beat fast, his voice sank low,
as he spoke to her.
"You shall see me again," he said. "I never was more in earnest
in promising you my truest help and sympathy than I am now."
She understood him. Her bosom heaved painfully; her eyes fell to
the ground--she made no reply. The tears rose in Julian's eyes as
he looked at her. He hurriedly left the room.
When he turned to close the billiard-room door, he heard Lady
Janet say, "I will be with you again in a moment, Grace; don't go
away."
Interpreting these words as meaning that his aunt had some
business of her own to attend to in the library, he shut the
door. He had just advanced into the smoking-room beyond, when he
thought he heard the door open again. He turned round. Lady Janet
had followed him.
"Do you wish to speak to me?" he asked.
"I want something of you," Lady Janet answered, "before you go."
"What is it?"
"Your card."
"My card?"
"You have just told me not to be uneasy," said the old lady. "I
_am_ uneasy, for all that. I don't feel as sure as you do that
this woman really is in the grounds. She may be lurking somewhere
in the house, and she may appear when your back in turned.
Remember what you told me."
Julian understood the allusion. He made no reply.
"The people at the police station close by," pursued Lady Janet,
"have instructions to send an experienced man, in plain clothes,
to any address indicated on your card the moment they receive it.
That is what you told me. For Grace's protection, I want your
card before you leave us."
It was impossible for Julian to mention the reasons which now
forbade him to make use of his own precautions--in the very face
of the emergency which they had been especially intended to meet.
How could he declare the true Grace Roseberry to be mad? How
could he give the true Grace Roseberry into custody? On the other
hand, he had personally pledged himself (when the circumstances
appeared to require it) to place the means of legal protection
from insult and annoyance at his aunt's disposal. And now, there
stood Lady Janet, unaccustomed to have her wishes disregarded by
anybody, with her band extended, waiting for the card!
What was to be done? The one way out of the difficulty appeared
to be to submit for the moment. If he succeeded in discovering
the missing woman, he could easily take care that she should be
subjected to no needless indignity. If she contrived to slip into
the house in his absence, he could provide against that
contingency by sending a second card privately to the police
station, forbidding the officer to stir in the affair until he
had received further orders. Julian made one stipulation only
before he handed his card to his aunt.
"You will not use this, I am sure, without positive and pressing
necessity," he said. "But I must make one condition. Promise me
to keep my plan for communicating with the police a strict
secret--"
"A strict secret from Grace?" interposed Lady Janet. (Julian
bowed.) "Do you suppose I want to frighten her? Do you think I
have not had anxiety enough about her already? Of course I shall
keep it a secret from Grace!"
Re-assured on this point, Julian hastened out into the grounds.
As soon as his back was turned Lady Janet lifted the gold
pencil-case which hung at her watch-chain, and wrote on her
nephew's card (for the information of the officer in plain
clothes), "_You are wanted at Mablethorpe House_." This done, she
put the card into the old-fashioned pocket of her dress, and
returned to the dining-room.
Grace was waiting, in obedience to the instructions which she had
received.
For the first moment or two not a word was spoken on either side.
Now that she was alone with her adopted daughter, a certain
coldness and hardness began to show itself in Lady Janet's
manner. The discovery that she had made on opening the
drawing-room door still hung on her mind. Julian had certainly
convinced her that she had misinterpreted what she had seen; but
he had convinced her against her will. She had found Mercy deeply
agitated; suspiciously silent. Julian might be innocent, she
admitted--there was no accounting for the vagaries of men. But
the case of Mercy was altogether different. Women did not find
themselves in the arms of men without knowing what they were
about. Acquitting Julian, Lady Janet declined to acquit Mercy.
"There is some secret understanding between them," thought the
old lady, "and she's to blame; the women always are!"
Mercy still waited to be spoken to; pale and quiet, silent and
submissive. Lady Janet--in a highly uncertain state of
temper--was obliged to begin.
"My dear!" she called out, sharply.
"Yes, Lady Janet."
"How much longer are you going to sit there with your mouth shut
up and your eyes on the carpet? Have you no opinion to offer on
this alarming state of things? You heard what the man said to
Julian--I saw you listening. Are you horribly frightened?"
"No, Lady Janet."
"Not even nervous?"
"No, Lady Janet."
"Ha! I should hardly have given you credit for so much courage
after my experience of you a week ago. I congratulate you on your
recovery."
"Thank you, Lady Janet."
"I am not so composed as you are. We were an excitable set in
_my_ youth--and I haven't got the better of it yet. I feel
nervous. Do you hear? I feel nervous."
"I am sorry, Lady Janet."
"You are very good. Do you know what I am going to do?"
"No, Lady Janet."
"I am going to summon the household. When I say the household, I
mean the men; the women are no use. I am afraid I fail to attract
your attention?"
"You have my best attention, Lady Janet."
"You are very good again. I said the women were of no use."
"Yes, Lady Janet."
"I mean to place a man-servant on guard at every entrance to the
house. I am going to do it at once. Will you come with me?"
"Can I be of any use if I go with your ladyship?"
"You can't be of the slightest use. I give the orders in this
house--not you. I had quite another motive in asking you to come
with me. I am more considerate of you than you seem to think--I
don't like leaving you here by yourself. Do you understand?
"I am much obliged to your ladyship. I don't mind being left here
by myself."
"You don't mind? I never heard of such heroism in my life--out of
a novel! Suppose that crazy wretch should find her way in here?"
"She would not frighten me this time as she frightened me
before."
"Not too fast, my young lady! Suppose--Good heavens! now I think
of it, there is the conservatory. Suppose she should be hidden in
there? Julian is searching the grounds. Who is to search the
conservatory?"
"With your ladyship's permission, _I_ will search the
conservatory."
"You!!!"
"With your ladyship's permission."
"I can hardly believe my own ears! Well, 'Live and learn' is an
old proverb. I thought I knew your character. This _is_ a
change!"
"You forget, Lady Janet (if I may venture to say so), that the
circumstances are changed. She took me by surprise on the last
occasion; I am prepared for her
now."
"Do you really feel as coolly as you speak?"
"Yes, Lady Janet."
"Have your own way, then. I shall do one thing, however, in case
of your having overestimated your own courage. I shall place one
of the men in the library. You will only have to ring for him if
anything happens. He will give the alarm--and I shall act
accordingly. I have my plan," said her Ladyship, comfortably
conscious of the card in her pocket. "Don't look as if you wanted
to know what it is. I have no intention of saying anything about
it--except that it will do. Once more, and for the last time--do
you stay here? or do you go with me?"
"I stay here."
She respectfully opened the library door for Lady Janet's
departure as she made that reply. Throughout the interview she
had been carefully and coldly deferential; she had not once
lifted her eyes to Lady Janet's face. The conviction in her that
a few hours more would, in all probability, see her dismissed
from the house, had of necessity fettered every word that she
spoke--had morally separated her already from the injured
mistress whose love she had won in disguise. Utterly incapable of
attributing the change in her young companion to the true motive,
Lady Janet left the room to summon her domestic garrison,
thoroughly puzzled and (as a necessary consequence of that
condition) thoroughly displeased.
Still holding the library door in her hand, Mercy stood watching
with a heavy heart the progress of her benefactress down the
length of the room on the way to the front hall beyond. She had
honestly loved and respected the warm-hearted, quick-tempered old
lady. A sharp pang of pain wrung her as she thought of the time
when even the chance utterance of her name would become an
unpardonable offense in Lady Janet's house.
But there was no shrinking in her now from the ordeal of the
confession. She was not only anxious--she was impatient for
Julian's return. Before she slept that night Julian's confidence
in her should be a confidence that she had deserved.
"Let her own the truth, without the base fear of discovery to
drive her to it. Let her do justice to the woman whom she has
wronged, while that woman is still powerless to expose her. Let
her sacrifice everything that she has gained by the fraud to the
sacred duty of atonement. If she can do that, then her repentance
has nobly revealed the noble nature that is in her; then she is a
woman to be trusted, respected, beloved." Those words were as
vividly present to her as if she still heard them falling from
his lips. Those other words which had followed them rang as
grandly as ever in her ears: "Rise, poor wounded heart!
Beautiful, purified soul, God's angels rejoice over you! Take
your place among the noblest of God's creatures!" Did the woman
live who could hear Julian Gray say that, and who could hesitate,
at any sacrifice, at any loss, to justify his belief in her?
"Oh!" she thought, longingly while her eyes followed Lady Janet
to the end of the library, "if your worst fears could only be
realized! If I could only see Grace Roseberry in this room, how
fearlessly I could meet her now!"
She closed the library door, while Lady Janet opened the other
door which led into the hall.
As she turned and looked back into the dining-room a cry of
astonishment escaped her.
There--as if in answer to the aspiration which was still in her
mind; there, established in triumph on the chair that she had
just left--sat Grace Roseberry, in sinister silence, waiting for
her.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE EVIL GENIUS.
RECOVERING from the first overpowering sensation of surprise,
Mercy rapidly advanced, eager to say her first penitent words.
Grace stopped her by a warning gesture of the hand. "No nearer to
me," she said, with a look of contemptuous command. "Stay where
you are."
Mercy paused. Grace's reception had startled her. She
instinctively took the chair nearest to her to support herself.
Grace raised a warning hand for the second time, and issued
another command: "I forbid you to be seated in my presence. You
have no right to be in this house at all. Remember, if you
please, who you are, and who I am."
The tone in which those words were spoken was an insult in
itself. Mercy suddenly lifted her head; the angry answer was on
her lips. She checked it, and submitted in silence. "I will be
worthy of Julian Gray's confidence in me," she thought, as she
stood patiently by the chair. "I will bear anything from the
woman whom I have wronged."
In silence the two faced each other; alone together, for the
first time since they had met in the French cottage. The contrast
between them was strange to see. Grace Roseberry, seated in her
chair, little and lean, with her dull white complexion, with her
hard, threatening face, with her shrunken figure clad in its
plain and poor black garments, looked like a being of a lower
sphere, compared with Mercy Merrick, standing erect in her rich
silken dress; her tall, shapely figure towering over the little
creature before her; her grand head bent in graceful submission;
gentle, patient, beautiful; a woman whom it was a privilege to
look at and a distinction to admire. If a stranger had been told
that those two had played their parts in a romance of real
life--that one of them was really connected by the ties of
relationship with Lady Janet Roy, and that the other had
successfully attempted to personate her--he would inevitably, if
it had been left to him to guess which was which, have picked out
Grace as the counterfeit and Mercy as the true woman.
Grace broke the silence. She had waited to open her lips until
she had eyed her conquered victim all over, with disdainfully
minute attention, from head to foot
"Stand there. I like to look at you," she said, speaking with a
spiteful relish of her own cruel words. "It's no use fainting
this time. You have not got Lady Janet Roy to bring you to. There
are no gentlemen here to-day to pity you and pick you up. Mercy
Merrick, I have got you at last. Thank God, my turn has come! You
can't escape me now!"
All the littleness of heart and mind which had first shown itself
in Grace at the meeting in the cottage, when Mercy told the sad
story of her life, now revealed itself once more. The woman who
in those past times. had felt no impulse to take a suffering and
a penitent fellow-creature by the hand was the same woman who
could feel no pity, who could spare no insolence of triumph, now.
Mercy's sweet voice answered her patiently, in low, pleading
tones.
"I have not avoided you," she said. "I would have gone to you of
my own accord if I had known that you were here. It is my
heartfelt wish to own that I have sinned against you, and to make
all the atonement that I can. I am too anxious to deserve your
forgiveness to have any fear of seeing you."
Conciliatory as the reply was, it was spoken with a simple and
modest dignity of manner which roused Grace Roseberry to fury.
"How dare you speak to me as if you were any equal?" she burst
out. "You stand there and answer me as if you had your right and
your place in this house. You audacious woman! _I_ have my right
and my place here--and what am I obliged to do? I am obliged to
hang about in the grounds, and fly from the sight of the
servants, and hide like a thief, and wait like a beggar, and all
for what? For the chance of having a word with _you_. Yes! you,
madam! with the air of the Refuge and the dirt of the streets on
you!"
Mercy's head sank lower; her hand trembled as it held by the back
of the chair.
It was hard to bear the reiterated insults heaped on her, but
Julian's influence still made itself felt. She answered as
patiently as ever.
"If it is your pleasure to use hard words to me," she said, "I
have no right to resent them."
"You have no right to anything!" Grace retorted. "You have no
right to the gown on your back. Look at yourself, and look at
Me!" Her eyes traveled with a tigerish stare over Mercy's costly
silk dress. "Who gave you that dress? who gave you those jewels?
I know! Lady Janet gave them to Grace Roseberry. Are _you_ Grace
Roseberry? That dress is mine. Take off your bracelets and your
brooch. They were meant for me."
"You may soon have the m, Miss Roseberry. They will not be in my
possession many hours longer."
"What do you mean?"
"However badly you may use me, it is my duty to undo the harm
that I have done. I am bound to do you justice--I am determined
to confess the truth."
Grace smiled scornfully.
"You confess!" she said. "Do you think I am fool enough to
believe that? You are one shameful brazen lie from head to foot!
Are _you_ the woman to give up your silks and your jewels, and
your position in this house, and to go back to the Refuge of your
own accord? Not you-- not you!"
A first faint flush of color showed itself, stealing slowly over
Mercy's face; but she still held resolutely by the good influence
which Julian had left behind him. She could still say to herself,
"Anything rather than disappoint Julian Gray." Sustained by the
courage which _he_ had called to life in her, she submitted to
her martyrdom as bravely as ever. But there was an ominous change
in her now: she could only submit in silence; she could no longer
trust herself to answer.
The mute endurance in her face additionally exasperated Grace
Roseberry.
"_You_ won't confess," she went on. "You have had a week to
confess in, and you have not done it yet. No, no! you are of the
sort that cheat and lie to the last. I am glad of it; I shall
have the joy of exposing you myself before the whole house. I
shall be the blessed means of casting you back on the streets.
Oh! it will be almost worth all I have gone through to see you
with a policeman's hand on your arm, and the mob pointing at you
and mocking you on your way to jail!"
This time the sting struck deep; the outrage was beyond
endurance. Mercy gave the woman who had again and again
deliberately insulted her a first warning.
"Miss Roseberry," she said, "I have borne without a murmur the
bitterest words you could say to me. Spare me any more insults.
Indeed, indeed, I am eager to restore you to your just rights.
With my whole heart I say it to you--I am resolved to confess
everything!"
She spoke with trembling earnestness of tone. Grace listened with
a hard smile of incredulity and a hard look of contempt.
"You are not far from the bell," she said; "ring it."
Mercy looked at her in speechless surprise.
"You are a perfect picture of repentance--you are dying to own
the truth," pursued the other, satirically. "Own it before
everybody, and own it at once. Call in Lady Janet--call in Mr.
Gray and Mr. Holmcroft--call in the servants. Go down on your
knees and acknowledge yourself an impostor before them all. Then
I will believe you--not before."
"Don't, don't turn me against you!" cried Mercy, entreatingly.
"What do I care whether you are against me or not?"
"Don't--for your own sake, don't go on provoking me much longer!"
"For my own sake? You insolent creature! Do you mean to threaten
me?"
With a last desperate effort, her heart beating faster and
faster, the blood burning hotter and hotter in her cheeks, Mercy
still controlled herself.
"Have some compassion on me!" she pleaded. "Badly as I have
behaved to you, I am still a woman like yourself. I can't face
the shame of acknowledging what I have done before the whole
house. Lady Janet treats me like a daughter; Mr. Holmcroft has
engaged himself to marry me. I can't tell Lady Janet and Mr.
Holmcroft to their faces that I have cheated them out of their
love. But they shall know it, for all that. I can, and will,
before I rest to-night, tell the whole truth to Mr. Julian Gray."
Grace burst out laughing. "Aha!" she exclaimed, with a cynical
outburst of gayety. "Now we have come to it at last!"
"Take care!" said Mercy. "Take care!"
"Mr. Julian Gray! I was behind the billiard-room door--I saw you
coax Mr. Julian Gray to come in! confession loses all its
horrors, and becomes quite a luxury, with Mr. Julian Gray!"
"No more, Miss Roseberry! no more! For God's sake, don't put me
beside myself! You have tortured me enough already."
"You haven't been on the streets for nothing. You are a woman
with resources; you know the value of having two strings to your
bow. If Mr. Holmcroft fails you, you have got Mr. Julian Gray.
Ah! you sicken me. _I'll_ see that Mr. Holmcroft's eyes are
opened; he shall know what a woman he might have married but for
Me--"
She checked herself; the next refinement of insult remained
suspended on her lips.
The woman whom she had outraged suddenly advanced on her. Her
eyes, staring helplessly upward, saw Mercy Merrick's face, white
with the terrible anger which drives the blood back on the heart,
bending threateningly over her.
"'You will see that Mr. Holmcroft's eyes are opened,'" Mercy
slowly repeated; "'he shall know what a woman he might have
married but for you!'"
She paused, and followed those words by a question which struck a
creeping terror through Grace Roseberry, from the hair of her
head to the soles of her feet:
"_Who are you?_"
The suppressed fury of look and tone which accompanied that
question told, as no violence could have told it, that the limits
of Mercy's endurance had been found at last. In the guardian
angel's absence the evil genius had done its evil work. The
better nature which Julian Gray had brought to life sank,
poisoned by the vile venom of a womanly spiteful tongue. An easy
and a terrible means of avenging the outrages heaped on her was
within Mercy's reach, if she chose to take it. In the frenzy of
her indignation she never hesitated--she took it.
"Who are you?" she asked for the second time.
Grace roused herself and attempted to speak. Mercy stopped her
with a scornful gesture of her hand.
"I remember!" she went on, with the same fiercely suppressed
rage. "You are the madwoman from the German hospital who came
here a week ago. I am not afraid of you this time. Sit down and
rest yourself, Mercy Merrick "
Deliberately giving her that name to her face, Mercy turned from
her and took the chair which Grace had forbidden her to occupy
when the interview began. Grace started to her feet.
"What does this mean?" she asked.
"It means," answered Mercy, contemptuously, "that I recall every
word I said to you just now. It means that I am resolved to keep
my place in this house."
"Are you out of your senses?"
"You are not far from the bell. Ring it. Do what you asked _me_
to do. Call in the whole household, and ask them which of us is
mad--you or I."
"Mercy Merrick! you shall repent this to the last hour of your
life!"
Mercy rose again, and fixed her flashing eyes on the woman who
still defied her.
"I have had enough of you!" she said. "Leave the house while you
can leave it. Stay here, and I will send for Lady Janet Roy."
"You can't send for her! You daren't send for her!"
"I can and I dare. You have not a shadow of a proof against me. I
have got the papers; I am in possession of the place; I have
established myself in Lady Janet's confidence. I mean to deserve
your opinion of me--I will keep my dresses and my jewels and my
position in the house. I deny that I have done wrong. Society has
used me cruelly; I owe nothing to Society. I have a right to take
any advantage of it if I can. I deny that I have injured you. How
was I to know that you would come to life again? Have I degraded
your name and your character? I have done honor to both. I have
won everybody's liking and everybody's respect. Do you think Lady
Janet would have loved you as she loves me? Not she! I tell you
to your face I have filled the false position more creditably
than you could have filled the true one, and I mean to keep it. I
won't give up your name; I won't restore your character! Do your
worst; I defy you!"
She poured out those reckless words in one headlong flow which
defied interruption. There was no answering her until she was too
breathless to say more. Grace seized her opportunity the moment
it was within her reach.
"You defy me?" she returned, resolutely. "You won't defy me long.
I have written to Canada. My friends will speak for me."
"What of it, if they do? Your friends are strangers here. I am
Lady Janet's adopted daughter. Do you think she will believe your
friends? She will believe me. She will burn their letters if they
write. She will forbid th e house to them if they come. I shall
be Mrs. Horace Holmcroft in a week's time. Who can shake _my_
position? Who can injure Me?"
"Wait a little. You forget the matron at the Refuge."
"Find her, if you can. I never told you her name. I never told
you where the Refuge was."
"I will advertise your name, and find the matron in that way."
"Advertise in every newspaper in London. Do you think I gave a
stranger like you the name I really bore in the Refuge? I gave
you the name I assumed when I left England. No such person as
Mercy Merrick is known to the matron. No such person is known to
Mr. Holmcroft. He saw me at the French cottage while you were
senseless on the bed. I had my gray cloak on; neither he nor any
of them saw me in my nurse's dress. Inquiries have been made
about me on the Continent--and (I happen to know from the person
who made them) with no result. I am safe in your place; I am
known by your name. I am Grace Roseberry; and you are Mercy
Merrick. Disprove it, if you can!"
Summing up the unassailable security of her false position in
those closing words, Mercy pointed significantly to the
billiard-room door.
"You were hiding there, by your own confession," she said. "You
know your way out by that door. Will you leave the room?"
"I won't stir a step!"
Mercy walked to a side-table, and struck the bell placed on it.
At the same moment the billiard-room door opened. Julian Gray
appeared--returning from his unsuccessful search in the grounds.
He had barely crossed the threshold before the library door was
thrown open next by the servant posted in the room. The man drew
back respectfully, and gave admission to Lady Janet Roy. She was
followed by Horace Holmcroft with his mother's wedding present to
Mercy in his hand.
CHAPTER XX
THE POLICEMAN IN PLAIN CLOTHES.
JULIAN looked round the room, and stopped at the door which he
had just opened.
His eyes rested first on Mercy, next on Grace.
The disturbed faces of both the women told him but too plainly
that the disaster which he had dreaded had actually happened.
They had met without any third person to interfere between them.
To what extremities the hostile interview might have led it was
impossible for him to guess. In his aunt's presence he could only
wait his opportunity of speaking to Mercy, and be ready to
interpose if anything was ignorantly done which might give just
cause of offense to Grace.
Lady Janet's course of action on entering the dining-room was in
perfect harmony with Lady Janet's character.
Instantly discovering the intruder, she looked sharply at Mercy.
"What did I tell you?" she asked. "Are you frightened? No! not in
the least frightened! Wonderful!" She turned to the servant.
"Wait in the library; I may want you again." She looked at
Julian. "Leave it all to me; I can manage it." She made a sign to
Horace. "Stay where you are, and hold your tongue." Having now
said all that was necessary to every one else, she advanced to
the part of the room in which Grace was standing, with lowering
brows and firmly shut lips, defiant of everybody.
"I have no desire to offend you, or to act harshly toward you,"
her ladyship began, very quietly. "I only suggest that your
visits to my house cannot possibly lead to any satisfactory
result. I hope you will not oblige me to say any harder words
than these--I hope you will understand that I wish you to
withdraw."
The order of dismissal could hardly have been issued with more
humane consideration for the supposed mental infirmity of the
person to whom it was addressed. Grace instantly resisted it in
the plainest possible terms.
"In justice to my father's memory and in justice to myself," she
answered, "I insist on a hearing. I refuse to withdraw." She
deliberately took a chair and seated herself in the presence of
the mistress of the house.
Lady Janet waited a moment--steadily controlling her temper. In
the interval of silence Julian seized the opportunity of
remonstrating with Grace.
"Is this what you promised me?" he asked, gently. "You gave me
your word that you would not return to Mablethorpe House."
Before he could say more Lady Janet had got her temper under
command. She began her answer to Grace by pointing with a
peremptory forefinger to the library door.
"If you have not made up your mind to take my advice by the time
I have walked back to that door," she said, "I will put it out of
your power to set me at defiance. I am used to be obeyed, and I
will be obeyed. You force me to use hard words. I warn you before
it is too late. Go!"
She returned slowly toward the library. Julian attempted to
interfere with another word of remonstrance. His aunt stopped him
by a gesture which said, plainly, "I insist on acting for
myself." He looked next at Mercy. Would she remain passive? Yes.
She never lifted her head; she never moved from the place in
which she was standing apart from the rest. Horace himself tried
to attract her attention, and tried in vain.
Arrived at the library door, Lady Janet looked over her shoulder
at the little immovable black figure in the chair.
"Will you go?" she asked, for the last time.
Grace started up angrily from her seat, and fixed her viperish
eyes on Mercy.
"I won't be turned out of your ladyship's house in the presence
of that impostor," she said. "I may yield to force, but I will
yield to nothing else. I insist on my right to the place that she
has stolen from me. It's no use scolding me," she added, turning
doggedly to Julian. "As long as that woman is here under my name
I can't and won't keep away from the house. I warn her, in your
presence, that I have written to my friends in Canada! I dare her
before you all to deny that she is the outcast and adventuress,
Mercy Merrick!"
The challenge forced Mercy to take part in the proceedings in her
own defense. She had pledged herself to meet and defy Grace
Roseberry on her own ground. She attempted to speak--Horace
stopped her.
"You degrade yourself if you answer her," he said. "Take my arm,
and let us leave the room."
"Yes! Take her out!" cried Grace. "She may well be ashamed to
face an honest woman. It's her place to leave the room--not
mine!"
Mercy drew her hand out of Horace's arm. "I decline to leave the
room," she said, quietly.
Horace still tried to persuade her to withdraw. "I can't bear to
hear you insulted," he rejoined. "The woman offends me, though I
know she is not responsible for what she says."
"Nobody's endurance will be tried much longer," said Lady Janet.
She glanced at Julian, and taking from her pocket the card which
he had given to her, opened the library door.
"Go to the police station," she said to the servant in an
undertone, "and give that card to the inspector on duty. Tell him
there is not a moment to lose."
"Stop!" said Julian, before his aunt could close the door again.
"Stop?" repeated Lady Janet, sharply. "I have given the man his
orders. What do you mean?"
"Before you send the card I wish to say a word in private to this
lady," replied Julian, indicating Grace. "When that is done," he
continued, approaching Mercy, and pointedly addressing himself to
her, "I shall have a request to make--I shall ask you to give me
an opportunity of speaking to you without interruption."
His tone pointed the allusion. Mercy shrank from looking at him.
The signs of painful agitation began to show themselves in her
shifting color and her uneasy silence. Roused by Julian's
significantly distant reference to what had passed between them,
her better impulses were struggling already to recover their
influence over her. She might, at that critical moment, have
yielded to the promptings of her own nobler nature--she might
have risen superior to the galling remembrance of the insults
that had been heaped upon her--if Grace's malice had not seen in
her hesitation a means of referring offensively once again to her
interview with Julian Gray.
"Pray don't think twice about trusting him alone with me," she
said, with a sardonic affectation of politeness. "_I_ am not
interested in making a conquest of Mr. Julian Gray."
The jealous distrust in Horace (already awakened by Julian's
request) now attempted to assert itself openl y. Before he could
speak, Mercy's indignation had dictated Mercy's answer.
"I am much obliged to you, Mr. Gray," she said, addressing Julian
(but still not raising her eyes to his). "I have nothing more to
say. There is no need for me to trouble you again."
In those rash words she recalled the confession to which she
stood pledged. In those rash words she committed herself to
keeping the position that she had usurped, in the face of the
woman whom she had deprived of it!
Horace was silenced, but not satisfied. He saw Julian's eyes
fixed in sad and searching attention on Mercy's face while she
was speaking. He heard Julian sigh to himself when she had done.
He observed Julian--after a moment's serious consideration, and a
moment's glance backward at the stranger in the poor black
clothes--lift his head with the air of a man who had taken a
sudden resolution.
"Bring me that card directly," he said to the servant. His tone
announced that he was not to be trifled with. The man obeyed.
Without answering Lady Janet--who still peremptorily insisted on
her right to act for herself--Julian took the pencil from his
pocketbook and added his signature to the writing already
inscribed on the card. When he had handed it back to the servant
he made his apologies to his aunt.
"Pardon me for venturing to interfere," he said "There is a
serious reason for what I have done, which I will explain to you
at a fitter time. In the meanwhile I offer no further obstruction
to the course which you propose taking. On the contrary, I have
just assisted you in gaining the end that you have in view."
As he said that he held up the pencil with which he had signed
his name.
Lady Janet, naturally perplexed, and (with some reason, perhaps)
offended as well, made no answer. She waved her hand to the
servant, and sent him away with the card.
There was silence in the room. The eyes of all the persons
present turned more or less anxiously on Julian. Mercy was
vaguely surprised and alarmed. Horace, like Lady Janet, felt
offended, without clearly knowing why. Even Grace Roseberry
herself was subdued by her own presentiment of some coming
interference for which she was completely unprepared. Julian's
words and actions, from the moment when he had written on the
card, were involved in a mystery to which not one of the persons
round him held the clew.
The motive which had animated his conduct may, nevertheless, be
described in two words: Julian still held to his faith in the
inbred nobility of Mercy's nature.
He had inferred, with little difficulty, from the language which
Grace had used toward Mercy in his presence, that the injured
woman must have taken pitiless advantage of her position at the
interview which he had interrupted. Instead of appealing to
Mercy's sympathies and Mercy's sense of right--instead of
accepting the expression of her sincere contrition, and
encouraging her to make the completest and the speediest
atonement--Grace had evidently outraged and insulted her. As a
necessary result, her endurance had given way-- under her own
sense of intolerable severity and intolerable wrong.
The remedy for the mischief thus done was, as Julian had first
seen it, to speak privately with Grace, to soothe her by owning
that his opinion of the justice of her claims had undergone a
change in her favor, and then to persuade her, in her own
interests, to let him carry to Mercy such expressions of apology
and regret as might lead to a friendly understanding between
them.
With those motives, he had made his request to be permitted to
speak separately to the one and the other. The scene that had
followed, the new insult offered by Grace, and the answer which
it had wrung from Mercy, had convinced him that no such
interference as he had contemplated would have the slightest
prospect of success.
The only remedy now left to try was the desperate remedy of
letting things take their course, and trusting implicitly to
Mercy's better nature for the result.
Let her see the police officer in plain clothes enter the room.
Let her understand clearly what the result of his interference
would be. Let her confront the alternative of consigning Grace
Roseberry to a mad-house or of confessing the truth--and what
would happen? If Julian's confidence in her was a confidence
soundly placed, she would nobly pardon the outrages that had been
heaped upon her, and she would do justice to the woman whom she
had wronged.
If, on the other hand, his belief in her was nothing better than
the blind belief of an infatuated man--if she faced the
alternative and persisted in asserting her assumed identity--what
then?
Julian's faith in Mercy refused to let that darker side of the
question find a place in his thoughts. It rested entirely with
him to bring the officer into the house. He had prevented Lady
Janet from making any mischievous use of his card by sending to
the police station and warning them to attend to no message which
they might receive unless the card produced bore his signature.
Knowing the responsibility that he was taking on himself--knowing
that Mercy had made no confession to him to which it was possible
to appeal--he had signed his name without an instant's
hesitation: and there he stood now, looking at the woman whose
better nature he was determined to vindicate, the only calm
person in the room.
Horace's jealousy saw something suspiciously suggestive of a
private understanding in Julian's earnest attention and in
Mercy's downcast face. Having no excuse for open interference, he
made an effort to part them.
"You spoke just now," he said to Julian, "of wishing to say a
word in private to that person." (He pointed to Grace.) "Shall we
retire, or will you take her into the library?"
"I refuse to have anything to say to him," Grace burst out,
before Julian could answer. "I happen to know that he is the last
person to do me justice. He has been effectually hoodwinked. If I
speak to anybody privately, it ought to be to you. You have the
greatest interest of any of them in finding out the truth."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you want to marry an outcast from the streets?"
Horace took one step forward toward her. There was a look in his
face which plainly betrayed that he was capable of turning her
out of the house with his own hands. Lady Janet stopped him.
"You were right in suggesting just now that Grace had better
leave the room," she said. "Let us all three go. Julian will
remain here and give the man his directions when he arrives.
Come."
No. By a strange contradiction it was Horace himself who now
interfered to prevent Mercy from leaving the room. In the heat of
his indignation he lost all sense of his own dignity; he
descended to the level of a woman whose intellect he believed to
be deranged. To the surprise of every one present, he stepped
back and took from the table a jewel-case which he had placed
there when he came into the room. It was the wedding present from
his mother which he had brought to his betrothed wife. His
outraged self-esteem seized the opportunity of vindicating Mercy
by a public bestowal of the gift.
"Wait!" he called out, sternly. "That wretch shall have her
answer. She has sense enough to see and sense enough to hear. Let
her see and hear!"
He opened the jewel-case, and took from it a magnificent pearl
necklace in an antique setting.
"Grace," he said, with his highest distinction of manner, "my
mother sends you her love and her congratulations on our
approaching marriage. She begs you to accept, as part of your
bridal dress, these pearls. She was married in them herself. They
have been in our family for centuries. As one of the family,
honored and beloved, my mother offers them to my wife."
He lifted the necklace to clasp it round Mercy's neck.
Julian watched her in breathless suspense. Would she sustain the
ordeal through which Horace had innocently condemned her to pass?
Yes! In the insolent presence of Grace Roseberry, what was there
now that she could _not_ sustain? Her pride was in arms. Her
lovely eyes lighted up as only a woman's eyes _can_ light up when
they see jewelry. Her grand head bent gracefully to receive the
necklace. Her face w armed into color; her beauty rallied its
charms. Her triumph over Grace Roseberry was complete! Julian's
head sank. For one sad moment he secretly asked himself the
question: "Have I been mistaken in her?"
Horace arrayed her in the pearls.
"Your husband puts these pearls on your neck, love," he said,
proudly, and paused to look at her. "Now," he added, with a
contemptuous backward glance at Grace, "we may go into the
library. She has seen, and she has heard."
He believed that he had silenced her. He had simply furnished her
sharp tongue with a new sting.
"_You_ will hear, and _you_ will see, when my proofs come from
Canada," she retorted. "You will hear that your wife has stolen
my name and my character! You will see your wife dismissed from
this house!"
Mercy turned on her with an uncontrollable outburst of passion.
"You are mad!" she cried.
Lady Janet caught the electric infection of anger in the air of
the room. She, too, turned on Grace. She, too, said it:
"You are mad!"
Horace followed Lady Janet. _He_ was beside himself. _He_ fixed
his pitiless eyes on Grace, and echoed the contagious words:
"You are mad!"
She was silenced, she was daunted at last. The treble accusation
revealed to her, for the first time, the frightful suspicion to
which she had exposed herself. She shrank back with a low cry of
horror, and struck against a chair. She would have fallen if
Julian had not sprung forward and caught her.
Lady Janet led the way into the library. She opened the door--
started--and suddenly stepped aside, so as to leave the entrance
free.
A man appeared in the open doorway.
He was not a gentleman; he was not a workman; he was not a
servant. He was vilely dressed, in glossy black broadcloth. His
frockcoat hung on him instead of fitting him. His waistcoat was
too short and too tight over the chest. His trousers were a pair
of shapeless black bags. His gloves were too large for him. His
highly-polished boots creaked detestably whenever he moved. He
had odiously watchful eyes--eyes that looked skilled in peeping
through key-holes. His large ears, set forward like the ears of a
monkey, pleaded guilty to meanly listening behind other people's
doors. His manner was quietly confidential when he spoke,
impenetrably self-possessed when he was silent. A lurking air of
secret service enveloped the fellow, like an atmosphere of his
own, from head to foot. He looked all round the magnificent room
without betraying either surprise or admiration. He closely
investigated every person in it with one glance of his cunningly
watchful eyes. Making his bow to Lady Janet, he silently showed
her, as his introduction, the card that had summoned him. And
then he stood at ease, self-revealed in his own sinister
identity--a police officer in plain clothes.
Nobody spoke to him. Everybody shrank inwardly as if a reptile
had crawled into the room.
He looked backward and forward, perfectly unembarrassed, between
Julian and Horace.
"Is Mr. Julian Gray here?" he asked.
Julian led Grace to a seat. Her eyes were fixed on the man. She
trembled--she whispered, "Who is he?" Julian spoke to the police
officer without answering her.
"Wait there," he said, pointing to a chair in the most distant
corner of the room. "I will speak to you directly."
The man advanced to the chair, marching to the discord of his
creaking boots. He privately valued the carpet at so much a yard
as he walked over it. He privately valued the chair at so much
the dozen as he sat down on it. He was quite at his ease: it was
no matter to him whether he waited and did nothing, or whether he
pried into the private character of every one in the room, as
long as he was paid for it.
Even Lady Janet's resolution to act for herself was not proof
against the appearance of the policeman in plain clothes. She
left it to her nephew to take the lead. Julian glanced at Mercy
before he stirred further in the matter. He alone knew that the
end rested now not with him but with her.
She felt his eye on her while her own eyes were looking at the
man. She turned her head --hesitated--and suddenly approached
Julian. Like Grace Roseberry, she was trembling. Like Grace
Roseberry, she whispered, "Who is he?"
Julian told her plainly who he was.
"Why is he here?"
"Can't you guess?"
"No!"
Horace left Lady Janet, and joined Mercy and Julian--impatient of
the private colloquy between them.
"Am I in the way?" he inquired.
Julian drew back a little, understanding Horace perfectly. He
looked round at Grace. Nearly the whole length of the spacious
room divided them from the place in which she was sitting. She
had never moved since he had placed her in a chair. The direst of
all terrors was in possession of her--terror of the unknown.
There was no fear of her interfering, and no fear of her hearing
what they said so long as they were careful to speak in guarded
tones. Julian set the example by lowering his voice.
"Ask Horace why the police officer is here?" he said to Mercy.
She put the question directly. "Why is he here?"
Horace looked across the room at Grace, and answered, "He is here
to relieve us of that woman."
"Do you mean that he will take her away?"
"Yes."
"Where will he take her to?"
"To the police station."
Mercy started, and looked at Julian. He was still watching the
slightest changes in her face. She looked back again at Horace.
"To the police station!" she repeated. "What for?"
"How can you ask the question?" said Horace, irritably. "To be
placed under restraint, of course."
"Do you mean prison?"
"I mean an asylum."
Again Mercy turned to Julian. There was horror now, as well as
surprise, in her face. "Oh!" she said to him, "Horace is surely
wrong? It can't be?"
Julian left it to Horace to answer. Every facility in him seemed
to be still absorbed in watching Mercy's face. She was compelled
to address herself to Horace once more.
"What sort of asylum?" she asked. "You don't surely mean a
madhouse?"
"I do," he rejoined. "The workhouse first, perhaps--and then the
madhouse. What is there to surprise you in that? You yourself
told her to her face she was mad. Good Heavens! how pale you are!
What is the matter?"
She turned to Julian for the third time. The terrible alternative
that was offered to her had showed itself at last, without
reserve or disguise. Restore the identity that you have stolen,
or shut her up in a madhouse--it rests with you to choose! In
that form the situation shaped itself in her mind. She chose on
the instant. Before she opened her lips the higher nature in her
spoke to Julian, in her eyes. The steady inner light that he had
seen in them once already shone in them again, brighter and purer
than before. The conscience that he had fortified, the soul that
he had saved, looked at him and said, Doubt us no more!
"Send that man out of the house."
Those were her first words. She spoke (pointing to the police
officer) in clear, ringing, resolute tones, audible in the
remotest corner of the room.
Julian's hand stole unobserved to hers, and told her, in its
momentary pressure, to count on his brotherly sympathy and help.
All the other persons in the room looked at her in speechless
surprise. Grace rose from her chair. Even the man in plain
clothes started to his feet. Lady Janet (hurriedly joining
Horace, and fully sharing his perplexity and alarm) took Mercy
impulsively by the arm, and shook it, as if to rouse her to a
sense of what she was doing. Mercy held firm; Mercy resolutely
repeated what she had said: "Send that man out of the house."
Lady Janet lost all her patience with her. "What has come to
you?" she asked, sternly. "Do you know what you are saying? The
man is here in your interest, as well as in mine; the man is here
to spare you, as well as me, further annoyance and insult. And
you insist-- insist, in my presence--on his being sent away! What
does it mean?"
"You shall know what it means, Lady Janet, in half an hour. I
don't insist--I only reiterate my entreaty. Let the man be sent
away."
Julian stepped aside (with his aunt's eyes angrily following him)
and spoke to the police officer. "Go back to the station, " he
said, "and wait there till you hear from me."
The meanly vigilant eyes of the man in plain clothes traveled
sidelong from Julian to Mercy, and valued her beauty as they had
valued the carpet and the chairs. "The old story," he thought.
"The nice-looking woman is always at the bottom of it; and,
sooner or later, the nice-looking woman has her way." He marched
back across the room, to the discord of his own creaking boots,
bowed, with a villainous smile which put the worst construction
on everything, and vanished through the library door.
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 returni ng 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.
CHAPTER XXIII.
LADY JANET AT BAY.
THE narrative leaves Julian and Mercy for a while, and, ascending
to the upper regions of the house, follows the march of events in
Lady Janet's room.
The maid had delivered her mistress's note to Mercy, and had gone
away again on her second errand to Grace Roseberry in her
boudoir. Lady Janet was seated at her writing-table, waiting for
the appearance of the woman whom she had summoned to her
presence. A single lamp difused its mild light over the books,
pictures, and busts round her, leaving the further end of the
room, in which the bed was placed, almost lost in obscurity. The
works of art were all portraits; the books were all presentation
copies from the authors. It was Lady Janet's fancy to associate
her bedroom with memorials of the various persons whom she had
known in the long course of her life--all of them more or less
distinguished, most of them, by this time, gathered with the
dead.
She sat near her writing-table, lying back in her easy-chair--the
living realization of the picture which Julian's description had
drawn. Her eyes were fixed on a photographic likeness of Mercy,
which was so raised upon a little gilt easel as to enable her to
contemplate it under the full light of the lamp. The bright,
mobile old face was strangely and sadly changed. The brow was
fixed; the mouth was rigid; the whole face would have been like a
mask, molded in the hardest forms of passive resistance and
surpressed rage, but for the light and life still thrown over it
by the eyes. There was something unutterably touching in the keen
hungering tenderness of the look which they fixed on the
portrait, intensified by an underlying expression of fond and
patient reproach. The danger which Julian so wisely dreaded was
in the rest of the face; the love which he had so truly described
was in the eyes alone. _They_ still spoke of the cruelly profaned
affection which had been the one immeasurable joy, the one
inexhaustible hope of Lady Janet's closing life. The brow
expressed nothing but her obstinate determination to stand by the
wreck of that joy, to rekindle the dead ashes of that hope. The
lips were only eloquent of her unflinching resolution to ignore
the hateful present and to save the sacred past. "My idol may be
shattered, but none of you shall know it. I stop the march of
discovery; I extinguish the light of truth. I am deaf to your
words; am blind to your proofs. At seventy years old, my idol is
my life. It shall be my idol still."
The silence in the bedroom was broken by a murmuring of women's
voices outside the door.
Lady Janet instantly raised herself in the chair and snatched the
photograph off the easel. She laid the portrait face downward,
among some papers on the table, then abruptly changed her mind,
and hid it among the thick folds of lace which clothed her neck
and bosom. There was a world of love in the action itself, and in
the sudden softening of the eyes which accompanied it. The next
moment Lady Janet's mask was on. Any superficial observer who had
seen her now would have said, "This is a hard woman!"
The door was opened by the maid. Grace Roseberry entered the
room.
She advanced rapidly, with a defiant assurance in her manner, and
a lofty carriage of her head. She sat down in the chair, to which
Lady Janet silently pointed, with a thump; she returned Lady
Janet's grave bow with a nod and a smile. Every movement and
every look of the little, worn, white-faced, shabbily dressed
woman expressed insolent triumph, and said, as if in words, "My
turn has come!"
"I am glad to wait on your ladyship," she began, without giving
Lady Janet an opportunity of speaking first. "Indeed, I should
have felt it my duty to request an interview, if you had not sent
your maid to invite me up here."
"You would have felt it your duty to request an interview?" Lady
Janet repeated, very quietly. "Why?"
The tone in which that one last word was spoken embarrassed Grace
at the outset. It established as great a distance between Lady
Janet and herself as if she had been lifted in her chair and
conveyed bodily to the other end of the room.
"I am surprised that your ladyship should not understand me," she
said, struggling to conceal her confusion. "Especially after your
kind offer of your own boudoir."
Lady Janet remained perfectly unmoved. "I do _not_ understand
you," she answered, just as quietly as ever.
Grace's temper came to her assistance. She recovered the
assurance which had marked her first appearance on the scene.
"In that case," she resumed, "I must enter into particulars, in
justice to myself. I can place but one interpretation on the
extraordinary change in your ladyship's behavior to me
downstairs. The conduct of that abominable woman has at last
opened your eyes to the deception that has been practiced on you.
For some reason of your own, however, you have not yet chosen to
recognize me openly. In this painful position something is due to
my own self-respect. I cannot, and will not, permit Mercy Merrick
to claim the merit of restoring me to my proper place in this
house. After what I have suffered it is quite impossible for me
to endu re that. I should have requested an interview (if you had
not sent for me) for the express purpose of claiming this
person's immediate expulsion from the house. I claim it now as a
proper concession to Me. Whatever you or Mr. Julian Gray may do,
_I_ will not tamely permit her to exhibit herself as an
interesting penitent. It is really a little too much to hear this
brazen adventuress appoint her own time for explaining herself.
It is too deliberately insulting to see her sail out of the
room--with a clergyman of the Church of England opening the door
for her--as if she was laying me under an obligation! I can
forgive much, Lady Janet--including the terms in which you
thought it decent to order me out of your house. I am quite
willing to accept the offer of your boudoir, as the expression on
your part of a better frame of mind. But even Christian Charity
has its limits. The continued presence of that wretch under your
roof is, you will permit me to remark, not only a monument of
your own weakness, but a perfectly insufferable insult to Me."
There she stopped abruptly--not for want of words, but for want
of a listener.
Lady Janet was not even pretending to attend to her. Lady Janet,
with a deliberate rudeness entirely foreign to her usual habits,
was composedly busying herself in arranging the various papers
scattered about the table. Some she tied together with little
morsels of string; some she placed under paper-weights; some she
deposited in the fantastic pigeon-holes of a little Japanese
cabinet--working with a placid enjoyment of her own orderly
occupation, and perfectly unaware, to all outward appearance,
that any second person was in the room. She looked up, with her
papers in both hands, when Grace stopped, and said, quietly,
"Have you done?"
"Is your ladyship's purpose in sending for me to treat me with
studied rudeness?" Grace retorted, angrily.
"My purpose in sending for you is to say something as soon as you
will allow me the opportunity."
The impenetrable composure of that reply took Grace completely by
surprise. She had no retort ready. In sheer astonishment she
waited silently with her eyes riveted on the mistress of the
house.
Lady Janet put down her papers, and settled herself comfortably
in the easy-chair, preparatory to opening the interview on her
side.
"The little that I have to say to you," she began, "may be said
in a question. Am I right in supposing that you have no present
employment, and that a little advance in money (delicately
offered) would be very acceptable to you?"
"Do you mean to insult me, Lady Janet?"
"Certainly not. I mean to ask you a question."
"Your question is an insult."
"My question is a kindness, if you will only understand it as it
is intended. I don't complain of your not understanding it. I
don't even hold you responsible for any one of the many breaches
of good manners which you have committed since you have been in
this room. I was honestly anxious to be of some service to you,
and you have repelled my advances. I am sorry. Let us drop the
subject."
Expressing herself in the most perfect temper in those terms,
Lady Janet resumed the arrangement of her papers, and became
unconscious once more of the presence of any second person in the
room.
Grace opened her lips to reply with the utmost intemperance of an
angry woman, and thinking better of it, controlled herself. It
was plainly useless to take the violent way with Lady Janet Roy.
Her age and her social position were enough of themselves to
repel any violence. She evidently knew that, and trusted to it.
Grace resolved to meet the enemy on the neutral ground of
politeness, as the most promising ground that she could occupy
under present circumstances.
"If I have said anything hasty, I beg to apologize to your
ladyship," she began. "May I ask if your only object in sending
for me was to inquire into my pecuniary affairs, with a view to
assisting me?"
"That," said Lady Janet, "was my only object."
"You had nothing to say to me on the subject of Mercy Merrick?"
"Nothing whatever. I am weary of hearing of Mercy Merrick. Have
you any more questions to ask me?"
"I have one more."
"Yes?"
"I wish to ask your ladyship whether you propose to recognize me
in the presence of your household as the late Colonel Roseberry's
daughter?"
"I have already recognized you as a lady in embarrassed
circumstances, who has peculiar claims on my consideration and
forbearance. If you wish me to repeat those words in the presence
of the servants (absurd as it is), I am ready to comply with your
request."
Grace's temper began to get the better of her prudent
resolutions.
"Lady Janet!" she said; "this won't do. I must request you to
express yourself plainly. You talk of my peculiar claims on your
forbearance. What claims do you mean?"
"It will be painful to both of us if we enter into details,"
replied Lady Janet. "Pray don't let us enter into details."
"I insist on it, madam."
"Pray don't insist on it."
Grace was deaf to remonstrance.
"I ask you in plain words," she went on, "do you acknowledge that
you have been deceived by an adventuress who has personated me?
Do you mean to restore me to my proper place in this house?"
Lady Janet returned to the arrangement of her papers.
"Does your ladyship refuse to listen to me?"
Lady Janet looked up from her papers as blandly as ever.
"If _you_ persist in returning to your delusion," she said, "you
will oblige _me_ to persist in returning to my papers."
"What is my delusion, if you please?"
"Your delusion is expressed in the questions you have just put to
me. Your delusion constitutes your peculiar claim on my
forbearance. Nothing you can say or do will shake my forbearance.
When I first found you in the dining-room, I acted most
improperly; I lost my temper. I did worse; I was foolish enough
and imprudent enough to send for a police officer. I owe you
every possible atonement (afflicted as you are) for treating you
in that cruel manner. I offered you the use of my boudoir, as
part of my atonement. I sent for you, in the hope that you would
allow me to assist you, as part of my atonement. You may behave
rudely to me, you may speak in the most abusive terms of my
adopted daughter; I will submit to anything, as part of my
atonement. So long as you abstain from speaking on one painful
subject, I will listen to you with the greatest pleasure.
Whenever you return to that subject I shall return to my papers."
Grace looked at Lady Janet with an evil smile.
"I begin to understand your ladyship," she said. "You are ashamed
to acknowledge that you have been grossly imposed upon. Your only
alternative, of course, is to ignore everything that has
happened. Pray count on _my_ forbearance. I am not at all
offended--I am merely amused. It is not every day that a lady of
high rank exhibits herself in such a position as yours to an
obscure woman like me. Your humane consideration for me dates, I
presume, from the time when your adopted daughter set you the
example, by ordering the police officer out of the room?"
Lady Janet's composure was proof even against this assault on it.
She gravely accepted Grace's inquiry as a question addressed to
her in perfect good faith.
"I am not at all surprised," she replied, "to find that my
adopted daughter's interference has exposed her to
misrepresentation. She ought to have remonstrated with me
privately before she interfered. But she has one fault--she is
too impulsive. I have never, in all my experience, met with such
a warm-hearted person as she is. Always too considerate of
others; always too forgetful of herself! The mere appearance of
the police officer placed you in a situation to appeal to her
compassion, and her impulses carried her away as usual. My fault!
All my fault!"
Grace changed her tone once more. She was quick enough to discern
that Lady Janet was a match for her with her own weapons.
"We have had enough of this," she said. "It is time to be
serious. Your adopted daughter (as you call her) is Mercy
Merrick, and you know it."
Lady Janet returned to her papers.
"I am Grace Roseberry, whose name she has stolen, and you know
_that_."
Lady Janet went o n with her papers.
Grace got up from her chair.
"I accept your silence, Lady Janet," she said, "as an
acknowledgment of your deliberate resolution to suppress the
truth. You are evidently determined to receive the adventuress as
the true woman; and you don't scruple to face the consequences of
that proceeding, by pretending to my face to believe that I am
mad. I will not allow myself to be impudently cheated out of my
rights in this way. You will hear from me again madam, when the
Canadian mail arrives in England."
She walked toward the door. This time Lady Janet answered, as
readily and as explicitly as it was possible to desire.
"I shall refuse to receive your letters," she said.
Grace returned a few steps, threateningly.
"My letters shall be followed by my witnesses," she proceeded.
"I shall refuse to receive your witnesses."
"Refuse at your peril. I will appeal to the law."
Lady Janet smiled.
"I don't pretend to much knowledge of the subject," she said;
"but I should be surprised indeed if I discovered that you had
any claim on me which the law could enforce. However, let us
suppose that you _can_ set the law in action. You know as well as
I do that the only motive power which can do that is--money. I am
rich; fees, costs, and all the rest of it are matters of no sort
of consequence to me. May I ask if you are in the same position?"
The question silenced Grace. So far as money was concerned, she
was literally at the end of her resources. Her only friends were
friends in Canada. After what she had said to him in the boudoir,
it would be quite useless to appeal to the sympathies of Julian
Gray. In the pecuniary sense, and in one word, she was absolutely
incapable of gratifying her own vindictive longings. And there
sat the mistress of Mablethorpe House, perfectly well aware of
it.
Lady Janet pointed to the empty chair.
"Suppose you sit down again?" she suggested. "The course of our
interview seems to have brought us back to the question that I
asked you when you came into my room. Instead of threatening me
with the law, suppose you consider the propriety of permitting me
to be of some use to you. I am in the habit of assisting ladies
in embarrassed circumstances, and nobody knows of it but my
steward--who keeps the accounts--and myself. Once more, let me
inquire if a little advance of the pecuniary sort (delicately
offered) would be acceptable to you?"
Grace returned slowly to the chair that she had left. She stood
by it, with one hand grasping the top rail, and with her eyes
fixed in mocking scrutiny on Lady Janet's face.
"At last your ladyship shows your hand," she said. "Hush-money!"
"You _will_ send me back to my papers," rejoined Lady Janet. "How
obstinate you are!"
Grace's hand closed tighter and tighter round the rail of the
chair. Without witnesses, without means, without so much as a
refuge--thanks to her own coarse cruelties of language and
conduct-- in the sympathies of others, the sense of her isolation
and her helplessness was almost maddening at that final moment. A
woman of finer sensibilities would have instantly left the room.
Grace's impenetrably hard and narrow mind impelled her to meet
the emergency in a very different way. A last base vengeance, to
which Lady Janet had voluntarily exposed herself, was still
within her reach. "For the present," she thought, "there is but
one way of being even with your ladyship. I can cost you as much
as possible."
"Pray make some allowances for me," she said. "I am not
obstinate--I am only a little awkward at matching the audacity of
a lady of high rank. I shall improve with practice. My own
language is, as I am painfully aware, only plain English. Permit
me to withdraw it, and to substitute yours. What advance is your
ladyship (delicately) prepared to offer me?"
Lady Janet opened a drawer, and took out her check-book.
The moment of relief had come at last! The only question now left
to discuss was evidently the question of amount. Lady Janet
considered a little. The question of amount was (to her mind) in
some sort a question of conscience as well. Her love for Mercy
and her loathing for Grace, her horror of seeing her darling
degraded and her affection profaned by a public exposure, had
hurried her--there was no disputing it--into treating an injured
woman harshly. Hateful as Grace Roseberry might be, her father
had left her, in his last moments, with Lady Janet's full
concurrence, to Lady Janet's care. But for Mercy she would have
been received at Mablethorpe House as Lady Janet's companion,
with a salary of one hundred pounds a year. On the other hand,
how long (with such a temper as she had revealed) would Grace
have remained in the service of her protectress? She would
probably have been dismissed in a few weeks, with a year's salary
to compensate her, and with a recommendation to some suitable
employment. What would be a fair compensation now? Lady Janet
decided that five years' salary immediately given, and future
assistance rendered if necessary, would represent a fit
remembrance of the late Colonel Roseberry's claims, and a liberal
pecuniary acknowledgment of any harshness of treatment which
Grace might have sustained at her hands. At the same time, and
for the further satisfying of her own conscience, she determined
to discover the sum which Grace herself would consider sufficient
by the simple process of making Grace herself propose the terms.
"It is impossible for me to make you an offer," she said, "for
this reason--your need of money will depend greatly on your
future plans. I am quite ignorant of your future plans.''
"Perhaps your ladyship will kindly advise me?" said Grace,
satirically.
"I cannot altogether undertake to advise you," Lady Janet
replied. "I can only suppose that you will scarcely remain in
England, where you have no friends. Whether you go to law with me
or not, you will surely feel the necessity of communicating
personally with your friends in Canada. Am I right?"
Grace was quite quick enough to understand this as it was meant.
Properly interpreted, the answer signified--"If you take your
compensation in money, it is understood, as part of the bargain
that you don't remain in England to annoy me."
"Your ladyship is quite right," she said. "I shall certainly not
remain in England. I shall consult my friends--and," she added,
mentally, "go to law with you afterward, if I possibly can, with
your own money!"
"You will return to Canada," Lady Janet proceeded; "and your
prospects there will be, probably, a little uncertain at first.
Taking this into consideration, at what amount do you estimate,
in your own mind, the pecuniary assistance which you will
require?"
"May I count on your ladyship's, kindness to correct me if my own
ignorant calculations turn out to be wrong?" Grace asked,
innocently.
Here again the words, properly interpreted, had a special
signification of their own: "It is stipulated, on my part, that I
put myself up to auction, and that my estimate shall be regulated
by your ladyship's highest bid." Thoroughly understanding the
stipulation, Lady Janet bowed, and waited gravely.
Gravely, on her side, Grace began.
"I am afraid I should want more than a hundred pounds," she said.
Lady Janet made her first bid. "I think so too."
"More, perhaps, than two hundred?"
Lady Janet made her second bid. "Probably."
"More than three hundred? Four hundred? Five hundred?"
Lady Janet made her highest bid. "Five hundred pounds will do,"
she said.
In spite of herself, Grace's rising color betrayed her
ungovernable excitement. From her earliest childhood she had been
accustomed to see shillings and sixpences carefully considered
before they were parted with. She had never known her father to
possess so much as five golden sovereigns at his own disposal
(unencumbered by debt) in all her experience of him. The
atmosphere in which she had lived and breathed was the
all-stifling one of genteel poverty. There was something horrible
in the greedy eagerness of her eyes as they watched Lady Janet,
to see if she was really sufficiently in earnest to give away
five hundred pounds sterling with a stroke of her pen.
Lady Janet wrote t he check in a few seconds, and pushed it
across the table.
Grace's hungry eyes devoured the golden line, "Pay to myself or
bearer five hundred pounds," and verified the signature beneath,
"Janet Roy." Once sure of the money whenever she chose to take
it, the native meanness of her nature instantly asserted itself.
She tossed her head, and let the check lie on the table, with an
overacted appearance of caring very little whether she took it or
not.
"Your ladyship is not to suppose that I snap at your check," she
said.
Lady Janet leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The very
sight of Grace Roseberry sickened her. Her mind filled suddenly
with the image of Mercy. She longed to feast her eyes again on
that grand beauty, to fill her ears again with the melody of that
gentle voice.
"I require time to consider--in justice to my own self-respect,"
Grace went on.
Lady Janet wearily made a sign, granting time to consider.
"Your ladyship's boudoir is, I presume, still at my disposal?"
Lady Janet silently granted the boudoir.
"And your ladyship's servants are at my orders, if I have
occasion to employ them?"
Lady Janet suddenly opened her eyes. "The whole household is at
your orders," she cried, furiously. "Leave me!"
Grace was far from being offended. If anything, she was
gratified-- there was a certain triumph in having stung Lady
Janet into an open outbreak of temper. She insisted forthwith on
another condition.
"In the event of my deciding to receive the check," she said, "I
cannot, consistently with my own self-respect, permit it to be
delivered to me otherwise than inclosed. Your ladyship will (if
necessary) be so kind as to inclose it. Good-evening."
She sauntered to the door, looking from side to side, with an air
of supreme disparagement, at the priceless treasures of art which
adorned the walls. Her eyes dropped superciliously on the carpet
(the design of a famous French painter), as if her feet
condescended in walking over it. The audacity with which she had
entered the room had been marked enough; it shrank to nothing
before the infinitely superior proportions of the insolence with
which she left it.
The instant the door was closed Lady Janet rose from her chair.
Reckless of the wintry chill in the outer air, she threw open one
of the windows. "Pah!" she exclaimed, with a shudder of disgust,
"the very air of the room is tainted by her!"
She returned to her chair. Her mood changed as she sat down
again--her heart was with Mercy once more. "Oh, my love!" she
murmured "how low I have stooped, how miserably I have degraded
myself--and all for You!" The bitterness of the retrospect was
unendurable. The inbred force of the woman's nature took refuge
from it in an outburst of defiance and despair. "Whatever she has
done, that wretch deserves it! Not a living creature in this
house shall say she has deceived me. She has _not_ deceived
me--she loves me! What do I care whether she has given me her
true name or not! She has given me her true heart. What right had
Julian to play upon her feelings and pry into her secrets? My
poor, tempted, tortured child! I won't hear her confession. Not
another word shall she say to any living creature. I am
mistress--I will forbid it at once!" She snatched a sheet of
notepaper from the case; hesitated, and threw it from her on the
table. "Why not send for my darling?" she thought. "Why write?"
She hesitated once more, and resigned the idea. "No! I can't
trust myself! I daren't see her yet!"
She took up the sheet of paper again, and wrote her second
message to Mercy. This time the note began fondly with a familiar
form of address.
"MY DEAR CHILD--I have had time to think and compose myself a
little, since I last wrote, requesting you to defer the
explanation which you had promised me. I already understand (and
appreciate) the motives which led you to interfere as you did
downstairs, and I now ask you to entirely abandon the
explanation. It will, I am sure, be painful to you (for reasons
of your own into which I have no wish to inquire) to produce the
person of whom you spoke, and as you know already, I myself am
weary of hearing of her. Besides, there is really no need now for
you to explain anything. The stranger whose visits here have
caused us so much pain and anxiety will trouble us no more. She
leaves England of her own free will, after a conversation with me
which has perfectly succeeded in composing and satisfying her.
Not a word more, my dear, to me, or to my nephew, or to any other
human creature, of what has happened in the dining-room to-day.
When we next meet, let it be understood between us that the past
is henceforth and forever _buried to oblivion_. This is not only
the earnest request--it is, if necessary, the positive command,
of your mother and friend,
JANET ROY.
"P.S.--I shall find opportunities (before you leave your room) of
speaking separately to my nephew and to Horace Holmcroft. You
need dread no embarrassment, when you next meet them. I will not
ask you to answer my note in writing. Say yes to the maid who
will bring it to you, and I shall know we understand each other."
After sealing the envelope which inclosed these lines, Lady Janet
addressed it, as usual, to "Miss Grace Roseberry." She was just
rising to ring the bell, when the maid appeared with a message
from the boudoir. The woman's tones and looks showed plainly that
she had been made the object of Grace's insolent self-assertion
as well as her mistress.
"If you please, my lady, the person downstairs wishes--"
Lady Janet, frowning contemptuously, interrupted the message at
the outset . "I know what the person downstairs wishes. She has
sent you for a letter from me?"
"Yes, my lady."
"Anything more?"
" She has sent one of the men-servants, my lady, for a cab. If
your ladyship had only heard how she spoke to him!"
Lady Janet intimated by a sign that she would rather not hear.
She at once inclosed the check in an undirected envelope.
"Take that to her," she said, "and then come back to me."
Dismissing Grace Roseberry from all further consideration, Lady
Janet sat, with her letter to Mercy in her hand, reflecting on
her position, and on the efforts which it might still demand from
her. Pursuing this train of thought, it now occurred to her that
accident might bring Horace and Mercy together at any moment, and
that, in Horace's present frame of mind, he would certainly
insist on the very explanation which it was the foremost interest
of her life to suppress. The dread of this disaster was in full
possession of her when the maid returned.
"Where is Mr. Holmcroft?" she asked, the moment the woman entered
the room.
"I saw him open the library door, my lady, just now, on my way
upstairs."
"Was he alone?"
"Yes, my lady."
"Go to him, and say I want to see him here immediately."
The maid withdrew on her second errand. Lady Janet rose
restlessly, and closed the open window. Her impatient desire to
make sure of Horace so completely mastered her that she left her
room, and met the woman in the corridor on her return. Receiving
Horace's message of excuse, she instantly sent back the
peremptory rejoinder, "Say that he will oblige me to go to him,
if be persists in refusing to come to me. And, stay!" she added,
remembering the undelivered letter. "Send Miss Roseberry's maid
here; I want her."
Left alone again, Lady Janet paced once or twice up and down the
corridor--then grew suddenly weary of the sight of it, and went
back to her room. The two maids returned together. One of them,
having announced Horace's submission, was dismissed. The other
was sent to Mercy's room with Lady Janet's letter. In a minute or
two the messenger appeared again, with the news that she had
found the room empty.
"Have you any idea where Miss Roseberry is?"
"No, my lady."
Lady Janet reflected for a moment. If Horace presented himself
without any needless delay, the plain inference would he that she
had succeeded in separating him from Mercy. If his appearance was
suspiciously deferred, she decided on personally searching for
Mercy in the reception rooms on the lower floor of the house.
"What have you done with
the letter?" she asked.
"I left it on Miss Roseberry's table, my lady."
"Very well. Keep within hearing of the bell, in case I want you
again."
Another minute brought Lady Janet's suspense to an end. She heard
the welcome sound of a knock at her door from a man's hand.
Horace hurriedly entered the room.
"What is it you want with me, Lady Janet?" he inquired, not very
graciously.
"Sit down, Horace, and you shall hear."
Horace did not accept the invitation. "Excuse me," he said, "if I
mention that I am rather in a hurry."
"Why are you in a hurry?"
"I have reasons for wishing to see Grace as soon as possible."
"And _I_ have reasons," Lady Janet rejoined, "for wishing to
speak to you about Grace before you see her; serious reasons. Sit
down."
Horace started. "Serious reasons?" he repeated. "You surprise
me."
"I shall surprise you still more before I have done "
Their eyes met as Lady Janet answered in those terms. Horace
observed signs of agitation in her, which he now noticed for the
first time. His face darkened with an expression of sullen
distrust--and he took the chair in silence.
CHAPTER XXIV.
LADY JANET'S LETTER.
THE narrative leaves Lady Janet and Horace Holmcroft together,
and returns to Julian and Mercy in the library.
An interval passed--a long interval, measured by the impatient
reckoning of suspense--after the cab which had taken Grace
Roseberry away had left the house. The minutes followed each
other; and still the warning sound of Horace's footsteps was not
heard on the marble pavement of the hall. By common (though
unexpressed) consent, Julian and Mercy avoided touching upon the
one subject on which they were now both interested alike. With
their thoughts fixed secretly in vain speculation on the nature
of the interview which was then taking place in Lady Janet's
room, they tried to speak on topics indifferent to both of
them--tried, and failed, and tried again. In a last and longest
pause of silence between them, the next event happened. The door
from the hall was softly and suddenly opened.
Was it Horace? No--not even yet. The person who had opened the
door was only Mercy's maid.
"My lady's love, miss; and will you please to read this
directly?"
Giving her message in those terms, the woman produced from the
pocket of her apron Lady Janet's second letter to Mercy, with a
strip of paper oddly pinned round the envelope. Mercy detached
the paper, and found on the inner side some lines in pencil,
hurriedly written in Lady Janet's hand. They ran thus.
"Don't lose a moment in reading my letter. And mind this, when H.
returns to you--meet him firmly: say nothing."
Enlightened by the warning words which Julian had spoken to her,
Mercy was at no loss to place the right interpretation on those
strange lines. Instead of immediately opening the letter, she
stopped the maid at the library door. Julian's suspicion of the
most trifling events that were taking place in the house had
found its way from his mind to hers. "Wait!" she said. "I don't
understand what is going on upstairs; I want to ask you
something."
The woman came back--not very willingly.
"How did you know I was here?" Mercy inquired.
"If you please, miss, her ladyship ordered me to take the letter
to you some little time since. You were not in your room, and I
left it on your table."
"I understand that. But how came you to bring the letter here?"
"My lady rang for me, miss. Before I could knock at her door she
came out into the corridor with that morsel of paper in her
hand--"
"So as to keep you from entering her room?"
"Yes, miss. Her ladyship wrote on the paper in a great hurry, and
told me to pin it round the letter that I had left in your room.
I was to take them both together to you, and to let nobody see
me. 'You will find Miss Roseberry in the library' (her ladyship
says), 'and run, run, run! there isn't a moment to lose!' Those
were her own words, miss."
"Did you hear anything in the room before Lady Janet came out and
met you?"
The woman hesitated, and looked at Julian.
"I hardly know whether I ought to tell you, miss."
Julian turned away to leave the library. Mercy stopped him by a
motion of her hand.
"You know that I shall not get you into any trouble," she said to
the maid. "And you may speak quite safely before Mr. Julian
Gray."
Thus re-assured, the maid spoke.
"To own the truth, miss, I heard Mr. Holmcroft in my lady's room.
His voice sounded as if he was angry. I may say they were both
angry--Mr. Holmcroft and my lady." (She turned to Julian.) "And
just before her ladyship came out, sir, I heard your name, as if
it was you they were having words about. I can't say exactly what
it was; I hadn't time to hear. And I didn't listen, miss; the
door was ajar; and the voices were so loud nobody could help
hearing them."
It was useless to detain the woman any longer. Having given her
leave to withdraw, Mercy turned to Julian.
"Why were they quarreling about you?" she asked.
Julian pointed to the unopened letter in her hand.
"The answer to your question may be there," he said. "Read the
letter while you have the chance. And if I can advise you, say so
at once."
With a strange reluctance she opened the envelope. With a sinking
heart she read the lines in which Lady Janet, as "mother and
friend," commanded her absolutely to suppress the confession
which she had pledged herself to make in the sacred interests of
justice and truth. A low cry of despair escaped her, as the cruel
complication in her position revealed itself in all its unmerited
hardship. "Oh, Lady Janet, Lady Janet!" she thought, "there was
but one trial more left in my hard lot--and it comes to me from
_you!_"
She handed the letter to Julian. He took it from her in silence.
His pale complexion turned paler still as he read it. His eyes
rested on her compassionately as he handed it back.
"To my mind," he said, "Lady Janet herself sets all further doubt
at rest. Her letter tells me what she wanted when she sent for
Horace, and why my name was mentioned between them."
"Tell me!" cried Mercy, eagerly.
He did not immediately answer her. He sat down again in the chair
by her side, and pointed to the letter.
"Has Lady Janet shaken your resolution?" he asked.
"She has strengthened my resolution," Mercy answered. "She has
added a new bitterness to my remorse."
She did not mean it harshly, but the reply sounded harshly in
Julian's ears. It stirred the generous impulses, which were the
strongest impulses in his nature. He who had once pleaded with
Mercy for compassionate consideration for herself now pleaded
with her for compassionate consideration for Lady Janet. With
persuasive gentleness he drew a little nearer, and laid his hand
on her arm.
"Don't judge her harshly," he said. "She is wrong, miserably
wrong. She has recklessly degraded herself; she has recklessly
tempted you. Still, is it generous--is it even just--to hold her
responsible for deliberate sin? She is at the close of her days;
she can feel no new affection; she can never replace you. View
her position in that light, and you will see (as I see) that it
is no base motive which has led her astray. Think of her wounded
heart and her wasted life--and say to yourself forgivingly, She
loves me!"
Mercy's eyes filled with tears.
"I do say it!" she answered. "Not forgivingly--it is _I_ who have
need of forgiveness. I say it gratefully when I think of her--I
say it with shame and sorrow when I think of myself."
He took her hand for the first time. He looked, guiltlessly
looked, at her downcast face. He spoke as he had spoken at the
memorable interview between them which had made a new woman of
her.
"I can imagine no crueler trial," he said, "than the trial that
is now before you. The benefactress to whom you owe everything
asks nothing from you but your silence. The person whom you have
wronged is no longer present to stimulate your resolution to
speak. Horace himself (unless I am entirely mistaken) will not
hold you to the explanation that you have promised. The
temptation to keep your false position in this house is, I do not
scruple to say, all but irresistible. Sister and friend! can you
still justify my fa ith in you? Will you still own the truth,
without the base fear of discovery to drive you to it?"
She lifted her head, with the steady light of resolution shining
again in her grand, gray eyes. Her low, sweet voice answered him,
without a faltering note in it,
"I will!"
"You will do justice to the woman whom you have wronged--unworthy
as she is; powerless as she is to expose you?"
"I will!"
"You will sacrifice everything you have gained by the fraud to
the sacred duty of atonement? You will suffer anything--even
though you offend the second mother who has loved you and sinned
for you-- rather than suffer the degradation of yourself?"
Her hand closed firmly on his. Again, and for the last time, she
answered,
"I will!"
His voice had not trembled yet. It failed him now. His next words
were spoken in faint whispering tones--to himself; not to her.
"Thank God for this day!" he said. "I have been of some service
to one of the noblest of God's creatures!"
Some subtle influence, as he spoke, passed from his hand to hers.
It trembled through her nerves; it entwined itself mysteriously
with the finest sensibilities in her nature; it softly opened her
heart to a first vague surmising of the devotion that she had
inspired in him. A faint glow of color, lovely in its faintness,
stole over her face and neck. Her breathing quickened tremblingly
. She drew her hand away from him, and sighed when she had
released it.
He rose suddenly to his feet and left her, without a word or a
look, walking slowly down the length of the room. When he turned
and came back to her, his face was composed; he was master of
himself again.
Mercy was the first to speak. She turned the conversation from
herself by reverting to the proceedings in Lady Janet's room.
"You spoke of Horace just now," she said, "in terms which
surprised me. You appeared to think that he would not hold me to
my explanation. Is that one of the conclusions which you draw
from Lady Janet's letter?"
"Most assuredly," Julian answered. "You will see the conclusion
as I see it if we return for a moment to Grace Roseberry's
departure from the house."
Mercy interrupted him there. "Can you guess," she asked, "how
Lady Janet prevailed upon her to go?"
"I hardly like to own it," said Julian. "There is an expression
in the letter which suggests to me that Lady Janet has offered
her money, and that she has taken the bribe."
"Oh, I can't think that!"
"Let us return to Horace. Miss Roseberry once out of the house,
but one serious obstacle is left in Lady Janet's way. That
obstacle is Horace Holmcroft."
"How is Horace an obstacle?"
"He is an obstacle in this sense. He is under an engagement to
marry you in a week's time; and Lady Janet is determined to keep
him (as she is determined to keep every one else) in ignorance of
the truth. She will do that without scruple. But the inbred sense
of honor in her is not utterly silenced yet. She cannot, she dare
not, let Horace make you his wife under the false impression that
you are Colonel Roseberry's daughter. You see the situation? On
the one hand, she won't enlighten him. On the other hand, she
cannot allow him to marry you blindfold. In this emergency what
is she to do? There is but one alternative that I can discover.
She must persuade Horace (or she must irritate Horace) into
acting for himself, and breaking off the engagement on his own
responsibility."
Mercy stopped him. "Impossible!" she cried, warmly. "Impossible!"
"Look again at her letter," Julian rejoined. "It tells, you
plainly that you need fear no embarrassment when you next meet
Horace. If words mean anything, those words mean that he will not
claim from you the confidence which you have promised to repose
in him. On what condition is it possible for him to abstain from
doing that? On the one condition that you have ceased to
represent the first and foremost interest of his life."
Mercy still held firm. "You are wronging Lady Janet, " she said .
Julian smiled sadly.
"Try to look at it," he answered, ''from Lady Janet's point of
view. Do you suppose _she_ sees anything derogatory to her in
attempting to break off the marriage? I will answer for it, she
believes she is doing you a kindness. In one sense it _would_ be
a kindness to spare you the shame of a humiliating confession,
and to save you (possibly) from being rejected to your face by
the man you love. In my opinion, the thing is done already. I
have reasons of my own for believing that my aunt will succeed
far more easily than she could anticipate. Horace's temper will
help her."
Mercy's mind began to yield to him, in spite of herself.
"What do you mean by Horace's temper?" she inquired.
"Must you ask me that?" he said, drawing back a little from her.
"I must."
"I mean by Horace's temper, Horace's unworthy distrust of the
interest that I feel in you."
She instantly understood him. And more than that, she secretly
admired him for the scrupulous delicacy with which he had
expressed himself. Another man would not have thought of sparing
her in that way. Another man would have said, plainly, "Horace is
jealous of me."
Julian did not wait for her to answer him. He considerately went
on.
"For the reason that I have just mentioned," he said, "Horace
will be easily irritated into taking a course which, in his
calmer moments, nothing would induce him to adopt. Until I heard
what your maid said to you I had thought (for your sake) of
retiring before he joined you here. Now I know that my name has
been introduced, and has made mischief upstairs, I feel the
necessity (for your sake again) of meeting Horace and his temper
face to face before you see him. Let me, if I can, prepare him to
hear you without any angry feeling in his mind toward you. Do you
object to retire to the next room for a few minutes in the event
of his coming back to the library?"
Mercy's courage instantly rose with the emergency. She refused to
leave the two men together.
"Don't think me insensible to your kindness," she said. "If I
leave you with Horace I may expose you to insult. I refuse to do
that. What makes you doubt his coming back?"
"His prolonged absence makes me doubt it," Julian replied. "In my
belief, the marriage is broken off. He may go as Grace Roseberry
has gone. You may never see him again."
The instant the opinion was uttered, it was practically
contradicted by the man himself. Horace opened the library door.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE CONFESSION
HE stopped just inside the door. His first look was for Mercy;
his is second look was for Julian.
"I knew it!" he said, with an assumption of sardonic composure.
"If I could only have persuaded Lady Janet to bet, I should have
won a hundred pounds." He advanced to Julian, with a sudden
change from irony to anger. "Would you like to hear what the bet
was?" he asked.
"I should prefer seeing you able to control yourself in the
presence of this lady," Julian answered, quietly.
"I offered to lay Lady Janet two hundred pounds to one," Horace
proceeded, "that I should find you here, making love to Miss
Roseberry behind my back."
Mercy interfered before Julian could reply.
"If you cannot speak without insulting one of us," she said,
"permit me to request that you will _not_ address yourself to Mr.
Julian Gray."
Horace bowed to her with a mockery of respect.
"Pray don't alarm yourself--I am pledged to be scrupulously civil
to both of you," he said. "Lady Janet only allowed me to leave
her on condition of my promising to behave with perfect
politeness. What else can I do? I have two privileged people to
deal with--a parson and a woman. The parson's profession protects
him, and the woman's sex protects her. You have got me at a
disadvantage, and you both of you know it. I beg to apologize if
I have forgotten the clergyman's profession and the lady's sex."
"You have forgotten more than that," said Julian. "You have
forgotten that you were born a gentleman and bred a man of honor.
So far as I am concerned, I don't ask you to remember that I am a
clergyman--I obtrude my profession on nobody--I only ask you to
remember your birth and your breeding. It is quite bad enough to
cruelly and unjustly suspect an old f riend who has never
forgotten what he owes to you and to himself. But it is still
more unworthy of you to acknowledge those suspicions in the
hearing of a woman whom your own choice has doubly bound you to
respect."
He stopped. The two eyed each other for a moment in silence.
It was impossible for Mercy to look at them, as she was looking
now, without drawing the inevitable comparison between the manly
force and dignity of Julian and the womanish malice and
irritability of Horace. A last faithful impulse of loyalty toward
the man to whom she had been betrothed impelled her to part them,
before Horace had hopelessly degraded himself in her estimation
by contrast with Julian.
"You had better wait to speak to me," she said to him, "until we
are alone."
"Certainly," Horace answered with a sneer, "if Mr. Julian Gray
will permit it."
Mercy turned to Julian, with a look which said plainly, "Pity us
both, and leave us!"
"Do you wish me to go?" he asked.
"Add to all your other kindnesses to me," she answered. "Wait for
me in that room."
She pointed to the door that led into the dining-room. Julian
hesitated.
"You promise to let me know it if I can be of the smallest
service to you?" he said.
"Yes, yes!" She followed him as he withdrew, and added, rapidly,
in a whisper, "Leave the door ajar!"
He made no answer. As she returned to Horace he entered the
dining-room. The one concession he could make to her he did make.
He closed the door so noiselessly that not even her quick hearing
could detect that he had shut it.
Mercy spoke to Horace, without waiting to let him speak first.
"I have promised you an explanation of my conduct," she said, in
accents that trembled a little in spite of herself. "I am ready
to perform my promise."
"I have a question to ask you before you do that," he rejoined.
"Can you speak the truth?"
"I am waiting to speak the truth."
"I will give you an opportunity. Are you or are you not in love
with Julian Gray?"
"You ought to be ashamed to ask the question!"
"Is that your only answer?"
"I have never been unfaithful to you, Horace, even in thought. If
I had _not_ been true to you, should I feel my position as you
see I feel it now?"
He smiled bitterly. "I have my own opinion of your fidelity and
of his honor," he said. "You couldn't even send him into the next
room without whispering to him first. Never mind that now. At
least you know that Julian Gray is in love with you."
"Mr. Julian Gray has never breathed a word of it to me."
"A man can show a woman that he loves her, without saying it in
words."
Mercy's power of endurance began to fail her. Not even Grace
Roseberry had spoken more insultingly to her of Julian than
Horace was speaking now. "Whoever says that of Mr. Julian Gray,
lies!" she answered, warmly.
"Then Lady Janet lies," Horace retorted.
"Lady Janet never said it! Lady Janet is incapable of saying it!"
"She may not have said it in so many words; but she never denied
it when _I_ said it. I reminded her of the time when Julian Gray
first heard from me that I was going to marry you: he was so
overwhelmed that he was barely capable of being civil to me. Lady
Janet was present, and could not deny it. I asked her if she had
observed, since then, signs of a confidential understanding
between you two. She could not deny the signs. I asked if she had
ever found you two together. She could not deny that she had
found you together, this very day, under circumstances which
justified suspicion. Yes! yes! Look as angry as you like! you
don't know what has been going on upstairs. Lady Janet is bent on
breaking off our engagement--and Julian Gray is at the bottom of
it."
As to Julian, Horace was utterly wrong. But as to Lady Janet, he
echoed the warning words which Julian himself had spoken to
Mercy. She was staggered, but she still held to her own opinion.
"I don't believe it," she said, firmly.
He advanced a step, and fixed his angry eyes on her searchingly.
"Do you know why Lady Janet sent for me?" he asked.
"No."
"Then I will tell you. Lady Janet is a stanch friend of yours,
there is no denying that. She wished to inform me that she had
altered her mind about your promised explanation of your conduct.
She said, 'Reflection has convinced me that no explanation is
required; I have laid my positive commands on my adopted daughter
that no explanation shall take place.' Has she done that?"
"Yes."
"Now observe! I waited till she had finished, and then I said,
'What have I to do with this?' Lady Janet has one merit--she
speaks out. 'You are to do as I do,' she answered. 'You are to
consider that no explanation is required, and you are to consign
the whole matter to oblivion from this time forth.' 'Are you
serious?' I asked. 'Quite serious.' 'In that case I have to
inform your ladyship that you insist on more than you may
suppose: you insist on my breaking my engagement to Miss
Roseberry. Either I am to have the explanation that she has
promised me, or I refuse to marry her.' How do you think Lady
Janet took that? She shut up her lips, and she spread out her
hands, and she looked at me as much as to say, 'Just as you
please! Refuse if you like; it's nothing to me!'"
He paused for a moment. Mercy remained silent, on her side: she
foresaw what was coming. Mistaken in supposing that Horace had
left the house, Julian had, beyond all doubt, been equally in
error in concluding that he had been entrapped into breaking off
the engagement upstairs.
"Do you understand me so far?" Horace asked.
"I understand you perfectly."
"I will not trouble you much longer," he resumed. "I said to Lady
Janet, 'Be so good as to answer me in plain words. Do you still
insist on closing Miss Roseberry's lips?' 'I still insist,' she
answered. 'No explanation is required. If you are base enough to
suspect your betrothed wife, I am just enough to believe in my
adopted daughter.' I replied--and I beg you will give your best
attention to what I am now going to say--I replied to that, 'It
is not fair to charge me with suspecting her. I don't understand
her confidential relations with Julian Gray, and I don't
understand her language and conduct in the presence of the police
officer. I claim it as my right to be satisfied on both those
points--in the character of the man who is to marry her.' There
was my answer. I spare you all that followed. I only repeat what
I said to Lady Janet. She has commanded you to be silent. If you
obey her commands, I owe it to myself and I owe it to my family
to release you from your engagement. Choose between your duty to
Lady Janet and your duty to Me."
He had mastered his temper at last: he spoke with dignity, and he
spoke to the point. His position was unassailable; he claimed
nothing but his right.
"My choice was made," Mercy answered, "when I gave you my promise
upstairs."
She waited a little, struggling to control herself on the brink
of the terrible revelation that was coming. Her eyes dropped
before his; her heart beat faster and faster; but she struggled
bravely. With a desperate courage she faced the position. "If you
are ready to listen," she went on, "I am ready to tell you why I
insisted on having the police officer sent out of the house."
Horace held up his hand warningly.
"Stop!" he said; "that is not all."
His infatuated jealousy of Julian (fatally misinterpreting her
agitation) distrusted her at the very outset. She had limited
herself to clearing up the one question of her interference with
the officer of justice. The other question of her relations with
Julian she had deliberately passed over. Horace instantly drew
his own ungenerous conclusion.
"Let us not misunderstand one another," he said. "The explanation
of your conduct in the other room is only one of the explanations
which you owe me. You have something else to account for. Let us
begin with _that_, if you please."
She looked at him in unaffected surprise.
"What else have I to account for?" she asked.
He again repeated his reply to Lady Janet.
"I have told you already," he said. "I don't understand your
confidential relations with Julian Gray."
Mercy's color rose; Mercy's eyes began to brighten.
"Don't return to tha t!" she cried, with an irrepressible
outbreak of disgust. "Don't, for God's sake, make me despise you
at such a moment as this!"
His obstinacy only gathered fresh encouragement from that appeal
to his better sense.
"I insist on returning to it."
She had resolved to bear anything from him-- as her fit
punishment for the deception of which she had been guilty. But it
was not in womanhood (at the moment when the first words of her
confession were trembling on her lips) to endure Horace's
unworthy suspicion of her. She rose from her seat and met his eye
firmly.
"I refuse to degrade myself, and to degrade Mr. Julian Gray, by
answering you," she said
Consider what you are doing," he rejoined. Change your mind,
before it is too late!"
"You have had my reply."
Those resolute words, that steady resistance, seemed to infuriate
him. He caught her roughly by the arm.
"You are as false as hell!" he cried. "It's all over between you
and me!"
The loud threatening tone in which he had spoken penetrated
through the closed door of the dining-room. The door instantly
opened. Julian returned to the library.
He had just set foot in the room, when there was a knock at the
other door--the door that opened on the hall. One of the
men-servants appeared, with a telegraphic message in his hand.
Mercy was the first to see it. It was the Matron's answer to the
letter which she had sent to the Refuge.
"For Mr. Julian Gray?" she asked.
"Yes, miss."
"Give it to me."
She signed to the man to withdraw, and herself gave the telegram
to Julian. "It is addressed to you, at my request," she said.
"You will recognize the name of the person who sends it, and you
will find a message in it for me."
Horace interfered before Julian could open the telegram.
"Another private understanding between you!" he said. "Give me
that telegram."
Julian looked at him with quiet contempt.
"It is directed to Me," he answered--and opened the envelope.
The message inside was expressed in these terms: "I am as deeply
interested in her as you are. Say that I have received her
letter, and that I welcome her back to the Refuge with all my
heart. I have business this evening in the neighborhood. I will
call for her myself at Mablethorpe House."
The message explained itself. Of her own free-will she had made
the expiation complete! Of her own free-will she was going back
to the martyrdom of her old life! Bound as he knew himself to be
to let no compromising word or action escape him in the presence
of Horace, the irrepressible expression of Julian's admiration
glowed in his eyes as they rested on Mercy. Horace detected the
look. He sprang forward and tried to snatch the telegram out of
Julian's hand.
"Give it to me!" he said. "I will have it!"
Julian silently put him back at arms-length.
Maddened with rage, he lifted his hand threateningly. "Give it to
me!" he repeated between his set teeth, "or it will be the worse
for you!"
"Give it to _me!_" said Mercy, suddenly placing herself between
them.
Julian gave it. She turned, and offered it to Horace, looking at
him with a steady eye, holding it out to him with a steady hand.
"Read it," she said.
Julian's generous nature pitied the man who had insulted him.
Julian's great heart only remembered the friend of former times.
"Spare him!" he said to Mercy. "Remember he is unprepared."
She neither answered nor moved. Nothing stirred the horrible
torpor of her resignation to her fate. She knew that the time had
come.
Julian appealed to Horace.
"Don't read it!" he cried. "Hear what she has to say to you
first!"
Horace's hand answered him with a contemptuous gesture. Horace's
eyes devoured, word by word, the Matron's message.
He looked up when he had read it through. There was a ghastly
change in his face as he turned it on Mercy.
She stood between the two men like a statue. The life in her
seemed to have died out, except in her eyes. Her eyes rested on
Horace with a steady, glittering calmness.
The silence was only broken by the low murmuring of Julian's
voice. His face was hidden in his hands--he was praying for them.
Horace spoke, laying his finger on the telegram. His voice had
changed with the change in his face. The tone was low and
trembling: no one would have recognized it as the tone of
Horace's voice.
"What does this mean?" he said to Mercy. "It can't be for you?"
"It _is_ for me."
"What have You to do with a Refuge?"
Without a change in her face, without a movement in her limbs,
she spoke the fatal words:
"I have come from a Refuge, and I am going back to a Refuge. Mr.
Horace Holmcroft, I am Mercy Merrick."
CHAPTER XXVI.
GREAT HEART AND LITTLE HEART.
THERE was a pause.
The moments passed--and not one of the three moved. The moments
passed--and not one of the three spoke. Insensibly the words of
supplication died away on Julian's lips. Even his energy failed
to sustain him, tried as it now was by the crushing oppression of
suspense. The first trifling movement which suggested the idea of
change, and which so brought with it the first vague sense of
relief, came from Mercy. Incapable of sustaining the prolonged
effort of standing, she drew back a little and took a chair. No
outward manifestation of emotion escaped her. There she sat--with
the death-like torpor of resignation in her face--waiting her
sentence in silence from the man at whom she had hurled the whole
terrible confession of the truth in one sentence!
Julian lifted his head as she moved. He looked at Horace. and
advancing a few steps, looked again. There was fear in his face,
as he suddenly turned it toward Mercy.
"Speak to him!" he said, in a whisper. "Rouse him, before it's
too late!"
She moved mechanically in her chair; she looked mechanically at
Julian.
"What more have I to say to him?" she asked, in faint, weary
tones. "Did I not tell him everything when I told him my name?"
The natural sound of her voice might have failed to affect
Horace. The altered sound of it roused him. He approached Mercy's
chair, with a dull surprise in his face, and put his hand, in a
weak, wavering way, on her shoulder. In that position he stood
for a while, looking down at her in silence.
The one idea in him that found its way outward to expression was
the idea of Julian. Without moving his hand, without looking up
from Mercy, he spoke for the first time since the shock had
fallen on him.
"Where is Julian?" he asked, very quietly.
"I am here, Horace--close by you."
"Will you do me a service?"
"Certainly. How can I help you?"
He considered a little before he replied. His hand left Mercy's
shoulder, and went up to his head--then dropped at his side. His
next words were spoken in a sadly helpless, bewildered way.
"I have an idea, Julian, that I have been somehow to blame. I
said some hard words to you. It was a little while since. I don't
clearly remember what it was all about. My temper has been a good
deal tried in this house; I have never been used to the sort of
thing that goes on here--secrets and mysteries, and hateful
low-lived quarrels. We have no secrets and mysteries at home. And
as for quarrels-- ridiculous! My mother and my sisters are highly
bred women (you know them); gentlewomen, in the best sense of the
word. When I am with _them_ I have no anxieties. I am not
harassed at home by doubts of who people are, and confusion about
names, and so on. I suspect the contrast weighs a little on my
mind and upsets it. They make me over-suspicious among them here,
and it ends in my feeling doubts and fears that I can't get over:
doubts about you and fears about myself. I have got a fear about
myself now. I want you to help me. Shall I make an apology
first?"
"Don't say a word. Tell me what I can do."
He turned his face toward Julian for the first time.
"Just look at me," he said. "Does it strike you that I am at all
wrong in my mind? Tell me the truth, old fellow."
"Your nerves are a little shaken, Horace. Nothing more."
He considered again after that reply, his eyes remaining
anxiously fixed on Julian's face.
"My nerves are a little shaken," he repeated. "That is true; I
feel they are shaken. I should like, if you don't mind, to make
sure that it's no worse. Will you help me to try if my memory is
all right?"
"I will do anything you like."
"Ah! you are a good fellow, Julian--and a clear-headed fellow
too, which is very important just now. Look here! I say it's
about a week since the troubles began in this house. Do you say
so too?"
"Yes."
"The troubles came in with the coming of a woman from Germany, a
stranger to us, who behaved very violently in the dining-room
there. Am I right, so far?"
"Quite right."
"The woman carried matters with a high hand. She claimed Colonel
Roseberry--I wish to be strictly accurate--she claimed _the late_
Colonel Roseberry as her father. She told a tiresome story about
her having been robbed of her papers and her name by an impostor
who had personated her. She said the name of the impostor was
Mercy Merrick. And she afterward put the climax to it all: she
pointed to the lady who is engaged to be my wife, and declared
that _she_ was Mercy Merrick. Tell me again, is that right or
wrong?"
Julian answered him as before. He went on, speaking more
confidently and more excitedly than he had spoken yet.
"Now attend to this, Julian. I am going to pass from my memory of
what happened a week ago to my memory of what happened five
minutes since. You were present; I want to know if you heard it
too." He paused, and, without taking his eyes off Julian, pointed
backward to Mercy. "There is the lady who is engaged to marry
me," he resumed. "Did I, or did I not, hear her say that she had
come out of a Refuge, and that she was going back to a Refuge?
Did I, or did I not, hear her own to my face that her name was
Mercy Merrick? Answer me, Julian. My good friend, answer me, for
the sake of old times."
His voice faltered as he spoke those imploring words. Under the
dull blank of his face there appeared the first signs of emotion
slowly forcing its way outward. The stunned mind was reviving
faintly. Julian saw his opportunity of aiding the recovery, and
seized it. He took Horace gently by the arm, and pointed to
Mercy.
"There is your answer!" he said. "Look!-- and pity her."
She had not once interrupted them while they had been speaking:
she had changed her position again, and that was all. There was a
writing-table at the side of her chair; her outstretched arms
rested on it. Her head had dropped on her arms, and her face was
hidden. Julian's judgment had not misled him; the utter
self-abandonment of her attitude answered Horace as no human
language could have answered him. He looked at her. A quick spasm
of pain passed across his face. He turned once more to the
faithful friend who had forgiven him. His head fell on Julian's
shoulder, and he burst into tears.
Mercy started wildly to her feet, and looked at the two men.
"O God" she cried, "what have I done!"
Julian quieted her by a motion of his hand.
"You have helped me to save him,'' he said. "Let his tears have
their way. Wait."
He put one arm round Horace to support him. The manly tenderness
of the action, the complete and noble pardon of past injuries
which it implied, touched Mercy to the heart. She went back to
her chair. Again shame and sorrow overpowered her, and again she
hid her face from view.
Julian led Horace to a seat, and silently waited by him until he
had recovered his self-control. He gratefully took the kind hand
that had sustained him: he said, simply, almost boyishly, "Thank
you, Julian. I am better now."
"Are you composed enough to listen to what is said to you?"
Julian asked.
"Yes. Do _you_ wish to speak to me?"
Julian left him without immediately replying, and returned to
Mercy.
"The time has come," he said. "Tell him all--truly, unreservedly,
as you would tell it to me."
She shuddered as he spoke. "Have I not told him enough?" she
asked. "Do you want me to break his heart? Look at him! Look what
I have done already!"
Horace shrank from the ordeal as Mercy shrank from it.
"No, no! I can't listen to it! I daren't listen to it!" he cried,
and rose to leave the room.
Julian had taken the good work in hand: he never faltered over it
for an instant. Horace had loved her--how dearly Julian now knew
for the first time. The bare possibility that she might earn her
pardon if she was allowed to plead her own cause was a
possibility still left. To let her win on Horace to forgive her,
was death to the love that still filled his heart in secret. But
he never hesitated. With a resolution which the weaker man was
powerless to resist, he took him by the arm and led him back to
his place.
"For her sake, and for your sake, you shall not condemn her
unheard," he said to Horace, firmly. "One temptation to deceive
you after another has tried her, and she has resisted them all.
With no discovery to fear, with a letter from the benefactress
who loves her commanding her to be silent, with everything that a
woman values in this world to lose, if she owns what she has
done--_this_ woman, for the truth's sake, has spoken the truth.
Does she deserve nothing at your hands in return for that?
Respect her, Horace--and hear her."
Horace yielded. Julian turned to Mercy.
"You have allowed me to guide you so far," he said. "Will you
allow me to guide you still?"
Her eyes sank before his; her bosom rose and fell rapidly. His
influence over her maintained its sway. She bowed her head in
speechless submission.
"Tell him,'' Julian proceeded, in accents of entreaty, not of
command--"tell him what your life has been. Tell him how you were
tried and tempted, with no friend near to speak the words which
might have saved you. And then," he added, raising her from the
chair, "let him judge you--if he can!"
He attempted to lead her across the room to the place which
Horace occupied. But her submission had its limits. Half-way to
the place she stopped, and refused to go further. Julian offered
her a chair. She declined to take it. Standing with one hand on
the back of the chair, she waited for the word from Horace which
would permit her to speak. She was resigned to the ordeal. Her
face was calm; her mind was clear. The hardest of all
humiliations to endure--the humiliation of acknowledging her
name--she had passed through. Nothing remained but to show her
gratitude to Julian by acceding to his wishes, and to ask pardon
of Horace before they parted forever. In a little while the
Matron would arrive at the house-- and then it would be over.
Unwillingly Horace looked at her. Their eyes met. He broke out
suddenly with something of his former violence.
"I can't realize it even now!" he cried. "_Is_ it true that you
are not Grace Roseberry? Don't look at me! Say in one word--Yes
or No!"
She answered him, humbly and sadly, "Yes."
"You have done what that woman accused you of doing? Am I to
believe that?"
"You are to believe it, sir."
All the weakness of Horace's character disclosed itself when she
made that reply.
"Infamous!" he exclaimed. "What excuse can you make for the cruel
deception you have practiced on me? Too bad! too bad! There can
be no excuse for you!"
She accepted his reproaches with unshaken resignation. "I have
deserved it!" was all she said to herself, "I have deserved it!"
Julian interposed once more in Mercy's defense.
"Wait till you are sure there is no excuse for her, Horace," he
said, quietly. "Grant her justice, if you can grant no more. I
leave you together."
He advanced toward the door of the dining-room. Horace's weakness
disclosed itself once more.
"Don't leave me alone with her!" he burst out. "The misery of it
is more than I can bear!"
Julian looked at Mercy. Her face brightened faintly. That
momentary expression of relief told him how truly he would be
befriending her if he consented to remain in the room. A position
of retirement was offered to him by a recess formed by the
central bay-window of the library. If he occupied this place,
they could see or not see that he was present, as their own
inclinations might decide them.
"I will stay with you, Horace, as long as you wish me to be
here." Having answered in those terms, he stopped as he passed
Mercy, on his way to the window. His quick and kindly insight
told him that he might still be of some service to her. A hint
from hi m might show her the shortest and the easiest way of
making her confession. Delicately and briefly he gave her the
hint. "The first time I met you," he said, "I saw that your life
had had its troubles. Let us hear how those troubles began."
He withdrew to his place in the recess. For the first time, since
the fatal evening when she and Grace Roseberry had met in the
French cottage, Mercy Merrick looked back into the purgatory on
earth of her past life, and told her sad story simply and truly
in these words.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MAGDALEN'S APPRENTICESHIP.
"MR. JULIAN GRAY has asked me to tell him, and to tell you, Mr.
Holmcroft, how my troubles began. They began before my
recollection. They began with my birth.
"My mother (as I have heard her say) ruined her prospects, when
she was quite a young girl, by a marriage with one of her
father's servants--the groom who rode out with her. She suffered,
poor creature, the usual penalty of such conduct as hers. After a
short time she and her husband were separated--on the condition
of her sacrificing to the man whom she had married the whole of
the little fortune that she possessed in her right.
"Gaining her freedom, my mother had to gain her daily bread next.
Her family refused to take her back. She attached herself to a
company of strolling players.
"She was earning a bare living in this way, when my father
accidentally met with her. He was a man of high rank, proud of
his position, and well known in the society of that time for his
many accomplishments and his refined tastes. My mother's beauty
fascinated him. He took her from the strolling players, and
surrounded her with every luxury that a woman could desire in a
house of her own.
"I don't know how long they lived together. I only know that my
father, at the time of my first recollections, had abandoned her.
She had excited his suspicions of her fidelity--suspicions which
cruelly wronged her, as she declared to her dying day. I believed
her, because she was my mother. But I cannot expect others to do
as I did--I can only repeat what she said. My father left her
absolutely penniless. He never saw her again; and he refused to
go to her when she sent to him in her last moments on earth.
"She was back again among the strolling players when I first
remember her. It was not an unhappy time for me. I was the
favorite pet and plaything of the poor actors. They taught me to
sing and to dance at an age when other children are just
beginning to learn to read. At five years old I was in what is
called 'the profession,' and had made my poor little reputation
in booths at country fairs. As early as that, Mr. Holmcroft, I
had begun to live under an assumed name--the prettiest name they
could invent for me 'to look well in the bills.' It was sometimes
a hard struggle for us, in bad seasons, to keep body and soul
together. Learning to sing and dance in public often meant
learning to bear hunger and cold in private, when I was
apprenticed to the stage. And yet I have lived to look back on my
days with the strolling players as the happiest days of my life!
"I was ten years old when the first serious misfortune that I can
remember fell upon me. My mother died, worn out in the prime of
her life. And not long afterward the strolling company, brought
to the end of its resources by a succession of bad seasons, was
broken up.
"I was left on the world, a nameless, penniless outcast, with one
fatal inheritance--God knows, I can speak of it without vanity,
after what I have gone through!--the inheritance of my mother's
beauty.
"My only friends were the poor starved-out players. Two of them
(husband and wife) obtained engagements in another company, and I
was included in the bargain The new manager by whom I was
employed was a drunkard and a brute. One night I made a trifling
mistake in the course of the performances--and I was savagely
beaten for it. Perhaps I had inherited some of my father's
spirit--without, I hope, also inheriting my father's pitiless
nature. However that may be, I resolved (no matter what became of
me) never again to serve the man who had beaten me. I unlocked
the door of our miserable lodging at daybreak the next morning;
and, at ten years old, with my little bundle in my hand, I faced
the world alone.
"My mother had confided to me, in her last moments, my father's
name and the address of his house in London. 'He may feel some
compassion for you' (she said), 'though he feels none for me: try
him.' I had a few shillings, the last pitiful remains of my
wages, in my pocket; and I was not far from London. But I never
went near my father: child as I was, I would have starved and
died rather than go to him. I had loved my mother dearly; and I
hated the man who had turned his back on her when she lay on her
deathbed. It made no difference to Me that he happened to be my
father.
"Does this confession revolt you? You look at me, Mr. Holmcroft,
as if it did.
"Think a little, sir. Does what I have just said condemn me as a
heartless creature, even in my earliest years? What is a father
to a child--when the child has never sat on