Janet had been so quickly summoned downstairs after her strange
adventure that she had no leisure to think it over, until, about the
time when Mr. Meredith set out on his walk, she escaped upstairs.
Meredith had been the very last to go away, he had stayed for the little
family supper which the house-party had made after the guests were gone.
He was evidently regarded, in short, entirely as one of the family, and
in that capacity claimed Mrs. Harwood’s applause for his exertions in
making everything “go off.”
“I have danced with all the plainest women,” he said, “and taken at
least three dowagers in to supper. I ought to be very much petted now to
make up.”
Mrs. Harwood looked from him to Gussy uncertain what to reply. But Gussy
did not meet her mother’s eyes, as she most certainly would have done
had there been anything to tell.
“Oh, yes, you have been of great use,” she said, “I don’t know what we
should have done without you. But I don’t believe in such magnanimity as
that. And you ought to be more civil about the dowagers when you are
talking to me.”
“You are not a dowager--you are the head of the house,” Meredith said,
bending over her affectionately to say good-night.
It was not possible that Janet could be otherwise than on the watch,
considering her own share of his attentions during the evening. He had
cast a laughing glance at her when he spoke of the plain women, and when
he turned to leave the house he shot another look of leave-taking,
tender yet laughing too, over the head of Julia, who was still at
supper, consuming as many forbidden dainties as was possible in the
short space of time that remained. Meredith put his hand on Julia’s
shoulder, which she flung off with a rapid twist, and said good-night to
Janet with his eyes, so that nobody could see; and then he turned round
with a laugh, complaining that all his civilities to Ju were without
effect. Gussy, who was pleased by this supposed attempt to conciliate
her young sister, accompanied him with Dolff to the floor. And Janet
could not but wonder what kind of farewell would take place there, with
something between mirth and misery in her heart.
Oh, he was not true. It was certain that he was not true; but we do not
somehow condemn the man who cheats another on our account, as we
denounce him when he deceives us on account of another. The two things
are different. He should not perhaps have pretended to be affectionate
to Julia in order to be at liberty to look love at Janet; but the
expedient prompted Janet to laugh. There is always something that tempts
the lookers-on to laugh in a lover’s wiles. And the person who is
preferred is apt to pardon and take such deceits lightly. How could he
otherwise have found it possible to give her that parting look? And
Julia’s wrench of her shoulder made Janet laugh in spite of herself. How
ridiculous of the girl to suppose that it was for her he did that!
And, to tell the truth, Janet could not think of the leading incident of
the night for the shadow of these other things which pushed in front as
if they were more important. What he had said to her--what he had
looked, which was more than what he had said, the touch of his hand, the
curious union that had been formed between them by their mutual
discovery, that discovery which was owing to Janet, and which her
observations had alone made possible--all these things were in her mind
rather than the discovery itself. When she tried to think of it she
found herself thinking of him, and going over and over his words and his
looks, and every particular of that so confidential and lover-like talk
which had taken place under the shadow of the evergreens. What would
Gussy have said if she had seen them sitting there? What would she have
thought if she had heard them?
It gave Janet a keen prick of pleasure, of gratification, and trouble
to think that the governess should be placed so much above the young
lady of the house. Janet did not know what would come of it, or if
anything would come of it, or if she were to blame or not. But, in the
meantime, she could not help enjoying the triumph. It was not Gussy he
cared about, who was so much better off, but her, little Janet the
governess. She forgave him his falseness--was not everything to be
forgiven to a sudden love springing up in a man’s heart when hitherto he
had been giving himself up to consideration of what was best to be done
in the way of a respectable marriage? She could not get these incidents
out of her mind.
When she tried to think of the other matter, the thing which Meredith
was studying so intently on his way home, her mind eluded that subject
and came back and back to the other, the more interesting, the subject
which made her youthful heart beat. She had been much excited once by
her own discoveries, by the face at the window, and indeed by the scraps
of paper, until she had discovered as she thought that they were only
from a copy-book; and it was inconceivable how little she cared now for
this far more important discovery. But then there were things more
important, events more exciting to Janet’s little self, which came in
the way. Her heart had suddenly been roused within her, a new life had
opened before her. It was not noble, nor did it come with that elevating
and purifying effect which a first love so often exercises, making all
beautiful and excellent things congenial to the awakening spirit in the
first fervor of that new emotion.
Janet felt guilty, she had a breathless sense of something secret,
forbidden, in her excitement and happiness. The best she could feel was
the mischievous clandestine pleasure of a child in balking some little
rival, and triumphing over some one who had been elevated above her. She
did not dare to think of Gussy, save in a ludicrous sense, as being so
silly as to be taken in. Oh, how silly she was not to see that his
looks, his secret inclinations, were not for her, that ever since Janet
appeared upon the scene it was towards her that his thoughts had turned!
She thought of Gussy only in this way, scorning her for being deceived;
and there was nothing softening, ameliorating, or ennobling in Janet’s
_vita nuova_. It was made up of clandestine communications, secret
looks, communings in dark corners. There had been only one of these, and
yet she felt as if it had been going on for years. And she did not know
what would come of it, or if anything could come of it. He had stepped
into a lover’s place without, in so many words, telling her that he
loved her; without that proposal of marriage which is the inevitable
formula of love to an English girl. He had said nothing about all that.
Janet did not know what he intended, or if he intended anything; but
this only made her heart beat all the more.
Thus two young women in that seemingly tranquil house retired to their
rooms with hearts high-beating, moved to their inmost depths by Charley
Meredith, who was not in the least worthy of the agitation of either,
not even of Janet’s half-guilty agitated excitement which she thought
love, and certainly not of the emotion which made Gussy Harwood hide her
face in her hands, in humiliation and misery which all the sweetness of
their recent interview could not overcome. It was sweet: and his implied
assurance of the cause that kept him silent, and certainty of a definite
term to the suspense, had flooded her being with happiness for the
moment; but by the time she had gained the privacy of her own room, and
the excitement was over, Gussy’s heart once more had sunk into the
depths. To wait in this humiliating way till he should signify his
pleasure, to be dependent upon him for something like life itself, to
attend like a handmaiden on his leisure and his choice of a time and
manner of signifying his will--all this filled Gussy with humiliation
and shame, still more deeply felt in that her consciousness was pervaded
by it, and she felt, even while she revolted, that her happiness was in
his hands, and that she could not escape. He was not a man of great
qualities, there was nothing in him to make him worthy of being the
arbiter of a life. And yet, so he was.
Janet went to bed, but she found that, with all these fumes of
excitement hanging about her, she could not sleep. If she dozed for a
few minutes she was again with Meredith, walking along wonderful dark
passages, peering through half-opened doors, seeing dreadful
visions--sometimes of coffins and dead people, sometimes of threatening
faces looking out upon her.
In the end Janet jumped out of bed again and lighted a candle. She had
suddenly thought she heard some one touch the handle of her door, and a
sudden vision--the face of the old man with his white beard seemed to
spring out of the darkness before her. After all, there were but a few
doors between them, doors which were sometimes left unsecured. What if,
waking like herself in the middle of the night, the prisoner should find
a practicable way as she had done, and come out and pass through her
door as she had done through his? The impression of some one standing
beside her bed was so strong upon her in the dark, that Janet made but
one spring to the opposite side, and trembling, managed, though with
difficulty, to strike a match.
The light relieved her from that sickening spasm of terror. There was
nobody there--of course she knew there could be nobody there: but it was
impossible to think of going to sleep again, thrice impossible to return
to the darkness and once more imagine stealthy steps about the room and
the pallid face bending over her. She put on a dressing-gown, and,
taking out the scraps of paper, began with more leisure and real pains
to put them together. Now that she knew it was not Dolff’s name that was
written at the bottom of the page, the sense of mystery returned to her
mind. It seemed impossible that his father’s copy-books should be still
in being, or that it could be of any importance who saw them.
Janet shivered with cold, but it was better than lying trembling in the
dark, thinking that the old man of the wing was walking about the room.
And she had promised to send the bits of paper to Meredith. She put them
all together, piecing them as well as she could. Sometimes she could
only join a triangular or oblong scrap to a square one. Sometimes there
was an absolute break which in no way could be filled out. She succeeded
in making out something like this:
“I can’t get---- I want to get out. I can’t get out. I can’t g--get out:
could pay--could p----can’t get----can’t get--out, out, out----Money,
plenty money. Could pay, could p----but can’t, can’t, can’t get out.”
It was mere gibberish Janet thought. She knew no meaning in it. After
she had worked for an hour at it, she had almost thrown it away again,
feeling that it was mere nonsense; whether written by the prisoner,
whether, as was more likely, some childish repetitions out of a
copybook, she could not tell; but at all events nonsense, throwing no
light upon anything, doing no one any good. She fixed the scraps on a
sheet of paper, however, as well as she could piece them together, and
especially the sprawling, childish signature “Adol----Char--es
Har--w----.”
She was very cold, very tired, and sleepy by the time this task was
done. She would put it in an envelope since _he_ had asked her to do so.
It would make him none the wiser, still it should be done, because he
had desired it. She forgot altogether the central incident of the night
as she went back to bed with little, cold feet, shivering and sleepy.
The foolishness of the words she had been so carefully picking out and
pasting together somehow emancipated her from her terror, they were so
silly and without meaning. She did not believe, after all, they could
have any connection with the mystery in the wing. But as she thought of
the address, and that she must take it herself to the post lest any one
should see it and think it a communication of a different kind, a thrill
ran through her, and she could not help thinking of perhaps a time to
come when there might be other communications that would not be so
colorless. Janet’s heart felt the lifting tide of a secret happiness.
She fell into a delicious drowsiness, in which all his words and looks
and movements came back upon her in a maze of pleasant confusion: and
then, with the privilege of her age, she fell fast asleep.
Janet posted her letter next day, glad to be rid of it; for she could
not, all the morning, get over the terror in her mind lest she should
pull the letter out of her pocket with her pocket-handkerchief, or
somehow expose it to be looked at, and so call forth the comment which
she felt already ringing in her ears, as if any one she met in the
street might come up and call it out to her:
“Oh, are you in correspondence with Charley Meredith?” “What have you to
say to Charley Meredith?”
She thought she could see Gussy’s look if that dreadful contingency
should come to pass. It would not be she that would make that
exclamation--wonder would be the sentiment in her face, wonder and a
sort of mild haughtiness which Miss Harwood knew how to put on. She
would take no notice. But she would never forget; she would go on
wondering, perhaps divining at last: proudly and entirely ignoring that
strange incident--but she would not forget it. Henceforward her eyes
would have another aspect towards Janet, and even perhaps towards her
lover.
Janet breathed more freely when it was safely out of her pocket and in
the post-office box. Nobody could see it now; she was safe, at least for
the time. It is needless to say that she added not a word, explanatory
or otherwise, to that curious piece of paper. She wrote the address with
the greatest care in her neatest hand. She was so girlish as to think
that her pretty handwriting, the fresh glossy envelope which she
selected so carefully, rejecting one which had a small speck upon it,
and which was a little brown at one corner--would go to his heart, and
that he would remark those signs of her care to please him. Poor little
Janet! She was not a girl of lofty sentiments, nor a very loyal soul;
but she was very young, and had a world of foolish expectation still in
her inexperienced heart.
Thus her former terror about the mystery which she had discovered so
close to her was quieted in her mind almost entirely by the coming in of
something more powerful. Sometimes a vague thrill of terror would pass
through her when she looked at the door so hermetically closed, the door
which had once trembled and given way under her slight fingers. In the
middle of the night she sometimes woke with a start thinking she heard
some one at her door, afraid to open her eyes lest she should see the
whiteness in her room of the white beard and pallid face.
She took to locking her door from that time, a practice for which she
was much scoffed at by Julia, who discovered it at once and wished to
know, satirically, what she was afraid of? Was it robbers, and did Janet
think they would come up all the way to the second floor for her,
instead of going at once to the pantry for the plate? Janet could not
make an answer to this assault, but she continued to lock her door and
to look carefully around her room every night to make sure that no one
was there.
This, however, was the only effect that the vision in the wing had upon
her. Another matter, far closer and more urgent, was introduced into her
thoughts. There were now two people whose whole attention was bent on
the sounds outside in the still evenings when they sat over their
needlework, listening intently for a step, for the sound of the bell. To
meet him and Gussy within the same four walls, to see his eyes turn to
her, and know that Miss Harwood looked on, this was far more difficult
than any mystery for Janet to bear.