It was strange that it should be Gussy, who was not ideal or visionary,
but very matter-of-fact in all her ways, who was the most cruelly
offended and wounded by the events of this night. It seemed to Gussy
that she had been deceived and played upon by everybody. By her mother,
who had never confided to her the gravity of the position, though she
had known the fact for years; by Meredith, who had seemed to know more
of it than Gussy did, and whose eyes had been keen with understanding,
following every word of what was to Gussy merely the ravings without
consequence of a madman; he knew more of it than she did, who had helped
to take care of the secret inmate. And then Dolff, her brother. What was
the meaning of this cloud of tempest which had come into Dolff’s
trivial, schoolboyish life? Why had he tried to kill, if that was what
he wanted, or, at least, to injure, to assault Meredith?
It was all a mystery to Gussy. She understood nothing except that many
things had been going on in the house which she either did not know at
all or knew imperfectly--that she had been possibly made a dupe of,
brought down from the position which she had seemed to hold of right as
the chief influence in the family. She had thought this was how it was:
her mother’s confidant, the nurse and guardian-angel of her lover, the
controller, more or less, of all the house. And it turned out that she
knew nothing, that there were all kinds of passions and mysteries in her
own home with which she was unacquainted, that what she knew she knew
imperfectly, and that even in the confidences given to her she had been
kept in the dark.
Gussy was not imaginative, and consequently had little power of entering
into the feelings or divining the movements of the minds of others. She
was wounded, mortified to the depths of her heart, and angry, with a
deep, silent anger not easily to be overcome. She did not linger nor ask
for explanations, but went straight up to her room without a moment’s
pause, careless that both her mother, whom she generally attended
through the troublesome process of undressing, and Julia, whom she
usually held under such strict authority, were left behind, the latter
in contempt of all ordinary hours. Janet, whose charge that was, was not
visible; she had stolen away, as it had lately been her habit to do.
Janet, Gussy felt sure, was mixed up in it too; but how was she mixed up
in it?
Think as she would, Miss Harwood could not make out to her satisfaction
how it could be that Janet could have influenced Dolff to assault
Meredith. Janet had no quarrel with Meredith, could not have. He had
been very civil to her--too civil, Gussy had sometimes thought. She
remembered that there was a time when she had felt it very tiresome to
have to discuss Miss Summerhayes so often; and on the night of the ball,
certainly, they had danced and talked together almost more than was
becoming. How, then, could Janet have moved Dolff to attack Meredith? It
seemed impossible to discern any plausible reason: and yet Gussy had a
moral certainty that Janet was somehow mixed up in it. Could it be that
the joke about Dolff and his accompaniments had been the cause? Gussy
felt involuntarily that it must be something more serious than that.
She went to bed resolutely, for, indeed, there are times when it
requires a severe effort to do this--to shut out the commotions which
are around, and turn one’s back upon all the questions that require
solving. Gussy felt bitterly that she had no certainty as to what might
be going on in the house, which she had lately been as sure of as if she
had created it. Her mother, for anything she knew, might be going from
room to room, her chair set aside, and all her pretences with it. To
think that she, Gussy, should have been taken in by it so long, and have
believed whatever was told her! Her brother Dolff, so good-natured, of
so little account as he was! might have caught Meredith again at a
disadvantage, and have accomplished now what he tried before.
The house, her calm and secure domain, seemed now full of
incomprehensible noises and mysterious sounds to Gussy. But she would
not even look over the banisters to see what was going on. She would not
open her door, much less steal downstairs, as another woman might have
done, to find out everything. She went to bed. She asked no explanation.
She shut her door and drew her curtains, and closed her eyes. Whatever
might be going on within or without, the gateways of her mind were
closely fastened up, so that she might hear or see no more.
It was Priscilla who put her mistress to bed: and Mrs. Harwood was very
angry with her children, feeling that Gussy had deserted her and that
Dolff had insulted her. But it takes more than that to make a woman
betray her sons and daughters. With the flush of anger still on her
cheek and the tremble on her lips she told Priscilla how tired Miss
Harwood was, how she had been overdoing herself, how she had made her go
to bed.
“I told her you could see to all I want quite nicely, Priscilla.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Priscilla; but it was doubtful how far she was taken
in, for, of course, the servants knew a great deal more than they were
supposed to know, and where they did not know they guessed freely, and
with wonderful success.
It was curious to see them all assemble in the morning at the
breakfast-table as if nothing had happened. Nay, that was not a thing
that was possible. There were traces of last night’s excitement on every
face; but yet they came in and sat down opposite to each other, and
Gussy helped Dolff to his coffee and again wondered how in all the world
Janet could be the cause of his attack on Meredith: for it was evident
that now, at least, Dolff was not in a state of mind to do anything for
Janet. He never spoke to her during breakfast. He avoided her eye. When
she spoke, he turned away as if he would not let her voice reach his
ears if he could help it. How then could Janet be mixed up in it? Gussy
was sorely perplexed by this problem. As for Janet, though she was pale,
she put on an elaborate appearance of composure and of knowing nothing
which (in her readiness to be exasperated with everything) provoked
Gussy most of all. She said to herself that it was a worse offence to
pretend not to know when everybody was aware that she must know, than to
show her knowledge in the most irritating way. No doubt, however, that
if Janet had betrayed any knowledge, Gussy would have found that the
most ill-timed exhibition that could be.
There was very little conversation, except between Janet and Julia,
during this embarrassing meal. And Mrs. Harwood came out of her room as
she had gone into it, unattended by her daughters. There were less signs
about her than about any of them of the perturbation of last night.
Sometimes an old woman will bear agitation better than the young. She
has probably had so much of it, and been compelled to gulp it down so
often! Her eyes were not less bright than usual--nay, they had a glance
of fire in them which was not usual in their calmer state, and the color
in her cheeks was fresher than that of any one else in the house. The
girls were all pale--even Julia, and Dolff of a sort of dusky pallor,
which made his light hair and mustache stand out from his face. But Mrs.
Harwood’s pretty complexion was unchanged--perhaps because though they
had all made so many discoveries she had made none, but had been aware
of everything and of far more than any one else knew, for years.
Early in the day the policeman of last night appeared with a summons to
Mrs. Harwood, directing her to appear before some board to show cause
why she should have kept, unregistered and unsuspected, a lunatic shut
up in her house. Mrs. Harwood saw the man herself, and begged to be
allowed to make him a little present, “for your great civility last
night.” The policeman almost blushed, as he was a man who bore a
conscience, for he was not conscious of being very civil; but he
accepted the gratuity, let us hope, with the intention of being civil
next time he was employed on any such piece of business.
While he spoke to Mrs. Harwood in the hall, whither she had been wheeled
out to see him, Meredith came from his room and joined her. He had not
escaped so well as she the excitement of the previous night, and it was
with unfeigned astonishment that he contemplated this old lady, fresh
and smiling, her pretty color unimpaired, her eyes as bright as usual.
She was over sixty; she had just been baffled in an object which had
been the chief inspiration of her life for years, disappointed, exposed
to universal censure, perhaps to punishment, but her wonderful force of
nature was not abated; the extraordinary crisis which had passed over
her, breaking the bonds of her ailment, delivering her from her
weakness, had left no signs of exhaustion upon her. She looked like a
woman who had never known what trouble or anxiety was as she sat there
smiling, assuring the policeman that she could fully explain everything,
and would not fail to do so in the proper quarter. She turned to
Meredith as he appeared, and held out her hand to him.
“Good-morning, my dear Charley; I hope you are not the worse for last
night’s agitation. You see our friend here has come to summon me to make
explanations about my poor dear upstairs. You will appear for me and
settle everything, won’t you? You see this gentleman is a barrister,”
she explained, smiling to the man who stood looking on.
“Of course I will,” Meredith said.
Upon this the policeman took courage, and with a scrape made his _amende
honorable_.
“I ought to beg your pardon, sir, and yours too, lady, for all the
trouble last night. I had every confidence in Jim Harrison, the man that
said he could identify the culprit--that is the fellow as nearly killed
you, sir--and rumors have been getting up all over the place as it was
the young gentleman here as had been a bit wild, and hated you like
poison.”
“Dolff never hated me like poison, did he?” said Meredith, elevating his
eyebrows and appealing to Mrs. Harwood.
“Never! you have always been one of his best friends.”
“Well,” said the officer, who was not too confident either in this
assurance or in the conclusion he had been obliged to come to, “there
was a parcel of tales about. You can never tell how them tales gets up.
However, it’s all been a mistake: for when Jim sees your young gentleman
he says in a moment, ‘Nothing of the sort--that’s not ‘m.’ So it all
falls to the ground, as you’ll see, sir, being used to these questions,
as the lady says--for want of evidence.”
“Exactly,” said Meredith, “and you’ll do me the justice to say, officer,
that I told you it would from the first. It’s worth while occasionally
taking a man’s advice that knows something about it, you perceive,
instead of your Mr. Jim, who evidently knows nothing but what he thinks
he saw or didn’t see.”
“That’s it, sir, I suppose,” said the policeman, “and if he did see it,
or if he didn’t I couldn’t tell, not if it was as much as my place was
worth.”
“He would have looked rather foolish though, don’t you think, in the
witness-box? You see,” added Meredith, with a laugh, “you might have
spared this lady the trouble of last night.”
“No, I don’t see that, sir,” said the policeman, promptly, “for if it
didn’t answer one purpose, it did another. I’m very sorry to upset a
lady, but she didn’t ought to bottle up a madman in a private house
without no register, nor information to the commissioners, nor proper
precautions. You know that, sir, just as well as me.”
“How do you know that the lady has no license?” said Meredith, “or that
her relation’s illness is not perfectly known? I think you will find a
little difficulty in proving that: and then your superiors will be less
pleased with the discovery. However, that’s my business, as Mrs. Harwood
has confided it to me,” he added, with a laugh, which he could not
restrain, at the man’s sudden look of alarm.
“Don’t find fault with our friend; he was as civil as it was possible to
be. Good-morning, and thank you,” said Mrs. Harwood, sitting, with her
placid smile, watching her visitor, stiff and uneasy in his plain
clothes, as he went away.
When the door was shut upon him by Priscilla, who sniffed and tossed her
head at the necessity of being thus civil to a man who had made so much
commotion in the house--much as she and her fellow-servants had enjoyed
the excitement--Mrs. Harwood’s countenance underwent a certain change.
The smile faded; a look of age crept round the still beaming eyes.
“If you will wheel me back to my room, Charley, we can talk,” she said.
She could not but be conscious that he was thinking, asking himself why
she could not walk, she who had found power to do so when she wanted it;
but she betrayed no consciousness of this inevitable thought. She was
very grave when he came round from the back of her chair and stood
facing her in the firelight, which, on a dull London morning in the end
of January, was the chief light in the room. Perhaps the dreary
atmosphere threw a cloud upon her face. Her soft, half-caressing tone
was gone. She had become hard and businesslike in a moment. “You want me
to explain,” she said.
“If you please. You know how much my father was involved: that craze
about the money to be paid back means something. Even a mad repetition
like that seems likely to have a foundation in fact. Is it true?”
She bent her head a little, and for the moment cast down her eyes.
“It was true.”
“It _was_ true; then you have alienated----”
“Wait a little. There were no such creditors as his own children, who
would have been ruined had not I saved them. They know nothing of any
question of money. They knew nothing of----”
“Of his existence at all--till last night?”
“I am bound to furnish you with every information I can. The young ones
knew nothing of his existence. Gussy did; but only that I kept him there
to save him from an asylum where he might have been treated
cruelly--nothing more. You will not take a high moral tone against me,
as she is ready to do, and Dolff----”
“No; I will take up no high moral tone,” said Meredith; “but the
position is very difficult. You have not, I suppose, done away with the
money?”
“It is well invested; it is intact. We could not have lived as we have
done on my own money. Now, of course, I must give it up---- And no
injustice need be done,” she added, with a sigh; “it can be paid--at
last.”
“With interest for all these years?” said Meredith, with a smile.
“Oh, what are you talking of?” She said, “People will be so glad to get
anything so unexpectedly, that they will say nothing about interest. I
even think----”
“What do you even think?” he said, as she paused.
“How can I tell how you may take it, whether it will commend itself to
you or not? There might still be an arrangement by which things might
be--tided over.”
“After it gets into the papers and it is known that you have been
concealing----”
“Oh,” she cried again, “you are more dull than I gave you credit for
being, Charley Meredith! Who will notice up in Liverpool a romantic
story (which is all the papers will make of it) occurring in St. John’s
Wood? Who will link one thing to another and understand exactly what has
happened, or believe that---- I might have taken him in, a miserable
wreck, out of sheer love and kindness. I did! I did!” she cried,
suddenly, her face melting out of its hardness, her eyes filling with
tears. “You may not believe me, but I did. I thought he had not a penny.
I went to all the expense of fitting up the wing for him--working with
my own hands at it, that nobody should suspect--believing that Vicars
had brought him back with his own money--that _he_ had none---- I did,
though you may not believe me,” she said.
“I have not said I did not believe you. We are all very queer
creatures--mixed up. And then when you found he had that old
pocketbook--for it was full of something better than old papers
then--you were tempted, and you----”
She nodded her head; then said, after a while,
“I do not accept that formula. I was tempted--and I did what I had a
right to do. _I_ had wronged nobody--I knew nothing about the debts. If
I had divided _that_ among them, what would it have been?--a trifle to
each, but enough to dry up all the sympathy they were meeting with. He
had made ducks and drakes of more than that belonging to me. And the
children were the most deeply wronged. I took it for their sakes, to
make up what they had been robbed of. It can go to the others now, and
you will see how much it will be.”
“You said something,” said Meredith, “about an arrangement that might
still be made?”
“Yes--if you could lend yourself to it, Charley. It could not be done
without you.”
“I cannot tell whether I could lend myself to it or not, until I hear
what it is.”
She looked at him, and two or three times made as if she would speak,
but shut her lips again. Her eyes searched his face with an anxious
expression.
“I don’t know how you will take it,” she said, hesitating; “I don’t know
how you will take it.” Then, after a pause, she added, “I will begin by
asking you a question. Do you want to marry my daughter Gussy? Yes or
no!”
Meredith made a step backwards, and put his hand to his breast as if he
had received a blow. In that moment various dreams swept through his
mind. Janet’s image was not the only one, though it had the freshness of
being the last. One of those dreams, indeed, was no other than the
freedom of his own bachelor estate, and the advantage of life which was
not bound by any social ties. He avowed, however, at length, soberly,
“I think I may say yes, Mrs. Harwood--that is it what has been for a
long time in my mind.”