The conduct of affairs in the house of the Harwoods was very dreary
during the whole of this day. It was, to begin with, a very dreary day,
not fog, which can be borne, but one of those dark days which are the
scourge of London, when everything is dull and without color without and
within, the skies gray, the earth gray, the leafless branches rising
like a black tracery upon the colorless background, the light scarcely
enough to swear by, to make it seem unnatural to shut the shutters and
light the lamp, which is what every well-constituted mind desires to do
in the circumstances.
And in the moral atmosphere the same thing reigned. Gussy had a
countenance like the day. She, who had at no time much color, had now
none. She was like the landscape: hair, eyes, and cheeks seemed the
same. Every glimmer of light seemed to have been suppressed in her eyes.
She kept them down, or she turned their gaze inward, or she veiled them
with some film which is at the command of those who are angry, whether
with or without cause. She made no inquiry even after the health of
Meredith, which had been hitherto her chief preoccupation, except in so
far as was implied in the conventional “How d’you do?” with which they
met. Even he was daunted by the determined indifference of her aspect.
When he talked of the drive which the doctor had suggested to him as a
preliminary to getting out on foot, Gussy never lifted her eyes or made
the least inquiry. Yesterday this step of decided progress would have
been the most exciting event in the world to her. She took no notice of
it now. There was scarcely anything said at table when they took their
midday meal, with a candle or two lit on the mantelpiece, “to add a
little cheerfulness,” as Mrs. Harwood said.
“For certainly we are not a very cheerful party,” added the mother, who
was more full of life than all the rest put together.
She it was who took the lead in the conversation till Gussy retired. She
talked to Meredith and a little to Janet, whom this curious aspect of
the family interested greatly, though she did not quite understand it.
But Gussy and Dolff both sat bolt upright and said nothing. They ate
nothing, too, which, perhaps, was a more effectual weapon against their
mother’s heart, and, when luncheon was over, they separated gloomily,
Dolff disappearing no one knew where, Gussy to her room, where she said
she had something to do while Mrs. Harwood retired with Meredith,
between whom and herself a curious intimacy seemed to have struck up, to
the dining-room, his room as it was called, to talk there.
In this universal gloom and strangeness Julia drew Janet out into the
garden. The day grew darker as it approached its end, the atmosphere
became more yellow, signs as of a fog appeared in the air. The governess
and the pupil put on their ulsters, and began to walk up and down the
garden walks, Julia hanging with all her might upon the arm of her
companion, dragging down Janet almost to the ground.
“Did you ever know,” Julia said, “such a detestable day?”
“It is turning to fog,” said Janet, trying to keep to what was
commonplace. “It was better that we did not go out.”
“Oh, was I thinking of the fog?” said Julia. “I would rather see a dozen
fogs than Gussy shut up like that, pursing up her lips as if she were
afraid something would drop out when she spoke. And poor Dolff, so
dismal, not knowing what to do with himself. Janet, do you think there
could be any truth in all that story about Dolff?”
“My dear,” said Janet, “how should I have any opinion? I cannot be
supposed to know about your brother, what he is likely to do.”
“Oh,” said Julia, “I did not ask you what you know, but what you
_think_; everybody must have an opinion. Besides, after all, it is not
so very little that you know about Dolff. He has been at home for six
weeks, and you have always seen a great deal of him; at least I am sure
he has always tried to see as much as he could of you.”
“I think,” said Janet, “that it is very bad taste for us to discuss
people, especially for you to talk with me about your own family. You
forget that I am the governess, Julia.”
“I think you are very nasty, and not nice at all. Whoever thinks of you
as the governess! I wonder what you mean, saying such unkind things.”
“They are not unkind, they are true. Your mother and Gussy have been
very good to me, but----”
“Oh, Janet, when you know we were very fond of you, and we thought you
were fond of us!”
Here Janet was suddenly visited by a great compunction which changed at
once her countenance and her feelings.
“Julia,” she said, “don’t speak to me. I feel so horrible sometimes, I
don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t think I am nice or good at
all. Perhaps,” she added with a faint revulsion of self-defence after
this impulsive confession, “it is not quite my fault.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Julia. “I ask you a question, quite a
simple question, and you go off into reproaching yourself and saying you
are not nice. What I want to know is whether you think it was Dolff that
knocked Charley Meredith down? If it was, he has not had the strength of
mind to stick to it, as I should have done. And what do you think that
man meant who came to identify him, and then said it wasn’t he? And do
you think that man last night really meant anything about Dolff, or did
they only pretend to find out about the wing? And, oh, Janet, did you
ever know, did you ever suspect anything about the wing? Please don’t
run away to other subjects, but tell me what you think.”
“Where am I to begin? I can’t answer all those questions at once.”
“Oh,” said Julia, with impatience, “how tiresome you are to-day! You
don’t want to answer me at all. Do you remember that first night when
you heard that cry, and were so frightened? I had heard it before, but
mamma told me it was nothing, it was the wind in the empty rooms. One
thinks it strange,” said Julia, “but at first one is stupid, you know,
and just believes anything. But you see you were right; and you didn’t
look surprised at all, not even to see mamma walking upstairs, she who
never moves. Or, do you think she only pretends not to be able to move,
to take us all in?” Julia added, after a pause.
“Oh, Julia, hush! How dare you say such a thing of your mother?”
“It is because she has deceived us about things,” said Julia, hanging
her head. “It was Dolff that said so, not me. She has deceived us in one
thing, and how are we to believe her in another. Both Dolff and Gussy
think so, though Gussy says nothing; to think she has kept it secret all
this time, and never let even the elder ones know: and how can we tell
if it is not a deceit about the chair, too?”
“If you had seen how she tore herself out of it last night! It was only
her misery and anxiety that gave her power to do it. It is very hard to
judge any one like that. I daresay,” said Janet, indignantly, “that the
other was done for your sakes, too, not to trouble you, when you were
still so young, with knowing what was a great secret, I suppose?”
“Ah, but why was it a secret? and who do you think the man is, Janet?”
said Julia, clinging ever and ever closer to her arm.
“Julia, what have I to do with the secrets of your family?”
“Why, you are one of the family,” said Julia; “you can’t help knowing;
and again I tell you, Janet, it isn’t what you know, it’s what you think
I am asking. Why don’t you give me your opinion? every one must have an
opinion. Dolff and I, we don’t know what to think.”
Dolff himself came hurriedly up behind the girls at this moment. He had
not gone out after all.
“Why do you trouble Miss Summerhayes, Ju? It is very interesting for us,
but not for--a stranger----”
“That is what I have just been saying, Mr. Harwood.”
“--Who can’t take any particular interest, except just as a wonder and a
thing to talk about, in what happens to us?”
Dolff’s hands were thrust to the very bottom of his pockets, his
shoulders were up to his ears, his head upon his breast. Gloom and anger
and misery were on Dolff’s face. As for Janet, she had stiffened more
and more with every word he said, and Julia, who had been clinging, with
all a child’s affection, to the arm of her governess, felt herself
repulsed and detached, she could not tell how, and protested loudly:
“Janet, because Dolff is disagreeable that’s no reason for shaking me
off!”
“I have no intention of being disagreeable,” said Dolff, walking slowly
with them. “I only say what every one must perceive to be the fact. We
have all supposed there was a miracle to be performed, and Miss
Summerhayes was to think of us as if--as if--she was, as you say, Ju,
one of the family; but she does not feel like that; our affairs are
nothing to her--only something that is odd and makes a story to talk
about, as they would be to any other stranger.”
“Oh, if you are going to quarrel!” said Julia, “you had better get it
over between yourselves. I don’t like people who are quarrelling. You
had better have it out with him, Janet, and then perhaps he will not be
so dreadful as he has been all these days.”
“There is nothing for us to quarrel about. I am, as Mr. Harwood says,
only a stranger,” said Janet, endeavoring to hold the girl’s hand upon
her arm.
But Julia slipped it out and ran indoors, not without a thought that she
had managed matters well. Julia had long ago made up her mind that a
romantic attachment between Dolff and Janet would add great interest to
her own life, and that the probable struggles of a love that would not
run too smooth would be very desirable for a young lady to witness. And
Dolff, under Janet’s influence, had been so much “nicer” than Dolff
without that. He had stayed at home; he had been ready for anything
(though there was always too much of that horrid music), he had not
objected even to a round game. It was true that all these domestic
pleasures had come to an end since Charley Meredith’s accident. But
Julia, in her inexperience, could not see why they might not come to an
explanation and “get over it,” and everything go on as before.
Janet did not follow her pupil as she would have liked to do. She
consented to the explanation as it seemed necessary, but she neither
hoped nor intended that everything should go on as before.
“Yes,” said Dolff, “you are only a stranger, Miss Summerhayes. My
mother, I think, took to you as if you had been her own, and everybody
was at your feet, but you did not respond--that is to say, you were very
kind, and the things you could not help but see, being in the house with
us, though we never saw them who belonged to it, you told--as amusing
incidents, I suppose, to----”
“What did I tell, Mr. Harwood?”
“Oh, I have not been taken into anyone’s confidence. You gave
information--you heard him say it--which made a secret meeting
necessary, and--all that followed. One might say,” said Dolff, with a
cheerless laugh, “that everything had followed. I went mad, I suppose,
for a little while; and you know as well as I do what I did. Oh, I am
very well aware that you know. You saved me in your way after you had
ruined me. Fellows say that women are like that--driving you mad first,
and then---- But I never was one that talked about women--till I knew
you.”
“I am very sorry,” said Janet, “to have given you a bad opinion of
women; but I don’t know why Mr. Meredith----” Here her voice faltered a
little in spite of herself.
“Ah!” cried Dolff, fiercely, “you have found out that fellow is not
worth his salt, yet you could cry when you say his name.”
“It is nothing of the sort,” exclaimed Janet. “_I_ cry--for any man in
the world! You don’t know me, Mr. Harwood. Mr. Meredith, I remember,
walked home a part of the road with me, as it was a dark night. There
are some men who think that is a right thing when they meet a lady
alone; and, though I am the governess, I am not very old. I think it
very old-fashioned, and unnecessary, and I am not afraid to go anywhere
alone.”
“You know very well if you had wished for an escort, Miss
Summerhayes----”
“Yes, Mrs. Harwood would have liked her son to be at the command of the
governess! Mr. Meredith walked home with me out of a civility which is
old-fashioned, and he stood talking, which it seems is his way--with
ladies. A man like that,” said Janet, almost fiercely, “will never learn
that all girls are not alike, and that some detest these old-fashioned
ways of being polite. But there was not in all that any reason for
knocking the man down. I supposed when I saw it that you were, perhaps,
working out some old quarrel.”
“You thought,” said Dolff, grinding his teeth, “that I had watched him,
and flew at him, by premeditation, to take him at a disadvantage--not
because I was driven mad to see him holding you by the hands.”
“How could I know one thing or another? There was no reason for anyone
being mad about me: I can take care of myself without anyone
interfering. But I did not want any scandal, I do not want to be mixed
up in it; when a girl’s name is mentioned it is always she that gets the
whole blame. You know what they say, ‘Oh, there was a woman at the
bottom of it.’ Now, I had done nothing wrong, I was not at the bottom of
it. Whatever you choose to say, it was no doing of mine.”
“One of the things that fellow says,” said Dolff, “is that a woman has
always reasons to show she is never wrong.”
“They say everything that is brutal and cruel,” said Janet, with a sound
of tears in her voice, “and therefore I was determined not to be mixed
up in it: and I did my best to save you from what was--not a very fine
action, Mr. Harwood. You did take him at a disadvantage. I don’t doubt
that you were very angry, though you had no reason----”
“If you think it was all for you!” cried Dolff, transported with boyish
passion and anxious to give a blow in his turn. “But to think of that
fellow, jeering and laughing at everybody, those who trusted in him----”
“You see,” said Janet, with a smile, “that I was right when I said I was
not at the bottom of it!”
Dolff gave her a look which might have killed her where she stood, had
the fire which passion struck even from his dull eyes been effectual,
and yet which had in it a strange mixture of love and hate. He was not
clever enough, however, to note that in Janet’s smile there was a
mixture, too, of malicious triumph and of mortification; for,
notwithstanding all that she had said, it would no doubt have been more
agreeable to Janet’s pride to have been told that the sudden assault was
entirely on her own account from fierce jealousy and passion. She was a
little girl who was full of reason, and understood the complication of
things, yet there was enough of the primitive in her to have been
pleased, even had she not fully believed it, by such an asseveration as
that.
“In that case,” she said, “I don’t know what you have to find fault with
me. I did my best to smooth it all away that nobody might have known
anything. What use is there in telling things that are so easily
misrepresented? If it would shock anyone who trusted in him to know that
Mr. Meredith had walked home with the governess----”
“Oh,” cried Dolff, “you will drive me out of my senses! who calls you
the governess, Miss Summerhayes?”
“I do myself,” said Janet, “it is my right title. I never have been one
of those who despise it; but if it would vex anyone--who trusted in
him--to hear that Mr. Meredith had walked home because it was dark and
late with the----”
“You are very anxious to defend Meredith,” said Dolff, bitterly.
“Am I?” cried Janet. There was a dart out of her eyes at that moment
that was more powerful than any dull spark that could come from Dolff’s.
“If I am,” she added, with a laugh, “it is only for the sake of those
who, as you say, trust in him, Mr. Harwood. For me I find those
old-fashioned ways of his intolerable. He is like a man in an old
novel,” cried Janet, “who kisses the maid and gives her half-a-crown,
and is what is called civil to every girl. It is eighteenth-century--it
is mock Lovelace--it is the most antiquated vanity and conceit. And he
thinks that he takes people in by it, which shows how foolish and
imbecile it is, besides being the worst taste in the world!”
Dolff stared open-eyed at this tirade. He had a faint idea that Lovelace
meant a seductive villain, but what Meredith had to do with the
eighteenth century, or how he was old-fashioned, this young man, devoid
of literature, understood not at all. He did understand, however, that
Janet was angry with Meredith, and this went to his heart. The dull
yellow sky began to look a little clearer. It became a possibility that
things might brighten, that a new world might arise, that these misty
shadows might blow away.
“If I could think,” he said, “that you ever could forget all this, Miss
Summerhayes. I heard you taking my mother’s part with Ju: and you are
thinking of Gussy, who doesn’t deserve it very much, perhaps, and you
have saved me: for I never could have faced it out but for what you said
to me--though I have seemed so ungrateful: and if you think it possible
that we could all forget what has happened--in time----”
“No,” said Janet, “I think there are several things in it which neither
you nor I could ever forget.”
“I am not so sure,” said Dolff. “It would depend upon you. If you would
promise never to see or speak to----”
“Whom?” said Janet, rising several inches out of her shoes, and looking
down upon him with a glance that froze Dolff; and then she added,
interrogatively, “For you?” and, turning round upon her heel, walked
away into the house without a glance behind.