There are times when Nemesis appears unwitting at the door of a doomed
house, and, however unlikely that might be, before she crosses the
threshold, with the mere wind of her coming, the cunning webs of deceit
are shattered, the blow of vengeance falls. But there are other cases in
which Nemesis comes and stands in the doorway and departs again
innoxious, either because some veil has been thrown over her
clear-sighted eyes, or because the heart of that inexorable goddess has
failed.
Nemesis turned and departed from the house of the Harwoods when Dr.
Harding went upstairs to the school-room with his little Janet. The
middle-aged gentleman there spent an ecstatic hour, the happiest of his
life, and he forgot that there were such people as the Harwoods in
existence, or anybody worth thinking of except the little girl who had
called him to come and take her to himself-- Janet, who had flung him
over that dark October evening on the edge of the windy common at
Clover, but who had now whistled him back and put her little hand in
his.
Which was more true to her real meaning--her refusal then, or her
delighted acceptance now? The doctor never asked himself any such
questions. He was too happy to be allowed to think that when Janet
compared the others, all the rest of the world, with him, who had loved
her since she was a baby, she had found that none were so much to her
taste as her old lover. That she had “them all” at her feet, Dr.
Harding had no doubt--how could it be otherwise? seeing there was no one
like her, no one! It seemed clear enough to him that both that cool
fellow downstairs who had taken the management of the business, and the
dolt--Dolff--what did they call him? had been at Janet’s feet, and had
been rejected. The young fellows had done him a good turn. They had
shown this little captivating creature, this darling little capricious
woman who did not know her own mind, that there was nobody like her old
doctor after all.
When he took his departure that night for the hotel where he meant to
stay until he could take Janet down to Clover to the vicarage from which
he was to marry her, there was no thought in his disturbed and rapturous
mind of the awful part which for a moment he had seemed about to play.
Not Nemesis--but Dr. Harding, an old fellow in love, and more silly than
any boy.
As for Janet, when her old lover left her, her little head was partly
turned by his raptures, and by the opinion he had of her as if she had
been a queen, and all the gratitude and honor he seemed to think he owed
her. A little thing who had not a penny, and who, indeed, had thrown
herself into his arms in a kind of despair because of her first
disappointment and disgust with the world. But he did not know that at
all, and she scarcely remembered it, when he took his leave with a
privileged kiss which made her cheeks burn, and a promise to come for
her as early as possible in the morning, to take her out shopping, to
buy what she would want against the great event, which was to be delayed
only as long as was necessary--not a day longer, he vowed.
“For you have cheated me out of six months,” he said. “I might have had
you six months ago.”
“Oh, no, no, Dr. Harding,” said Janet, with gravity, remembering that
nothing in the world would then have made her accept the old doctor.
But she had no such feeling as that now. She did not even remember that
he was a _pis aller_, and she looked forward to to-morrow, when she was
to be taken out shopping, and to buy such things as she had never hoped
for--dinner-dresses, morning-dresses ball-dresses; for she would require
a great deal of dress, she had the sense to perceive, in that great rich
town in the north, which was so very different from Clover.
Janet could scarcely think for the moment of anything beyond this, for
it was a delight she had never enjoyed before. To buy, is a pleasure to
every woman--to get a number of new dresses, is a delight to any girl.
If these things are accompanied by a heartbreak, as when she is going to
be forced to marry a man whom she does not love, the pleasure
evaporates. But this was not Janet’s case. She had made up her mind to
have her old doctor, it is true, in a moment of pique and
disappointment, and perhaps if he had come instantly as she had
expected, if he had not kept her waiting, if he had been still only the
doctor of Clover--but none of these things had been. Her heart had been
racked with the thought that he, too, had forsaken her; and then he had
arrived a new man, in those new, well-cut clothes, with all the
confidence of a great success about him.
And he had no sooner appeared than he had taken a commanding position.
The father of the family had been in his hand. Dolff was nothing but a
foolish boy beside him, and even Meredith--Dr. Harding had held the
upper hand easily of them all. He had been able to put aside Janet while
that crisis which she but half understood was going on, and then he had
come back to her, and poured out gratitude and admiration; and she was
to have a handsome house in Liverpool, where there was a great deal of
gayety, a great deal of wealth--and a carriage--and a day of shopping
to-morrow with nothing to do but to say, “I like this,” or “I like
that!”
Thus Janet’s mind was satisfied, and her fancy delighted. Those little
vagaries which had troubled her rest had all dropped into oblivion.
Meredith? Yes, he was going to marry Miss Harwood, to struggle into a
practice at the Bar, though he was not at all hardworking, and probably
would never be known except as an amateur tenor among his friends. Janet
wondered maliciously whether they would sing as much together after they
were married, or, if not, what they would do to amuse themselves? and
could not help the reflection that Gussy’s accompaniments would probably
tire her husband, and that he would not conceal the fact from her in
these after days. She wished them no harm whatever, none at all, they
had done her no harm: but still in her own room, as she was going to
bed, Janet could not but laugh at this thought.
Mrs. Harwood had recovered in the most wonderful way. It was she who
kept up the conversation at dinner, talking to Dr. Harding of old
friends, and, with her head high and another cap on, looking as if
agitation or trouble had never come her way. She kept it up all the
evening with a courage that never faltered. It happened before they all
separated for the night that there was a moment in which Meredith and
she were left alone. He went up to her, and took her hand in his.
“You are wonderful!” he said. “I could not have thought it possible. You
are able for any emergency.”
She began to cry a little, with a laugh running through the sobs.
“Oh, Charley,” she said, “I hope it will all be forgiven me. What could
I do? I had to hold by it. And what would that have been among so many?
I shall be able to do justice to Gussy.”
“No,” he said, ignoring these last words, “it would have been nothing
among so many.”
“You see that, too?” said Mrs. Harwood. And then she added, raising her
hands in an appeal to the roof or the skies, “Heaven knows that it was
_them_ I thought of--my children--always, always! all the time.”
Nobody was aware of this momentary confidence, for Gussy came into the
room a little afterwards, and Meredith led her up to her mother.
“Of course,” he said, “you have known it, dear Mrs. Harwood, for long,
and, though there has been nothing absolutely said between us, I think
that Gussy and I have understood each other for a long time. You will
give her to me, won’t you? I will try to be worthy of her.”
Mrs. Harwood’s eyes were filled with tears. There was no hypocrisy in
this, nothing but nature.
“That I will, with all my heart, Charley!” she cried, and held out her
arms to her daughter, who in the moment of emotion forgot everything,
and forgave her mother who had done so much--had she done so much?--for
her children. Gussy did not know all that the mother had done, nor at
what cost she herself was to be “done justice to.” She only knew that
there had been clouds upon the domestic firmament, and that they were
now all blown away by delicious breezes of happiness and sweet content.
Everything was arranged afterwards with the authorities, and Adolphus
Harwood, proved to be a harmless though hopeless lunatic, was left in
the custody of his wife. When the story stole out, it was as the story
of a wife’s devotion, which indeed it was, in some sort. It was said
that he had wandered back to England, scarcely recognizable in his
madness after he was supposed to be dead, and that she had then and
there taken the tremendous task upon her of concealing him, caring for
him, watching and providing for his safety and comfort. It was a
tremendous task: nobody could exaggerate the weight of the burden that
had been upon her shoulders. And those of the victims who heard of it in
faint rumors after a time, were more disposed to shed tears over Mrs.
Harwood’s martyr life and her wonderful devotion then to take any
steps--if any had been possible--to interfere with her custody of the
madman.
The vengeance of Heaven had overtaken that criminal who had been the
ruin of so many. And, as for his poor wife, what was she but the first
of the victims, the one who had suffered most? The story of the
pocket-book with which he was going to pay up every claim touched still
more the hearts of those who heard it. They thought it proved that,
underneath all the misdoings which had overwhelmed his brain, there had
still been an honest instinct, and that perhaps he had never intended
but to give the money back. If Dr. Harding felt sometimes, when he
looked back upon that strange scene, that there was something beneath,
he was the only one to whom that idea came. And nobody suspected even,
what there had been in the pocket-book the first time Adolphus Harwood’s
wife got it into her hands!
Dolff threw up the university, which did him but little good, and the
music-halls, which did him less, and went down to the little property in
Wales which had come to him from his grandfather. Notwithstanding that
scene with Dr. Harding, he never understood clearly what his father had
done. He married there, and was in a small way a gentleman farmer, and
got perhaps as much good out of his life as if he had pursued the course
his mother intended. Perhaps on the whole, even she admitted, it was as
well that the name of Adolphus Harwood, which is a conspicuous name,
should not flourish at the Bar, which was a thankless profession; and
where even Charley Meredith, who had been always thought so clever, did
not flourish as people had hoped, though fortunately he and his wife
were sufficiently well off not to care.
As for Janet, the little governess, the wife of the great Liverpool
doctor, who acquired such fame in that northern capital, and was
knighted, and as great a man as any in the place, her career is too
brilliant for these simple pages. And yet when I say that she was beyond
question the best-dressed woman in the north of Lancashire, which is
saying a great deal, where could there be found a sign more eloquent of
the apotheosis and grand culmination of a favorable fate?
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of a Governess, by Margaret Oliphant