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 little 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.”