“You were here when I fainted, were you not?” Mercy began. “You must
think me a sad coward, even for a woman.”
He shook his head. “I am far from thinking that,” he replied. “No
courage could have sustained the shock which fell on you. I don’t wonder
that you fainted. I don’t wonder that you have been ill.”
She paused in rolling up the ball of wool. What did those words of
unexpected sympathy mean? Was he laying a trap for her? Urged by that
serious doubt, she questioned him more boldly.
“Horace tells me you have been abroad,” she said. “Did you enjoy your
holiday?”
“It was no holiday. I went abroad because I thought it right to make
certain inquiries--” He stopped there, unwilling to return to a subject
that was painful to her.
Her voice sank, her fingers trembled round the ball of wool; but she
managed to go on.
“Did you arrive at any results?” she asked.
“At no results worth mentioning.”
The caution of that reply renewed her worst suspicions of him. In sheer
despair, she spoke out plainly.
“I want to know your opinion--” she began.
“Gently!” said Julian. “You are entangling the wool again.”
“I want to know your opinion of the person who so terribly frightened
me. Do you think her--”
“Do I think her--what?”
“Do you think her an adventuress?”
(As she said those words the branches of a shrub in the conservatory
were noiselessly parted by a hand in a black glove. The face of Grace
Roseberry appeared dimly behind the leaves. Undiscovered, she had
escaped from the billiard-room, and had stolen her way into the
conservatory as the safer hiding-place of the two. Behind the shrub she
could see as well as listen. Behind the shrub she waited as patiently as
ever.)
“I take a more merciful view,” Julian answered. “I believe she is acting
under a delusion. I don’t blame her: I pity her.”
“You pity her?” As Mercy repeated the words, she tore off Julian’s hands
the last few lengths of wool left, and threw the imperfectly wound skein
back into the basket. “Does that mean,” she resumed, abruptly, “that you
believe her?”
Julian rose from his seat, and looked at Mercy in astonishment.
“Good heavens, Miss Roseberry! what put such an idea as that into your
head?”
“I am little better than a stranger to you,” she rejoined, with an
effort to assume a jesting tone. “You met that person before you met
with me. It is not so very far from pitying her to believing her. How
could I feel sure that you might not suspect me?”
“Suspect _you!_” he exclaimed. “You don’t know how you distress, how you
shock me. Suspect _you!_ The bare idea of it never entered my mind. The
man doesn’t live who trusts you more implicitly, who believes in you
more devotedly, than I do.”
His eyes, his voice, his manner, all told her that those words came from
the heart. She contrasted his generous confidence in her (the confidence
of which she was unworthy) with her ungracious distrust of him. Not only
had she wronged Grace Roseberry--she had wronged Julian Gray. Could she
deceive him as she had deceived the others? Could she meanly accept
that implicit trust, that devoted belief? Never had she felt the base
submissions which her own imposture condemned her to undergo with a
loathing of them so overwhelming as the loathing that she felt now. In
horror of herself, she turned her head aside in silence and shrank from
meeting his eye. He noticed the movement, placing his own interpretation
on it. Advancing closer, he asked anxiously if he had offended her.
“You don’t know how your confidence touches me,” she said, without
looking up. “You little think how keenly I feel your kindness.”
She checked herself abruptly. Her fine tact warned her that she was
speaking too warmly--that the expression of her gratitude might strike
him as being strangely exaggerated. She handed him her work-basket
before he could speak again.
“Will you put it away for me?” she asked, in her quieter tones. “I don’t
feel able to work just now.”
His back was turned on her for a moment, while he placed the basket on a
side-table. In that moment her mind advanced at a bound from present to
future. Accident might one day put the true Grace in possession of the
proofs that she needed, and might reveal the false Grace to him in the
identity that was her own. What would he think of her then? Could she
make him tell her without betraying herself? She determined to try.
“Children are notoriously insatiable if you once answer their questions,
and women are nearly as bad,” she said, when Julian returned to her.
“Will your patience hold out if I go back for the third time to the
person whom we have been speaking of?”
“Try me,” he answered, with a smile.
“Suppose you had _not_ taken your merciful view of her?”
“Yes?”
“Suppose you believed that she was wickedly bent on deceiving others for
a purpose of her own--would you not shrink from such a woman in horror
and disgust?”
“God forbid that I should shrink from any human creature!” he answered,
earnestly. “Who among us has a right to do that?”
She hardly dared trust herself to believe him. “You would still pity
her?” she persisted, “and still feel for her?”
“With all my heart.”
“Oh, how good you are!”
He held up his hand in warning. The tones of his voice deepened, the
luster of his eyes brightened. She had stirred in the depths of that
great heart the faith in which the man lived--the steady principle which
guided his modest and noble life.
“No!” he cried. “Don’t say that! Say that I try to love my neighbor as
myself. Who but a Pharisee can believe that he is better than another?
The best among us to-day may, but for the mercy of God, be the worst
among us tomorrow. The true Christian virtue is the virtue which never
despairs of a fellow-creature. The true Christian faith believes in Man
as well as in God. Frail and fallen as we are, we can rise on the wings
of repentance from earth to heaven. Humanity is sacred. Humanity has its
immortal destiny. Who shall dare say to man or woman, ‘There is no hope
in you?’ Who shall dare say the work is all vile, when that work bears
on it the stamp of the Creator’s hand?”
He turned away for a moment, struggling with the emotion which she had
roused in him.
Her eyes, as they followed him, lighted with a momentary
enthusiasm--then sank wearily in the vain regret which comes too late.
Ah! if he could have been her friend and her adviser on the fatal day
when she first turned her steps toward Mablethorpe House! She sighed
bitterly as the hopeless aspiration wrung her heart. He heard the sigh;
and, turning again, looked at her with a new interest in his face.
“Miss Roseberry,” he said.
She was still absorbed in the bitter memories of the past: she failed to
hear him.
“Miss Roseberry,” he repeated, approaching her.
She looked up at him with a start.
“May I venture to ask you something?” he said, gently.
She shrank at the question.
“Don’t suppose I am speaking out of mere curiosity,” he went on.
“And pray don’t answer me unless you can answer without betraying any
confidence which may have been placed in you.”
“Confidence!” she repeated. “What confidence do you mean?”
“It has just struck me that you might have felt more than a common
interest in the questions which you put to me a moment since,” he
answered. “Were you by any chance speaking of some unhappy woman--not
the person who frightened you, of course--but of some other woman whom
you know?”
Her head sank slowly on her bosom. He had plainly no suspicion that she
had been speaking of herself: his tone and manner both answered for it
that his belief in her was as strong as ever. Still those last words
made her tremble; she could not trust herself to reply to them.
He accepted the bending of her head as a reply.
“Are you interested in her?” he asked next.
She faintly answered this time. “Yes.”
“Have you encouraged her?”
“I have not dared to encourage her.”
His face lighted up suddenly with enthusiasm. “Go to her,” he said, “and
let me go with you and help you!”
The answer came faintly and mournfully. “She has sunk too low for that!”
He interrupted her with a gesture of impatience.
“What has she done?” he asked.
“She has deceived--basely deceived--innocent people who trusted her. She
has wronged--cruelly wronged--another woman.”
For the first time Julian seated himself at her side. The interest that
was now roused in him was an interest above reproach. He could speak to
Mercy without restraint; he could look at Mercy with a pure heart.
“You judge her very harshly,” he said. “Do _you_ know how she may have
been tried and tempted?”
There was no answer.
“Tell me,” he went on, “is the person whom she has injured still
living?”
“Yes.”
“If the person is still living, she may atone for the wrong. The time
may come when this sinner, too, may win our pardon and deserve our
respect.”
“Could _you_ respect her?” Mercy asked, sadly. “Can such a mind as yours
understand what she has gone through?”
A smile, kind and momentary, brightened his attentive face.
“You forget my melancholy experience,” he answered. “Young as I am, I
have seen more than most men of women who have sinned and suffered. Even
after the little that you have told me, I think I can put myself in
her place. I can well understand, for instance, that she may have been
tempted beyond human resistance. Am I right?”
“You are right.”
“She may have had nobody near at the time to advise her, to warn her, to
save her. Is that true?”
“It is true.”
“Tempted and friendless, self-abandoned to the evil impulse of the
moment, this woman may have committed herself headlong to the act which
she now vainly repents. She may long to make atonement, and may not
know how to begin. All her energies may be crushed under the despair and
horror of herself, out of which the truest repentance grows. Is such
a woman as this all wicked, all vile? I deny it! She may have a noble
nature; and she may show it nobly yet. Give her the opportunity she
needs, and our poor fallen fellow-creature may take her place again
among the best of us--honored, blameless, happy, once more!”
Mercy’s eyes, resting eagerly on him while he was speaking, dropped
again despondingly when he had done.
“There is no such future as that,” she answered, “for the woman whom I
am thinking of. She has lost her opportunity. She has done with hope.”
Julian gravely considered with himself for a moment.
“Let us understand each other,” he said. “She has committed an act of
deception to the injury of another woman. Was that what you told me?”
“Yes.”
“And she has gained something to her own advantage by the act.”
“Yes.”
“Is she threatened with discovery?”
“She is safe from discovery--for the present, at least.”
“Safe as long as she closes her lips?”
“As long as she closes her lips.”
“There is her opportunity!” cried Julian. “Her future is before her. She
has not done with hope!”
With clasped hands, in breathless suspense, Mercy looked at that
inspiriting face, and listened to those golden words.
“Explain yourself,” she said. “Tell her, through me, what she must do.”
“Let her own the truth,” answered Julian, “without the base fear of
discovery to drive her to it. Let her do justice to the woman whom she
has wronged, while that woman is still powerless to expose her. Let her
sacrifice everything that she has gained by the fraud to the sacred duty
of atonement. If she can do that--for conscience’ sake, and for pity’s
sake--to her own prejudice, to her own shame, to her own loss--then her
repentance has nobly revealed the noble nature that is in her; then she
is a woman to be trusted, respected, beloved! If I saw the Pharisees and
fanatics of this lower earth passing her by in contempt, I would hold
out my hand to her before them all. I would say to her in her solitude
and her affliction, ‘Rise, poor wounded heart! Beautiful, purified soul,
God’s angels rejoice over you! Take your place among the noblest of
God’s creatures!’”
In those last sentences he unconsciously repeated the language in which
he had spoken, years since, to his congregation in the chapel of the
Refuge. With tenfold power and tenfold persuasion they now found their
way again to Mercy’s heart. Softly, suddenly, mysteriously, a change
passed over her. Her troubled face grew beautifully still. The shifting
light of terror and suspense vanished from her grand gray eyes, and left
in them the steady inner glow of a high and pure resolve.
There was a moment of silence between them. They both had need of
silence. Julian was the first to speak again.
“Have I satisfied you that her opportunity is still before her?” he
asked. “Do you feel, as I feel, that she has _not_ done with hope?”
“You have satisfied me that the world holds no truer friend to her than
you,” Mercy answered, gently and gratefully. “She shall prove herself
worthy of your generous confidence in her. She shall show you yet that
you have not spoken in vain.”
Still inevitably failing to understand her, he led the way to the door.
“Don’t waste the precious time,” he said. “Don’t leave her cruelly to
herself. If you can’t go to her, let me go as your messenger, in your
place.”
She stopped him by a gesture. He took a step back into the room, and
paused, observing with surprise that she made no attempt to move from
the chair that she occupied.
“Stay here,” she said to him, in suddenly altered tones.
“Pardon me,” he rejoined, “I don’t understand you.”
“You will understand me directly. Give me a little time.”
He still lingered near the door, with his eyes fixed inquiringly on
her. A man of a lower nature than his, or a man believing in Mercy less
devotedly than he believed, would now have felt his first suspicion of
her. Julian was as far as ever from suspecting her, even yet. “Do you
wish to be alone?” he asked, considerately. “Shall I leave you for a
while and return again?”
She looked up with a start of terror. “Leave me?” she repeated, and
suddenly checked herself on the point of saying more. Nearly half the
length of the room divided them from each other. The words which she
was longing to say were words that would never pass her lips unless she
could see some encouragement in his face. “No!” she cried out to him, on
a sudden, in her sore need, “don’t leave me! Come back to me!”
He obeyed her in silence. In silence, on her side, she pointed to the
chair near her. He took it. She looked at him, and checked herself
again; resolute to make her terrible confession, yet still hesitating
how to begin. Her woman’s instinct whispered to her, “Find courage in
his touch!” She said to him, simply and artlessly said to him, “Give
me encouragement. Give me strength. Let me take your hand.” He neither
answered nor moved. His mind seemed to have become suddenly preoccupied;
his eyes rested on her vacantly. He was on the brink of discovering her
secret; in another instant he would have found his way to the truth. In
that instant, innocently as his sister might have taken it, she took
his hand. The soft clasp of her fingers, clinging round his, roused
his senses, fired his passion for her, swept out of his mind the pure
aspirations which had filled it but the moment before, paralyzed his
perception when it was just penetrating the mystery of her disturbed
manner and her strange words. All the man in him trembled under the
rapture of her touch. But the thought of Horace was still present to
him: his hand lay passive in hers; his eyes looked uneasily away from
her.
She innocently strengthened her clasp of his hand. She innocently said
to him, “Don’t look away from me. Your eyes give me courage.”
His hand returned the pressure of hers. He tasted to the full the
delicious joy of looking at her. She had broken down his last reserves
of self-control. The thought of Horace, the sense of honor, became
obscured in him. In a moment more he might have said the words which he
would have deplored for the rest of his life, if she had not stopped him
by speaking first. “I have more to say to you,” she resumed abruptly,
feeling the animating resolution to lay her heart bare before him at
last; “more, far more, than I have said yet. Generous, merciful friend,
let me say it _here!_”
She attempted to throw herself on her knees at his feet. He sprung from
his seat and checked her, holding her with both his hands, raising her
as he rose himself. In the words which had just escaped her, in the
startling action which had accompanied them, the truth burst on him. The
guilty woman she had spoken of was herself!
While she was almost in his arms, while her bosom was just touching his,
before a word more had passed his lips or hers, the library door opened.
Lady Janet Roy entered the room.