IN the great emergencies of life we feel, or we act, as our dispositions
incline us. But we never think. Mercy’s mind was a blank as she
descended the stairs. On her way down she was conscious of nothing but
the one headlong impulse to get to the library in the shortest possible
space of time. Arrived at the door, the impulse capriciously left her.
She stopped on the mat, wondering why she had hurried herself, with time
to spare. Her heart sank; the fever of her excitement changed suddenly
to a chill as she faced the closed door, and asked herself the question,
Dare I go in?
Her own hand answered her. She lifted it to turn the handle of the lock.
It dropped again helplessly at her side.
The sense of her own irresolution wrung from her a low exclamation of
despair. Faint as it was, it had apparently not passed unheard. The door
was opened from within--and Horace stood before her.
He drew aside to let her pass into the room. But he never followed her
in. He stood in the doorway, and spoke to her, keeping the door open
with his hand.
“Do you mind waiting here for me?” he asked.
She looked at him, in vacant surprise, doubting whether she had heard
him aright.
“It will not be for long,” he went on. “I am far too anxious to hear
what you have to tell me to submit to any needless delays. The truth is,
I have had a message from Lady Janet.”
(From Lady Janet! What could Lady Janet want with him, at a time when
she was bent on composing herself in the retirement of her own room?)
“I ought to have said two messages,” Horace proceeded. “The first
was given to me on my way downstairs. Lady Janet wished to see me
immediately. I sent an excuse. A second message followed. Lady Janet
would accept no excuse. If I refused to go to her I should be merely
obliging her to come to me. It is impossible to risk being interrupted
in that way; my only alternative is to get the thing over as soon as
possible. Do you mind waiting?”
“Certainly not. Have you any idea of what Lady Janet wants with you?”
“No. Whatever it is, she shall not keep me long away from you. You will
be quite alone here; I have warned the servants not to show any one in.”
With those words he left her.
Mercy’s first sensation was a sensation of relief--soon lost in a
feeling of shame at the weakness which could welcome any temporary
relief in such a position as hers. The emotion thus roused merged,
in its turn, into a sense of impatient regret. “But for Lady Janet’s
message,” she thought to herself, “I might have known my fate by this
time!”
The slow minutes followed each other drearily. She paced to and fro in
the library, faster and faster, under the intolerable irritation, the
maddening uncertainty, of her own suspense. Ere long, even the spacious
room seemed to be too small for her. The sober monotony of the long
book-lined shelves oppressed and offended her. She threw open the door
which led into the dining-room, and dashed in, eager for a change of
objects, athirst for more space and more air.
At the first step she checked herself; rooted to the spot, under a
sudden revulsion of feeling which quieted her in an instant.
The room was only illuminated by the waning fire-light. A man was
obscurely visible, seated on the sofa, with his elbows on his knees and
his head resting on his hands. He looked up as the open door let in
the light from the library lamps. The mellow glow reached his face and
revealed Julian Gray.
Mercy was standing with her back to the light; her face being
necessarily hidden in deep shadow. He recognized her by her figure, and
by the attitude into which it unconsciously fell. That unsought grace,
that lithe long beauty of line, belonged to but one woman in the house.
He rose, and approached her.
“I have been wishing to see you,” he said, “and hoping that accident
might bring about some such meeting as this.”
He offered her a chair. Mercy hesitated before she took her seat. This
was their first meeting alone since Lady Janet had interrupted her at
the moment when she was about to confide to Julian the melancholy story
of the past. Was he anxious to seize the opportunity of returning to
her confession? The terms in which he had addressed her seemed to imply
it. She put the question to him in plain words,
“I feel the deepest interest in hearing all that you have still to
confide to me,” he answered. “But anxious as I may be, I will not hurry
you. I will wait, if you wish it.”
“I am afraid I must own that I do wish it,” Mercy rejoined. “Not on my
account--but because my time is at the disposal of Horace Holmcroft. I
expect to see him in a few minutes.”
“Could you give me those few minutes?” Julian asked. “I have something
on my side to say to you which I think you ought to know before you see
any one--Horace himself included.”
He spoke with a certain depression of tone which was not associated
with her previous experience of him. His face looked prematurely old and
careworn in the red light of the fire. Something had plainly happened to
sadden and to disappoint him since they had last met.
“I willingly offer you all the time that I have at my own command,”
Mercy replied. “Does what you have to tell me relate to Lady Janet?”
He gave her no direct reply. “What I have to tell you of Lady Janet,”
he said, gravely, “is soon told. So far as she is concerned you have
nothing more to dread. Lady Janet knows all.”
Even the heavy weight of oppression caused by the impending interview
with Horace failed to hold its place in Mercy’s mind when Julian
answered her in those words.
“Come into the lighted room,” she said, faintly. “It is too terrible to
hear you say that in the dark.”
Julian followed her into the library. Her limbs trembled under her.
She dropped into a chair, and shrank under his great bright eyes, as he
stood by her side looking sadly down on her.
“Lady Janet knows all!” she repeated, with her head on her breast, and
the tears falling slowly over her cheeks. “Have you told her?”
“I have said nothing to Lady Janet or to any one. Your confidence is a
sacred confidence to me, until you have spoken first.”
“Has Lady Janet said anything to you?”
“Not a word. She has looked at you with the vigilant eyes of love; she
has listened to you with the quick hearing of love--and she has found
her own way to the truth. She will not speak of it to me--she will not
speak of it to any living creature. I only know now how dearly she loved
you. In spite of herself she clings to you still. Her life, poor soul,
has been a barren one; unworthy, miserably unworthy, of such a nature as
hers. Her marriage was loveless and childless. She has had admirers, but
never, in the higher sense of the word, a friend. All the best years of
her life have been wasted in the unsatisfied longing for something to
love. At the end of her life You have filled the void. Her heart has
found its youth again, through You. At her age--at any age--is such a
tie as this to be rudely broken at the mere bidding of circumstances?
No! She will suffer anything, risk anything, forgive anything, rather
than own, even to herself, that she has been deceived in you. There is
more than her happiness at stake; there is pride, a noble pride, in such
love as hers, which will ignore the plainest discovery and deny the most
unanswerable truth. I am firmly convinced--from my own knowledge of her
character, and from what I have observed in her to-day--that she will
find some excuse for refusing to hear your confession. And more than
that, I believe (if the exertion of her influence can do it) that she
will leave no means untried of preventing you from acknowledging
your true position here to any living creature. I take a serious
responsibility on myself in telling you this--and I don’t shrink
from it. You ought to know, and you shall know, what trials and what
temptations may yet lie before you.”
He paused--leaving Mercy time to compose herself, if she wished to speak
to him.
She felt that there was a necessity for her speaking to him. He was
plainly not aware that Lady Janet had already written to her to defer
her promised explanation. This circumstance was in itself a confirmation
of the opinion which he had expressed. She ought to mention it to him;
she tried to mention it to him. But she was not equal to the effort.
The few simple words in which he had touched on the tie that bound Lady
Janet to her had wrung her heart. Her tears choked her. She could only
sign to him to go on.
“You may wonder at my speaking so positively,” he continued, “with
nothing better than my own conviction to justify me. I can only say
that I have watched Lady Janet too closely to feel any doubt. I saw the
moment in which the truth flashed on her, as plainly as I now see you.
It did not disclose itself gradually--it burst on her, as it burst on
me. She suspected nothing--she was frankly indignant at your sudden
interference and your strange language--until the time came in which
you pledged yourself to produce Mercy Merrick. Then (and then only)
the truth broke on her mind, trebly revealed to her in your words, your
voice, and your look. Then (and then only) I saw a marked change come
over her, and remain in her while she remained in the room. I dread to
think of what she may do in the first reckless despair of the discovery
that she has made. I distrust--though God knows I am not naturally a
suspicious man--the most apparently trifling events that are now taking
place about us. You have held nobly to your resolution to own the truth.
Prepare yourself, before the evening is over, to be tried and tempted
again.”
Mercy lifted her head. Fear took the place of grief in her eyes, as they
rested in startled inquiry on Julian’s face.
“How is it possible that temptation can come to me now?” she asked.
“I will leave it to events to answer that question,” he said. “You will
not have long to wait. In the meantime I have put you on your guard.”
He stooped, and spoke his next words earnestly, close at her ear. “Hold
fast by the admirable courage which you have shown thus far,” he went
on. “Suffer anything rather than suffer the degradation of yourself. Be
the woman whom I once spoke of--the woman I still have in my mind--who
can nobly reveal the noble nature that is in her. And never forget
this--my faith in you is as firm as ever!”
She looked at him proudly and gratefully.
“I am pledged to justify your faith in me,” she said. “I have put it
out of my own power to yield. Horace has my promise that I will explain
everything to him, in this room.”
Julian started.
“Has Horace himself asked it of you?” he inquired. “_He_, at least, has
no suspicion of the truth.”
“Horace has appealed to my duty to him as his betrothed wife,” she
answered. “He has the first claim to my confidence--he resents my
silence, and he has a right to resent it. Terrible as it will be to open
_his_ eyes to the truth, I must do it if he asks me.”
She was looking at Julian while she spoke. The old longing to associate
with the hard trial of the confession the one man who had felt for her,
and believed in her, revived under another form. If she could only
know, while she was saying the fatal words to Horace, that Julian was
listening too, she would be encouraged to meet the worst that could
happen! As the idea crossed her mind, she observed that Julian was
looking toward the door through which they had lately passed. In an
instant she saw the means to her end. Hardly waiting to hear the few
kind expressions of sympathy and approval which he addressed to her, she
hinted timidly at the proposal which she had now to make to him.
“Are you going back into the next room?” she asked.
“Not if you object to it,” he replied.
“I don’t object. I want you to be there.”
“After Horace has joined you?”
“Yes. After Horace has joined me.”
“Do you wish to see me when it is over?”
She summoned her resolution, and told him frankly what she had in her
mind.
“I want you to be near me while I am speaking to Horace,” she said. “It
will give me courage if I can feel that I am speaking to you as well as
to him. I can count on _your_ sympathy--and sympathy is so precious to
me now! Am I asking too much, if I ask you to leave the door unclosed
when you go back to the dining-room? Think of the dreadful trial--to him
as well as to me! I am only a woman; I am afraid I may sink under it, if
I have no friend near me. And I have no friend but you.”
In those simple words she tried her powers of persuasion on him for the
first time.
Between perplexity and distress Julian was, for the moment, at a loss
how to answer her. The love for Mercy which he dared not acknowledge was
as vital a feeling in him as the faith in her which he had been free to
avow. To refuse anything that she asked of him in her sore need--and,
more even than that, to refuse to hear the confession which it had been
her first impulse to make to _him_--these were cruel sacrifices to his
sense of what was due to Horace and of what was due to himself. But
shrink as he might, even from the appearance of deserting her, it was
impossible for him (except under a reserve which was almost equivalent
to a denial) to grant her request.
“All that I can do I will do,” he said. “The doors shall be left
unclosed, and I will remain in the next room, on this condition,
that Horace knows of it as well as you. I should be unworthy of your
confidence in me if I consented to be a listener on any other terms. You
understand that, I am sure, as well as I do.”
She had never thought of her proposal to him in this light. Woman-like,
she had thought of nothing but the comfort of having him near her. She
understood him now. A faint flush of shame rose on her pale cheeks as
she thanked him. He delicately relieved her from her embarrassment by
putting a question which naturally occurred under the circumstances.
“Where is Horace all this time?” he asked. “Why is he not here?”
“He has been called away,” she answered, “by a message from Lady Janet.”
The reply more than astonished Julian; it seemed almost to alarm him. He
returned to Mercy’s chair; he said to her, eagerly, “Are you sure?”
“Horace himself told me that Lady Janet had insisted on seeing him.”
“When?”
“Not long ago. He asked me to wait for him here while he went upstairs.”
Julian’s face darkened ominously.
“This confirms my worst fears,” he said. “Have _you_ had any
communication with Lady Janet?”
Mercy replied by showing him his aunt’s note. He read it carefully
through.
“Did I not tell you,” he said, “that she would find some excuse for
refusing to hear your confession? She begins by delaying it, simply to
gain time for something else which she has it in her mind to do. When
did you receive this note? Soon after you went upstairs?”
“About a quarter of an hour after, as well as I can guess.”
“Do you know what happened down here after you left us?”
“Horace told me that Lady Janet had offered Miss Roseberry the use of
her boudoir.”
“Any more?”
“He said that you had shown her the way to the room.”
“Did he tell you what happened after that?”
“No.”
“Then I must tell you. If I can do nothing more in this serious state
of things, I can at least prevent your being taken by surprise. In
the first place, it is right you should know that I had a motive for
accompanying Miss Roseberry to the boudoir. I was anxious (for your
sake) to make some appeal to her better self--if she had any better
self to address. I own I had doubts of my success--judging by what I
had already seen of her. My doubts were confirmed. In the ordinary
intercourse of life I should merely have thought her a commonplace,
uninteresting woman. Seeing her as I saw her while we were alone--in
other words, penetrating below the surface--I have never, in all my sad
experience, met with such a hopelessly narrow, mean, and low nature as
hers. Understanding, as she could not fail to do, what the sudden change
in Lady Janet’s behavior toward her really meant, her one idea was to
take the cruelest possible advantage of it. So far from feeling any
consideration for _you_, she was only additionally imbittered toward
you. She protested against your being permitted to claim the merit of
placing her in her right position here by your own voluntary avowal of
the truth. She insisted on publicly denouncing you, and on forcing Lady
Janet to dismiss you, unheard, before the whole household! ‘Now I can
have my revenge! At last Lady Janet is afraid of me!’ Those were her own
words--I am almost ashamed to repeat them--those, on my honor, were
her own words! Every possible humiliation to be heaped on you; no
consideration to be shown for Lady Janet’s age and Lady Janet’s
position; nothing, absolutely nothing, to be allowed to interfere with
Miss Roseberry’s vengeance and Miss Roseberry’s triumph! There is this
woman’s shameless view of what is due to her, as stated by herself in
the plainest terms. I kept my temper; I did all I could to bring her to
a better frame of mind. I might as well have pleaded--I won’t say with
a savage; savages are sometimes accessible to remonstrance, if you know
how to reach them--I might as well have pleaded with a hungry animal to
abstain from eating while food was within its reach. I had just given up
the hopeless effort in disgust, when Lady Janet’s maid appeared with a
message for Miss Roseberry from her mistress: ‘My lady’s compliments,
ma’am, and she will be glad to see you at your earliest convenience, in
her room.’”
Another surprise! Grace Roseberry invited to an interview with Lady
Janet! It would have been impossible to believe it, if Julian had not
heard the invitation given with his own ears.
“She instantly rose,” Julian proceeded. “‘I won’t keep her ladyship
waiting a moment,’ she said; ‘show me the way.’ She signed to the maid
to go out of the room first, and then turned round and spoke to me from
the door. I despair of describing the insolent exultation of her manner.
I can only repeat her words: ‘This is exactly what I wanted! I had
intended to insist on seeing Lady Janet: she saves me the trouble. I am
infinitely obliged to her.’ With that she nodded to me, and closed the
door. I have not seen her, I have not heard of her, since. For all I
know, she may be still with my aunt, and Horace may have found her there
when he entered the room.”
“What can Lady Janet have to say to her?” Mercy asked, eagerly.
“It is impossible even to guess. When you found me in the dining-room
I was considering that very question. I cannot imagine that any neutral
ground can exist on which it is possible for Lady Janet and this woman
to meet. In her present frame of mind she will in all probability insult
Lady Janet before she has been five minutes in the room. I own I am
completely puzzled. The one conclusion I can arrive at is that the note
which my aunt sent to you, the private interview with Miss Roseberry
which has followed, and the summons to Horace which has succeeded in its
turn, are all links in the same chain of events, and are all tending to
that renewed temptation against which I have already warned you.”
Mercy held up her hand for silence. She looked toward the door that
opened on the hall; had she heard a footstep outside? No. All was still.
Not a sign yet of Horace’s return.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “what would I not give to know what is going on
upstairs!”
“You will soon know it now,” said Julian. “It is impossible that our
present uncertainty can last much longer.”
He turned away, intending to go back to the room in which she had found
him. Looking at her situation from a man’s point of view, he naturally
assumed that the best service he could now render to Mercy would be to
leave her to prepare herself for the interview with Horace. Before
he had taken three steps away from her she showed him the difference
between the woman’s point of view and the man’s. The idea of considering
beforehand what she should say never entered her mind. In her horror of
being left by herself at that critical moment, she forgot every other
consideration. Even the warning remembrance of Horace’s jealous distrust
of Julian passed away from her, for the moment, as completely as if it
never had a place in her memory. “Don’t leave me!” she cried. “I can’t
wait here alone. Come back--come back!”
She rose impulsively while she spoke, as if to follow him into the
dining-room, if he persisted in leaving her.
A momentary expression of doubt crossed Julian’s face as he retraced his
steps and signed to her to be seated a gain. Could she be depended on
(he asked himself) to sustain the coming test of her resolution, when
she had not courage enough to wait for events in a room by herself?
Julian had yet to learn that a woman’s courage rises with the greatness
of the emergency. Ask her to accompany you through a field in which some
harmless cattle happen to be grazing, and it is doubtful, in nine cases
out of ten, if she will do it. Ask her, as one of the passengers in a
ship on fire, to help in setting an example of composure to the rest,
and it is certain, in nine cases out of ten, that she will do it. As
soon as Julian had taken a chair near her, Mercy was calm again.
“Are you sure of your resolution?” he asked.
“I am certain of it,” she answered, “as long as you don’t leave me by
myself.”
The talk between them dropped there. They sat together in silence, with
their eyes fixed on the door, waiting for Horace to come in.
After the lapse of a few minutes their attention was attracted by
a sound outside in the grounds. A carriage of some sort was plainly
audible approaching the house.
The carriage stopped; the bell rang; the front door was opened. Had a
visitor arrived? No voice could be heard making inquiries. No footsteps
but the servant’s footsteps crossed the hall. Along pause followed,
the carriage remaining at the door. Instead of bringing some one to the
house, it had apparently arrived to take some one away.
The next event was the return of the servant to the front door. They
listened again. Again no second footstep was audible. The door was
closed; the servant recrossed the hall; the carriage was driven away.
Judging by sounds alone, no one had arrived at the house, and no one had
left the house.
Julian looked at Mercy. “Do you understand this?” he asked.
She silently shook her head.
“If any person has gone away in the carriage,” Julian went on, “that
person can hardly have been a man, or we must have heard him in the
hall.”
The conclusion which her companion had just drawn from the noiseless
departure of the supposed visitor raised a sudden doubt in Mercy’s mind.
“Go and inquire!” she said, eagerly.
Julian left the room, and returned again, after a brief absence, with
signs of grave anxiety in his face and manner.
“I told you I dreaded the most trifling events that were passing about
us,” he said. “An event, which is far from being trifling, has just
happened. The carriage which we heard approaching along the drive turns
out to have been a cab sent for from the house. The person who has gone
away in it--”
“Is a woman, as you supposed?”
“Yes.”
Mercy rose excitedly from her chair.
“It can’t be Grace Roseberry?” she exclaimed.
“It _is_ Grace Roseberry.”
“Has she gone away alone?”
“Alone--after an interview with Lady Janet.”
“Did she go willingly?”
“She herself sent the servant for the cab.”
“What does it mean?”
“It is useless to inquire. We shall soon know.”
They resumed their seats, waiting, as they had waited already, with
their eyes on the library door.