JANET drew instinctively a little out of the way of the new-comer. It was not, we fear, with any intention of effacing herself, but to satisfy the spectator’s privilege of watching all that happened and understanding every new situation. The change that had come over Gussy’s countenance took her by surprise. She had not thought it possible that such an illumination and transformation could take place in so calm a face, and it betrayed Miss Harwood instantly to Janet’s quick perceptions. She was a little person whose reflections were very rapid—who saw in a moment a whole succession of possibilities. Her mind flashed from one to another in sudden surprise, conviction, imagination, asking herself was the man worth it? almost in the same flash of intelligence with which she perceived that to Gussy he was the first of men.
Janet saw various other matters in the moment of pushing back her chair. She saw that the stranger, now in the act of approaching Gussy, whose interest in him was so visible, recognized herself, and was surprised, with the slightest, scarcely visible, elevation of his eyebrows, as if asking an explanation. She saw also that Mrs. Harwood made a slight movement of pleasure in the chair which she never quitted, as if in her mind making the same little start of welcome which her daughter actually did. Janet would not perhaps have gone farther than this if her attention had not been called by another movement of a different kind. Julia, who had been lying as usual on the rug with her book between her mother’s chair and the fire—a position which she could not be persuaded or forced to resign—suddenly disappeared with a sort of scrambling sound and movement, which came in not unlike a hiss into the very different sentiment with which the welcome of the others was given. Did she actually make some such sound between her closed teeth? At all events, Janet’s rapid judgment flew to the conclusion that Julia detested while the others cherished the visitor. Her own keen eyes made an inventory of him and all his visible qualities in a moment. Was he worth it? He was well-looking, nay, very good-looking, she concluded in that instantaneous survey: but a little of the order of the barber’s block—good features, very white where whiteness was becoming, very bright in color where color was necessary: good eyes, dark, and with considerable power of expression, which he entirely understood and could manage; the whiskers of respectability carefully kept under, disturbed by no extravagance of moustache or beard; dark hair that curled in a very attractive way in close vigorous rings; not tall. This, in Janet’s opinion, was the worst thing about him; for a girl’s hero has always six feet of stature at the least. And he was perfectly well dressed in well-fitting evening clothes, which, though so generally objected to in matter of form, are yet, with their large foreground of dazzling linen and background of blackness, almost always becoming to men. All these things Janet remarked in a glance; but as for her first question, was he worth it? she had not yet come to any decision at all.
Gussy made no movement to present the stranger to the governess. She gave him a chair so near herself that Janet was obliged to draw back a little more to get herself out of the way. It was the first time that she had found herself de trop in the little circle. She was not, however, at all wounded by this, being very curious and much excited by the little drama which thus seemed to come to light under her eyes. It must have been existing for some time, Janet thought. They must have reached at least the end of the second, if not the third, act, and with quite a flush of interest she settled herself to watch its progress. Was she de trop? Would they rather she went away? Was Julia’s disappearance a signal for her—a hint that she was not wanted. These ideas passed through Janet’s head, but without disturbing her. She wanted above all things to follow this story out.
“I have only just got back to town,” said Mr. Meredith. “I have had a longer holiday than usual this year.”
“So we suppose, or I made sure we should have seen you,” said Gussy, with undisguised pleasure in her face.
“That seems like making a claim of right upon Charley’s time,” said Mrs. Harwood; “we must not do that, for it is the last thing that young men like.”
“I think Gussy understands me best,” he said, “so far as that goes. Of course I should have come in any case the first evening I had.”
Janet said to herself that they must at least have begun the third act, as they called each other by their Christian names.
“You say in any case?” said Gussy, with an inquiring look.
“Yes; fancy what was the first thing I heard to-day. I went into Mimpriss’s on my way to the Temple to get some pencils, and there was some one inquiring for books for Mrs. Harwood: so I knew that you also had reached home.”
“Oh, yes, we have been at home a long time!” said Gussy. “Mamma never likes to be long away: and Ju—you know Ju—was going down hill like an express train, getting more and more unmanageable and refractory every day.”
“But I am happy to tell you, Charley, that Miss Summerhayes seems likely to work marvels.”
This was the only thing that approached an introduction, and Janet did not know whether to take any notice. Mr. Meredith, however, jumped to his feet, and made her a bow.
“It was Miss Summerhayes I saw changing the books,” he said.
Gussy made no remark. She was not in the least disturbed by this greeting. Janet had not even the satisfaction of thinking that Miss Harwood did not wish her to seek the visitor’s acquaintance. She ignored her altogether, as if she was of absolutely no importance—which was much harder to bear, and a great surprise to the governess, who had hitherto been treated with so much regard.
“Mamma cannot do without her books,” she said, calmly. “As for me, I have not heard a note of music since you have been away.”
“We must take order about that,” he said. “I brought something with me to-night, a new thing by—what’s his name—one of the men you like. The soprano part is very nice. We can try it over to-night.”
“And how did you leave your Aunt Owen, Charley, and what are they doing down in that part of the country? Dear me, what changes I should find, to be sure, if I were to go down there again. All the Plinlimmons swept away, and my friends at the Grange, and Agatha Lloyd, and——”
“Don’t think of it, mamma,” said Gussy, humming over the air with the music in her hand, and interrupting herself to run in a few words between the bars. “Think of your own people, and how well we all are—tum—tum—ti-tum—tum—and don’t let us distress ourselves about strangers, tu-tu—tu-tu—tum-tum. Yes, I think I shall like this.”
“Your friends at the Grange have not been swept away, Mrs. Harwood. They are in perfectly good case, and made the most tender inquiries for you. I came home full of Welsh news for you; but it blows away after a day in chambers. Ask me as many questions as you please, and it will all come back.”
“Oh, never mind!” said Gussy, with an impatience quite unusual to her. “Tell us rather what you have been doing yourself. Have you had any sport? Have you met any nice people while you have been away? Have you been singing a great deal, or met anybody whose voice goes with yours?”
“Not one like you,” he said, with a glance that made Gussy’s color rise. He added, after a moment, “There were some ladies at the Lloyds’ who were very good musicians. We had a little practice now and then.
“Young ladies?” asked Gussy.
“Well—yes, some of them were young. One was a capital accompanist, and her sister’s voice was something quite remarkable. We managed that duet, don’t you know, that we never could master, of Brahm’s.”
“Oh!” said Gussy. The color went slowly out of her face, leaving her very pale and gray. “You must have enjoyed yourself very much,” she said, in a subdued tone.
“Not so much as I do—here,” he said, lowering his voice and bending towards her: and Janet, ever watching, saw Gussy’s face take fire again and glow with a tender flush. Was the man worth it? He seemed to play upon her like an instrument, blowing her upwards one moment, the next bringing her down to the ground.
All this time not the least notice had been taken of the governess, who went on with her sewing with a little thrill of observation and attention in her which ran to her very finger points. Even these finger points seemed to be roused into seeing and hearing, reading meanings, and judging looks. Janet felt as if she were sitting apart at the rehearsal of a play. In this end of the room where the personages of the drama were sitting everything was light and brightness; but the other was like an unoccupied auditorium, the lights low, and the space vacant, though quite in the depths of the scene there was an open piano with a gleam of white keys showing out of the dimness. Had Gussy left the piano open on purpose? She had been in the habit of scolding Julia for that injurious habit, but Janet now remembered that it had been left open for several nights. And where was Julia? and was it perhaps, understood that she should vanish with her pupil? All these things perplexed and disturbed Janet, who did not know what was meant.
Presently the scene changed, the dim background lighted up, and there were two people between her and the gleaming white keyboard of the piano. The episode grew more exciting than ever, for the two—lovers? surely they must be lovers—were going to sing together. Janet’s attention, however, was distracted for a moment or two by the same little stifled sound which she had heard before, and looking up she saw Julia glide from behind the curtains and come back to her place on the rug.
“Julia,” cried Mrs. Harwood, “you will end by making me frightened. What do you mean by that elfish way of stealing out and in? Can’t you have a little respect for your sister? It is not so often that she sings.”
Julia fixed upon her mother her usual dogged look, lifting her head from her book, then, to Janet’s supreme surprise, vouchsafed an answer.
“She’s so silly,” the girl said, with a glance of scorn.
“Do you hear, Miss Summerhayes?” said the old lady. “She is incorrigible. I thought we had come to an end of all that, Ju?”
Julia gave her mother another look, then returned to her book, with again a faint hiss from between her closed teeth.
“She is so much interested in her book,” Janet made haste to say. “When one gets into the heart of a story at her age one thinks of nothing else.”
“Do you think, Miss Summerhayes, that Ju ought to read so many novels?”
“I thought,” said Janet, faltering, “that it was with your permission.”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Harwood, “I thought you might have seen by this time how little they care for anything I say.”
She looked irritable, cross, disturbed, as Janet thought she had never seen her before, and moved uneasily in her chair. But she had shown no such annoyance when the visitor came in. She had received him with a cheerful welcome, and he had seemed in no doubt on that subject. Indeed, the young man had come in and taken his place among them with the familiarity and complacency of a favored visitor who expected to confer as well as to receive pleasure. That line in Mrs. Harwood’s brow had not appeared till Julia, with her dogged look, had stared into her mother’s face.
“I wish,” cried the old lady, “oh, I wish that Adolphus would come home!” and she wrung her white, plump hands with almost a tragic gesture, which was so strangely unlike her comfortable person, and all that Janet had hitherto known of her, that the little governess had hard ado not to laugh.
“Do you expect Mr. Harwood soon?” she asked.
“They are all very self-willed, Miss Summerhayes. You must have seen that, already. Gussy of course will not be guided by me. She thinks that things are meant which probably are not meant at all—except to pass the time. And Julia, though she is not more than a child, sets herself up in judgment as if she were—do you think I can do anything to stop it?—even if it were desirable to stop it. And why should I, for that matter, even if I could? It would be suitable enough. How am I to tell, Miss Summerhayes, with no one to advise me, and such self-willed children to deal with? Oh, I wish—I wish that Adolphus were here!”
Janet did not know what to make of this sudden burst of confidence. She was afraid to seem to wish to pry into her employer’s concerns, yet, with the impulse of youth, which is at once a kind meaning and a movement of vanity, wanted to say something which should be consolatory—to put forth her own little hand as a guide in the circumstances of which she was so entirely ignorant.
“I am sure, dear Mrs. Harwood, no one would do anything which they knew you really disliked—you are so good. Perhaps they don’t know that you really dislike—anything that may be going on.”
To Janet’s surprise, Mrs. Harwood received this enigmatical utterance as if it had thrown real light upon the situation. She put her handkerchief to her eyes.
“I dare say you are right, my dear. I always said you were full of understanding for so young a thing. Perhaps that’s what it is, after all. I don’t speak out. It would be much more sensible if I were to speak out.”
There was a momentary silence, and the sound of the singing came in, the two voices “going” together, rising into a burst of melody in the higher notes which made Janet pause and hold her breath. Mr. Meredith had a beautiful tenor voice, and Gussy’s, though not so good, aided the effect with a somewhat tremulous second, twining out and in of the clear and liquid masculine notes. Janet let her work drop and her attempt at consolation together, and sat rapt gazing at the pair. She was too young, too energetic, too ambitious for pure sympathy. She gazed with impatient longing to be in the midst of it.
“Oh! what a weak accompaniment!” she said to herself. “Why don’t they ask me to play it for them? She might sing to her heart’s content; but why doesn’t she ask me to play?”
Jane forgot Mrs. Harwood, whom she had been in the act of advising and consoling, and Julia, who was her special care. She could scarcely restrain herself.
“It is too much for Miss Harwood to sing and play both,” she said, with a sudden impulse, dropping her work upon the floor, half rising as if to rush to the rescue. Her own movement, however, brought her to herself; for what right had she, a stranger and a hireling, to interfere?
“Miss Summerhayes!” said Mrs. Harwood.
As this was all that was said, Janet detached her eyes from the scene at the piano, and looked at the old lady in the chair. Mrs. Harwood was talking energetically with her eyes and gestures, though she said nothing. She indicated Julia with a glance, then looked towards the door. She put her plump hands together with a little pantomimic prayer. Janet saw and understood, and sighed. She wanted to have a hand in the music; she wanted to watch the story which was going on, which as yet she did not understand. But no. Her duty lay in another direction. It was the first time that she had felt her chains.
“Julia, come, come; it is our time,” she said briskly.
Miss Harwood at the piano, who had her back turned, took no notice of the little commotion of the withdrawal; but Mr. Meredith turned round, still singing, and gave Janet a look out of those eyes which she had declared to herself were too black, too bright, too ostentatiously fringed with eyelashes—a look which meant respectful regret, a tinge of remonstrance, a veiled entreaty to stay, a sort of au revoir unspoken but eloquent. He could not make more than a slight inclination of his head, as he was singing, but the effect was that of the most deferential bow. Janet was taken altogether by surprise. Had he appreciated her position all in a moment, read her abilities in her eyes, longed to have her at the piano as she longed to be there? or was it a mere impulse of subjugation, the instinct of the conqueror who desired another victim? She was so startled that her heart jumped up suddenly like a bird as she left the room, and made one or two big beats in her ears. And then she laughed to herself apparently without any meaning at all.