JANET had been so quickly summoned downstairs after her strange adventure that she had no leisure to think it over, until, about the time when Mr. Meredith set out on his walk, she escaped upstairs. Meredith had been the very last to go away, he had stayed for the little family supper which the house-party had made after the guests were gone. He was evidently regarded, in short, entirely as one of the family, and in that capacity claimed Mrs. Harwood’s applause for his exertions in making everything “go off.”
“I have danced with all the plainest women,” he said, “and taken at least three dowagers in to supper. I ought to be very much petted now to make up.”
Mrs. Harwood looked from him to Gussy uncertain what to reply. But Gussy did not meet her mother’s eyes, as she most certainly would have done had there been anything to tell.
“Oh, yes, you have been of great use,” she said, “I don’t know what we should have done without you. But I don’t believe in such magnanimity as that. And you ought to be more civil about the dowagers when you are talking to me.”
“You are not a dowager—you are the head of the house,” Meredith said, bending over her affectionately to say good-night.
It was not possible that Janet could be otherwise than on the watch, considering her own share of his attentions during the evening. He had cast a laughing glance at her when he spoke of the plain women, and when he turned to leave the house he shot another look of leave-taking, tender yet laughing too, over the head of Julia, who was still at supper, consuming as many forbidden dainties as was possible in the short space of time that remained. Meredith put his hand on Julia’s shoulder, which she flung off with a rapid twist, and said good-night to Janet with his eyes, so that nobody could see; and then he turned round with a laugh, complaining that all his civilities to Ju were without effect. Gussy, who was pleased by this supposed attempt to conciliate her young sister, accompanied him with Dolff to the floor. And Janet could not but wonder what kind of farewell would take place there, with something between mirth and misery in her heart.
Oh, he was not true. It was certain that he was not true; but we do not somehow condemn the man who cheats another on our account, as we denounce him when he deceives us on account of another. The two things are different. He should not perhaps have pretended to be affectionate to Julia in order to be at liberty to look love at Janet; but the expedient prompted Janet to laugh. There is always something that tempts the lookers-on to laugh in a lover’s wiles. And the person who is preferred is apt to pardon and take such deceits lightly. How could he otherwise have found it possible to give her that parting look? And Julia’s wrench of her shoulder made Janet laugh in spite of herself. How ridiculous of the girl to suppose that it was for her he did that!
And, to tell the truth, Janet could not think of the leading incident of the night for the shadow of these other things which pushed in front as if they were more important. What he had said to her—what he had looked, which was more than what he had said, the touch of his hand, the curious union that had been formed between them by their mutual discovery, that discovery which was owing to Janet, and which her observations had alone made possible—all these things were in her mind rather than the discovery itself. When she tried to think of it she found herself thinking of him, and going over and over his words and his looks, and every particular of that so confidential and lover-like talk which had taken place under the shadow of the evergreens. What would Gussy have said if she had seen them sitting there? What would she have thought if she had heard them?
It gave Janet a keen prick of pleasure, of gratification, and trouble to think that the governess should be placed so much above the young lady of the house. Janet did not know what would come of it, or if anything would come of it, or if she were to blame or not. But, in the meantime, she could not help enjoying the triumph. It was not Gussy he cared about, who was so much better off, but her, little Janet the governess. She forgave him his falseness—was not everything to be forgiven to a sudden love springing up in a man’s heart when hitherto he had been giving himself up to consideration of what was best to be done in the way of a respectable marriage? She could not get these incidents out of her mind.
When she tried to think of the other matter, the thing which Meredith was studying so intently on his way home, her mind eluded that subject and came back and back to the other, the more interesting, the subject which made her youthful heart beat. She had been much excited once by her own discoveries, by the face at the window, and indeed by the scraps of paper, until she had discovered as she thought that they were only from a copy-book; and it was inconceivable how little she cared now for this far more important discovery. But then there were things more important, events more exciting to Janet’s little self, which came in the way. Her heart had suddenly been roused within her, a new life had opened before her. It was not noble, nor did it come with that elevating and purifying effect which a first love so often exercises, making all beautiful and excellent things congenial to the awakening spirit in the first fervor of that new emotion.
Janet felt guilty, she had a breathless sense of something secret, forbidden, in her excitement and happiness. The best she could feel was the mischievous clandestine pleasure of a child in balking some little rival, and triumphing over some one who had been elevated above her. She did not dare to think of Gussy, save in a ludicrous sense, as being so silly as to be taken in. Oh, how silly she was not to see that his looks, his secret inclinations, were not for her, that ever since Janet appeared upon the scene it was towards her that his thoughts had turned! She thought of Gussy only in this way, scorning her for being deceived; and there was nothing softening, ameliorating, or ennobling in Janet’s vita nuova. It was made up of clandestine communications, secret looks, communings in dark corners. There had been only one of these, and yet she felt as if it had been going on for years. And she did not know what would come of it, or if anything could come of it. He had stepped into a lover’s place without, in so many words, telling her that he loved her; without that proposal of marriage which is the inevitable formula of love to an English girl. He had said nothing about all that. Janet did not know what he intended, or if he intended anything; but this only made her heart beat all the more.
Thus two young women in that seemingly tranquil house retired to their rooms with hearts high-beating, moved to their inmost depths by Charley Meredith, who was not in the least worthy of the agitation of either, not even of Janet’s half-guilty agitated excitement which she thought love, and certainly not of the emotion which made Gussy Harwood hide her face in her hands, in humiliation and misery which all the sweetness of their recent interview could not overcome. It was sweet: and his implied assurance of the cause that kept him silent, and certainty of a definite term to the suspense, had flooded her being with happiness for the moment; but by the time she had gained the privacy of her own room, and the excitement was over, Gussy’s heart once more had sunk into the depths. To wait in this humiliating way till he should signify his pleasure, to be dependent upon him for something like life itself, to attend like a handmaiden on his leisure and his choice of a time and manner of signifying his will—all this filled Gussy with humiliation and shame, still more deeply felt in that her consciousness was pervaded by it, and she felt, even while she revolted, that her happiness was in his hands, and that she could not escape. He was not a man of great qualities, there was nothing in him to make him worthy of being the arbiter of a life. And yet, so he was.
Janet went to bed, but she found that, with all these fumes of excitement hanging about her, she could not sleep. If she dozed for a few minutes she was again with Meredith, walking along wonderful dark passages, peering through half-opened doors, seeing dreadful visions—sometimes of coffins and dead people, sometimes of threatening faces looking out upon her.
In the end Janet jumped out of bed again and lighted a candle. She had suddenly thought she heard some one touch the handle of her door, and a sudden vision—the face of the old man with his white beard seemed to spring out of the darkness before her. After all, there were but a few doors between them, doors which were sometimes left unsecured. What if, waking like herself in the middle of the night, the prisoner should find a practicable way as she had done, and come out and pass through her door as she had done through his? The impression of some one standing beside her bed was so strong upon her in the dark, that Janet made but one spring to the opposite side, and trembling, managed, though with difficulty, to strike a match.
The light relieved her from that sickening spasm of terror. There was nobody there—of course she knew there could be nobody there: but it was impossible to think of going to sleep again, thrice impossible to return to the darkness and once more imagine stealthy steps about the room and the pallid face bending over her. She put on a dressing-gown, and, taking out the scraps of paper, began with more leisure and real pains to put them together. Now that she knew it was not Dolff’s name that was written at the bottom of the page, the sense of mystery returned to her mind. It seemed impossible that his father’s copy-books should be still in being, or that it could be of any importance who saw them.
Janet shivered with cold, but it was better than lying trembling in the dark, thinking that the old man of the wing was walking about the room. And she had promised to send the bits of paper to Meredith. She put them all together, piecing them as well as she could. Sometimes she could only join a triangular or oblong scrap to a square one. Sometimes there was an absolute break which in no way could be filled out. She succeeded in making out something like this:
“I can’t get—— I want to get out. I can’t get out. I can’t g—get out: could pay—could p——can’t get——can’t get—out, out, out——Money, plenty money. Could pay, could p——but can’t, can’t, can’t get out.”
It was mere gibberish Janet thought. She knew no meaning in it. After she had worked for an hour at it, she had almost thrown it away again, feeling that it was mere nonsense; whether written by the prisoner, whether, as was more likely, some childish repetitions out of a copybook, she could not tell; but at all events nonsense, throwing no light upon anything, doing no one any good. She fixed the scraps on a sheet of paper, however, as well as she could piece them together, and especially the sprawling, childish signature “Adol——Char—es Har—w——.”
She was very cold, very tired, and sleepy by the time this task was done. She would put it in an envelope since he had asked her to do so. It would make him none the wiser, still it should be done, because he had desired it. She forgot altogether the central incident of the night as she went back to bed with little, cold feet, shivering and sleepy. The foolishness of the words she had been so carefully picking out and pasting together somehow emancipated her from her terror, they were so silly and without meaning. She did not believe, after all, they could have any connection with the mystery in the wing. But as she thought of the address, and that she must take it herself to the post lest any one should see it and think it a communication of a different kind, a thrill ran through her, and she could not help thinking of perhaps a time to come when there might be other communications that would not be so colorless. Janet’s heart felt the lifting tide of a secret happiness. She fell into a delicious drowsiness, in which all his words and looks and movements came back upon her in a maze of pleasant confusion: and then, with the privilege of her age, she fell fast asleep.
Janet posted her letter next day, glad to be rid of it; for she could not, all the morning, get over the terror in her mind lest she should pull the letter out of her pocket with her pocket-handkerchief, or somehow expose it to be looked at, and so call forth the comment which she felt already ringing in her ears, as if any one she met in the street might come up and call it out to her:
“Oh, are you in correspondence with Charley Meredith?” “What have you to say to Charley Meredith?”
She thought she could see Gussy’s look if that dreadful contingency should come to pass. It would not be she that would make that exclamation—wonder would be the sentiment in her face, wonder and a sort of mild haughtiness which Miss Harwood knew how to put on. She would take no notice. But she would never forget; she would go on wondering, perhaps divining at last: proudly and entirely ignoring that strange incident—but she would not forget it. Henceforward her eyes would have another aspect towards Janet, and even perhaps towards her lover.
Janet breathed more freely when it was safely out of her pocket and in the post-office box. Nobody could see it now; she was safe, at least for the time. It is needless to say that she added not a word, explanatory or otherwise, to that curious piece of paper. She wrote the address with the greatest care in her neatest hand. She was so girlish as to think that her pretty handwriting, the fresh glossy envelope which she selected so carefully, rejecting one which had a small speck upon it, and which was a little brown at one corner—would go to his heart, and that he would remark those signs of her care to please him. Poor little Janet! She was not a girl of lofty sentiments, nor a very loyal soul; but she was very young, and had a world of foolish expectation still in her inexperienced heart.
Thus her former terror about the mystery which she had discovered so close to her was quieted in her mind almost entirely by the coming in of something more powerful. Sometimes a vague thrill of terror would pass through her when she looked at the door so hermetically closed, the door which had once trembled and given way under her slight fingers. In the middle of the night she sometimes woke with a start thinking she heard some one at her door, afraid to open her eyes lest she should see the whiteness in her room of the white beard and pallid face.
She took to locking her door from that time, a practice for which she was much scoffed at by Julia, who discovered it at once and wished to know, satirically, what she was afraid of? Was it robbers, and did Janet think they would come up all the way to the second floor for her, instead of going at once to the pantry for the plate? Janet could not make an answer to this assault, but she continued to lock her door and to look carefully around her room every night to make sure that no one was there.
This, however, was the only effect that the vision in the wing had upon her. Another matter, far closer and more urgent, was introduced into her thoughts. There were now two people whose whole attention was bent on the sounds outside in the still evenings when they sat over their needlework, listening intently for a step, for the sound of the bell. To meet him and Gussy within the same four walls, to see his eyes turn to her, and know that Miss Harwood looked on, this was far more difficult than any mystery for Janet to bear.