GUSSY was the last to leave of that strange procession, of whom no one spoke to the other. She closed the door after her, and the curtains, and followed the erect figure of Dolff, drawn up as it never had been in his life before, and walking stiffly, as if carrying a new weight and occupying a position unknown. They all came into the hall, defiling solemnly one after the other, to find Mrs. Harwood deposited in her chair and awaiting them, almost as if the whole events of the evening had been a dream and she had never left that spot. It was with a strange embarrassment, however, that they looked at each other in the pale, clear light as they emerged from the doorway, almost like making new acquaintance, as if they had never seen each other before. Nobody certainly had seen Dolff in that new manifestation; nor was Gussy, she whose very existence had been wrapped up in that of Meredith, who had only lived to watch him for weeks past, recognizable. It was she who came out the last, but who made herself the first of the group.
“There may be a great many things to say,” said Gussy; “but not to-night. We have all had a great many agitations to-night. My brother has been hunted for his life. My mother has done a thing which, so far as we know, she hasn’t been able to do for years. Mr. Meredith has had a bad illness, for which it appears this unfortunate family is responsible too. I only and my little sister”—she paused here with an effort—“no; I will not pretend; I have had my share of the shock, too. We’d better all separate for the night.”
“Gussy!” cried Mrs. Harwood, with a sharp tone of appeal.
“Gussy!” cried Meredith, astonished, trying to take her hand to draw her towards him.
“Gussy!” said Dolff, with a certain indignation.
“It is of no use,” she said, quickly, “to appeal to me. I think I am the one who has been deceived all round. I thought I knew everything, and I’ve known nothing. Whatever may be the meaning of it, I for one am not able for any more to-night, and none of the rest ought to be able for it. I don’t know whether I may have been deceived there, too, about how much invalids could bear. Good-night, mamma. I advise you to get to bed.”
Gussy waved her hand to the others without a word, and walked upstairs without turning her head. The sudden failure of a perfect faith in all the world, such as she had entertained without entering into complications for which her mind was not adapted, is no small matter. It is alarming even for others to see. They all stood for a moment huddled together as if a rock or a tower had fallen before their eyes. They could scarcely see each other for the dust and darkness it made. All the other events of this startling night seemed to fall into the background. Gussy! who had been the central prop of the house, who had kept everybody together, done everything! When she thus threw up her arms they were all left in dismay, and fell into an assemblage of atoms, of units—no longer a united party ready to meet all comers.
Meredith, perhaps, he who had been the most eager, was the most discomfited of all. He had claimed Gussy’s interest as his right for years. When she thus withdrew, not even asking if he were fatigued, speaking almost as if she thought that fatigue a pretence, he was so bewildered that he could do nothing. An anxious believer like this is accepted perhaps with too much faith and considered too inalienable a possession; and when she fails the shock is proportionately great. Without Gussy to stand by him, to make him believe himself a universal conqueror, always interesting, always important, Meredith for the moment was like an idol thrown from his pedestal. He was more astonished than words could say. He exclaimed, hurriedly,
“I think Gussy is right, as she always is. Mrs. Harwood, I will say good-night.”
Mrs. Harwood was altogether in a different mind. The period of reaction had not come with her as yet. She had got herself deposited in her chair in time enough to save her from any breaking down. And her spirit was full of excitement.
“I am ready,” she said, with a panting hot breath of mental commotion, “to explain—whatever it is necessary to explain. Take me back to my room, Dolff. It is cold here.”
“Good-night,” said Meredith. “I will not encroach upon you longer to-night.”
“As you like,” she said. “I warn you, however, that to-morrow—— Dolff, take me back to my fire.”
Dolff was unsubdued, like his mother. The reaction from a long period of suspense, and the sense of safety after a great alarm, no doubt acted upon his mind: though, so far as he was aware, he was moved by nothing save the overwhelming discovery he had made, and his indignant sense of wrong in finding such a secret retreat unsuspected, in his mother’s—in his own—house.
“We’ll be better alone,” he said, in the stern tone which was so new to him, putting his hand upon her chair; “but perhaps you could walk if you tried,” he added, with rude sarcasm.
He drove rather than wheeled her before him into the deserted room, where all was so brilliant and warm, the light blinking in the bright brass and steel, the lamps serenely burning, everything telling of the tranquil life, unbroken by any but cheerful incidents, which had gone on there for so many years.
“Now, mother,” said Dolff, “we have got to have it out. Who is that man upstairs?”
Julia had followed them unremarked, and remained behind her mother’s chair. Dolff stood before them, in the full firelight, very erect, inspired with indignation and that sense of superiority which injury gives. It had elevated him altogether in the scale of being. His own shortcomings had fallen from his consciousness. He was aware of nothing but that he, Dolff, in reality the head of the family, had been deceived and compromised.
Mrs. Harwood took but little notice of her son. She took up her work which had been thrown upon the table and turned it over in her fingers.
“Gussy was right,” she said, “though she was a little brusque in her way of saying it. I am certainly unable to bear anything more to-night.”
“I suppose, however, you can answer my question,” said Dolff.
“Go to bed, boy,” said his mother, “and don’t worry me. We have two or three things to talk over, you and I, which are too much for to-night.”
“I am not a boy any longer,” cried Dolff; “you have made me a man. Who is it you have been hiding for years upstairs?”
She gave vent to a little fierce laugh.
“For my pleasure,” she said; “for my amusement, as anybody may see.”
“Whether it is for your amusement or not,” said Dolff, “I am of age, and I have a right to know who is living in my house.”
“In your house!” Her exasperation was growing. “Don’t force me, Dolff, to go into other questions to-night.”
“Whose house is it?” he said. “There’s been no question, because you have kept everything in your hands; but if I am to be driven to it, and claim my rights——”
“Your rights!” she cried, again repeating his words. “Was it one of your rights to knock down a man like a coward from behind? It appears this is what you think you may be permitted to do with impunity—to have your home searched in every corner and to destroy all that I have been doing for years, and to bring shame and disgrace to a house that I have kept free of shame, almost at the risk of my life!”
“I did not,” cried Dolff, interrupting her eagerly. “I did not knock him down from behind. I had not time to think. I let fly at him as I passed. It’s a lie to say I knocked him down from behind.”
“You did the same thing; you took him unawares. And you dare to question me! You killed a man at my door—or meant to do it—and never breathed a word to warn us, to keep us from the disgrace——”
Dolff was not clever enough to know what to say. His snort of rage was not attended by any force of bitter words. He only could repeat, with rage and incompetence,
“At your door?”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Harwood, half carried away by passion, half influenced by the dismay which she knew she had it in her power to call forth, “it would be better, since you are exact, to say at your father’s door.”
Dolff responded with a strange cry. He did not understand it, but he felt all the same that a blow which stunned him had been directed at him, and that the ground was cut from beneath his feet.
“He has neither been tried, nor sentenced, nor anything proved against him,” cried Mrs. Harwood, carried away now by the heat of her own excitement. “All that has to be gone through before he can be put aside. And at this moment everything’s his—the roof that covers you, the money you have been spending. It is no more your house—your house!—than it is Julia’s. It is your father’s house.”
“My father is dead,” said Dolff, who had again grown very pale, the flush of passion dying out of his face.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Harwood, “and might have remained so, had it not been for your cowardly folly and Vicars’s infatuation for you. How was it the man had not the sense to see that a fool like you would spoil all?”
“You are dreaming, you are mad,” said Dolff; “you are telling me another lie.”
But, though he said this with almost undiminished passion, the young fellow’s superiority, his erect pose, his sense of being able to cow and overwhelm her, had come to an end. He fell into his usual attitude, his shoulders dropped and curved, his head hung down. He could fling a last insult at his mother, but no more. And his own mind began to be filled with unfathomable dismay.
Julia had been very uncertain what side to take. Her mind went naturally with her brother, who was most near herself. But a mother is a mother after all. You may feel her to be in some way your natural enemy when the matter is between yourself and her; but when another hand plucks at her it is different. A girl is not going to let her mother be insulted, who after all means her own side, without interposing. Julia suddenly flew forth from behind her mother’s chair and flung herself upon Dolff’s arm, seizing it and shaking him violently.
“How dare you speak to her like that?” cried Ju, “you that can’t do anything you try—not even kill Charley Meredith when you have the chance! I should be ashamed to look any one in the face. Go away, go away, and leave us quiet, you that have done it all: that brought the police into the house, and yet did not hurt him to speak of, you great, useless, disappointing boy!”
Dolff did not know how to sustain this sudden assault. He looked round stupidly at the active assailant at his shoulder with a little pang, even in his agitated and helpless state, to find that Julia was no longer on his side. His head was going round and round: already in his soul he had entirely collapsed, although he still kept his feet in outward appearance. And it would have been difficult to end this scene without an entire breakdown on one side or the other, had not the pensive little voice of the parlor-maid become audible at this moment over their heads, making them all start and draw back into themselves.
“If you please, ma’am,” said Priscilla, “for I can’t find Miss Gussy—shall I take Mr. Meredith’s tray to his room, or shall I bring it in here?”
“I think Mr. Meredith is going to bed,” said Mrs. Harwood; “he is a little tired. Take it into his room, Priscilla. And Miss Gussy has gone to bed; you may come now and help me to get into my room, and then shut up everything. It is later than I thought.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Priscilla, in those quiet tones of commonplace which calm down every excitement.
Priscilla indeed was herself bursting with curiosity and eagerness to find out what had happened. The long-shut-up door stood ajar, and every maid in the house had already come to peep into the dark passage and wonder what it led to: and the keenest excitement filled the house. But a parlor-maid has as high a standard of duty as any one, were it an archbishop. It was against the unwritten household law to show any such commotion. She took hold of the handle of her mistress’s chair as she did on the mildest of domestic evenings, and drew her very steadily and gently away. The only revelation she made of knowing anything was in the suggestion that a little gruel with a glass of wine in it would be a proper thing for Mrs. Harwood to take.
“You may bring me the glass of wine without the gruel,” Mrs. Harwood was heard saying as the sound of her wheels moved slowly across the hall, an hour ago the scene of such passionate agitation. “I don’t think I have caught cold. A glass of wine—and a few biscuits,” she said as by an afterthought.
Was this part of the elaborate make-believe intended to deceive the servants and persuade them that nothing particular had happened? or was she indeed capable of munching those biscuits after such a night of fate?
“Ju, don’t you turn against me,” said Dolff, feebly, throwing himself into a chair when they were thus left alone.
“Oh!” cried Julia, still panting with her outburst, “to think you had hold of him and didn’t really hurt him, not to matter! I can never, never forgive you, Dolff.”
“Oh, hold your tongue, you little fool; the only thing I’m glad of is that I didn’t hurt him—to matter! You don’t know what it is to live for a long week, all the time he was insensible, thinking you have killed a man!”
“When it was only Charley Meredith!” Julia said.