JANET was passing quickly through the hall, coming from the garden by the long passage which led past the kitchen and pantry, and turning round to go upstairs, when she found herself suddenly caught as she went along. Some one took hold of the end of the long boa which was round her neck and detained her. She was a little startled and frightened at first, thinking instinctively of the mad tenant of the wing, and that now the door was no longer fastened between him and the house. Her fears, however, were instantly put to flight, and feelings very different substituted in their stead, when a voice said,
“Janet! stop a moment and speak to me, I am very lonely here.”
“You have no need to be here, or to be lonely unless you like,” she cried, hurriedly; “and call me by my proper name, please. I can be only Miss Summerhayes to you.”
“Don’t say so. You were not so hard upon me the other night. Ah! I forgot; it’s not the other night, it’s three weeks ago. Stop a moment; don’t pass without saying a word. You ought to pay me a little attention, considering all that I have suffered since—for you.”
“For me!” she cried. “I am sorry that you have suffered, but it was not for me.”
“Do you think for a moment that that lout would have sprung on me as he did if it hadn’t been for you? You know better, Janet. I owe it to you, my dear, that I was beaten flat like a pancake, and had my head dashed against the stones, as they did, you know, in the psalm. No, Janet; be quiet and listen to me. I’ve paid dear for one bit of an interview, and you ought to give me some recompense. I’ve lain upon my back all these many days for you, and it’s for you that I grin at that fellow, instead of taking him by the throat!”
“That does me no good,” said Janet, panting with excitement and alarm. “Let me go, please. I would rather die than be found talking to you here. Take him by the throat if you please. What is that to me?”
“To save you from trouble,” said the other. “Don’t you think I have felt how unpleasant it would be to have your name coming out? That is why I have let him off, for that reason and no other. Come, talk to me a moment, I deserve it. Nobody will hear us; Gussy is out, and the mother shut up in her room. I’m very forlorn in this house, which I had better leave, I think, at once; I’m well enough, I suppose, to do so now——”
“Don’t you want to leave it? Shall you not be glad to get away?” cried Janet, under her breath.
“Glad to get away! when you are here, you little witch. Do you think it has been pleasant to go on all the time purred over by the others, and never getting a word with you.”
“You will not,” said Janet, with perhaps a certain revengeful pleasure, “be purred over by the others any more.”
“You think so?” he said. “Don’t you be too sure. If you disdain me, and refuse to hear me, there is no telling, they may purr again.”
“One way or other,” said Janet, “it has nothing to do with me.”
“Why do you say so? Are you going to be sent away?”
“Sent away!” Janet breathed forth the words as in a gale of indignation. “Nobody,” she cried, “except myself, shall send me away.”
“Well,” he said, “and yourself will not, I hope? It would be a changed house if you were gone. All the spirit and the understanding and the mischief—don’t be angry, Janet; there is nothing so enchanting as mischief, and you know you are full of it—would be gone. I doubt if I should ever come back to the place again.”
“Mr. Meredith,” said Janet, “you have no right to speak to me so. It is unpardonable in a man. Who is to believe you? Miss Harwood, whom I believe you are engaged to all this time—or me, whom you venture to take hold of and—talk to, when you think nobody sees? Oh, it is quite unpardonable, Mr. Meredith! Is it her or is it me whom you want to please? You ought to know.”
“That sounds very like asking me my intentions,” he said, with a laugh, “as the father does in novels, or sometimes the mother. But never, so far as I recollect, the young lady herself.”
Janet was angry, and she was sore. She had been made of no account among them; she who was very well aware of her own value, and had never been ignored by those around her before, had been lately treated as if she were nobody in this house. It had been necessary for her to conceal her own movements, to be prudent, to take the most urgent measures that her name should not suffer. But it had galled her to the very heart that Meredith should have spoken of her as a mere means of receiving information, and even that Dolff should have ignored her part in the matter, though it was what she wished him most to do. She was full of inconsistency in this respect, as most human natures are, and as women in particular are expected to be. Not to be mixed up in it was her most urgent desire, but to be ignored, though it was what she desired most, was bitter to her heart. It had given her a certain amount of satisfaction to assert her superiority to Dolff, and she would have been still more pleased now could she have done the same with Meredith, and issued from the double complication triumphant, setting both men in “their proper place,” and proving that she was not deceived by either, but above both. But it was not so easy with Meredith as with Dolff. She had played with the youth who was not so clever as she, nor her equal in anything, but alas! it was she who had been played with in the other case, and her attempt to change the rôle was not likely to be very effectual.
She did not love Meredith—she was angry with him, and more or less despised him: but he had a charm for her which some men have for women, and some women for men, not only without merit on the part of the enchanter, but even with a distinct feeling of disapproval and almost contempt on that of the enchanted. This was her feeling towards Gussy’s lover. He was Gussy’s lover, probably for all she knew Gussy’s betrothed; yet he had dared to play with her, to set up a secret understanding, to persuade her that he loved her best.
He did not love her at all, she declared to herself indignantly; he loved nobody except himself, he cared for nothing except to be amused, to have the best of everything, to gather sweetness on every side. She had thrown him aside indignantly in the moment of trial when he had been found wanting, and when she, too, had found herself wanting, and instinctively defended herself by dropping him. And yet now when Janet was suddenly brought face to face with him again, and there was a moment given her in which to express her final sentiments, one of those curious returns upon herself which come in every such history came over her. It was always possible that in the human mind there should be a complete change of sentiment, that the balance should turn at a touch, and truth and love vanquish all evil. The most conventional and the most lively and imaginative of minds acknowledge this possibility. It is called conversion in religion, in other matters it bears a less important title: yet it is always a possibility. A man who has been an egotist may become suddenly generous and tender; a man who has resisted every inducement to do well, and broken every heart that loved him, may by some more subtle touch be changed, and turned from his evil ways. Such a thing is always possible: and Janet, when she addressed Meredith in her indignation, had some such feeling in her mind. He had a charm for her notwithstanding her anger against him, her sense of wrong, and the no-faith she had in him; but yet he had a charm: and it was possible that something she might say, some argument struck out in the heat of the moment, might still convert him to honor and to truth.
That was, to Janet’s version of honor and truth, which was, perhaps, a one-sided one. It was according to all her canons that the man finding himself not to love his fiancée but to love another, should sacrifice everything to that other, and leave the fiancée to bear it as she might. This would have been the triumph of love over worldliness and conventionality in Janet’s eyes. She would not have felt it wrong for him to prefer herself, to give up Gussy: and it was quite in his power to hold by Gussy and give up herself; but one thing she felt must be done, and that at once. She would not allow him to go on, detaining her, making love to her, telling her in words and otherwise that he loved her best, if he meant after all to marry Gussy. It had to be now decided once for all.
“Since you say so,” she said, with her heart beating, “I will not object to the word. I am not frightened by words: and I have neither father nor mother. Oh, don’t think I forget what you said about that last time you asked me to meet you in the shop, that it was to receive information. And now you stop me and want to begin again, in a way very different from getting information. Yes, I want to know what you mean. It is quite true: which of us is it you want to please? Answer me!” cried Janet, stamping upon the floor with her foot. “Is it her, or is it me?”
“Alas, that it can’t be both! My dear child, I should like to please you both, if that is how you put it,” said Meredith.
It was so dark that she could scarcely see his face, but he had twisted the long boa round his arm, so as to bring her nearer to him.
She stamped her foot again upon the ground, and began to loosen her boa.
“Answer me!” she said.
“Don’t put a poor fellow in a corner, Janet. I have to temporize like other people. You have almost made me lose my head; but I can’t afford it, don’t you know. I can’t throw things up like that: and there’s no hurry—we’re all young enough; let us wait and see what may turn up.”
“Is that all you have got to say?” said Janet, uncoiling the boa from her throat.
“What can any one say more? You women have the most confounded way of putting a fellow in a corner. There’s no need for any such desperate decision. Let us wait a bit and enjoy ourselves as much as we can in the meantime,” said Meredith, manipulating the boa on his side.
She left it suddenly in his hand, and quickly and noiselessly turned away, flying upstairs almost before he could call her back: and Meredith did not venture to call “Janet, Janet!” in more than a subdued tone. He dared not follow her, he did not want anybody to know of that colloquy in the hall, though he had risked it, and would have prolonged it, perhaps, to the very edge of discovery. When he felt the boa dropped upon his hands he laughed to himself, with amusement mingled with a certain discomfiture, to think how much in earnest these girls were—and he was not at all in earnest. He liked to take the goods the gods had provided, and get all the pleasure he could out of them; but to compromise his own future and bind himself forever was what he would not do for anyone: and perhaps he was half pleased to have got through the dangerous amusement of that interview, though it was he who had sought it and prolonged it, so easily upon the whole. He had not been made to commit himself to anything, and yet he flattered himself he had made no breach. Things were just as they had been before. He was not like a married man, or one who had come under solemn engagements; there was no reason that he should give up what was agreeable to him, yet, at least; but it amused him to see Janet’s high spirit, her impatience, and even those questions which it was ludicrous, yet a little confusing, to be asked by her—about “his intentions,” as he said. Even the sudden conclusion of the interview by which she betrayed her impatience, her displeasure was amusing to him. He felt all the more fond of her, amused and flattered by her anxiety to know what he meant, and pleased that she had not made much of her bold attempt.
“The little vixen!” he said to himself. He gathered up the boa, which was of a kind which slips through unused fingers, and laid it carefully upon the table. It escaped him once, as its mistress had done, and had to be caught again, and laid in soft, dark coils on the table, which was a thing that pleased him, and made him laugh again. Janet was in a great fright lest her conversation with him should be discovered, and she would by no means have liked it to be discovered, yet it gave him a pungent pleasure to linger and keep her there, and feel that she had fled on the very eve of detection, and get away himself to the shelter of his room, just as Gussy outside put her latch-key in the door.
He laughed as he heard her come in and call to Priscilla to light the lamps, and that the hall was so dark she could scarcely see her way upstairs. Janet had found her way upstairs like a bird a minute before. He chuckled at the thought that in another moment it might have been too late: and yet he had no desire at all that Gussy should find out that meeting in the dark.
As for Janet, she hurried to her room with hot indignation in her heart and the water in her eyes. Oh, it was not that she expected it to have ended in any other way! She had known exactly how it would be. He was not a man to behave like a man, to love one and no more. What he wanted was his own pleasure and advantage, not Gussy and not Janet. She despised him for it all, for the subdued tone in which he had attempted to call her back, for his way of putting off everything that was serious: and she half despised herself for having asked, as he said, “his intentions,” and allowed him to see that she cared.
She did care, she said to herself, dashing the tears from her eyes. She had a contempt for him, and penetrated his character with the keenest perception, and to say that she loved him would have been a great exaggeration: and yet he had a charm for Janet—his mockery, his laugh, the tone of his voice, almost his want of respect and bold appropriation of her, whether she wished it or not, had a charm. Her heart would have danced with pleasure had he given her an assurance of love (which he might very well have done, she knew, without in the least meaning it), and yet she had penetrated him through and through, and had no illusion as to his character. All motives are mingled, but Janet’s were so mingled that she did not understand them. She was humiliated by the result of her endeavor, yet highly excited, her heart leaping in her breast: she sat down as she was, in her hat and coat, to think it all over. Dolff and Meredith had both revealed their affection more or less—they had both allowed her to see into their hearts. And Janet, though she had provoked it in both cases, was angry, mortified, full of fury and pain. That was what men were incapable of, she thought—any real feeling, but for themselves and themselves only. Even Dolff, who had been her slave, would have consented now to forget everything, if she would give him her promise. She to him! as if he would give any promise or act otherwise than as pleased himself!
Janet sat for a long time pondering over the half-extinguished fire, her heart full of anger, disappointment, and contempt. It was themselves they had both thought of, never of her! At one time they had made her believe that she was everything, queen of their hearts, and for a moment she had been so silly as to be half-intoxicated, believing in it, accepting the high compliment, but now——. She suddenly sprang up under the impulse of the shock at the dictation of a new idea. They might be unworthy, but there were some who were worthy. Oh, what did it matter that they should have youth and a fair appearance, or any of those adventitious gifts. It was better to be true and real. It occurred to her suddenly that instead of going away to another family to exercise the mystery of a governess, instead of being liable to be dismissed, as Meredith so coarsely had suggested, instead of the state which was offensive to Janet’s own good taste and feeling, of covert hostility to her employers, which she had fallen into so readily, and which in another house it was horribly possible she might fall into again—how much better it would be to go out proudly in the eye of day, as good as any of them, as independent, with a life of her own to fall back upon!
Janet flew to her writing-table at this new thought, and wrote, as quick as the pen would form the letters, a hasty letter. It was all done at flying speed, without taking time to think, a hurried, blurred, as she felt unladylike production. She thrust it into an envelope, directed it, and rushed downstairs with it to take it herself to the post, not to lose a moment. The hall was now lighted but abandoned—nobody there to call to her, to bid her pause, to stop her on the way. Her boa lay on the table carefully coiled round and round. Janet snatched it up, as if that had been an additional reason for speed, and rushed out to decide her fate.