IN the evening they were all assembled in the drawing-room once more.
The same party with so many differences. There were only Mrs. Harwood and Meredith who were unchanged. She sat in the usual warm corner, with the usual white fleecy knitting, which never changed, in her lace cap and white shawl, with her pretty complexion and her smiling looks, the woman of whom people said that she must have lain in the lilies and fed on the roses of life to preserve that wonderful complexion and eyes so clear and so bright. And he, looking so much better—really assured in his health, the tints of weakness going off, the high color which was at once his characteristic and the drawback to his good looks coming back, and his high spirits as if they had never had any check. It was only last night that he had been following up that discovery with the eagerness of a bloodhound, forgetting everything but the scent on which he was following on to the end. All that had now flown away. He was the Charley Meredith of old, playful and ready to “chaff” everybody round, talking of the new songs and what would suit “our” voices, and lamenting the interrupted “practisings.” Charley was as if nothing had happened, full of fun, eager for amusement, calling upon the mother for sympathy and encouragement.
“They have all become so grave,” he said. “It is you and I, Mrs. Harwood, that will have to perform our duet.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Harwood, “if I had been twenty years younger, there is no telling what might have happened. I should not have kept you waiting, Charley. I wish, Gussy, you would not look as if you had been to a funeral this afternoon.”
“Not this afternoon—but something a little like it, mamma.”
“You are talking great nonsense, my dear. If there is anybody that ought to be cast down, it is surely me. All my troubles have been forced back upon me; but I have the comfort of knowing,” said Mrs. Harwood, with a slightly raised voice, “that I never meant any harm—and that I have done none—and that the last people in the world to criticise me are my children: so I desire that there shall be an end of this. I have been summoned, as I expected, to explain everything: and Charley has kindly promised to appear for me and clear it all up—and secure permission for me to look after my poor dear upstairs, as I have done ever since he was afflicted. When I have made it all clear with the Lunacy commissioners I may perhaps be supposed to have done enough, though one can never know.”
“Mamma,” said Gussy, “there was no need for anything but to be frank and open. You have not been open—not to me, who was taken more or less into your confidence. I suppose you were compelled to tell me something, but not all, or nearly all. A child could see there is more in it than meets the eye. And now I presume you have taken Mr. Meredith into your confidence, but none of your children.”
“Why Mr. Meredith?” said he, with a smile, putting out his hand for hers.
Gussy made no reply. She gave him a look of indignant reproach. In point of fact, when he asked her thus, she could not have told why—after all. The truth began to steal into her mind, like the influence of a thaw, that after all he had done nothing. He had been curious to fathom the secret in the house. So would any one have been. And there was something about information that he had received—where or from whence could he have received information? But even that, she suddenly reflected, could not be his fault. If he had been told anything it would be difficult not to listen. Thus, though she gave him a look of reproach and drew away her hand, it suddenly occurred to Gussy that after all there was no particular reason why she should call him Mr. Meredith, or consider him as deeply to blame. The thaw had begun.
Dolff had kept behind backs all the evening. He took no seat, he attached himself to none of the party. For some time he had been seated in a large easy-chair which almost swallowed him up, in the other part of the room, reading, or pretending to read. Then when the conversation began he had risen from that place, and walked about in the half-light like an uneasy ghost. Now he came into the talk with a voice that sounded far off, partly because of the length of the room, and partly because of the boyish gruffness which, as a token of high contrariety and offence, he had brought into his voice.
“I don’t see,” he said, “what Lunacy commissioners have to do with it in comparison with the people in the house.”
Mrs. Harwood turned her chair round as much as she was capable of doing, and cast a look into the dim depths of the other room.
“It is a pity,” she said, “that the commissioners could not be of your opinion, Dolff; it would have saved me a great deal of trouble.”
“I can’t see,” he said, irritably, “why you should have taken such trouble upon you at all. What is the man to you? Who is he that you should have taken such trouble for him? You have no brother that I ever heard of. Mother,” said Dolff, coming forward out of the gloom, “I have cudgelled my brains to think who it could be. Is it possible that for a mere stranger—a man who is no relation to us—you should have risked all our comfort and separated us from you? I have heard of such things,” said the young man, working himself up, “but to find them out in one’s mother whom one has always respected——”
She gave a wondering look round upon them all and then burst into a strange confused laugh.
“In the name of wonder,” she cried, “can anybody tell me what the boy has got in his head? what does he mean?”
What did he mean? They all looked at each other with perplexity; even Janet, rousing from the rigid unmeaningness to which she had condemned herself, to take share in the glance of amazement which ran round. Only Meredith did not share that amazement. He laughed, which was a sound that made Dolff frantic, and brought him a step forward with his hand clenched.
“Dolff, my good fellow,” he said, with an air of superior experience which still further irritated the furious lad, “don’t fly upon me again: for that sort of argument doesn’t do much good in a discussion. And don’t bring your ideas out of French novels here. Such things are a great deal worse when they are translated than when they are at home.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” cried Dolff, “with your French novels! nor what right you have to be here, in the midst of us all, discussing a subject—a subject which—a subject that—makes me,” cried the young man, “that I cannot endure myself, nor the house, nor so much as my mother’s name.”
“What does he mean?” said the ladies to each other, looking all round with perturbed looks. They were all united, from Julia to her mother, in the wonder to which they had no clue. Englishwomen, brought up in the very lap of respectability, not knowing even the alphabet of shame, full of faults, no doubt of their own kind, but utterly incapable even of imagining the secret horror and suspicion that lurked in Dolff’s words, they could do nothing but send round that troubled look of consultation. Was Dolff going out of his senses, too? Was it perhaps in the family, this dreadful thing, and had it assailed the boy? Mrs. Harwood grew pale with sheer fright and horror as she looked back upon her son, and then pitifully consulted his sisters with her eyes.
“Dolff,” cried Meredith, in a warning tone, “mind what you are about, my boy. I tell you to bring none of your French novels here. They don’t explain the situation. Strike me if you like then; but don’t be such an everlasting fool. Pierre et Jean, eh, here!” cried the elder man, with a half shriek of derisive laughter. He sat with a sort of careless courage, not putting himself even into an attitude of defence, but on his guard, looking towards the enraged youth—an air which transported both the young feminine hearts beside him into an ecstasy of admiration, though Gussy was so deeply offended (she began to think more and more without reason), and Janet more deeply still, hating and despising him as she thought.
Gussy darted forward between her brother, who had the air of springing upon his senior, and Meredith, warning Dolff in her turn with a loud cry.
“Mind,” she exclaimed, “what you are about! As Charley says, enough has happened already. We will tolerate no more in this house.”
Janet rose too, scarcely knowing why she did it, she who had so solemnly made up her mind that on no provocation would she take any part.
“I don’t know,” she said, “what Mr. Dolff means; but I hope no one will be angry if I say I found some papers torn in little pieces under the windows of the wing. I thought they were from an old copy-book and that they were Mr. Dolff’s. I am sure now they belonged to the poor gentleman upstairs. They were signed ‘Adolphus Charles Harwood.’ I have no right to be here at all, and I am going away.”
Dolff stood breathless, feeling the light fail in his eyes. He saw Meredith spring up and open the door for her, and with a pang watched while the little dark figure disappeared. For the moment he was only aware of her disappearance, of the final going out as he thought in eternal darkness of the little light which had made his life so different. He came back to himself with a gasp when the door closed, but scarcely knew what had been said to him for the beating of the pulses in his head.
“‘Adolphus Charles Harwood’?” said Julia, thoughtfully; “then that, I suppose, is the poor gentleman’s name; so, Dolff, you see I was right, and it was a relation after all.”
“What is Pierre et Jean, Charley?” said Mrs. Harwood, sitting up a little more erect than usual, with a kindling in her eyes.
“It is a very clever French novel—far more clever and better than most—a very fine piece of work.”
“But with something in it,” said Mrs. Harwood, “like our circumstances? You must bring it to me to read it, Dolff. If I did not burden your minds with a secret, which would have done you no good, and been hard, hard to keep——”
“Then,” he said, interrupting her abruptly, “it is a relation? but even that I never heard of before. How is it that there should be a man of that name in the family, and I should never have heard of him before?”
He still stood on the defensive, his face flushed with anger, and a sense of being wrong and inferior to all the rest somehow, though he could not tell how.
It is strange how difficult it sometimes is in such a discussion, when there is one whose invincible ignorance holds out in face of all argument and proof, to say the single word which will cut the knot. It was on Gussy’s lips to say it; but she did not, perhaps because Dolff’s want of comprehension was so curious to them all. And at this moment, almost before he could be replied to, there arose a little commotion in the hall. Janet’s voice was heard in a faint cry, and there was a shuffling of feet, and another unknown male voice rising in the quiet. Julia, who was awake like a dog to all new sounds, rushed to the door and flung it open, and then there became visible the strangest sight.
There stood upon the threshold an old man in a strange dress, something between a long coat and a gown, with a white beard on his breast, long white hair streaming on his shoulders, and a long pallid face. His appearance was so sudden, so unlooked-for, like a stage entrance without warning, that the effect was more startling and wild than could be imagined. It was as if the conversation, in which so many complications, so many misunderstandings, were involved, had been suddenly embodied in this bizarre and extraordinary figure which was its cause. And, as if to make it more extraordinary still, this strange apparition held by the hand, with her arm drawn through his, Janet, pale, terrified, and faintly struggling, who had left the room but a moment before.
Janet was evidently wild with terror, yet did not dare even to try to escape except by the strain of reluctance in her whole figure, drawing back while he drew her forward. The most benignant aspect that is compatible with a disordered brain was in the madman’s face. He smiled as he held her, dividing the fingers of the hand he held with his own, as if he were caressing and playing with a child. He stood for a moment contemplating them all, taking in the details of the picture which on their side they made, with that pleased, half-bewildered, half-imbecile look, and nodding his head from one to another, like one of those nodding figures that go on indefinitely. The weakness of the smile, the glow of foolish satisfaction in his face, the endless nodding, took much from the majesty of the venerable patriarchal figure, and made him look more like a silly old man than a picturesque and tragical lunatic. While they all stood thunderstruck, he advanced into the room with a buoyant, almost dancing step.
“Well,” he said, “here I am, Julia. I suppose that you expected me? This is a merry meeting: here’s to our merry meeting. Vicars says I am so much better—and so I am, quite well—don’t you see I have a color in my cheeks—that I may come downstairs. He is a very good fellow, Vicars; but I want society. Julia, see what I’ve got here.”
He drew Janet forward, nodding at her with the most complacent looks, while the poor little girl, deadly pale, trembling with terror, hung upon his arm as if suspended by a hook, holding back, yet not daring to struggle, shutting her eyes for very terror. He waved his hand, releasing hers for a moment, but holding it tight within his arm.
“Another of them?” he said. “Where does she come? I don’t seem to remember what we called her, or where she comes in the family; but a nice little thing, Julia—with some feeling for her old—for her old—eh? I forget what I was going to say. What is her name?”
“Adolphus! let the child go. Here is a chair by me: come and sit down.”
They all stood about helpless, gazing, Mrs. Harwood alone keeping her place in her chair, while he strayed across the floor in his half-dancing step, dragging Janet with him.
“I’ll sit by you with pleasure, Julia. It is long since you have come to sit with me till last night. And these are all of them? I’ve said their names over in my mind, but I forget some—I forget some. They were so little once—curious to think so little once, and then when a man comes back—tse! in a moment all grown up—the same as men and women. But this,” he said, with a laugh, “is still a little thing. Where shall I put her, Julia? Too big, you know, to sit on papa’s knee.”
He laughed again, looking round upon them all, and suddenly let Janet go, so that she fell in the shock of the release, which made the stranger laugh more and more.
“Poor little sing! but too big to tumble about. Det up again and don’t ky. Julia,” he put out his hand again and laid it on the elbow of Mrs. Harwood’s chair, “these are all then?—between you and me——” He rubbed his long soft pallid hands.
“Who would have thought,” he said, “that I should have got so well, and come downstairs again and sat by you in another chair, and seen them all men and women. It’s more than we could have expected—more than we could have expected. And now there’s a great deal to be done to show that we’re thankful. Where is my pocket-book? I want my pocketbook. God in heaven! that villain Vicars has taken my pocket-book, and now I shall not be able to pay!”
He started up again in rising excitement, his eyes beginning to stare and his face to redden, while he dragged and pulled at the pockets of his coat. Mrs. Harwood put her hand upon him to pull him down into his chair, and called to them all to find Vicars.
“Sit down, sit down, Adolphus,” she said, holding him with both her hands. “It is in your other coat. You changed your other coat to come down, you know you did. Run—run, Dolff! for the love of heaven, and get the pocket-book out of your father’s other coat!”