Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (883 page)

“Grace!” she exclaimed. “What Grace? That’s my name. Lady Janet, you
have
got the letter! The woman is here!”

Lady Janet dropped Horace’s arm, and retraced her steps to the place at which her nephew was standing.

“Julian,” she said. “You force me, for the first time in my life, to remind you of the respect that is due to me in my own house. Send that woman away.”

Without waiting to be answered, she turned back again, and once more took Horace’s arm.

“Stand back, if you please,” she said, quietly, to Grace.

Grace held her ground.

“The woman is here!” she repeated. “Confront me with her — and then send me away, if you like.”

Julian advanced, and firmly took her by the arm. “You forget what is due to Lady Janet,” he said, drawing her aside. “You forget what is due to yourself.”

With a desperate effort, Grace broke away from him, and stopped Lady Janet on the threshold of the conservatory door.

“Justice!” she cried, shaking her clinched hand with hysterical frenzy in the air. “I claim my right to meet that woman face to face! Where is she? Confront me with her! Confront me with her!”

While those wild words were pouring from her lips, the rumbling of carriage wheels became audible on the drive in front of the house. In the all-absorbing agitation of the moment, the sound of the wheels (followed by the opening of the house door) passed unnoticed by the persons in the dining-room. Horace’s voice was still raised in angry protest against the insult offered to Lady Janet; Lady Janet herself (leaving him for the second time) was vehemently ringing the bell to summon the servants; Julian had once more taken the infuriated woman by the arms and was trying vainly to compose her — when the library door was opened quietly by a young lady wearing a mantle and a bonnet. Mercy Merrick (true to the appointment which she had made with Horace) entered the room.

The first eyes that discovered her presence on the scene were the eyes of Grace Roseberry. Starting violently in Julian’s grasp, she pointed toward the library door. “Ah!” she cried, with a shriek of vindictive delight. “There she is!”

Mercy turned as the sound of the scream rang through the room, and met — resting on her in savage triumph — the living gaze of the woman whose identity she had stolen, whose body she had left laid out for dead. On the instant of that terrible discovery — with her eyes fixed helplessly on the fierce eyes that had found her — she dropped senseless on the floor.

CHAPTER XII. EXIT JULIAN.

JULIAN happened to be standing nearest to Mercy. He was the first at her side when she fell.

In the cry of alarm which burst from him, as he raised her for a moment in his arms, in the expression of his eyes when he looked at her death-like face, there escaped the plain — too plain — confession of the interest which he felt in her, of the admiration which she had aroused in him. Horace detected it. There was the quick suspicion of jealousy in the movement by which he joined Julian; there was the ready resentment of jealousy in the tone in which he pronounced the words, “Leave her to me.” Julian resigned her in silence. A faint flush appeared on his pale face as he drew back while Horace carried her to the sofa. His eyes sunk to the ground; he seemed to be meditating self-reproachfully on the tone in which his friend had spoken to him. After having been the first to take an active part in meeting the calamity that had happened, he was now, to all appearance, insensible to everything that was passing in the room.

A touch on his shoulder roused him.

He turned and looked round. The woman who had done the mischief — the stranger in the poor black garments — was standing behind him. She pointed to the prostrate figure on the sofa, with a merciless smile.

“You wanted a proof just now,” she said. “There it is!”

Horace heard her. He suddenly left the sofa and joined Julian. His face, naturally ruddy, was pale with suppressed fury.

“Take that wretch away!” he said. “Instantly! or I won’t answer for what I may do.”

Those words recalled Julian to himself. He looked round the room. Lady Janet and the housekeeper were together, in attendance on the swooning woman. The startled servants were congregated in the library doorway. One of them offered to run to the nearest doctor; another asked if he should fetch the police. Julian silenced them by a gesture, and turned to Horace. “Compose yourself,” he said. “Leave me to remove her quietly from the house.” He took Grace by the hand as he spoke. She hesitated, and tried to release herself. Julian pointed to the group at the sofa, and to the servants looking on. “You have made an enemy of every one in this room,” he said, “and you have not a friend in London. Do you wish to make an enemy of
me?
Her head drooped; she made no reply; she waited, dumbly obedient to the firmer will than her own. Julian ordered the servants crowding together in the doorway to withdraw. He followed them into the library, leading Grace after him by the hand. Before closing the door he paused, and looked back into the dining-room.

“Is she recovering?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation.

Lady Janet’s voice answered him. “Not yet.”

“Shall I send for the nearest doctor?”

Horace interposed. He declined to let Julian associate himself, even in that indirect manner, with Mercy’s recovery.

“If the doctor is wanted,” he said, “I will go for him myself.”

Julian closed the library door. He absently released Grace; he mechanically pointed to a chair. She sat down in silent surprise, following him with her eyes as he walked slowly to and fro in the room.

For the moment his mind was far away from her, and from all that had happened since her appearance in the house. It was impossible that a man of his fineness of perception could mistake the meaning of Horace’s conduct toward him. He was questioning his own heart, on the subject of Mercy, sternly and unreservedly as it was his habit to do. “After only once seeing her,” he thought, “has she produced such an impression on me that Horace can discover it, before I have even suspected it myself? Can the time have come already when I owe it to my friend to see her no more?” He stopped irritably in his walk. As a man devoted to a serious calling in life, there was something that wounded his self-respect in the bare suspicion that he could be guilty of the purely sentimental extravagance called “love at first sight.”

He had paused exactly opposite to the chair in which Grace was seated. Weary of the silence, she seized the opportunity of speaking to him.

“I have come here with you as you wished,” she said. “Are you going to help me? Am I to count on you as my friend?”

He looked at her vacantly. It cost him an effort before he could give her the attention that she had claimed.

“You have been hard on me,” Grace went on. “But you showed me some kindness at first; you tried to make them give me a fair hearing. I ask you, as a just man, do you doubt now that the woman on the sofa in the next room is an impostor who has taken my place? Can there be any plainer confession that she is Mercy Merrick than the confession she has made?
You
saw it;
they
saw it. She fainted at the sight of me.”

Julian crossed the room — still without answering her — and rang the bell. When the servant appeared, he told the man to fetch a cab.

Grace rose from her chair. “What is the cab for?” she asked, sharply.

“For you and for me,” Julian replied. “I am going to take you back to your lodgings.”

“I refuse to go. My place is in this house. Neither Lady Janet nor you can get over the plain facts. All I asked was to be confronted with her. And what did she do when she came into the room? She fainted at the sight of me.”

Reiterating her one triumphant assertion, she fixed her eyes on Julian with a look which said plainly: Answer that if you can. In mercy to her, Julian answered it on the spot.

“As far as I understand,” he said, “you appear to take it for granted that no innocent woman would have fainted on first seeing you. I have something to tell you which will alter your opinion. On her arrival in England this lady informed my aunt that she had met with you accidentally on the French frontier, and that she had seen you (so far as she knew) struck dead at her side by a shell. Remember that, and recall what happened just now. Without a word to warn her of your restoration to life, she finds herself suddenly face to face with you, a living woman — and this at a time when it is easy for any one who looks at her to see that she is in delicate health. What is there wonderful, what is there unaccountable, in her fainting under such circumstances as these?”

The question was plainly put. Where was the answer to it?

There was no answer to it. Mercy’s wisely candid statement of the manner in which she had first met with Grace, and of the accident which had followed had served Mercy’s purpose but too well. It was simply impossible for persons acquainted with that statement to attach a guilty meaning to the swoon. The false Grace Roseberry was still as far beyond the reach of suspicion as ever, and the true Grace was quick enough to see it. She sank into the chair from which she had risen; her hands fell in hopeless despair on her lap.

“Everything is against me,” she said. “The truth itself turns liar, and takes
her
side.” She paused, and rallied her sinking courage. “No!” she cried, resolutely, “I won’t submit to have my name and my place taken from me by a vile adventuress! Say what you like, I insist on exposing her; I won’t leave the house!”

The servant entered the room, and announced that the cab was at the door.

Grace turned to Julian with a defiant wave of her hand. “Don’t let me detain you,” she said. “I see I have neither advice nor help to expect from Mr. Julian Gray.”

Julian beckoned to the servant to follow him into a corner of the room.

“Do you know if the doctor has been sent for?” he asked.

“I believe not, sir. It is said in the servants’ hall that the doctor is not wanted.”

Julian was too anxious to be satisfied with a report from the servants’ hall. He hastily wrote on a slip of paper: “Has she recovered?” and gave the note to the man, with directions to take it to Lady Janet.

“Did you hear what I said?” Grace inquired, while the messenger was absent in the dining room.

“I will answer you directly,” said Julian.

The servant appeared again as he spoke, with some lines in pencil written by Lady Janet on the back of Julian’s note. “Thank God, we have revived her. In a few minutes we hope to be able to take her to her room.”

The nearest way to Mercy’s room was through the library. Grace’s immediate removal had now become a necessity which was not to be trifled with. Julian addressed himself to meeting the difficulty the instant he was left alone with Grace.

“Listen to me,” he said. “The cab is waiting, and I have my last words to say to you. You are now (thanks to the consul’s recommendation) in my care. Decide at once whether you will remain under my charge, or whether you will transfer yourself to the charge of the police.”

Grace started. “What do you mean?” she asked, angrily.

“If you wish to remain under my charge,” Julian proceeded, “you will accompany me at once to the cab. In that case I will undertake to give you an opportunity of telling your story to my own lawyer. He will be a fitter person to advise you than I am. Nothing will induce we to believe that the lady whom you have accused has committed, or is capable of committing, such a fraud as you charge her with. You will hear what the lawyer thinks, if you come with me. If you refuse, I shall have no choice but to send into the next room, and tell them that you are still here. The result will be that you will find yourself in charge of the police. Take which course you like: I will give you a minute to decide in. And remember this — if I appear to express myself harshly, it is your conduct which forces me to speak out. I mean kindly toward you; I am advising you honestly for your good.”

He took out his watch to count the minute.