Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (895 page)

Horace’s jealousy saw something suspiciously suggestive of a private understanding in Julian’s earnest attention and in Mercy’s downcast face. Having no excuse for open interference, he made an effort to part them.

“You spoke just now,” he said to Julian, “of wishing to say a word in private to that person.” (He pointed to Grace.) “Shall we retire, or will you take her into the library?”

“I refuse to have anything to say to him,” Grace burst out, before Julian could answer. “I happen to know that he is the last person to do me justice. He has been effectually hoodwinked. If I speak to anybody privately, it ought to be to you. You have the greatest interest of any of them in finding out the truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to marry an outcast from the streets?”

Horace took one step forward toward her. There was a look in his face which plainly betrayed that he was capable of turning her out of the house with his own hands. Lady Janet stopped him.

“You were right in suggesting just now that Grace had better leave the room,” she said. “Let us all three go. Julian will remain here and give the man his directions when he arrives. Come.”

No. By a strange contradiction it was Horace himself who now interfered to prevent Mercy from leaving the room. In the heat of his indignation he lost all sense of his own dignity; he descended to the level of a woman whose intellect he believed to be deranged. To the surprise of every one present, he stepped back and took from the table a jewel-case which he had placed there when he came into the room. It was the wedding present from his mother which he had brought to his betrothed wife. His outraged self-esteem seized the opportunity of vindicating Mercy by a public bestowal of the gift.

“Wait!” he called out, sternly. “That wretch shall have her answer. She has sense enough to see and sense enough to hear. Let her see and hear!”

He opened the jewel-case, and took from it a magnificent pearl necklace in an antique setting.

“Grace,” he said, with his highest distinction of manner, “my mother sends you her love and her congratulations on our approaching marriage. She begs you to accept, as part of your bridal dress, these pearls. She was married in them herself. They have been in our family for centuries. As one of the family, honoured and beloved, my mother offers them to my wife.”

He lifted the necklace to clasp it round Mercy’s neck.

Julian watched her in breathless suspense. Would she sustain the ordeal through which Horace had innocently condemned her to pass?

Yes! In the insolent presence of Grace Roseberry, what was there now that she could
not
sustain? Her pride was in arms. Her lovely eyes lighted up as only a woman’s eyes
can
light up when they see jewelry. Her grand head bent gracefully to receive the necklace. Her face w armed into colour; her beauty rallied its charms. Her triumph over Grace Roseberry was complete! Julian’s head sank. For one sad moment he secretly asked himself the question: “Have I been mistaken in her?”

Horace arrayed her in the pearls.

“Your husband puts these pearls on your neck, love,” he said, proudly, and paused to look at her. “Now,” he added, with a contemptuous backward glance at Grace, “we may go into the library. She has seen, and she has heard.”

He believed that he had silenced her. He had simply furnished her sharp tongue with a new sting.

“
You
will hear, and
you
will see, when my proofs come from Canada,” she retorted. “You will hear that your wife has stolen my name and my character! You will see your wife dismissed from this house!”

Mercy turned on her with an uncontrollable outburst of passion.

“You are mad!” she cried.

Lady Janet caught the electric infection of anger in the air of the room. She, too, turned on Grace. She, too, said it:

“You are mad!”

Horace followed Lady Janet.
He
was beside himself.
He
fixed his pitiless eyes on Grace, and echoed the contagious words:

“You are mad!”

She was silenced, she was daunted at last. The treble accusation revealed to her, for the first time, the frightful suspicion to which she had exposed herself. She shrank back with a low cry of horror, and struck against a chair. She would have fallen if Julian had not sprung forward and caught her.

Lady Janet led the way into the library. She opened the door — started — and suddenly stepped aside, so as to leave the entrance free.

A man appeared in the open doorway.

He was not a gentleman; he was not a workman; he was not a servant. He was vilely dressed, in glossy black broadcloth. His frockcoat hung on him instead of fitting him. His waistcoat was too short and too tight over the chest. His trousers were a pair of shapeless black bags. His gloves were too large for him. His highly-polished boots creaked detestably whenever he moved. He had odiously watchful eyes — eyes that looked skilled in peeping through key-holes. His large ears, set forward like the ears of a monkey, pleaded guilty to meanly listening behind other people’s doors. His manner was quietly confidential when he spoke, impenetrably self-possessed when he was silent. A lurking air of secret service enveloped the fellow, like an atmosphere of his own, from head to foot. He looked all round the magnificent room without betraying either surprise or admiration. He closely investigated every person in it with one glance of his cunningly watchful eyes. Making his bow to Lady Janet, he silently showed her, as his introduction, the card that had summoned him. And then he stood at ease, self-revealed in his own sinister identity — a police officer in plain clothes.

Nobody spoke to him. Everybody shrank inwardly as if a reptile had crawled into the room.

He looked backward and forward, perfectly unembarrassed, between Julian and Horace.

“Is Mr. Julian Gray here?” he asked.

Julian led Grace to a seat. Her eyes were fixed on the man. She trembled — she whispered, “Who is he?” Julian spoke to the police officer without answering her.

“Wait there,” he said, pointing to a chair in the most distant corner of the room. “I will speak to you directly.”

The man advanced to the chair, marching to the discord of his creaking boots. He privately valued the carpet at so much a yard as he walked over it. He privately valued the chair at so much the dozen as he sat down on it. He was quite at his ease: it was no matter to him whether he waited and did nothing, or whether he pried into the private character of every one in the room, as long as he was paid for it.

Even Lady Janet’s resolution to act for herself was not proof against the appearance of the policeman in plain clothes. She left it to her nephew to take the lead. Julian glanced at Mercy before he stirred further in the matter. He alone knew that the end rested now not with him but with her.

She felt his eye on her while her own eyes were looking at the man. She turned her head — hesitated — and suddenly approached Julian. Like Grace Roseberry, she was trembling. Like Grace Roseberry, she whispered, “Who is he?”

Julian told her plainly who he was.

“Why is he here?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“No!”

Horace left Lady Janet, and joined Mercy and Julian — impatient of the private colloquy between them.

“Am I in the way?” he inquired.

Julian drew back a little, understanding Horace perfectly. He looked round at Grace. Nearly the whole length of the spacious room divided them from the place in which she was sitting. She had never moved since he had placed her in a chair. The direst of all terrors was in possession of her — terror of the unknown. There was no fear of her interfering, and no fear of her hearing what they said so long as they were careful to speak in guarded tones. Julian set the example by lowering his voice.

“Ask Horace why the police officer is here?” he said to Mercy.

She put the question directly. “Why is he here?”

Horace looked across the room at Grace, and answered, “He is here to relieve us of that woman.”

“Do you mean that he will take her away?”

“Yes.”

“Where will he take her to?”

“To the police station.”

Mercy started, and looked at Julian. He was still watching the slightest changes in her face. She looked back again at Horace.

“To the police station!” she repeated. “What for?”

“How can you ask the question?” said Horace, irritably. “To be placed under restraint, of course.”

“Do you mean prison?”

“I mean an asylum.”

Again Mercy turned to Julian. There was horror now, as well as surprise, in her face. “Oh!” she said to him, “Horace is surely wrong? It can’t be?”

Julian left it to Horace to answer. Every facility in him seemed to be still absorbed in watching Mercy’s face. She was compelled to address herself to Horace once more.

“What sort of asylum?” she asked. “You don’t surely mean a madhouse?”

“I do,” he rejoined. “The workhouse first, perhaps — and then the madhouse. What is there to surprise you in that? You yourself told her to her face she was mad. Good Heavens! how pale you are! What is the matter?”

She turned to Julian for the third time. The terrible alternative that was offered to her had showed itself at last, without reserve or disguise. Restore the identity that you have stolen, or shut her up in a madhouse — it rests with you to choose! In that form the situation shaped itself in her mind. She chose on the instant. Before she opened her lips the higher nature in her spoke to Julian, in her eyes. The steady inner light that he had seen in them once already shone in them again, brighter and purer than before. The conscience that he had fortified, the soul that he had saved, looked at him and said, Doubt us no more!

“Send that man out of the house.”

Those were her first words. She spoke (pointing to the police officer) in clear, ringing, resolute tones, audible in the remotest corner of the room.

Julian’s hand stole unobserved to hers, and told her, in its momentary pressure, to count on his brotherly sympathy and help. All the other persons in the room looked at her in speechless surprise. Grace rose from her chair. Even the man in plain clothes started to his feet. Lady Janet (hurriedly joining Horace, and fully sharing his perplexity and alarm) took Mercy impulsively by the arm, and shook it, as if to rouse her to a sense of what she was doing. Mercy held firm; Mercy resolutely repeated what she had said: “Send that man out of the house.”

Lady Janet lost all her patience with her. “What has come to you?” she asked, sternly. “Do you know what you are saying? The man is here in your interest, as well as in mine; the man is here to spare you, as well as me, further annoyance and insult. And you insist — insist, in my presence — on his being sent away! What does it mean?”

“You shall know what it means, Lady Janet, in half an hour. I don’t insist — I only reiterate my entreaty. Let the man be sent away.”

Julian stepped aside (with his aunt’s eyes angrily following him) and spoke to the police officer. “Go back to the station,” he said, “and wait there till you hear from me.”

The meanly vigilant eyes of the man in plain clothes traveled sidelong from Julian to Mercy, and valued her beauty as they had valued the carpet and the chairs. “The old story,” he thought. “The nice-looking woman is always at the bottom of it; and, sooner or later, the nice-looking woman has her way.” He marched back across the room, to the discord of his own creaking boots, bowed, with a villainous smile which put the worst construction on everything, and vanished through the library door.

Lady Janet’s high breeding restrained her from saying anything until the police officer was out of hearing. Then, and not till then, she appealed to Julian.