Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (901 page)

Lady Janet looked up from her papers as blandly as ever.

“If
you
persist in returning to your delusion,” she said, “you will oblige
me
to persist in returning to my papers.”

“What is my delusion, if you please?”

“Your delusion is expressed in the questions you have just put to me. Your delusion constitutes your peculiar claim on my forbearance. Nothing you can say or do will shake my forbearance. When I first found you in the dining-room, I acted most improperly; I lost my temper. I did worse; I was foolish enough and imprudent enough to send for a police officer. I owe you every possible atonement (afflicted as you are) for treating you in that cruel manner. I offered you the use of my boudoir, as part of my atonement. I sent for you, in the hope that you would allow me to assist you, as part of my atonement. You may behave rudely to me, you may speak in the most abusive terms of my adopted daughter; I will submit to anything, as part of my atonement. So long as you abstain from speaking on one painful subject, I will listen to you with the greatest pleasure. Whenever you return to that subject I shall return to my papers.”

Grace looked at Lady Janet with an evil smile.

“I begin to understand your ladyship,” she said. “You are ashamed to acknowledge that you have been grossly imposed upon. Your only alternative, of course, is to ignore everything that has happened. Pray count on
my
forbearance. I am not at all offended — I am merely amused. It is not every day that a lady of high rank exhibits herself in such a position as yours to an obscure woman like me. Your humane consideration for me dates, I presume, from the time when your adopted daughter set you the example, by ordering the police officer out of the room?”

Lady Janet’s composure was proof even against this assault on it. She gravely accepted Grace’s inquiry as a question addressed to her in perfect good faith.

“I am not at all surprised,” she replied, “to find that my adopted daughter’s interference has exposed her to misrepresentation. She ought to have remonstrated with me privately before she interfered. But she has one fault — she is too impulsive. I have never, in all my experience, met with such a warm-hearted person as she is. Always too considerate of others; always too forgetful of herself! The mere appearance of the police officer placed you in a situation to appeal to her compassion, and her impulses carried her away as usual. My fault! All my fault!”

Grace changed her tone once more. She was quick enough to discern that Lady Janet was a match for her with her own weapons.

“We have had enough of this,” she said. “It is time to be serious. Your adopted daughter (as you call her) is Mercy Merrick, and you know it.”

Lady Janet returned to her papers.

“I am Grace Roseberry, whose name she has stolen, and you know
that
.”

Lady Janet went on with her papers.

Grace got up from her chair.

“I accept your silence, Lady Janet,” she said, “as an acknowledgment of your deliberate resolution to suppress the truth. You are evidently determined to receive the adventuress as the true woman; and you don’t scruple to face the consequences of that proceeding, by pretending to my face to believe that I am mad. I will not allow myself to be impudently cheated out of my rights in this way. You will hear from me again madam, when the Canadian mail arrives in England.”

She walked toward the door. This time Lady Janet answered, as readily and as explicitly as it was possible to desire.

“I shall refuse to receive your letters,” she said.

Grace returned a few steps, threateningly.

“My letters shall be followed by my witnesses,” she proceeded.

“I shall refuse to receive your witnesses.”

“Refuse at your peril. I will appeal to the law.”

Lady Janet smiled.

“I don’t pretend to much knowledge of the subject,” she said; “but I should be surprised indeed if I discovered that you had any claim on me which the law could enforce. However, let us suppose that you
can
set the law in action. You know as well as I do that the only motive power which can do that is — money. I am rich; fees, costs, and all the rest of it are matters of no sort of consequence to me. May I ask if you are in the same position?”

The question silenced Grace. So far as money was concerned, she was literally at the end of her resources. Her only friends were friends in Canada. After what she had said to him in the boudoir, it would be quite useless to appeal to the sympathies of Julian Gray. In the pecuniary sense, and in one word, she was absolutely incapable of gratifying her own vindictive longings. And there sat the mistress of Mablethorpe House, perfectly well aware of it.

Lady Janet pointed to the empty chair.

“Suppose you sit down again?” she suggested. “The course of our interview seems to have brought us back to the question that I asked you when you came into my room. Instead of threatening me with the law, suppose you consider the propriety of permitting me to be of some use to you. I am in the habit of assisting ladies in embarrassed circumstances, and nobody knows of it but my steward — who keeps the accounts — and myself. Once more, let me inquire if a little advance of the pecuniary sort (delicately offered) would be acceptable to you?”

Grace returned slowly to the chair that she had left. She stood by it, with one hand grasping the top rail, and with her eyes fixed in mocking scrutiny on Lady Janet’s face.

“At last your ladyship shows your hand,” she said. “Hush-money!”

“You
will
send me back to my papers,” rejoined Lady Janet. “How obstinate you are!”

Grace’s hand closed tighter and tighter round the rail of the chair. Without witnesses, without means, without so much as a refuge — thanks to her own coarse cruelties of language and conduct — in the sympathies of others, the sense of her isolation and her helplessness was almost maddening at that final moment. A woman of finer sensibilities would have instantly left the room. Grace’s impenetrably hard and narrow mind impelled her to meet the emergency in a very different way. A last base vengeance, to which Lady Janet had voluntarily exposed herself, was still within her reach. “For the present,” she thought, “there is but one way of being even with your ladyship. I can cost you as much as possible.”

“Pray make some allowances for me,” she said. “I am not obstinate — I am only a little awkward at matching the audacity of a lady of high rank. I shall improve with practice. My own language is, as I am painfully aware, only plain English. Permit me to withdraw it, and to substitute yours. What advance is your ladyship (delicately) prepared to offer me?”

Lady Janet opened a drawer, and took out her check-book.

The moment of relief had come at last! The only question now left to discuss was evidently the question of amount. Lady Janet considered a little. The question of amount was (to her mind) in some sort a question of conscience as well. Her love for Mercy and her loathing for Grace, her horror of seeing her darling degraded and her affection profaned by a public exposure, had hurried her — there was no disputing it — into treating an injured woman harshly. Hateful as Grace Roseberry might be, her father had left her, in his last moments, with Lady Janet’s full concurrence, to Lady Janet’s care. But for Mercy she would have been received at Mablethorpe House as Lady Janet’s companion, with a salary of one hundred pounds a year. On the other hand, how long (with such a temper as she had revealed) would Grace have remained in the service of her protectress? She would probably have been dismissed in a few weeks, with a year’s salary to compensate her, and with a recommendation to some suitable employment. What would be a fair compensation now? Lady Janet decided that five years’ salary immediately given, and future assistance rendered if necessary, would represent a fit remembrance of the late Colonel Roseberry’s claims, and a liberal pecuniary acknowledgment of any harshness of treatment which Grace might have sustained at her hands. At the same time, and for the further satisfying of her own conscience, she determined to discover the sum which Grace herself would consider sufficient by the simple process of making Grace herself propose the terms.

“It is impossible for me to make you an offer,” she said, “for this reason — your need of money will depend greatly on your future plans. I am quite ignorant of your future plans.’’

“Perhaps your ladyship will kindly advise me?” said Grace, satirically.

“I cannot altogether undertake to advise you,” Lady Janet replied. “I can only suppose that you will scarcely remain in England, where you have no friends. Whether you go to law with me or not, you will surely feel the necessity of communicating personally with your friends in Canada. Am I right?”

Grace was quite quick enough to understand this as it was meant. Properly interpreted, the answer signified — ”If you take your compensation in money, it is understood, as part of the bargain that you don’t remain in England to annoy me.”

“Your ladyship is quite right,” she said. “I shall certainly not remain in England. I shall consult my friends — and,” she added, mentally, “go to law with you afterward, if I possibly can, with your own money!”

“You will return to Canada,” Lady Janet proceeded; “and your prospects there will be, probably, a little uncertain at first. Taking this into consideration, at what amount do you estimate, in your own mind, the pecuniary assistance which you will require?”

“May I count on your ladyship’s, kindness to correct me if my own ignorant calculations turn out to be wrong?” Grace asked, innocently.

Here again the words, properly interpreted, had a special signification of their own: “It is stipulated, on my part, that I put myself up to auction, and that my estimate shall be regulated by your ladyship’s highest bid.” Thoroughly understanding the stipulation, Lady Janet bowed, and waited gravely.

Gravely, on her side, Grace began.

“I am afraid I should want more than a hundred pounds,” she said.

Lady Janet made her first bid. “I think so too.”

“More, perhaps, than two hundred?”

Lady Janet made her second bid. “Probably.”

“More than three hundred? Four hundred? Five hundred?”

Lady Janet made her highest bid. “Five hundred pounds will do,” she said.

In spite of herself, Grace’s rising colour betrayed her ungovernable excitement. From her earliest childhood she had been accustomed to see shillings and sixpences carefully considered before they were parted with. She had never known her father to possess so much as five golden sovereigns at his own disposal (unencumbered by debt) in all her experience of him. The atmosphere in which she had lived and breathed was the all-stifling one of genteel poverty. There was something horrible in the greedy eagerness of her eyes as they watched Lady Janet, to see if she was really sufficiently in earnest to give away five hundred pounds sterling with a stroke of her pen.

Lady Janet wrote t he check in a few seconds, and pushed it across the table.

Grace’s hungry eyes devoured the golden line, “Pay to myself or bearer five hundred pounds,” and verified the signature beneath, “Janet Roy.” Once sure of the money whenever she chose to take it, the native meanness of her nature instantly asserted itself. She tossed her head, and let the check lie on the table, with an overacted appearance of caring very little whether she took it or not.

“Your ladyship is not to suppose that I snap at your check,” she said.

Lady Janet leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The very sight of Grace Roseberry sickened her. Her mind filled suddenly with the image of Mercy. She longed to feast her eyes again on that grand beauty, to fill her ears again with the melody of that gentle voice.

“I require time to consider — in justice to my own self-respect,” Grace went on.

Lady Janet wearily made a sign, granting time to consider.

“Your ladyship’s boudoir is, I presume, still at my disposal?”

Lady Janet silently granted the boudoir.