Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (902 page)

“And your ladyship’s servants are at my orders, if I have occasion to employ them?”

Lady Janet suddenly opened her eyes. “The whole household is at your orders,” she cried, furiously. “Leave me!”

Grace was far from being offended. If anything, she was gratified — there was a certain triumph in having stung Lady Janet into an open outbreak of temper. She insisted forthwith on another condition.

“In the event of my deciding to receive the check,” she said, “I cannot, consistently with my own self-respect, permit it to be delivered to me otherwise than inclosed. Your ladyship will (if necessary) be so kind as to inclose it. Good-evening.”

She sauntered to the door, looking from side to side, with an air of supreme disparagement, at the priceless treasures of art which adorned the walls. Her eyes dropped superciliously on the carpet (the design of a famous French painter), as if her feet condescended in walking over it. The audacity with which she had entered the room had been marked enough; it shrank to nothing before the infinitely superior proportions of the insolence with which she left it.

The instant the door was closed Lady Janet rose from her chair. Reckless of the wintry chill in the outer air, she threw open one of the windows. “Pah!” she exclaimed, with a shudder of disgust, “the very air of the room is tainted by her!”

She returned to her chair. Her mood changed as she sat down again — her heart was with Mercy once more. “Oh, my love!” she murmured “how low I have stooped, how miserably I have degraded myself — and all for You!” The bitterness of the retrospect was unendurable. The inbred force of the woman’s nature took refuge from it in an outburst of defiance and despair. “Whatever she has done, that wretch deserves it! Not a living creature in this house shall say she has deceived me. She has
not
deceived me — she loves me! What do I care whether she has given me her true name or not! She has given me her true heart. What right had Julian to play upon her feelings and pry into her secrets? My poor, tempted, tortured child! I won’t hear her confession. Not another word shall she say to any living creature. I am mistress — I will forbid it at once!” She snatched a sheet of notepaper from the case; hesitated, and threw it from her on the table. “Why not send for my darling?” she thought. “Why write?” She hesitated once more, and resigned the idea. “No! I can’t trust myself! I daren’t see her yet!”

She took up the sheet of paper again, and wrote her second message to Mercy. This time the note began fondly with a familiar form of address.

“MY DEAR CHILD — I have had time to think and compose myself a little, since I last wrote, requesting you to defer the explanation which you had promised me. I already understand (and appreciate) the motives which led you to interfere as you did downstairs, and I now ask you to entirely abandon the explanation. It will, I am sure, be painful to you (for reasons of your own into which I have no wish to inquire) to produce the person of whom you spoke, and as you know already, I myself am weary of hearing of her. Besides, there is really no need now for you to explain anything. The stranger whose visits here have caused us so much pain and anxiety will trouble us no more. She leaves England of her own free will, after a conversation with me which has perfectly succeeded in composing and satisfying her. Not a word more, my dear, to me, or to my nephew, or to any other human creature, of what has happened in the dining-room to-day. When we next meet, let it be understood between us that the past is henceforth and forever
buried to oblivion
. This is not only the earnest request — it is, if necessary, the positive command, of your mother and friend,

“JANET ROY.

“P.S. — I shall find opportunities (before you leave your room) of speaking separately to my nephew and to Horace Holmcroft. You need dread no embarrassment, when you next meet them. I will not ask you to answer my note in writing. Say yes to the maid who will bring it to you, and I shall know we understand each other.”

After sealing the envelope which inclosed these lines, Lady Janet addressed it, as usual, to “Miss Grace Roseberry.” She was just rising to ring the bell, when the maid appeared with a message from the boudoir. The woman’s tones and looks showed plainly that she had been made the object of Grace’s insolent self-assertion as well as her mistress.

“If you please, my lady, the person downstairs wishes — ”

Lady Janet, frowning contemptuously, interrupted the message at the outset. “I know what the person downstairs wishes. She has sent you for a letter from me?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Anything more?”

“She has sent one of the men-servants, my lady, for a cab. If your ladyship had only heard how she spoke to him!”

Lady Janet intimated by a sign that she would rather not hear. She at once inclosed the check in an undirected envelope.

“Take that to her,” she said, “and then come back to me.”

Dismissing Grace Roseberry from all further consideration, Lady Janet sat, with her letter to Mercy in her hand, reflecting on her position, and on the efforts which it might still demand from her. Pursuing this train of thought, it now occurred to her that accident might bring Horace and Mercy together at any moment, and that, in Horace’s present frame of mind, he would certainly insist on the very explanation which it was the foremost interest of her life to suppress. The dread of this disaster was in full possession of her when the maid returned.

“Where is Mr. Holmcroft?” she asked, the moment the woman entered the room.

“I saw him open the library door, my lady, just now, on my way upstairs.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Go to him, and say I want to see him here immediately.”

The maid withdrew on her second errand. Lady Janet rose restlessly, and closed the open window. Her impatient desire to make sure of Horace so completely mastered her that she left her room, and met the woman in the corridor on her return. Receiving Horace’s message of excuse, she instantly sent back the peremptory rejoinder, “Say that he will oblige me to go to him, if he persists in refusing to come to me. And, stay!” she added, remembering the undelivered letter. “Send Miss Roseberry’s maid here; I want her.”

Left alone again, Lady Janet paced once or twice up and down the corridor — then grew suddenly weary of the sight of it, and went back to her room. The two maids returned together. One of them, having announced Horace’s submission, was dismissed. The other was sent to Mercy’s room with Lady Janet’s letter. In a minute or two the messenger appeared again, with the news that she had found the room empty.

“Have you any idea where Miss Roseberry is?”

“No, my lady.”

Lady Janet reflected for a moment. If Horace presented himself without any needless delay, the plain inference would he that she had succeeded in separating him from Mercy. If his appearance was suspiciously deferred, she decided on personally searching for Mercy in the reception rooms on the lower floor of the house.

“What have you done with the letter?” she asked.

“I left it on Miss Roseberry’s table, my lady.”

“Very well. Keep within hearing of the bell, in case I want you again.”

Another minute brought Lady Janet’s suspense to an end. She heard the welcome sound of a knock at her door from a man’s hand. Horace hurriedly entered the room.

“What is it you want with me, Lady Janet?” he inquired, not very graciously.

“Sit down, Horace, and you shall hear.”

Horace did not accept the invitation. “Excuse me,” he said, “if I mention that I am rather in a hurry.”

“Why are you in a hurry?”

“I have reasons for wishing to see Grace as soon as possible.”

“And
I
have reasons,” Lady Janet rejoined, “for wishing to speak to you about Grace before you see her; serious reasons. Sit down.”

Horace started. “Serious reasons?” he repeated. “You surprise me.”

“I shall surprise you still more before I have done.”

Their eyes met as Lady Janet answered in those terms. Horace observed signs of agitation in her, which he now noticed for the first time. His face darkened with an expression of sullen distrust — and he took the chair in silence.

CHAPTER XXIV. LADY JANET’S LETTER.

THE narrative leaves Lady Janet and Horace Holmcroft together, and returns to Julian and Mercy in the library.

An interval passed — a long interval, measured by the impatient reckoning of suspense — after the cab which had taken Grace Roseberry away had left the house. The minutes followed each other; and still the warning sound of Horace’s footsteps was not heard on the marble pavement of the hall. By common (though unexpressed) consent, Julian and Mercy avoided touching upon the one subject on which they were now both interested alike. With their thoughts fixed secretly in vain speculation on the nature of the interview which was then taking place in Lady Janet’s room, they tried to speak on topics indifferent to both of them — tried, and failed, and tried again. In a last and longest pause of silence between them, the next event happened. The door from the hall was softly and suddenly opened.

Was it Horace? No — not even yet. The person who had opened the door was only Mercy’s maid.

“My lady’s love, miss; and will you please to read this directly?”

Giving her message in those terms, the woman produced from the pocket of her apron Lady Janet’s second letter to Mercy, with a strip of paper oddly pinned round the envelope. Mercy detached the paper, and found on the inner side some lines in pencil, hurriedly written in Lady Janet’s hand. They ran thus.

“Don’t lose a moment in reading my letter. And mind this, when H. returns to you — meet him firmly: say nothing.”

Enlightened by the warning words which Julian had spoken to her, Mercy was at no loss to place the right interpretation on those strange lines. Instead of immediately opening the letter, she stopped the maid at the library door. Julian’s suspicion of the most trifling events that were taking place in the house had found its way from his mind to hers. “Wait!” she said. “I don’t understand what is going on upstairs; I want to ask you something.”

The woman came back — not very willingly.

“How did you know I was here?” Mercy inquired.

“If you please, miss, her ladyship ordered me to take the letter to you some little time since. You were not in your room, and I left it on your table.”

“I understand that. But how came you to bring the letter here?”

“My lady rang for me, miss. Before I could knock at her door she came out into the corridor with that morsel of paper in her hand — ”

“So as to keep you from entering her room?”

“Yes, miss. Her ladyship wrote on the paper in a great hurry, and told me to pin it round the letter that I had left in your room. I was to take them both together to you, and to let nobody see me. ‘You will find Miss Roseberry in the library’ (her ladyship says), ‘and run, run, run! there isn’t a moment to lose!’ Those were her own words, miss.”

“Did you hear anything in the room before Lady Janet came out and met you?”

The woman hesitated, and looked at Julian.

“I hardly know whether I ought to tell you, miss.”

Julian turned away to leave the library. Mercy stopped him by a motion of her hand.

“You know that I shall not get you into any trouble,” she said to the maid. “And you may speak quite safely before Mr. Julian Gray.”

Thus re-assured, the maid spoke.

“To own the truth, miss, I heard Mr. Holmcroft in my lady’s room. His voice sounded as if he was angry. I may say they were both angry — Mr. Holmcroft and my lady.” (She turned to Julian.) “And just before her ladyship came out, sir, I heard your name, as if it was you they were having words about. I can’t say exactly what it was; I hadn’t time to hear. And I didn’t listen, miss; the door was ajar; and the voices were so loud nobody could help hearing them.”