Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (909 page)

Lady Janet’s voice, clear and resolute, penetrated into the room. She was reprimanding the servant who had answered the bell.

“Is it your duty in my house to look after the lamps?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“And is it my duty to pay you your wages?”

“If you please, my lady.”

“Why do I find the light in the hall dim, and the wick of that lamp smoking? I have not failed in my duty to You. Don’t let me find you failing again in your duty to Me.”

(Never had Lady Janet’s voice sounded so sternly in Mercy’s ear as it sounded now. If she spoke with that tone of severity to a servant who had neglected a lamp, what had her adopted daughter to expect when she discovered that her entreaties and her commands had been alike set at defiance?)

Having administered her reprimand, Lady Janet had not done with the servant yet. She had a question to put to him next.

“Where is Miss Roseberry?”

“In the library, my lady.”

Mercy returned to the couch. She could stand no longer; she had not even resolution enough left to lift her eyes to the door.

Lady Janet came in more rapidly than usual. She advanced to the couch, and tapped Mercy playfully on the cheek with two of her fingers.

“You lazy child! Not dressed for dinner? Oh, fie, fie!”

Her tone was as playfully affectionate as the action which had accompanied her words. In speechless astonishment Mercy looked up at her.

Always remarkable for the taste and splendor of her dress, Lady Janet had on this occasion surpassed herself. There she stood revealed in her grandest velvet, her richest jewelry, her finest lace — with no one to entertain at the dinner-table but the ordinary members of the circle at Mablethorpe House. Noticing this as strange to begin with, Mercy further observed, for the first time in her experience, that Lady Janet’s eyes avoided meeting hers. The old lady took her place companionably on the couch; she ridiculed her “lazy child’s” plain dress, without an ornament of any sort on it, with her best grace; she affectionately put her arm round Mercy’s waist, and rearranged with her own hand the disordered locks of Mercy’s hair — but the instant Mercy herself looked at her, Lady Janet’s eyes discovered something supremely interesting in the familiar objects that surrounded her on the library walls.

How were these changes to be interpreted? To what possible conclusion did they point?

Julian’s profounder knowledge of human nature, if Julian had been present, might have found a clew to the mystery.
He
might have surmised (incredible as it was) that Mercy’s timidity before Lady Janet was fully reciprocated by Lady Janet’s timidity before Mercy. It was even so. The woman whose immovable composure had conquered Grace Roseberry’s utmost insolence in the hour of her triumph — the woman who, without once flinching, had faced every other consequence of her resolution to ignore Mercy’s true position in the house — quailed for the first time when she found herself face to face with the very person for who m she had suffered and sacrificed so much. She had shrunk from the meeting with Mercy, as Mercy had shrunk from the meeting with
her
. The splendor of her dress meant simply that, when other excuses for delaying the meeting downstairs had all been exhausted, the excuse of a long, and elabourate toilet had been tried next. Even the moments occupied in reprimanding the servant had been moments seized on as the pretext for another delay. The hasty entrance into the room, the nervous assumption of playfulness in language and manner, the evasive and wandering eyes, were all referable to the same cause. In the presence of others, Lady Janet had successfully silenced the protest of her own inbred delicacy and inbred sense of honour. In the presence of Mercy, whom she loved with a mother’s love — in the presence of Mercy, for whom she had stooped to deliberate concealment of the truth — all that was high and noble in the woman’s nature rose in her and rebuked her. What will the daughter of my adoption, the child of my first and last experience of maternal love, think of me, now that I have made myself an accomplice in the fraud of which she is ashamed? How can I look her in the face, when I have not hesitated, out of selfish consideration for my own tranquillity, to forbid that frank avowal of the truth which her finer sense of duty had spontaneously bound her to make? Those were the torturing questions in Lady Janet’s mind, while her arm was wound affectionately round Mercy’s waist, while her fingers were busying themselves familiarly with the arrangement of Mercy’s hair. Thence, and thence only, sprang the impulse which set her talking, with an uneasy affectation of frivolity, of any topic within the range of conversation, so long as it related to the future, and completely ignored the present and the past.

“The winter here is unendurable,” Lady Janet began. “I have been thinking, Grace, about what we had better do next.”

Mercy started. Lady Janet had called her “Grace.” Lady Janet was still deliberately assuming to be innocent of the faintest suspicion of the truth.

“No,” resumed her ladyship, affecting to misunderstand Mercy’s movement, “you are not to go up now and dress. There is no time, and I am quite ready to excuse you. You are a foil to me, my dear. You have reached the perfection of shabbiness. Ah! I remember when I had my whims and fancies too, and when I looked well in anything I wore, just as you do. No more of that. As I was saying, I have been thinking and planning what we are to do. We really can’t stay here. Cold one day, and hot the next — what a climate! As for society, what do we lose if we go away? There is no such thing as society now. Assemblies of well-dressed mobs meet at each other’s houses, tear each other’s clothes, tread on each other’s toes. If you are particularly lucky, you sit on the staircase, you get a tepid ice, and you hear vapid talk in slang phrases all round you. There is modern society. If we had a good opera, it would be something to stay in London for. Look at the programme for the season on that table — promising as much as possible on paper, and performing as little as possible on the stage. The same works, sung by the same singers year after year, to the same stupid people — in short the dullest musical evenings in Europe. No! the more I think of it, the more plainly I perceive that there is but one sensible choice before us: we must go abroad. Set that pretty head to work; choose north or south, east or west; it’s all the same to me. Where shall we go?”

Mercy looked at her quickly as she put the question.

Lady Janet, more quickly yet, looked away at the programme of the opera-house. Still the same melancholy false pretenses! still the same useless and cruel delay! Incapable of enduring the position now forced upon her, Mercy put her hand into the pocket of her apron, and drew from it Lady Janet’s letter.

“Will your ladyship forgive me,” she began, in faint, faltering tones, “if I venture on a painful subject? I hardly dare acknowledge — ” In spite of her resolution to speak out plainly, the memory of past love and past kindness prevailed with her; the next words died away on her lips. She could only hold up the letter.

Lady Janet declined to see the letter. Lady Janet suddenly became absorbed in the arrangement of her bracelets.

“I know what you daren’t acknowledge, you foolish child!” she exclaimed. “You daren’t acknowledge that you are tired of this dull house. My dear! I am entirely of your opinion — I am weary of my own magnificence; I long to be living in one snug little room, with one servant to wait on me. I’ll tell you what we will do. We will go to Paris, in the first place. My excellent Migliore, prince of couriers, shall be the only person in attendance. He shall take a lodging for us in one of the unfashionable quarters of Paris. We will rough it, Grace (to use the slang phrase), merely for a change. We will lead what they call a ‘Bohemian life.’ I know plenty of writers and painters and actors in Paris — the liveliest society in the world, my dear, until one gets tired of them. We will dine at the restaurant, and go to the play, and drive about in shabby little hired carriages. And when it begins to get monotonous (which it is only too sure to do!) we will spread our wings and fly to Italy, and cheat the winter in that way. There is a plan for you! Migliore is in town. I will send to him this evening, and we will start to-morrow.”

Mercy made another effort.

“I entreat your ladyship to pardon me,” she resumed. “I have something serious to say. I am afraid — ”

“I understand. You are afraid of crossing the Channel, and you don’t like to acknowledge it. Pooh! The passage barely lasts two hours; we will shut ourselves up in a private cabin. I will send at once — the courier may be engaged. Ring the bell.”

“Lady Janet, I must submit to my hard lot. I cannot hope to associate myself again with any future plans of yours — ”

“What! you are afraid of our ‘Bohemian life’ in Paris? Observe this, Grace! If there is one thing I hate more than another, it is ‘an old head on young shoulders.’ I say no more. Ring the bell.”

“This cannot go on, Lady Janet! No words can say how unworthy I feel of your kindness, how ashamed I am — ”

“Upon my honour, my dear, I agree with you. You
ought
to be ashamed, at your age, of making me get up to ring the bell.”

Her obstinacy was immovable; she attempted to rise from the couch. But one choice was left to Mercy. She anticipated Lady Janet, and rang the bell.

The man-servant came in. He had his little letter-tray in his hand, with a card on it, and a sheet of paper beside the card, which looked like an open letter.

“You know where my courier lives when he is in London?’ asked Lady Janet.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Send one of the grooms to him on horseback; I am in a hurry. The courier is to come here without fail to-morrow morning — in time for the tidal train to Paris. You understand?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“What have you got there? Anything for me?”

“For Miss Roseberry, my lady.”

As he answered, the man handed the card and the open letter to Mercy.

“The lady is waiting in the morning-room, miss. She wished me to say she has time to spare, and she will wait for you if you are not ready yet.”

Having delivered his message in those terms, he withdrew.

Mercy read the name on the card. The matron had arrived! She looked at the letter next. It appeared to be a printed circular, with some lines in pencil added on the empty page. Printed lines and written lines swam before her eyes. She felt, rather than saw, Lady Janet’s attention steadily and suspiciously fixed on her. With the matron’s arrival the foredoomed end of the flimsy false pretenses and the cruel delays had come.

“A friend of yours, my dear?”

“Yes, Lady Janet.”

“Am I acquainted with her?”

“I think not, Lady Janet.”

“You appear to be agitated. Does your visitor bring bad news? Is there anything that I can do for you?”

“You can add — immeasurably add, madam — to all your past kindness, if you will only bear with me and forgive me.”

“Bear with you and forgive you? I don’t understand.”

“I will try to explain. Whatever else you may think of me, Lady Janet, for God’s sake don’t think me ungrateful!”

Lady Janet held up her hand for silence.

“I dislike explanations,” she said, sharply. “Nobody ought to know that better than you. Perhaps the lady’s letter will explain for you. Why have you not looked at it yet?”

“I am in great trouble, madam, as you noticed just now — ”

“Have you any objection to my knowing who your visitor is?”

“No, Lady Janet.”

“Let me look at her card, then.”

Mercy gave the matron’s card to Lady Janet, as she had given the matron’s telegram to Horace.

Lady Janet read the name on the card — considered — decided that it was a name quite unknown to her — and looked next at the address: “Western District Refuge, Milburn Road.”

“A lady connected with a Refuge?” she said, speaking to herself; “and calling here by appointment — if I remember the servant’s message? A strange time to choose, if she has come for a subscription!”