Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (889 page)

Was it fancy? or did she really see the door first open a little, then suddenly and softly close again?

Was it fancy? or did she really hear, at the same moment, a sound behind her as of persons speaking in the conservatory?

She paused; and, looking back in that direction, listened intently. The sound — if she had really heard it — was no longer audible. She advanced toward the billiard-room to set her first doubt at rest. She stretched out her hand to open the door, when the voices (recognisable now as the voices of two men) caught her ear once more.

This time she was able to distinguish the words that were spoken.

“Any further orders, sir?” inquired one of the men.

“Nothing more,” replied the other.

Mercy started, and faintly flushed, as the second voice answered the first. She stood irresolute close to the billiard-room, hesitating what to do next.

After an interval the second voice made itself heard again, advancing nearer to the dining-room: “Are you there, aunt?” it asked cautiously. There was a moment’s pause. Then the voice spoke for the third time, sounding louder and nearer. “Are you there?” it reiterated; “I have something to tell you.” Mercy summoned her resolution and answered: “Lady Janet is not here.” She turned as she spoke toward the conservatory door, and confronted on the threshold Julian Gray.

They looked at one another without exchanging a word on either side. The situation — for widely different reasons — was equally embarrassing to both of them.

There — as Julian saw
her
— was the woman forbidden to him, the woman whom he loved.

There — as Mercy saw
him
— was the man whom she dreaded, the man whose actions (as she interpreted them) proved that he suspected her.

On the surface of it, the incidents which had marked their first meeting were now exactly repeated, with the one difference that the impulse to withdraw this time appeared to be on the man’s side and not on the woman’s. It was Mercy who spoke first.

“Did you expect to find Lady Janet here?” she asked, constrainedly. He answered, on his part, more constrainedly still.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Another time will do.”

He drew back as he made the reply. She advanced desperately, with the deliberate intention of detaining him by speaking again.

The attempt which he had made to withdraw, the constraint in his manner when he had answered, had instantly confirmed her in the false conviction that he, and he alone, had guessed the truth! If she was right — if he had secretly made discoveries abroad which placed her entirely at his mercy — the attempt to induce Grace to consent to a compromise with her would be manifestly useless. Her first and foremost interest now was to find out how she really stood in the estimation of Julian Gray. In a terror of suspense, that turned her cold from head to foot, she stopped him on his way out, and spoke to him with the piteous counterfeit of a smile.

“Lady Janet is receiving some visitors,” she said. “If you will wait here, she will be back directly.”

The effort of hiding her agitation from him had brought a passing colour into her cheeks. Worn and wasted as she was, the spell of her beauty was strong enough to hold him against his own will. All he had to tell Lady Janet was that he had met one of the gardeners in the conservatory, and had cautioned him as well as the lodge-keeper. It would have been easy to write this, and to send the note to his aunt on quitting the house. For the sake of his own peace of mind, for the sake of his duty to Horace, he was doubly bound to make the first polite excuse that occurred to him, and to leave her as he had found her, alone in the room. He made the attempt, and hesitated. Despising himself for doing it, he allowed himself to look at her. Their eyes met. Julian stepped into the dining-room.

“If I am not in the way,” he said, confusedly, “I will wait, as you kindly propose.”

She noticed his embarrassment; she saw that he was strongly restraining himself from looking at her again. Her own eyes dropped to the ground as she made the discovery. Her speech failed her; her heart throbbed faster and faster.

“If I look at him again” (was the thought in
her
mind) “I shall fall at his feet and tell him all that I have done!”

“If I look at her again” (was the thought in
his
mind) “I shall fall at her feet and own that I am in love with her!”

With downcast eyes he placed a chair for her. With downcast eyes she bowed to him and took it. A dead silence followed. Never was any human misunderstanding more intricately complete than the misunderstanding which had now established itself between those two.

Mercy’s work-basket was near her. She took it, and gained time for composing herself by pretending to arrange the coloured wools. He stood behind her chair, looking at the graceful turn of her head, looking at the rich masses of her hair. He reviled himself as the weakest of men, as the falsest of friends, for still remaining near her — and yet he remained.

The silence continued. The billiard-room door opened again noiselessly. The face of the listening woman appeared stealthily behind it.

At the same moment Mercy roused herself and spoke: “Won’t you sit down?” she said, softly, still not looking round at him, still busy with her basket of wools.

He turned to get a chair — turned so quickly that he saw the billiard-room door move, as Grace Roseberry closed it again.

“Is there any one in that room?” he asked, addressing Mercy.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I thought I saw the door open and shut again a little while ago.”

He advanced at once to look into the room. As he did so Mercy dropped one of her balls of wool. He stopped to pick it up for her — then threw open the door and looked into the billiard-room. It was empty.

Had some person been listening, and had that person retreated in time to escape discovery? The open door of the smoking-room showed that room also to be empty. A third door was open — the door of the side hall, leading into the grounds. Julian closed and locked it, and returned to the dining-room.

“I can only suppose,” he said to Mercy, “that the billiard-room door was not properly shut, and that the draught of air from the hall must have moved it.”

She accepted the explanation in silence. He was, to all appearance, not quite satisfied with it himself. For a moment or two he looked about him uneasily. Then the old fascination fastened its hold on him again. Once more he looked at the graceful turn of her head, at the rich masses of her hair. The courage to put the critical question to him, now that she had lured him into remaining in the room, was still a courage that failed her. She remained as busy as ever with her work — too busy to look at him; too busy to speak to him. The silence became unendurable. He broke it by making a commonplace inquiry after her health. “I am well enough to be ashamed of the anxiety I have caused and the trouble I have given,” she answered. “To-day I have got downstairs for the first time. I am trying to do a little work.” She looked into the basket. The various specimens of wool in it were partly in balls and partly in loose skeins. The skeins were mixed and tangled. “Here is sad confusion!” she exclaimed, timidly, with a faint smile. “How am I to set it right again?”

“Let me help you,” said Julian.

“You!”

“Why not?” he asked, with a momentary return of the quaint humour which she remembered so well. “You forget that I am a curate. Curates are privileged to make themselves useful to young ladies. Let me try.”

He took a stool at her feet, and set himself to unravel one of the tangled skeins. In a minute the wool was stretched on his hands, and the loose end was ready for Mercy to wind. There was something in the trivial action, and in the homely attention that it implied, which in some degree quieted her fear of him. She began to roll the wool off his hands into a ball. Thus occupied, she said the daring words which were to lead him little by little into betraying his suspicions, if he did indeed suspect the truth.

CHAPTER XVII. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.

“You were here when I fainted, were you not?” Mercy began. “You must think me a sad coward, even for a woman.”

He shook his head. “I am far from thinking that,” he replied. “No courage could have sustained the shock which fell on you. I don’t wonder that you fainted. I don’t wonder that you have been ill.”

She paused in rolling up the ball of wool. What did those words of unexpected sympathy mean? Was he laying a trap for her? Urged by that serious doubt, she questioned him more boldly.

“Horace tells me you have been abroad,” she said. “Did you enjoy your holiday?”

“It was no holiday. I went abroad because I thought it right to make certain inquiries — ” He stopped there, unwilling to return to a subject that was painful to her.

Her voice sank, her fingers trembled round the ball of wool; but she managed to go on.

“Did you arrive at any results?” she asked.

“At no results worth mentioning.”

The caution of that reply renewed her worst suspicions of him. In sheer despair, she spoke out plainly.

“I want to know your opinion — ” she began.

“Gently!” said Julian. “You are entangling the wool again.”

“I want to know your opinion of the person who so terribly frightened me. Do you think her — ”

“Do I think her — what?”

“Do you think her an adventuress?”

(As she said those words the branches of a shrub in the conservatory were noiselessly parted by a hand in a black glove. The face of Grace Roseberry appeared dimly behind the leaves. Undiscovered, she had escaped from the billiard-room, and had stolen her way into the conservatory as the safer hiding-place of the two. Behind the shrub she could see as well as listen. Behind the shrub she waited as patiently as ever.)

“I take a more merciful view,” Julian answered. “I believe she is acting under a delusion. I don’t blame her: I pity her.”

“You pity her?” As Mercy repeated the words, she tore off Julian’s hands the last few lengths of wool left, and threw the imperfectly wound skein back into the basket. “Does that mean,” she resumed, abruptly, “that you believe her?”

Julian rose from his seat, and looked at Mercy in astonishment.

“Good heavens, Miss Roseberry! what put such an idea as that into your head?”

“I am little better than a stranger to you,” she rejoined, with an effort to assume a jesting tone. “You met that person before you met with me. It is not so very far from pitying her to believing her. How could I feel sure that you might not suspect me?”

“Suspect
you!
” he exclaimed. “You don’t know how you distress, how you shock me. Suspect
you!
The bare idea of it never entered my mind. The man doesn’t live who trusts you more implicitly, who believes in you more devotedly, than I do.”

His eyes, his voice, his manner, all told her that those words came from the heart. She contrasted his generous confidence in her (the confidence of which she was unworthy) with her ungracious distrust of him. Not only had she wronged Grace Roseberry — she had wronged Julian Gray. Could she deceive him as she had deceived the others? Could she meanly accept that implicit trust, that devoted belief? Never had she felt the base submissions which her own imposture condemned her to undergo with a loathing of them so overwhelming as the loathing that she felt now. In horror of herself, she turned her head aside in silence and shrank from meeting his eye. He noticed the movement, placing his own interpretation on it. Advancing closer, he asked anxiously if he had offended her.

“You don’t know how your confidence touches me,” she said, without looking up. “You little think how keenly I feel your kindness.”

She checked herself abruptly. Her fine tact warned her that she was speaking too warmly — that the expression of her gratitude might strike him as being strangely exaggerated. She handed him her work-basket before he could speak again.