Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (891 page)

She innocently strengthened her clasp of his hand. She innocently said to him, “Don’t look away from me. Your eyes give me courage.”

His hand returned the pressure of hers. He tasted to the full the delicious joy of looking at her. She had broken down his last reserves of self-control. The thought of Horace, the sense of honour, became obscured in him. In a moment more he might have said the words which he would have deplored for the rest of his life, if she had not stopped him by speaking first. “I have more to say to you,” she resumed abruptly, feeling the animating resolution to lay her heart bare before him at last; “more, far more, than I have said yet. Generous, merciful friend, let me say it
here!
”

She attempted to throw herself on her knees at his feet. He sprung from his seat and checked her, holding her with both his hands, raising her as he rose himself. In the words which had just escaped her, in the startling action which had accompanied them, the truth burst on him. The guilty woman she had spoken of was herself!

While she was almost in his arms, while her bosom was just touching his, before a word more had passed his lips or hers, the library door opened.

Lady Janet Roy entered the room.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE SEARCH IN THE GROUNDS.

GRACE ROSEBERRY, still listening in the conservatory, saw the door open, and recognised the mistress of the house. She softly drew back, and placed herself in safer hiding, beyond the range of view from the dining-room.

Lady Janet advanced no further than the threshold. She stood there and looked at her nephew and her adopted daughter in stern silence.

Mercy dropped into the chair at her side. Julian kept his place by her. His mind was still stunned by the discovery that had burst on it; his eyes still rested on her in mute terror of inquiry. He was as completely absorbed in the one act of looking at her as if they had been still alone together in the room.

Lady Janet was the first of the three who spoke. She addressed herself to her nephew.

“You were right, Mr. Julian Gray,” she said, with her bitterest emphasis of tone and manner. “You ought to have found nobody in this room on your return but
me
. I detain you no longer. You are free to leave my house.”

Julian looked round at his aunt. She was pointing to the door. In the excited state of his sensibilities at that moment the action stung him to the quick. He answered without his customary consideration for his aunt’s age and his aunt’s position toward him.

“You apparently forget, Lady Janet, that you are not speaking to one of your footmen,” he said. “There are serious reasons (of which you know nothing) for my remaining in your house a little longer. You may rely upon my trespassing on your hospitality as short a time as possible.”

He turned again to Mercy as he said those words, and surprised her timidly looking up at him. In the instant when their eyes met, the tumult of emotions struggling in him became suddenly stilled. Sorrow for her — compassionating sorrow — rose in the new calm and filled his heart. Now, and now only, he could read in the wasted and noble face how she had suffered. The pity which he had felt for the unnamed woman grew to a tenfold pity for
her
. The faith which he professed — honestly professed — in the better nature of the unnamed woman strengthened into a tenfold faith in
her
. He addressed himself again to his aunt, in a gentler tone. “This lady,” he resumed, “has something to say to me in private which she has not said yet. That is my reason and my apology for not immediately leaving the house.”

Still under the impression of what she had seen on entering the room, Lady Janet looked at him in angry amazement. Was Julian actually ignoring Horace Holmcroft’s claims, in the presence of Horace Holmcroft’s betrothed wife? She appealed to her adopted daughter. “Grace!” she exclaimed, “have you heard him? Have you nothing to say? Must I remind you — ”

She stopped. For the first time in Lady Janet’s experience of her young companion, she found herself speaking to ears that were deaf to her. Mercy was incapable of listening. Julian’s eyes had told her that Julian understood her at last!

Lady Janet turned to her nephew once more, and addressed him in the hardest words that she had ever spoken to her sister’s son.

“If you have any sense of decency,” she said — ”I say nothing of a sense of honour — you will leave this house, and your acquaintance with that lady will end here. Spare me your protests and excuses; I can place but one interpretation on what I saw when I opened that door.”

“You entirely misunderstand what you saw when you opened that door,” Julian answered, quietly.

“Perhaps I misunderstand the confession which you made to me not an hour ago?” retorted Lady Janet.

Julian cast a look of alarm at Mercy. “Don’t speak of it!” he said, in a whisper. “She might hear you.”

“Do you mean to say she doesn’t know you are in love with her?”

“Thank God, she has not the faintest suspicion of it!”

There was no mistaking the earnestness with which he made that reply. It proved his innocence as nothing else could have proved it. Lady Janet drew back a step — utterly bewildered; completely at a loss what to say or what to do next.

The silence that followed was broken by a knock at the library door. The man-servant — with news, and bad news, legibly written in his disturbed face and manner — entered the room. In the nervous irritability of the moment, Lady Janet resented the servant’s appearance as a positive offense on the part of the harmless man. “Who sent for you?” she asked, sharply. “What do you mean by interrupting us?”

The servant made his excuses in an oddly bewildered manner.

“I beg your ladyship’s pardon. I wished to take the liberty — I wanted to speak to Mr. Julian Gray.”

“What is it?” asked Julian.

The man looked uneasily at Lady Janet, hesitated, and glanced at the door, as if he wished himself well out of the room again.

“I hardly know if I can tell you, sir, before her ladyship,” he answered.

Lady Janet instantly penetrated the secret of her servant’s hesitation.

“I know what has happened,” she said; “that abominable woman has found her way here again. Am I right?”

The man’s eyes helplessly consulted Julian.

“Yes, or no?” cried Lady Janet, imperatively.

“Yes, my lady.”

Julian at once assumed the duty of asking the necessary questions.

“Where is she?” he began.

“Somewhere in the grounds, as we suppose, sir.”

“Did
you
see her?”

“No, sir.”

“Who saw her?”

“The lodge-keeper’s wife.”

This looked serious. The lodge-keeper’s wife had been present while Julian had given his instructions to her husband. She was not likely to have mistaken the identity of the person whom she had discovered.

“How long since?” Julian asked next.

“Not very long, sir.”

“Be more particular.
How
long?”

“I didn’t hear, sir.”

“Did the lodge-keeper’s wife speak to the person when she saw her?”

“No, sir: she didn’t get the chance, as I understand it. She is a stout woman, if you remember. The other was too quick for her — discovered her, sir, and (as the saying is) gave her the slip.”

“In what part of the grounds did this happen?”

The servant pointed in the direction of the side hall. “In that part, sir. Either in the Dutch garden or the shrubbery. I am not sure which.”

It was plain, by this time, that the man’s information was too imperfect to be practically of any use. Julian asked if the lodge-keeper’s wife was in the house.

“No, sir. Her husband has gone out to search the grounds in her place, and she is minding the gate. They sent their boy with the message. From what I can make out from the lad, they would be thankful if they could get a word more of advice from you, sir.”

Julian reflected for a moment.

So far as he could estimate them, the probabilities were that the stranger from Mannheim had already made her way into the house; that she had been listening in the billiard-room; that she had found time enough to escape him on his approaching to open the door; and that she was now (in the servant’s phrase) “somewhere in the grounds,” after eluding the pursuit of the lodgekeeper’s wife.

The matter was serious. Any mistake in dealing with it might lead to very painful results.

If Julian had correctly anticipated the nature of the confession which Mercy had been on the point of addressing to him, the person whom he had been the means of introducing into the house was — what she had vainly asserted herself to be — no other than the true Grace Roseberry.

Taking this for granted, it was of the utmost importance that he should speak to Grace privately, before she committed herself to any rashly renewed assertion of her claims, and before she could gain access to Lady Janet’s adopted daughter. The landlady at her lodgings had already warned him that the object which she held steadily in view was to find her way to “Miss Roseberry” when Lady Janet was not present to take her part, and when no gentleman were at hand to protect her. “Only let me meet her face to face” (she had said), “and I will make her confess herself the impostor that she is!” As matters now stood, it was impossible to estimate too seriously the mischief which might ensue from such a meeting as this. Everything now depended on Julian’s skillful management of an exasperated woman; and nobody, at that moment, knew where the woman was.

In this position of affairs, as Julian understood it, there seemed to be no other alternative than to make his inquiries instantly at the lodge and then to direct the search in person.

He looked toward Mercy’s chair as he arrived at this resolution. It was at a cruel sacrifice of his own anxieties and his own wishes that he deferred continuing the conversation with her from the critical point at which Lady Janet’s appearance had interrupted it.

Mercy had risen while he had been questioning the servant. The attention which she had failed to accord to what had passed between his aunt and himself she had given to the imperfect statement which he had extracted from the man. Her face plainly showed that she had listened as eagerly as Lady Janet had listened; with this remarkable difference between there, that Lady Janet looked frightened, and that Lady Janet’s companion showed no signs of alarm. She appeared to be interested; perhaps anxious — nothing more.

Julian spoke a parting word to his aunt.

“Pray compose yourself,” he said “I have little doubt, when I can learn the particulars, that we shall easily find this person in the grounds. There is no reason to be uneasy. I am going to superintend the search myself. I will return to you as soon as possible.”

Lady Janet listened absently. There was a certain expression in her eyes which suggested to Julian that her mind was busy with some project of its own. He stopped as he passed Mercy, on his way out by the billiard-room door. It cost him a hard effort to control the contending emotions which the mere act of looking at her now awakened in him. His heart beat fast, his voice sank low, as he spoke to her.

“You shall see me again,” he said. “I never was more in earnest in promising you my truest help and sympathy than I am now.”

She understood him. Her bosom heaved painfully; her eyes fell to the ground — she made no reply. The tears rose in Julian’s eyes as he looked at her. He hurriedly left the room.

When he turned to close the billiard-room door, he heard Lady Janet say, “I will be with you again in a moment, Grace; don’t go away.”

Interpreting these words as meaning that his aunt had some business of her own to attend to in the library, he shut the door. He had just advanced into the smoking-room beyond, when he thought he heard the door open again. He turned round. Lady Janet had followed him.