For the last time--at the crisis of her life--Julian spoke for her. He had never loved her as he loved her at that moment; it tried even his generous nature to plead her cause with Horace against himself. But he had promised her, without reserve, all the help that her truest friend could offer. Faithfully and manfully he redeemed his promise.
"Horace!" he said.
Horace slowly looked up. Julian rose and approached him.
"She has told you to thank _me_, if her conscience has spoken. Thank the n.o.ble nature which answered when I called upon it! Own the priceless value of a woman who can speak the truth. Her heartfelt repentance is a joy in heaven. Shall it not plead for her on earth? Honor her, if you are a Christian! Feel for her, if you are a man!"
He waited. Horace never answered him.
Mercy"s eyes turned tearfully on Julian. _His_ heart was the heart that felt for her! _His_ words were the words which comforted and pardoned her! When she looked back again at Horace, it was with an effort. His last hold on her was lost. In her inmost mind a thought rose unbidden--a thought which was not to be repressed. "Can I ever have loved this man?"
She advanced a step toward him; it was not possible, even yet, to completely forgot the past. She held out her hand.
He rose on his side--without looking at her.
"Before we part forever," she said to him, "will you take my hand as a token that you forgive me?"
He hesitated. He half lifted his hand. The next moment the generous impulse died away in him. In its place came the mean fear of what might happen if he trusted himself to the dangerous fascination of her touch.
His hand dropped again at his side; he turned away quickly.
"I can"t forgive her!" he said.
With that horrible confession--without even a last look at her--he left the room.
At the moment when he opened the door Julian"s contempt for him burst its way through all restraints.
"Horace," he said, "I pity you!"
As the words escaped him he looked back at Mercy. She had turned aside from both of them--she had retired to a distant part of the library The first bitter foretaste of what was in store for her when she faced the world again had come to her from Horace! The energy which had sustained her thus far quailed before the dreadful prospect--doubly dreadful to a woman--of obloquy and contempt. She sank on her knees before a little couch in the darkest corner of the room. "O Christ, have mercy on me!"
That was her prayer--no more.
Julian followed her. He waited a little. Then his kind hand touched her; his friendly voice fell consolingly on her ear.
"Rise, poor wounded heart! Beautiful, purified soul, G.o.d"s angels rejoice over you! Take your place among the n.o.blest of G.o.d"s creatures!"
He raised her as he spoke. All her heart went out to him. She caught his hand--she pressed it to her bosom; she pressed it to her lips--then dropped it suddenly, and stood before him trembling like a frightened child.
"Forgive me!" was all she could say. "I was so lost and lonely--and you are so good to me!"
She tried to leave him. It was useless--her strength was gone; she caught at the head of the couch to support herself. He looked at her.
The confession of his love was just rising to his lips--he looked again, and checked it. No, not at that moment; not when she was helpless and ashamed; not when her weakness might make her yield, only to regret it at a later time. The great heart which had spared her and felt for her from the first spared her and felt for her now.
He, too, left her--but not without a word at parting.
"Don"t think of your future life just yet," he said, gently. "I have something to propose when rest and quiet have restored you." He opened the nearest door--the door of the dining-room--and went out.
The servants engaged in completing the decoration of the dinner-table noticed, when "Mr. Julian" entered the room, that his eyes were "brighter than ever." He looked (they remarked) like a man who "expected good news." They were inclined to suspect--though he was certainly rather young for it--that her ladyship"s nephew was in a fair way of preferment in the Church.
Mercy seated herself on the couch.
There are limits, in the physical organization of man, to the action of pain. When suffering has reached a given point of intensity the nervous sensibility becomes incapable of feeling more. The rule of Nature, in this respect, applies not only to sufferers in the body, but to sufferers in the mind as well. Grief, rage, terror, have also their appointed limits. The moral sensibility, like the nervous sensibility, reaches its period of absolute exhaustion, and feels no more.
The capacity for suffering in Mercy had attained its term. Alone in the library, she could feel the physical relief of repose; she could vaguely recall Julian"s parting words to her, and sadly wonder what they meant--she could do no more.
An interval pa.s.sed; a brief interval of perfect rest.
She recovered herself sufficiently to be able to look at her watch and to estimate the lapse of time that might yet pa.s.s before Julian returned to her as he had promised. While her mind was still languidly following this train of thought she was disturbed by the ringing of a bell in the hall, used to summon the servant whose duties were connected with that part of the house. In leaving the library, Horace had gone out by the door which led into the hall, and had failed to close it. She plainly heard the bell--and a moment later (more plainly still) she heard Lady Janet"s voice!
She started to her feet. Lady Janet"s letter was still in the pocket of her ap.r.o.n--the letter which imperatively commanded her to abstain from making the very confession that had just pa.s.sed her lips! It was near the dinner hour, and the library was the favorite place in which the mistress of the house and her guests a.s.sembled at that time. It was no matter of doubt; it was an absolute certainty that Lady Janet had only stopped in the hall on her way into the room.
The alternative for Mercy lay between instantly leaving the library by the dining-room door--or remaining where she was, at the risk of being sooner or later compelled to own that she had deliberately disobeyed her benefactress. Exhausted by what she had already suffered, she stood trembling and irresolute, incapable of deciding which alternative she should choose.
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 surpa.s.sed 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 elaborate 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 a.s.sumption 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 honor. 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 n.o.ble 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.