Janet sent out before her into the hall a bursting sigh, a hot wave of impatient fiery breath, which seemed to raise a little mist before her eyes as she emerged into the silence and found herself alone, leaving mockery and music, and sentiment true or false, behind. What did he mean, what did he want, that visitor whose non-appearance had held the household in suspense, whose coming had introduced so many elements of disturbance? It cannot be said that Janet herself had been uninfluenced by his absence. It had been a fact of which she could not get rid, always present with her as with Gussy, though in a different way. Certainly he had taken away much of the salt of life with him—the interest, the drama. And now that he had come back the salt had not lost its savor; it was almost too keen: it affected sharply not only the chief personage in the piece, but the audience. He was now more than actor—he was audience also; and that look of intelligence which had conveyed so many confidences on his own part now expressed the most daring suggestions as to hers. Janet burst out of the room with a sense that her period of peace was over. His looks would put motives to the most trifling actions. What had he to do with her? How dared he to suggest that this booby, this music-hall hero, this cherished only son, could in any way affect the life of Janet? “Miss Summerhayes plays his accompaniments.” The tone was light enough, the laugh as light; but it stung Janet to the very depths of her heart. Something cold and fresh blowing in her face made her turn to the door, which had been left inadvertently open, filling the house with the chill of December. Outside it was a beautiful night—the moon shining full, the stars sparkling with that keen glitter which is given by frost, the shadows of the leafless trees standing as if engraved upon the whiteness, not a breath stirring. Moonlight is always an attraction to a girl, and the outer air the best calmer of feverish thoughts. She caught a shawl from the stand, and wrapping it round her, went softly out. Everything was very still. Talk of the silence of the hills! The hills have sounds innumerable that can never be silenced{118}—movements of birds, of insects, of living creatures of all kinds; rustlings among the heather; tinklings of water; the air itself, occupying vast fields of space, has a breath—which means silence, but is not. But, if you like, the silence, in St. John’s Wood! That is something worth speaking of. There was not a sound. At long intervals, when anybody moved in the world outside, you could hear the distant footstep walk out of the unknown, advance step by step as if it had been that of a messenger of doom, diverge, pass away again, grow fainter and fainter till it went out in the stillness like the withdrawal of a light. That mystic, unseen passage occurred from time to time, but faintly at a distance. Sometimes there came into the absolute stillness a distant jar of wheels, increasing and diminishing in the same manner, going out in space.
When Janet stole out, in her little thin evening shoes that made no sound, the house stood surrounded by that intense quiet and moonlight like a house in a dream. Like its own enclosure of humble human garden soil, that mystic atmosphere isolated and surrounded it from everything else in the world. It was almost an awe to steal round the white path, and cross the branching shadows that lay over it in all the complication of their elaborate anatomy, and watch the dark and solid dwelling standing in the midst, surrounded by all that reverence of nature, with a touch of yellow light here and there in its windows, and such foolish evanescent fret and jar of feelings and thoughts within! Janet’s own little step, which was scarcely so much as the stir of a bird, struck, she felt, a half-guilty little broken note into the profound calm. The chill of the air cooled her little head. She was so small, so insignificant an atom in that silent world, troubled about matters so infinitesimally little, so unworthy to be breathed in the all-listening ear of night.
She had made the round of the garden, which was a long piece of ground, more than half of it grass, and of a very woodland aspect for anything so near London, and was about passing the side of the house on her way back, when Janet’s attention was suddenly roused in a very extraordinary way. The house was square, of the commonest comfortable form, but on the western side there had been built on to it, at some previous period, a wing, which projected in front, making a gable, and slightly outpassing the corps du logis. This wing, however, was not, so far as Janet knew, ever used at all. If used, it was as a lodging or workshop, whatever his employment might be, for the mysterious Vicars, who yet was not mysterious at all—the man-servant of whom more had been{119} seen since Dolff’s return home, and who, Janet had vaguely understood, lived in some corner of the house, carrying on his own avocations, whatever they were, but at hand when he was wanted for any special service—a privilege given by the kindness of Mrs. Harwood to an old servant, but also a convenience to herself. It was after Janet had seen this personage carrying through an open door, which had all the appearance at other times of being hermetically closed, a tray covered with dainties, that Mrs. Harwood herself had explained the position of Vicars to the governess, thus settling the question.
Nothing could possibly be more uninhabited, more shut-up and empty, than the wing. It had two long windows on the upper floor, facing the garden, which were so grown over with ivy that it was clearly apparent no light could enter, or human uses be served by them. The ivy was carefully trained, and perhaps a little thinner than usual at this time of the year. As Janet came opposite the windows, something—she could not tell what—made her look up. The moonlight was streaming full upon them, showing white crevices and reflections in the half-covered window-panes which never showed by day. She stopped short, struck by an alarm and horror which seemed to freeze the blood in her veins. At the nearest window, in an opening made by the curvature of a great ivy branch half denuded of leaves, there appeared to her the face of an old man with white hair and a long, white beard—a white image so like the moonlight that, after the first dreadful realization of what she saw as a face, Janet, in her terror, tried to persuade herself that it was only some effect of the white light shining upon the panes, which were covered by dust and the droppings of the heavy foliage. If she had hurried away then, flying indoors, as was her first impulse, no doubt she would have been able to persuade herself that this was the case. But she was, on the other hand, too much frightened, too much excited, to fly. She stood still, scarcely able to draw her breath.
A pale, very pale face, with a long, white beard—patriarchal, like the beard of a prophet—white hair, deep-sunken, aged eyes, looking up towards the moon. A sort of frenzy of terror caught hold upon Janet, so that she could not move. Who was it? Who was it? Vague recollections flew across her mind of things she had read—of an old, blind, mad king whom she remembered in her history—of—she knew not what. The thoughts thronged over her mind like clouds o’er the sky, and she could take no count of them. For there could be no king, no martyr, no prison, no madhouse here. Who{120} was it? Who was it? In a house in St. John’s Wood, the most respectable, the most perfectly well-known and well-established, in the midst of the quiet, within the tranquil garden, surrounded by all the decorums of society. Who—oh, who could it be?
She stood transfixed, not thinking that she herself in the midst of that white light, a little dark figure, all surrounded and isolated by the brightness, was more clearly distinguishable than anything about her, and, indeed, could scarcely fail to catch the eye of any one that might be looking. Janet did not think of this, her whole mind being occupied with her extraordinary discovery. She was afraid of being seen. She never realized the possibility—until suddenly, all in a moment as she stood and gazed, her whole bewildered being lost in wonder and amaze, she discovered, with a second shock even more potent than the first............