The night of the ball arrived at last. It was a long time in coming to the impatience of Dolff and Julia: and even to Gussy, who was not impatient, who would rather have held it off a little when the day at last came, and to whom so many things were involved in the hours which would be but amusement to the rest. Nobody suspected what was going on under Gussy’s tranquil looks. She was one of those people whom many think to be incapable of feeling at all. She had a force of resolution not to expose herself, not to let anybody know what she endured, which was equal to almost any trial. There are many women who possess this power, but it is most frequently exercised to shield and cover the delinquencies of others. Gussy’s reticence was only for herself; but strength of any kind is respectable; and if any one had known the fever that was in her breast, the chance upon which the fortune of her life seemed to turn, and the absolute tranquillity with which, to all appearance, she prepared for the evening’s pleasure, no doubt she would have earned the admiration of some and the respect of others. But our best qualities, as well as our worst, remain for the most part blank to those who surround us, and nobody suspected either the trouble in which Miss Harwood was, or the empire she exercised over her own soul. Janet, perhaps, was the only member of the party who was in the least degree cognizant of it, but even Janet was chiefly aware, with a feeling of provoked sympathy, that Gussy, as she generally did, had dressed herself unbecomingly on an occasion on which the little, quick-witted governess divined she would have wished to look her best. Gussy was not clever in the matter of dress. She arrayed herself in the lightest of tints and materials—she who was herself so colorless, who wanted something solid and distinct “to throw her up.”
Janet had done her duty in this respect by the other young{150} woman, who could scarcely now be called her friend, so conscious were both of a mist that had come between them. It was one of Janet’s good qualities that she had no jealous feeling, but that unfeigned pleasure in dress which made her so anxious to see everybody else becomingly attired, that she was impatient of failure. She had given many hints and suggestions as to Miss Harwood’s dress on this particular occasion, but they had not been attended to. And Gussy had enveloped herself in something that was not quite white nor yet any other color, with the persistency common to persons who are without any real instinct in the matter; and, instead of looking her best, looked more colorless than usual.
Janet could scarcely restrain a cry of impatience when they all met in the drawing-room, which had been cleared for dancing. If Gussy had but worn her own black gown, what a difference it would have made! But Gussy was altogether unconscious of that, as all the others were unconscious of the way in which her heart was beating under her fade and foolish dress.
Janet, for her part, had received her programme from Dolff, with his own neat little “A. H.” written on a great many lines; but she was too wise to permit the son of the house to make himself and her remarkable. Janet had a great terror of what the opportunities of the evening might lead to, very different from that sentiment which moved Gussy. She managed to escape, if not with some other partner, then alone, anywhere, even going so far as to make a rush upstairs till some of the dances bespoken by Dolff were over. She was determined not to lay herself open to any comments in that respect, or to expose herself to the chances of what Dolff might say in the excitement of the evening. But she had no such terror of Meredith, who, after he had done his duty in various directions was so polite as to ask the governess for a dance. Nor was she alarmed by the eagerness with which he plunged into conversation, leading her away, when half the dance was over, to a quiet corner.
“I am sure you are tired,” he said; “you have been dancing all the evening, and so have I. Come and let us talk a little. I never have a chance of half-a-dozen words with you, Miss Summerhayes.”
“That cannot matter much,” said Janet, “for I don’t suppose we have anything very particular to say to each other, Mr. Meredith.”
“You must, of course, speak for yourself; but you cannot for me, and I have a hundred things I want to say to you. We{151} have never had a good talk but once, and that was the day I walked with you from the circulating library, when you were quite afraid to be seen with me.”
“Not in the least afraid to be seen with any one,” said Janet; “but it did not seem suitable somehow. And as we are talking of that, Mr. Meredith, I don’t think it’s very suitable——”
Here Janet thought better of what she was going to say, and stopped short.
“What does not seem suitable? Tell me, I implore you! How can I regulate my conduct according to your wishes, which is my highest ambition, if you will not tell me what to do?”
“I have nothing to do with your conduct, Mr. Meredith, I don’t understand why you should wish to sneer at me——”
“I—sneer! but you know you don’t mean that. I sometimes try to secure your sympathy, I allow, when I’m at a particularly hard place. They say that the lookers-on see most of the game, and I soon saw in your eyes, if you’ll forgive me, that you——”
“I don’t see any game,” cried Janet, with indignation, “and if you are playing one you ought to be ashamed of yourself; and, at all events, I will not be in your confidence!”
“Hush!” he said, “don’t be so fiery. If you get up and leave me you will make everybody ask why, and we don’t want to raise any talk, do we? Look there, Miss Summerhayes—for I must talk of something—look at that man Vicars. What a hang-dog face he has! Like a man that is up to some mischief, don’t you think?”
“I don’t like Vicars,” said Janet, hastily; “he would like to be insolent, if he dared.”
“Insolent, the beast! You have only to give Dolff a hint,” said Meredith, with a laugh, “and he’ll soon put a stop to that. I should like, all the same, to know a little what’s Vicars’s mission in this house. Oh, I know he’s an old servant, and all that. I have my little curiosities, Miss Summerhayes; haven’t you? There are some things I should like to know.”
“I thought you must know everything,” said Janet; “you are such a very old friend.”
Now Janet was bursting with desire to communicate to somebody her own wonderings and the things she had seen, or had imagined herself to see. She was held back by many things—by regard for the law which forbids you to talk to strangers of things you have observed in the house in which you live: and also by a principle of honor, which is but feeble in such matters in most bosoms, and by a lingering sense of loyalty{152} towards Gussy, whose property this man was—and by a general prejudice against making mischief. But, on the other hand, she was impelled to speak by her own curiosity and conviction that there was something to find out, and eagerness to communicate her discoveries. And then Meredith was not a stranger; and if there was anything to find out he had a right to know it; and, of course, as Gussy’s husband he would know everything. Janet’s heart began to beat with excitement. Should she tell him? She wanted so much to do it that she scarcely knew how to keep in the words.
“I am an old friend,” said Meredith. “I have known them all my life; therefore I have a kind of right, don’t you think, to want to know? And I am one of the very few men who come familiarly about the house, so if there was any way in which that fellow Vicars was taking them in, or playing upon them, I am just the person who ought to be told, for I could take steps to put them on their guard.”
It was on this argument, which seemed so unanswerable, and especially applicable if Meredith became, as Janet assured herself was inevitable, the son of the house, that at last she spoke. After all, it did not seem as if she had very much to tell. She confided to him her suspicions that Vicars had somebody shut up in the wing whom no one knew about, and that she herself had seen—she was certain she had seen—a face pressed against the window-panes, visible between the branches of the ivy; and how, just below the same window, there had been the other day that little shower of scraps of paper, which looked as if they had been thrown out.
Meredith listened with the greatest eagerness. He leaned his elbow on his knee, and his head in his hand, looking up into her face, and shielding her thus from observation in her dark corner, so that even Gussy, passing by at a little distance on the arm of her partner, could not make out who the lady was to whom he was talking, though the sight increased almost beyond bearing the agitation in her mind. Meredith’s eyes on Janet’s face, so near, and the manner in which he surrounded her, shutting off the world, confused her and gave her a vague sort of guilt; but, after all, how could she have helped it? She could not have refused to dance with him. She co............