Janet was passing quickly through the hall, coming from the garden by the long passage which led past the kitchen and pantry, and turning round to go upstairs, when she found her{285}self suddenly caught as she went along. Some one took hold of the end of the long boa which was round her neck and detained her. She was a little startled and frightened at first, thinking instinctively of the mad tenant of the wing, and that now the door was no longer fastened between him and the house. Her fears, however, were instantly put to flight, and feelings very different substituted in their stead, when a voice said, “Janet! stop a moment and speak to me, I am very lonely here.”
“You have no need to be here, or to be lonely unless you like,” she cried, hurriedly; “and call me by my proper name, please. I can be only Miss Summerhayes to you.”
“Don’t say so. You were not so hard upon me the other night. Ah! I forgot; it’s not the other night, it’s three weeks ago. Stop a moment; don’t pass without saying a word. You ought to pay me a little attention, considering all that I have suffered since—for you.”
“For me!” she cried. “I am sorry that you have suffered, but it was not for me.”
“Do you think for a moment that that lout would have sprung on me as he did if it hadn’t been for you? You know better, Janet. I owe it to you, my dear, that I was beaten flat like a pancake, and had my head dashed against the stones, as they did, you know, in the psalm. No, Janet; be quiet and listen to me. I’ve paid dear for one bit of an interview, and you ought to give me some recompense. I’ve lain upon my back all these many days for you, and it’s for you that I grin at that fellow, instead of taking him by the throat!”
“That does me no good,” said Janet, panting with excitement and alarm. “Let me go, please. I would rather die than be found talking to you here. Take him by the throat if you please. What is that to me?”
“To save you from trouble,” said the other. “Don’t you think I have felt how unpleasant it would be to have your name coming out? That is why I have let him off, for that reason and no other. Come, talk to me a moment, I deserve it. Nobody will hear us; Gussy is out, and the mother shut up in her room. I’m very forlorn in this house, which I had better leave, I think, at once; I’m well enough, I suppose, to do so now——”
“Don’t you want to leave it? Shall you not be glad to get away?” cried Janet, under her breath.
“Glad to get away! when you are here, you little witch. Do you think it has been pleasant to go on all the time purred over by the others, and never getting a word with you.”
“You will not,” said Janet, with perhaps a certain revengeful pleasure, “be purred over by the others any more.{286}”
“You think so?” he said. “Don’t you be too sure. If you disdain me, and refuse to hear me, there is no telling, they may purr again.”
“One way or other,” said Janet, “it has nothing to do with me.”
“Why do you say so? Are you going to be sent away?”
“Sent away!” Janet breathed forth the words as in a gale of indignation. “Nobody,” she cried, “except myself, shall send me away.”
“Well,” he said, “and yourself will not, I hope? It would be a changed house if you were gone. All the spirit and the understanding and the mischief—don’t be angry, Janet; there is nothing so enchanting as mischief, and you know you are full of it—would be gone. I doubt if I should ever come back to the place again.”
“Mr. Meredith,” said Janet, “you have no right to speak to me so. It is unpardonable in a man. Who is to believe you? Miss Harwood, whom I believe you are engaged to all this time—or me, whom you venture to take hold of and—talk to, when you think nobody sees? Oh, it is quite unpardonable, Mr. Meredith! Is it her or is it me whom you want to please? You ought to know.”
“That sounds very like asking me my intentions,” he said, with a laugh, “as the father does in novels, or sometimes the mother. But never, so far as I recollect, the young lady herself.”
Janet was angry, and she was sore. She had been made of no account among them; she who was very well aware of her own value, and had never been ignored by those around her before, had been lately treated as if she were nobody in this house. It had been necessary for her to conceal her own movements, to be prudent, to take the most urgent measures that her name should not suffer. But it had galled her to the very heart that Meredith should have spoken of her as a mere means of receiving information, and even that Dolff should have ignored her part in the matter, though it was what she wished him most to do. She was full of inconsistency in this respect, as most human natures are, and as women in particular are expected to be. Not to be mixed up in it was her most urgent desire, but to be ignored, though it was what she desired most, was bitter to her heart. It had given her a certain amount of satisfaction to assert her superiority to Dolff, and she would have been still more pleased now could she have done the same with Meredith, and issued from the double complication triumphant, setting both men in “their proper place,” and proving that she was not deceived by either, but above both. But it was not so easy with Meredith as with{287} Dolff. She had played with the youth who was not so clever as she, nor her equal in anything, but alas! it was she who had been played with in the other case, and her attempt to change the r?le was not likely to be very effectual.
She did not love Meredith—she was angry with him, and more or less despised him: but he had a charm for her which some men have for women, and some women for men, not only without merit on the part of the enchanter, but even with a distinct feeling of disapproval and almost contempt on that of the enchanted. This was her feeling towards Gussy’s lover. He was Gussy’s lover, probably for all she knew Gussy’s betrothed; yet he had dared to play with her, to set up a secret understanding, to persuade her that he loved her best.
He did not love her at all, she declared to herself indignantly; he loved nobody except himself, he cared for nothing except to be amused, to have the best of everything, to gather sweetness on every side. She had thrown him aside indignantly in the moment of trial when he had been found wanting, and when she, too, had found herself wanting, and instinctively defended herself by dropping him. And yet now when Janet was suddenly brought face to face with him again, and there was a moment given her in which to express her final sentiments, one of those curious returns upon herself which come in every such history came over her. It was always possible that in the human mind there should be a complete change of sentiment, that the balance should turn at a touch, and truth and love vanquish all evil. The most conventional and the most lively and imaginative of minds acknowledge this possibility. It is called conversion in religion, in other matters it bears a less important title: yet it is always a possibility. A man who has been an egotist may become suddenly generous and tender; a man who has resisted every inducement to do well, and broken every heart that loved him, may by some more subtle touch be changed, and turned from his evil ways. Such a thing is always possible: and Janet, when she addressed Meredith in her indignation, had some such feeling in her mind. He had a charm for her notwithstanding her anger against him, her sense of wrong, and the no-faith she had in him; but yet he had a charm: and it was possible that something she might say, some argument struck out in the heat of the moment, might still convert him to honor and to truth.
That was, to Janet’s version of honor and truth, which was, perhaps, a one-sided one. It was according to all her canons that the man finding himself not to love his fiancée but to love another, should sacrifice everything to that other, and leave the fiancée to bear it as she might. This would have been the{288} triumph of love over worldliness and conventionality in Janet’s eyes. She would not have felt it wrong for him to prefer herself, to give up Gussy: and it was quite in his power to hold by Gussy and give up herself; but one thing she felt must be done, and that ............