In the evening they were all assembled in the drawing-room once more. The same party with so many differences. There were only Mrs. Harwood and Meredith who were unchanged. She sat in the usual warm corner, with the usual white fleecy knitting, which never changed, in her lace cap and white shawl, with her pretty complexion and her smiling looks, the woman of whom people said that she must have lain in the lilies and fed on the roses of life to preserve that wonderful complexion and eyes so clear and so bright. And he, looking so much better—really assured in his health, the tints of weakness going off, the high color which was at once his characteristic and the drawback to his good looks coming back, and his high spirits as if they had never had any check. It was only last night that he had been following up that discovery with the eagerness of a bloodhound, forgetting everything but the scent on which he was following on to the end. All that had now flown away. He was the Charley Meredith of old, playful and ready to “chaff” everybody round, talking of the new songs and what would suit “our” voices, and lamenting the interrupted “practisings.” Charley was as if nothing had happened, full of fun, eager for amusement, calling upon the mother for sympathy and encouragement.
“They have all become so grave,” he said. “It is you and I, Mrs. Harwood, that will have to perform our duet.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Harwood, “if I had been twenty years{292} younger, there is no telling what might have happened. I should not have kept you waiting, Charley. I wish, Gussy, you would not look as if you had been to a funeral this afternoon.”
“Not this afternoon—but something a little like it, mamma.”
“You are talking great nonsense, my dear. If there is anybody that ought to be cast down, it is surely me. All my troubles have been forced back upon me; but I have the comfort of knowing,” said Mrs. Harwood, with a slightly raised voice, “that I never meant any harm—and that I have done none—and that the last people in the world to criticise me are my children: so I desire that there shall be an end of this. I have been summoned, as I expected, to explain everything: and Charley has kindly promised to appear for me and clear it all up—and secure permission for me to look after my poor dear upstairs, as I have done ever since he was afflicted. When I have made it all clear with the Lunacy commissioners I may perhaps be supposed to have done enough, though one can never know.”
“Mamma,” said Gussy, “there was no need for anything but to be frank and open. You have not been open—not to me, who was taken more or less into your confidence. I suppose you were compelled to tell me something, but not all, or nearly all. A child could see there is more in it than meets the eye. And now I presume you have taken Mr. Meredith into your confidence, but none of your children.”
“Why Mr. Meredith?” said he, with a smile, putting out his hand for hers.
Gussy made no reply. She gave him a look of indignant reproach. In point of fact, when he asked her thus, she could not have told why—after all. The truth began to steal into her mind, like the influence of a thaw, that after all he had done nothing. He had been curious to fathom the secret in the house. So would any one have been. And there was something about information that he had received—where or from whence could he have received information? But even that, she suddenly reflected, could not be his fault. If he had been told anything it would be difficult not to listen. Thus, though she gave him a look of reproach and drew away her hand, it suddenly occurred to Gussy that after all there was no particular reason why she should call him Mr. Meredith, or consider him as deeply to blame. The thaw had begun.
Dolff had kept behind backs all the evening. He took no seat, he attached himself to none of the party. For some time he had been seated in a large easy-chair which almost swallowed him up, in the other part of the room, reading, or{293} pretending to read. Then when the conversation began he had risen from that place, and walked about in the half-light like an uneasy ghost. Now he came into the talk with a voice that sounded far off, partly because of the length of the room, and partly because of the boyish gruffness which, as a token of high contrariety and offence, he had brought into his voice.
“I don’t see,” he said, “what Lunacy commissioners have to do with it in comparison with the people in the house.”
Mrs. Harwood turned her chair round as much as she was capable of doing, and cast a look into the dim depths of the other room.
“It is a pity,” she said, “that the commissioners could not be of your opinion, Dolff; it would have saved me a great deal of trouble.”
“I can’t see,” he said, irritably, “why you should have taken such trouble upon you at all. What is the man to you? Who is he that you should have taken such trouble for him? You have no brother that I ever heard of. Mother,” said Dolff, coming forward out of the gloom, “I have cudgelled my brains to think who it could be. Is it possible that for a mere stranger—a man who is no relation to us—you should have risked all our comfort and separated us from you? I have heard of such things,” said the young man, working himself up, “but to find them out in one’s mother whom one has always respected——”
She gave a wondering look round upon them all and then burst into a strange confused laugh.
“In the name of wonder,” she cried, “can anybody tell me what the boy has got in his head? what does he mean?”
What did he mean? They all looked at each other with perplexity; even Janet, rousing from the rigid unmeaningness to which she had condemned herself, to take share in the glance of amazement which ran round. Only Meredith did not share that amazement. He laughed, which was a sound that made Dolff frantic, and brought him a step forward with his hand clenched.
“Dolff, my good fellow,” he said, with an air of superior experience which still further irritated the furious lad, “don’t fly upon me again: for that sort of argument doesn’t do much good in a discussion. And don’t bring your ideas out of French novels here. Such things are a great deal worse when they are translated than when they are at home.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” cried Dolff, “with your French novels! nor what right you have to be here, in the midst of us all, discussing a subject—a subject which—a subject that—makes me,” cried the young man, “that I cannot{294} endure myself, nor the house, nor so much as my mother’s name.”
“What does he mean?” said the ladies to each other, looking all round with perturbed looks. They were all united, from Julia to her mother, in the wonder to which they had no clue. Englishwomen, brought up in the very lap of respectability, not knowing even the alphabet of shame, full of faults, no doubt of their own kind, but utterly incapable even of imagining the secret horror and suspicion that lurked in Dolff’s words, they could do nothing but send round that troubled look of consultation. Was Dolff going out of his senses, too? Was it perhaps in the family, this dreadful thing, and had it assailed the boy? Mrs. Harwood grew pale with sheer fright and horror as she looked back upon her son, and then pitifully consulted his sisters with her eyes.
“Dolff,” cried Meredith, in a warning tone, “mind what you are about, my boy. I tell you to bring none of your French novels here. They don’t explain the situation. Strike me if you like then; but don’t be such an everlasting fool. Pierre et Jean, eh, here!” cried the elder man, with a half shriek of derisive laughter. He sat with a sort of careless courage, not putting himself even into an attitude of defence, but on his guard, looking towards the enraged youth—an air which transported both the young feminine hearts beside him into an ecstasy of admiration, though Gussy was so deeply offended (she began to think more and ............