Nothing, as Mrs. Harwood herself said, is so bad as you expect; and the great shock which the sight of this stranger evidently gave her soon subsided in the extraordinary composure and self-command which she was able to bring to bear against every accident. By the time that it had been explained to her who the visitor was, and what was his errand, which he insisted at once upon telling, the conversation became what an uninitiated person would have thought quite cosy and pleasant. Mrs. Harwood drew her breath more quickly than usual. She looked at the door with some anxiety, and she even sent Julia with a message whispered in her ear. “Don’t let Dolff come in here.”
“Why not?” said Julia, aloud.
It is inconvenient to have a daughter who has not the sense to obey. Mrs. Harwood made no answer, but pushed the girl away, and after a moment’s pause Julia went, though whether to fulfil the message in the manner intended, her mother could not say.
“Things have changed very much for us all,” she said, in her cheerful voice; “I have a daughter on the eve of marriage, like you, Dr. Harding—a man who does not marry keeps so much longer young. You may remember my Gussy as a child——”
“I remember my little wife that is to be as a child,” he said, heartily, “and she might well have despised an old fellow.{321} Yes, things have changed. It was very good for me, as it turns out, that I could not go on in my old way. I’ve been a hard-working man, and kept very close to it for a long time, and now things are mending with me. I shall be able to give this little thing what they all like—a carriage and finery and all that. I am going back—to the old place, Mrs. Harwood——”
“To Liverpool?” she said with something like a repressed scream.
“Yes, to Liverpool; they had heard of me, it appears, and then some of the old folks remembered I was a townsman. You have not kept up much connection with the old place, Mrs. Harwood.”
“None at all; you may suppose it would not be very pleasant for me.”
“Perhaps not,” he answered, drumming a little with his finger on his knee; “and yet I don’t know why, for there was always a great deal of sympathy with you.”
“Dr. Harding,” said Mrs. Harwood, with some eagerness and a nervous thrill in her voice, “may I ask you a favor? It is, please, not to speak of me to any of my old friends. You may think it strange—there is nobody else in the room, is there, Janet?—but I would rather the children did not know more than is necessary about the past.”
“I understand: and I honor you, madam,” said Dr. Harding, in an old-fashioned, emphatic way.
A faint tint of color came over Mrs. Harwood’s face, which varied from red to white, no doubt with the agitation caused by the sight of her old acquaintance.
“I ask for no honor,” she said, hurriedly, “so long as it is thought that I have done my duty by the children.”
“I should think there could not be much doubt of that,” said Dr. Harding, who, in his own high content and satisfaction with himself saw every one round him in a rose-colored light. He would have sworn she was an example to the country, had anyone asked him. So she was, no doubt, for had she not given shelter and protection to Janet, and somehow led her by example or otherwise to see that there was nothing so good in this world as to trust yourself to the man that loved you, whatever his age or his appearance might be?
Janet listened to this conversation with a great deal of her old curiosity and desire to find everything out. She did not see why her doctor should be bound by a promise to Mrs. Harwood not to speak to her of Liverpool. Janet felt happy that{322} it was not upon herself this injunction was laid, and that she was free to talk about the strange occurrences which had happened in St. John’s Wood, and perhaps get to understand them better. Janet, however, gave only a part of her mind to this. The rest was filled with her own affairs: her heart was beating still with the startling sensation of his arrival and the realization of all that must now follow. She had been a little afraid, when she brought him into the bright light, of the revelations it would make. But the Dr. Harding who was about to enter upon a ‘noble practise’ in Liverpool was not at all like the Dr. Harding of Clover. His clothes were new and well-made, his hair carefully brushed, his linen dazzling—oh, he was not at all like the man who rode over on a shaggy cob to see Miss Philipson, and was at everybody’s beck and call around the Green.
Looking at him again in this favorable new light, Janet decided that he was not so very old—older than herself, no doubt, older than Meredith or Dolff, but not so old—at the utmost no more than middle-aged—a man still in his prime. She did not do any talking herself, but let him talk, and she thought he talked well. All her thoughts had undergone such a revolution within the last half-hour. She had felt herself abandoned, a creature all alone, cast off from everything, scorned on all sides. And now all at once she had a defender in whose presence no one dared utter a jibe or make a scoff of Janet. She had wealth within her reach—a carriage (he said), all the prettinesses that life could bestow. No such prospect was before Gussy, though she thought herself so happy;—and the more Janet looked at him in these spruce clothes, the more her breast expanded with satisfaction. He was not merely Dr. Harding—he was something that belonged to herself. And so manly—not a person to be despised. Meredith himself—why did she keep thinking of Meredith?—Meredith was a weakly person, a man who had let himself be almost killed, not one who would stand against the world like John Harding. Pride and satisfaction swelled her breast. She too looked at the door as Mrs. Harwood did, but with a different meaning. She desired that they should all come in to see how much changed her position was, and that she had now someone belonging to her—someone who was better than them all.
Both these ladies accordingly sat and listened to Dr. Harding without taking much notice of what he said. He filled them with emotions of different kinds, neither of them entirely on his own account. They both listened for sounds without while he talked, intently, anxiously praying and hoping on one side{323} and the other that some one would or would not come. Mrs. Harwood had perhaps never been so deeply moved before. To have made sure that no one would come—that this dangerous man might be got out of the house, without meeting Dolff at least, she would have given a year or two out of her life. There were sounds, several times repeated, of people coming and going, doors opening and shutting, the usual sounds of a house full of people, which brought the blood coursing to the mother’s heart. She put up her handkerchief to her face as if the fire scorched her. But it was her trouble that scorched her, the great anxiety in which she was consuming her very soul.
At last, in a moment, it was stilled, as our fears of an evil are stilled, either because it has become impossible, or because it has happened. The latter was the case in this instance.
Dolff came into the room, and behind him Julia, very curious, and after her Priscilla carrying the tea-tray. Priscilla and the tea-tray were things in which there was hope—but what Mrs. Harwood dreaded had happened. She had no resource, but to say:
“My son, Dr. Harding. Dolff, Dr. Harding is a friend of Janet’s and—and an old acquaintance of mine.”
“How do you do?” said Dr. Harding, rising up, formally giving the young man his hand. “I did not know your son was grown up. I thought he was the youngest.”
“No, it is Julia who is the youngest,” said the mother, breathlessly, indicating the girl, who came forward and shook hands with Dr. Harding too. Though she had been in the room at his first appearance, there had been no thought of introduction then.
“It is quite curious,” said the doctor, with his hearty voice, “to find myself among old friends. I expected to find only my little Janet, and here I am surrounded by people whom I knew in the old days in Liverpool before she was born.”
“But we have nothing to do with Liverpool,” said Dolff.
“Welsh,” said Mrs. Harwood, with breathless brevity.
“Ah, yes, by origin; the little property’s there, isn’t it? But Harwood has been a well-known name in Liverpool for longer than any of us can recollect. I remember when it was talked of like the Bank of England,” said the doctor, shaking his head a little and with a suppressed sigh.
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Harwood, “I am not fond of those old recollections; they always lead to something sad.”
She had made another tremendous effort of self-control, recovered her voice, recovered her composure. She sat bolt{324} upright in her chair, her eyes shining out like watch-lights, and all her color concentrated in two red spots in her cheeks.
“This is very interesting to me, for I never heard of it before,” said Dolff. “My mother has told us very little, Dr. Harding; I should be very grateful for a little information.”
“My dear young fellow,” said Dr. Harding, “I daresay your mother’s very wise. Least said is soonest mended. That’s all over and done with. It all went to pieces, you know, when your father”—he paused a moment, visibly embarrassed, not knowing what word to use; then added softly, “when your father—died.”
Mrs. Harwood drew a long breath. She sank back a little in her chair. The dreadful tension was loosed.
“If you think that this is satisfactory to me,” said Dolff, “you are making an immense mistake. Why should least said be soonest mended? Is there any disgrace belonging to our name? Besides,” he said, himself a little breathless, with an instinctive sense that his words were words of fate, “my father—is not dead.”
“What?” said Dr. Harding. He jumped up from his chair as if he had been stung. “What? Adolphus Harwood not dead? My God! Adolphus Harwood? What does this mean?”
Mrs. Harwood was making convulsive efforts to speak, to rise from her chair, but nobody heeded her. Dolff stood confronting the stranger, in his ignorance, poor boy, fearing he knew not what, angry, beginning to awake to the fact that there might be need for defence, and that the danger was his own. He said:
“I don’t know why you speak in such a tone. There is no harm, I suppose, in my father—being alive. We never knew till the other day. Perhaps she can tell you why. Is there any harm in my father—not having died?”
His voice had grown hoarse with an alarm which he did not himself understand.
“Harm!” cried Dr. Harding. “Adolphus Harwood alive!—harm! Only this harm—that I can’t let old friendship stand in the way. I dare not do injustice; he must be given up to answer for his ill-doings. Harm!............