There are times when Nemesis appears unwitting at the door of a doomed house, and, however unlikely that might be, before she crosses the threshold, with the mere wind of her coming, the cunning webs of deceit are shattered, the blow of vengeance falls. But there are other cases in which Nemesis comes and stands in the doorway and departs again innoxious, either because some veil has been thrown over her clear-sighted eyes, or because the heart of that inexorable goddess has failed. Nemesis turned and departed from the house of the Harwoods when Dr. Harding went upstairs to the school-room with his little Janet. The middle-aged gentleman there spent an ecstatic hour, the happiest of his life, and he forgot that there were such people as the Harwoods in existence, or anybody worth thinking of except the little girl who had called him to come and take her to himself—Janet, who had flung him over that dark October evening on the edge of the windy common at Clover, but who had now whistled him back and put her little hand in his.
Which was more true to her real meaning—her refusal then, or her delighted acceptance now? The doctor never asked himself any such questions. He was too happy to be allowed to think that when Janet compared the others, all the rest of the world, with him, who had loved her since she was a baby, she had found that none were so much to her taste as her old{330} lover. That she had “them all” at her feet, Dr. Harding had no doubt—how could it be otherwise? seeing there was no one like her, no one! It seemed clear enough to him that both that cool fellow downstairs who had taken the management of the business, and the dolt—Dolff—what did they call him? had been at Janet’s feet, and had been rejected. The young fellows had done him a good turn. They had shown this little captivating creature, this darling little capricious woman who did not know her own mind, that there was nobody like her old doctor after all.
When he took his departure that night for the hotel where he meant to stay until he could take Janet down to Clover to the vicarage from which he was to marry her, there was no thought in his disturbed and rapturous mind of the awful part which for a moment he had seemed about to play. Not Nemesis—but Dr. Harding, an old fellow in love, and more silly than any boy.
As for Janet, when her old lover left her, her little head was partly turned by his raptures, and by the opinion he had of her as if she had been a queen, and all the gratitude and honor he seemed to think he owed her. A little thing who had not a penny, and who, indeed, had thrown herself into his arms in a kind of despair because of her first disappointment and disgust with the world. But he did not know that at all, and she scarcely remembered it, when he took his leave with a privileged kiss which made her cheeks burn, and a promise to come for her as early as possible in the morning, to take her out shopping, to buy what she would want against the great event, which was to be delayed only as long as was necessary—not a day longer, he vowed.
“For you have cheated me out of six months,” he said. “I might have had you six months ago.”
“Oh, no, no, Dr. Harding,” said Janet, with gravity, remembering that nothing in the world would then have made her accept the old doctor.
But she had no such feeling as that now. She did not even remember that he was a pis aller, and she looked forward to to-morrow, when she was to be taken out shopping, and to buy such things as she had never hoped for—dinner-dresses, morning-dresses ball-dresses; for she would require a great deal of dress, she had the sense to perceive, in that great rich town in the north, which was so very different from Clover.
Janet could scarcely think for the moment of anything beyond this, for it was a delight she had never enjoyed before. To buy, is a pleasure to every woman—to get a number of new{331} dresses, is a delight to any girl. If these things are accompanied by a heartbreak, as when she is going to be forced to marry a man whom she does not love, the pleasure evaporates. But this was not Janet’s case. She had made up her mind to have her old doctor, it is true, in a moment of pique and disappointment, and perhaps if he had come instantly as she had expected, if he had not kept her waiting, if he had been still only the doctor of Clover—but none of these things had been. Her heart had been racked with the thought that he, too, had forsaken her; and then he had arrived a new man, in those new, well-cut clothes, with all the confidence of a great success about him.
And he had no sooner appeared than he had taken a commanding position. The father of the family had been in his hand. Dolff was nothing but a foolish boy beside him, and even Meredith—Dr. Harding had held the upper hand easily of them all. He had been able to put aside Janet while that crisis which she but half understood was going on, and then he had come back to her, and poured out gratitude and admiration; and she was to have a handsome house in Liverpool, where there was a great deal of gayety, a great deal of wealth—and a carriage—and a day of shopping to-morrow with nothing to do but to say, “I like this,” or “I like that!”
Thus Janet’s mind was satisfied, and her fancy delighted. Those little vagaries which had troubled her rest had all dropped into oblivion. Meredith? Yes, he was going to marry Miss Harwood, to struggle into a practice at the Bar, though he was not at all hardworking, and probably would never be known except as an amateur tenor among his friends. Janet wondered maliciously whether they would sing as much together a............