第76章

LADY JANET AT BAY.

THE narrative leaves Julian and Mercy for a while, and, ascending to the upper regions of the house, follows the march of events in Lady Janet's room.

The maid had delivered her mistress's note to Mercy, and had gone away again on her second errand to Grace Roseberry in her boudoir.Lady Janet was seated at her writing-table, waiting for the appearance of the woman whom she had summoned to her presence.A single lamp difused its mild light over the books, pictures, and busts round her, leaving the further end of the room, in which the bed was placed, almost lost in obscurity.The works of art were all portraits; the books were all presentation copies from the authors.It was Lady Janet's fancy to associate her bedroom with memorials of the various persons whom she had known in the long course of her life--all of them more or less distinguished, most of them, by this time, gathered with the dead.

She sat near her writing-table, lying back in her easy-chair--the living realization of the picture which Julian's description had drawn.Her eyes were fixed on a photographic likeness of Mercy, which was so raised upon a little gilt easel as to enable her to contemplate it under the full light of the lamp.The bright, mobile old face was strangely and sadly changed.The brow was fixed; the mouth was rigid; the whole face would have been like a mask, molded in the hardest forms of passive resistance and surpressed rage, but for the light and life still thrown over it by the eyes.There was something unutterably touching in the keen hungering tenderness of the look which they fixed on the portrait, intensified by an underlying expression of fond and patient reproach.The danger which Julian so wisely dreaded was in the rest of the face; the love which he had so truly described was in the eyes alone.They still spoke of the cruelly profaned affection which had been the one immeasurable joy, the one inexhaustible hope of Lady Janet's closing life.The brow expressed nothing but her obstinate determination to stand by the wreck of that joy, to rekindle the dead ashes of that hope.The lips were only eloquent of her unflinching resolution to ignore the hateful present and to save the sacred past."My my duty to request an interview, if you had not sent your maid to invite me up here.""You would have felt it your duty to request an interview?" Lady Janet repeated, very quietly."Why?"The tone in which that one last word was spoken embarrassed Grace at the outset.It established as great a distance between Lady Janet and herself as if she had been lifted in her chair and conveyed bodily to the other end of the room.

"I am surprised that your ladyship should not understand me," she said, struggling to conceal her confusion."Especially after your kind offer of your own boudoir."Lady Janet remained perfectly unmoved."I do not understand you," she answered, just as quietly as ever.

Grace's temper came to her assistance.She recovered the assurance which had marked her first appearance on the scene.

"In that case," she resumed, "I must enter into particulars, in justice to myself.I can place but one interpretation on the extraordinary change in your ladyship's behavior to me downstairs.The conduct of that abominable woman has at last opened your eyes to the deception that has been practiced on you.For some reason of your own, however, you have not yet chosen to recognize me openly.In this painful position something is due to my own self-respect.I cannot, and will not, permit Mercy Merrick to claim the merit of restoring me to my proper place in this house.After what I have suffered it is quite impossible for me to endure that.I should have requested an interview (if you had not sent for me) for the express purpose of claiming this person's immediate expulsion from the house.I claim it now as a proper concession to Me.Whatever you or Mr.Julian Gray may do, I will not tamely permit her to exhibit herself as an interesting penitent.It is really a little too much to hear this brazen adventuress appoint her own time for explaining herself.It is too deliberately insulting to see her sail out of the room--with a clergyman of the Church of England opening the door for her--as if she was laying me under an obligation! I can forgive much, Lady Janet--including the terms in which you thought it decent to order me out of your house.I am quite willing to accept the offer of your boudoir, as the expression on your part of a better frame of mind.But even Christian Charity has its limits.The continued presence of that wretch under your roof is, you will permit me to remark, not only a monument of your own weakness, but a perfectly insufferable insult to Me."There she stopped abruptly--not for want of words, but for want of a listener.

Lady Janet was not even pretending to attend to her.Lady Janet, with a deliberate rudeness entirely foreign to her usual habits, was composedly busying herself in arranging the various papers scattered about the table.Some she tied together with little morsels of string; some she placed under paper-weights; some she deposited in the fantastic pigeon-holes of a little Japanese cabinet--working with a placid enjoyment of her own orderly occupation, and perfectly unaware, to all outward appearance, that any second person was in the room.She looked up, with her papers in both hands, when Grace stopped, and said, quietly, "Have you done?""Is your ladyship's purpose in sending for me to treat me with studied rudeness?" Grace retorted, angrily.

"My purpose in sending for you is to say something as soon as you will allow me the opportunity."The impenetrable composure of that reply took Grace completely by surprise.She had no retort ready.In sheer astonishment she waited silently with her eyes riveted on the mistress of the house.

Lady Janet put down her papers, and settled herself comfortably in the easy-chair, preparatory to opening the interview on her side.