Media and Their Publics 1st Edition Michael Higgins
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- 5. Media and Their Publics 1st Edition Michael Higgins Digital Instant Download Author(s): Michael Higgins ISBN(s): 9780335219308, 0335219306 Edition: 1 File Details: PDF, 49.12 MB Year: 2008 Language: english
- 7. Media and Their Publics
- 9. Media and Their Publics Michael Higgins • Open University Press
- 10. Open University Press McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill House Shoppenhangers Road Maidenhead Berkshire England SL62QL email: enquiries@openup.co.uk world wide web: www.openup.co.uk and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA First published 2008 Copyright © The Author 2008 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, WIT 4LP. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN-1O: 0335219292 (pb) 0335219306 (hb) ISBN-13: 9780335219292 (pb) 9780335219308 (hb) Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data CIP data applied for Fictitious names of companies, products, people, characters and/or data that may be used herein (in case studies or in examples) are not intended to represent any real individual, company, product or event. Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts. Printed in the UK by Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow The McGraw·HiIICompanies
- 11. Contents Acknowledgements ix Issues of the public Introduction Public as discourse 4 The public and governance 6 Public service / public interest 7 Public service and govern mentality 14 Conclusion 16 Questions for discussion 17 Further reading 17 2 The construction of the political public 18 Introduction 18 Democracy, the public and the media 18 The construction of public opinion 21 The media as a public sphere 27 The marketization of the political public 29 Conclusion 31 Questions for discussion 32 Further reading 32 3 The political public and its advocates 33 Introduction 33 The media and political responsibility 33 Media and politics: the advocacy role 35 The public inquisitor 36 The public inquisitor in action 39 Political coverage and populism 44 Alternative advocacy: the entertainment talk show 48 Conclusion 50 Questions for discussion 51 Further reading 52
- 12. vi CONTENTS 4 The political public take to the stage 53 Introduction 53 Public participation: motives and types 53 The political public as studio audience 54 The political public as correspondents: the case of talk radio 65 Conclusion 71 Questions for discussion 72 Further reading 73 5 The construction of the cultural public 74 Introduction 74 Culture as a form of politics 74 The roots of the cultural public 76 The cultural public and judgement 78 The cultural public and practices of distinction 83 The cultural public and the politics of representation 84 A cultural public sphere 88 Conclusion 90 Questions for discussion 91 Further reading 91 6 Cultural publics and participation 92 Introduction 92 The drive towards public participation 92 Involving/invoking the public 93 Authenticity, ordinariness and broadcasting 94 The public participation talk show 95 Authenticity and public judgement 98 Spectacle and public judgement 101 The possibilities and limits of the 'emotional public' 106 Conclusion 109 Questions for discussion 111 Further reading 111 7 The construction of expertise in the media 112 Introduction 112 Media and expert knowledge 112 Experts on the inside: the example of lifestyle television 114 Experts from the outside: public participation television 116 Expertise and public morality 120 Expertise, public and power 127 Conclusion 129
- 13. CONTENTS vii Questions for discussion 130 Further reading 130 8 Rethinking media publics Introduction 131 131 Media publics: a summary and rationale 131 From public service to public journalism and citizen journalists 134 Formations of publics 137 Media publics and democratic inclusion 140 Expanding the public, expanding the political 141 Defining and distinguishing publics 143 Conclusion 146 Questions for discussion 146 Further reading 146 Key figures and their thoughts 147 References 149 Index 171
- 15. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the staff at Open University Press, past and present, for their patience and advice in the composition of this book. Thanks in particular to Chris Cudmore, who encouraged the original idea and guided much of the preparation, as well as to Louise Caswell, Jack Fray and Melanie Havelock. What clarity there is in this book owes a great deal to my numerous conversations and arguments with Angela Smith of the University of Sunderland, who was also a critical reader and reservoir of references, data and coffee breaks. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen of Cardiff University also provided insightful comments on a number of the chapters. I owe a considerable debt to the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland, where much of this work was undertaken and who were supportive in providing a semester's study leave. Thank you in particular to the Centre management of John Storey and Shaun Moores, as well as Andrew Crisell, Angela Werndly, Niall Richardson, Clarissa Smith, Amir Saeed, Rob Jewitt, John-Paul Green and Monika Metykova. Thank you also to my new colleagues at the University of Strathclyde: in particular, Nigel Fabb, David Goldie, Faye Hammill, Tereza McLaughlin-Vanova, Brian McNair, Martin Montgomery and Eamonn O'Neill. Others that have been helpful at various stages include Valentina Cardo, Colin Cremin, Stephen Cushion, Nick Couldry, Philip Drake, Yusaf Ibrahim, Bethany Klein, Derek Mckiernan, Kerry Moore, Michael Pickering, Andy Ruddock, Gary and Julie Russell, Heather Savigny, Niamh Stack, James Stanyer, John Street, Mick Temple, Claire Wardle, Mark Wheeler and Dominic Wring. I'm afraid any blame for the content lies with me. As always, the greatest thanks are due to my parents, Margaret and Thomas Higgins.
- 17. 1 Issues of the public Introduction An operational idea of what constitutes 'the public' is a central component of the operation of media, and yet it comes laden with assumptions. This chapter will begin a book dedicated to this vital concept by sketching out the key issues involving media and the various constructions of public. We will unpick our contemporary under- standing of the public by examining its development through the classical and modern periods, assessing the importance of maintaining a politically engaged view of the public and public conduct - as they relate to media in particular. Much of what is to come will assume that the public operates as an element of what Norman Fairclough (1995) and others have described as 'media discourse' in that it presents a form of representation that contributes to the exercise and regulation of power. In introducing the issues to come, this chapter will also emphasize and begin to explore the notion of 'governance' as a potential resource in examining the use of the public in media, especially with regard to the extent to which ideas of the public have become bound up with normative judgements of media performance and ethics. To this end, the case of 'public service' media will be examined in detail. We will then take the opportunity to summarize how the rest of the book will develop these themes and present a critical appraisal of how the nebulous concept of public is key to comprehending what media do - and what they ought to do. When Tony Bennett et al. (2005) revisited Raymond Williams's idea of compiling a critical 'keywords' of contemporary social and cultural usage, they included the term 'public' and appOinted renowned scholar Craig Calhoun to the task. Perhaps, the surprise might have been that the word was not included in Williams's (1983) original selection. From 'public nuisance' to 'public art' to 'public prosecutor', the lexicon of publicness arises in a variety of cultural, political, legal and bureaucratic contexts, normally with associations of the civil realm. Yet despite the ease with which the term moves from one context to the next, 'public' stands out as an overtly significant word, and never more than when it is used in relation to media and communication industries. There is public access television and public service broadcasting, as well as public
- 18. 2 MEDIA AND THEIR PUBLICS participation media and media operating in the public interest. If there is one factor that unites many of these, it is that the public is often invoked in contexts of judgement or of holding to aesthetic, moral or political account. This is as true whether the judgement is said to be on the part of 'the public' itself, as with opinion polls of various sorts (Lewis 2001), or whether it is on the part of professionals and regulators claiming to maintain 'public interest' (Blumler and Hoffman-Riem 1992: 220-1; McQuail 1994: 241; Harcup 2007). Indeed, John Rawls (1996: 68) comments that the concept is so central to legitimizing political power that even political demagogues fashion their rhetoric around 'the power of the public'. To a larger extent, the 'public' is there to be brandished as a warrant of interrogation, and demonstrable engagement with the public becomes an indicator of adequate media performance. This sense of the public is bound up in an attitude to social commitment that is as long established as civil society, but it is important not to assume this has always been equated with political empowerment. In Homer's Ancient Greek epic poem Odyssey, in seeking to convince the reader of the vileness of the Cyclops - a creature the narrative has yet to reveal - Homer cites the monster's civic irrespon- sibility. The Cyclops and its kin are described as a collection of 'arrogant, lawless beings' with 'no assemblies to debate in', living in circumstances in which 'the head of each family heeds no other, but makes his own ordinances for wife and children' (Homer 1980: 101). That they also like to dine on human beings warrants a mention later, but only after the listener is invited to contemplate with horror that the Cyclops have no public life - this being the very essence of civilization. Yet, John Durham Peters (1995: 7) points out, discourses of public to predominate in the Greece or Rome of antiquity were bound up with the mere 'exhibition' of virtue; a willingness to be exposed to the judgement of 'the people'. In this sense, Peters argues, conceptions of the classical public as onlookers for the display of 'shame and glory', rather than as a dynamic force, resemble the view of the public taken by the feudal rulers of the high middle ages, concerned in embodied display of power rather than appearing to represent the populace. As Carroll Glynn et a1. (2004: 42) remark, it is against this background that Machiavelli's The Prince presented as such an effective instruction manual for public conduct. Throughout, public display has been bound up with acceptable modes of conduct, but Peters (1995: 8) insists that it was not until the eighteenth century that ideas of the public began to coalesce around contemporary ideas of citizenship and political inclusion: a development we will discuss in Chapter 2's section on the public sphere. Discussion of the public since the eighteenth century may well have taken place within an inclusive political idiom, but its use has extended
- 19. ISSUES OF THE PUBLIC 3 in ways that come neither from traditional politics nor are especially inclusive. Calhoun (2005: 283) shows how other circumstances began to develop that saw public used in a bureaucratic sense to mean the sum of those outside of an immediate professional or administrative circle, but who nevertheless live under its jurisdiction. It is easy to see the public used in this way on signs specifying the terms of admission for 'members of the public', or where a regulatory body or police force claims to be driven by the 'protection of the public'. But this unity and belonging has always come with conditions. As Calhoun points out, admittance to the status of a 'public person' during the eighteenth century demanded adequate demonstration of material success and intellect, and it is arguably still the case that entrance to a public building, and even representation from a regulatory body, requires a veneer of convention- ality that may be termed 'public respectability'. This means that, to different and fluctuating extents, those social groups that Antonio Gramsci (1971: 52) refers to as 'subaltern' and without prospect of coming to dominance, such as the working classes, women, racial and ethnic minority groups are often seen to be excluded from what may be described as a dominant public. What unites these formations of public is that they are necessarily schemes of representing the population at large by focusing on particular groups or individuals in ways that are bound up with cultural and political power. So being an active and influential member of a public implies a set of civic and cultural practices that are normally the preserve of a relative minority. Just as civic buildings are designed to allow some degree of public access, their architecture is designed to smother this engagement in the grandeur of authOrity. Even when the procedures are not purposeful, access to legitimated forms of public conduct is strategically distributed among perceived intellectual elites and opinion leaders. This articulation between public and the exercise of power should be seen alongside the prominence of the public in everyday media language and in media policy. In terms of social and cultural politicS, mention of the public seems to confirm Regis Debray's (1983: 140) argument that political interests and ideologies operate within and depend upon references to the human collective. All in all, while the term, 'the public', resonates as an element of everyday discourse, its use hides any number of contradictions. For one thing, there is the distinction that JUrgen Habermas (2004) makes between what are two quite different forms of public engagement. There is on the one hand the option of seeking to become a public personality, in a manner commonly associated mainly with the 'celebrities' of the cultural realm, but also as an ambition of politicians and those seeking administrative power (Street 2004). Here, a 'self conscious and strategic'
- 20. 4 MEDIA AND THEIR PUBLICS breach is made between the public and private to display a crafted 'persona' as an item of public interest (Corner 2003). Another strategy described by Habermas (2004), and one more in keeping with his own thinking on political rationality, is the option of engaging in the deliberative processes associated with his conception of what we will go on to call 'the public sphere'. Here, an individual will listen to and offer suggestions on matters of common interest, so that ideas should stand or fall based on their own strengths or weaknesses. In such a case, public engagement is a matter of contributing to a shared pool of intelligence, leaving issues of personality - celebrated or otherwise - as irrelevant and potentially counterproductive. But our concern here is more with the dynamics of the relationship between publicness and media than with those specific debates on forms of argument, sincerity and authenticity. And this relationship is an important one, as John Corner et al. (1997: 6) remind us when they point out that talk of 'the public' often works to blur the boundaries between the interests of the citizenry and the interests of those in power. Public as discourse Already, we have established that the use of 'public' - in media and elsewhere - is widespread, and also that the ideas behind the use of public are complex and Significant. It is important, then, to think about the way public is used as a means of representing social meaning. Over the last few decades, the term 'discourse' has emerged as a means of describing the place of representation in establishing and reproducing social relations. In book length interrogations of the term, both Diane Macdonell (1986) and Sara Mills (1997) acknowledge the divergent and contradictory developments in the use of the term 'discourse'. There are those interested in the organization of language as a sensemaking activity that use discourse in a broad sense to refer to the capacity of language to make meaning 'above the sentence' (see Stubbs 1983), and then there are critical theorists such as Michel Foucault (1970, 1972) as well as Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst (1977) who use discourse to describe the various institutional and relational strategies of exercising power. Elements of both approaches unite in the 'critical discourse analysis' approach, which attempts a systematic scrutiny of the composition and grammar of socially and politically significant texts (Fairclough 1995; Fairclough and Wodak 1997). As discourse, the public therefore links representation and power. As the rest of the book comes to look at the discursiveness of the public in media, we can consider its persuasive power - looking at the way that individuals and groups present a
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- 22. arm drawn through his, Janet, pale, terrified, and faintly struggling, who had left the room but a moment before. Janet was evidently wild with terror, yet did not dare even to try to escape except by the strain of reluctance in her whole figure, drawing back while he drew her forward. The most benignant aspect that is compatible with a disordered brain was in the madman’s face. He smiled as he held her, dividing the fingers of the hand he held with his own, as if he were caressing and playing with a child. He stood for a moment contemplating them all, taking in the details of the picture which on their side they made, with that pleased, half-bewildered, half-imbecile look, and nodding his head from one to another, like one of those nodding figures that go on indefinitely. The weakness of the smile, the glow of foolish satisfaction in his face, the endless nodding, took much from the majesty of the venerable patriarchal figure, and made him look more like a silly old man than a picturesque and tragical lunatic. While they all stood thunderstruck, he advanced into the room with a buoyant, almost dancing step. “Well,” he said, “here I am, Julia. I suppose that you expected me? This is a merry meeting: here’s to our merry meeting. Vicars says I am so much better—and so I am, quite well—don’t you see I have a color in my cheeks —that I may come downstairs. He is a very good fellow, Vicars; but I want society. Julia, see what I’ve got here.” He drew Janet forward, nodding at her with the most complacent looks, while the poor little girl, deadly pale, trembling with terror, hung upon his arm as if suspended by a hook, holding back, yet not daring to struggle, shutting her eyes for very terror. He waved his hand, releasing hers for a moment, but holding it tight within his arm. “Another of them?” he said. “Where does she come? I don’t seem to remember what we called her, or where she comes in the family; but a nice little thing, Julia—with some feeling for her old—for her old—eh? I forget what I was going to say. What is her name?” “Adolphus! let the child go. Here is a chair by me: come and sit down.” They all stood about helpless, gazing, Mrs. Harwood alone keeping her place in her chair, while he strayed across the floor in his half-dancing step, dragging Janet with him. “I’ll sit by you with pleasure, Julia. It is long since you have come to sit with me till last night. And these are all of them? I’ve said their names over
- 23. in my mind, but I forget some—I forget some. They were so little once— curious to think so little once, and then when a man comes back—tse! in a moment all grown up—the same as men and women. But this,” he said, with a laugh, “is still a little thing. Where shall I put her, Julia? Too big, you know, to sit on papa’s knee.” He laughed again, looking round upon them all, and suddenly let Janet go, so that she fell in the shock of the release, which made the stranger laugh more and more. “Poor little sing! but too big to tumble about. Det up again and don’t ky. Julia,” he put out his hand again and laid it on the elbow of Mrs. Harwood’s chair, “these are all then?—between you and me——” He rubbed his long soft pallid hands. “Who would have thought,” he said, “that I should have got so well, and come downstairs again and sat by you in another chair, and seen them all men and women. It’s more than we could have expected—more than we could have expected. And now there’s a great deal to be done to show that we’re thankful. Where is my pocket-book? I want my pocketbook. God in heaven! that villain Vicars has taken my pocket-book, and now I shall not be able to pay!” He started up again in rising excitement, his eyes beginning to stare and his face to redden, while he dragged and pulled at the pockets of his coat. Mrs. Harwood put her hand upon him to pull him down into his chair, and called to them all to find Vicars. “Sit down, sit down, Adolphus,” she said, holding him with both her hands. “It is in your other coat. You changed your other coat to come down, you know you did. Run—run, Dolff! for the love of heaven, and get the pocket-book out of your father’s other coat!”
- 24. CHAPTER XLVIII. Dolff hurried out of the room so bewildered and dazed that he neither understood what this new revelation was, nor what he was sent out to do. He felt himself hustled out of the room by his anxious sisters, while Meredith was left to be the defender of the party against the madman. The madman! What was it his mother had said. To fetch Vicars—but that was not all—to get something out of his father’s coat. His father! Dolff stopped a few steps from the door, out of which he had been thrust to run in haste and bring what was wanted out of his father’s coat. “My father,” Dolff said to himself, “has been dead since ever I can remember. Who is my father?” He was completely bewildered. He remembered his mother very well in her widow’s cap. And she was known everywhere to be a widow. “Your father!”—he could not think what it meant. He believed there must be some mistake, some strange illusion which had fallen upon them, or which, perhaps, they had thought of, invented, to prevent remark. “Your father!” could it have been said only to shut his mouth? It was due to Providence, not to Dolff, that Vicars came in his way, drifting across the hall in pursuit of his patient. Vicars had the famous pocket-book in his hand, and Dolff wondered vaguely what was the meaning of it, and how it was that this pocket-book, like a property on the stage, should be so mixed up with the poor man’s thoughts, if these distracted fancies could be called thoughts. All that he could do was to point towards the drawing-room, whither Vicars hastened. He had no command of his voice to say anything, or of himself to be able to exercise his own wits. He dropped in his dismay upon one of the hard wooden chairs in the hall, and sat there staring vaguely before him, trying to think. There was a faint jar of the door, and a little figure came out abruptly, as if escaping. It was Janet, whose smooth hair was a little out of order, and her black dress crushed by the half embrace in which the madman had held her. Janet was deeply humiliated by that embrace, by having thus appeared before Meredith and all of them, the object of the old man’s fondling. Her face was obscured by anger and annoyance, and when Dolff sprang up and put himself in her way, the little governess looked for a moment like a little
- 25. fury, contemplating him with a desire in her eyes to strike him to dust if she had been able—a fiery little Gorgon, with the will without the power. “What is it—what is it now?” she cried, clenching her hand as if she would have struck him, yet at the same moment holding herself in with difficulty from a fit of angry tears. “Janet, don’t forsake me,” cried Dolff; “I am half mad, I don’t know what to think. Who is he? Tell me who he is!” “Mr. Harwood,” cried Janet, fiercely, “you—you are not a wise child.” He looked at her with a naive wonder. “I have never set up for being wise. You are far, far more quick than I am. I suppose you understand it, Janet. I know you don’t care for me, as I do for you; but you might feel for me a little. Oh, don’t turn away like that —I know you’ve thrown me off; but help me—only help me. Who is he? Tell me who he is.” “Mr. Harwood,” said Janet, “how should I know your family history? He is your father; any one can see that.” “It is impossible,” said Dolff; “my father is dead.” “Of course, I cannot know anything,” said Janet, with a cruel intention which she did not disguise from herself, with her lip a little raised over her white teeth like a fierce little animal at bay, “but I will tell you what I think. Your father has done something which made it better that he should be thought dead, and your mother has hidden him away and kept him a close prisoner all these years: but now it is all found out.” “Done something—that made it better he should be thought dead!” Dolff turned so deadly pale that the girl’s heart smote her. The place seemed to turn round and round with him. He fell back against the wall as if he would have fallen. “You don’t mean that!—you don’t mean that!” he cried, piteously, stretching out his hands to her as if she could help it. “Oh! forgive me, Mr. Dolff. I did not mean to hurt you so.” “Never mind about hurting me,” he said, hoarsely. “Is it true?” She made no reply; what did she know about it? Perhaps it was not true —but what else could any one think who was not a fool? If Dolff had not been a fool he would have known that it must be so. She stood confronting him for a minute while he stood there supporting himself against the wall, hiding his face in his hands. And then Janet left him, running upstairs to
- 26. escape altogether from these family mysteries, with which she had nothing to do. It had been very interesting at first, full of excitement, like a story. But now Janet felt that it was a great consolation to have nothing really to do with it, to retire and leave these people to manage their own affairs. And she had in her veins an entirely new excitement, something of her own enough to occupy all her thoughts. She ran upstairs, leaving Dolff in his dismay with his head hidden in his hands—what had she to do with that?—and fled to her comfortable room, where she sat down beside the blazing fire, and turned to her own affairs— they were important enough now to demand her full attention. Since she had written that letter, Janet herself had become subject to all the suspenses, the doubts and alarms of independent life. What would be thought of it? Would he still be in the same mind? Would he come to take her away? And oh, biggest and most serious of all her questions, if he did come, if he were still of the same mind, could she endure him—could she accept the fate which she had thus invited for herself? Janet had serious enough questions of her own to discuss with herself as she sat over the glowing fire. Poor Dolff did not know how long he stood there, with his head against the wall. He was roused at last by the sound of a movement in the drawing- room, and presently the door opened, and a sort of procession came out. First of all, the strange new inmate of the house leaning upon Vicars, looking back and kissing his hand to the others behind him, who came crowding out in a group close to each other. “I’ll come often now and sit an hour with you in the evening,” he said. “Now that everybody’s paid, I’ll live a new life. My children, don’t be frightened; I’ll take care of you all. For,” he said, stopping short, turning Vicars round by the arm, “I’m to have a wheeled chair and go out for an airing to-morrow. Hey, what do you think—an airing! That means it’s all paid and everything right.” “I wouldn’t, if I were you, say the same thing over not more than twenty times,” said Vicars, sulkily; “and you won’t have no airing, I can tell you, if you don’t come off to bed.” “That’s Vicars all over,” said the smiling patient. “Vicars all over! You would think he’s my master—and he’s only my servant! Yes—yes, it’s all paid, and everything right—or how could I go out for an airing to-morrow? There is plenty in the pocket-book for everybody. You know—in the
- 27. pocket-book. Eh! My! Where’s my pocket-book?” he cried, suddenly changing his tone and searching in his breast-pocket. “Vicars, do you hear? My pocket-book! Where’s my pocket-book? It’s not where I always have it —I keep it here, you know, to keep it safe. My pocket-book!” cried the poor maniac, tossing Vicars from him and waving his arms wildly. His distracted eyes caught at this moment the figure of Dolff standing against the wall. Dolff had uncovered his pale and miserable countenance: he was standing in the shade, mysterious, half seen, with that very pale face looking out from the semi-dark. The madman rushed towards him with a cry. “There’s the thief! There’s the thief! Get hold of him before he gets away! He’s got my pocket-book—lay hold of him! I’m not strong enough,” he added, turning round with an explanatory look, “to do it myself. Never getting any air you know, as I couldn’t till things were settled. I’ve got very little strength.” “I thought,” said Vicars, “as taking that pocket-book from him was a mistake! He’s always a-looking back upon that pocket-book! You’ll have to give it him back.” “Don’t you remember, sir,” said Meredith, holding up a sealed packet, “that you gave it to me to put it up—look at the seals, you stamped them yourself. You gave it to me to pay off everything. Try to remember. Here it is, safe and sound. You gave it to me yourself.” “And who the devil are you,” said the invalid, “that I should give you all my money? You’re not one of them: some fellow, Vicars, that Julia has picked up. She’s always picking people up. Give it back, make him give it back, Vicars—my money that’s meant to pay off everybody! Give it back— back! I tell you I’ll pay them all myself! I’ll go out to-morrow in the wheel- chair—you know, Vicars, the wheel-chair for the airing—and pay them all myself!” “Who is it,” said Dolff, coming forward out of the gloom, “who has to be paid back? and who is this man? For you all seem to know.” “Come, come, sir,” said Vicars; “it’s your time for bed. You’ll not go nowhere, neither for an airing nor to pay them debts of yours, if you don’t come straight off to bed.” “Who is he?” cried Dolff, pushing upon the group. “Who are you? For I will know.”
- 28. To the surprise of all, the madman, who had been so self-confident, suddenly shrank behind Vicars, and, catching his arm, pulled him towards the door that led to the wing. “I’m afraid of that man,” he said, in a whispering, hissing tone. “Vicars, get me home; get me out of sight. He’s an officer. Vicars, I’m not safe with that man!” “Hold your tongue, can’t you, Mr. Dolff, till I get him away,” cried Vicars, pushing past. And in a moment the pair had disappeared within the mysterious door, which swung after them, noiseless, closing without a sound. Dolff was left, pale and threatening, with Meredith and his two sisters facing him. That they should know what he did not filled Dolff with a sort of frenzy; and yet how could he continue to say that he did not know? “I wish,” cried Julia, stamping her foot, “that you two who know such a lot would go away, and not speak to Dolff and me. You don’t belong to us— at least Charley Meredith doesn’t belong to us, and Gussy thinks more of him than of all of us together. Oh, Dolff, it only matters to you and me! I believe,” cried Julia, catching her brother’s arm, “that old madman’s our father, Dolff. I believe he is our father. It’s terrible, it’s odious, and I will never forgive mamma. Why isn’t he dead? as she said he was. Dolff—oh, don’t mind it so dreadfully! I don’t mind it so dreadfully: he’s only mad— and that’s not wicked after all.” Dolff pushed past them all to where his mother sat in that temple of brightness and comfort, in her chair. Everything that could be done for her convenience and consolation in her incapacity was about her. She sat there as in a sanctuary, the centre of the most peaceful house. And there she had sat for years with the air of knowing nothing different, fearing nothing, meeting every day that rose and every night that fell with the same serene composure—a woman with nothing to conceal, nothing to alarm her, occupied only with little cares of the family and sympathies with others, and the knitting with which she was always busy. To look at her, and to think of the burden that had been for so long upon her shoulders, unknown, undreamed of, was a problem beyond the reach of imagination. Never a line upon her brow, and all that mystery and misery behind. The room, usually so orderly, was a little disarranged to-night, the chairs pushed about anyhow, and one lying where it fell, which had been pushed
- 29. over as Vicars led his patient out. And she had sat there patiently and listened to the voices in the hall, knowing that another encounter was taking place—knowing that her son was desperate, that he had it in him to be violent, that it was enough to touch that secret spring of madness which, for aught she could tell, the son of a mad father might have inherited. Perhaps, had she been scanned at that moment by any one more able to judge than Dolff, the signs of a conflict might have been seen in her eyes, but to Dolff she appeared precisely as she always was in her incredible calm. He placed himself in front of her with the air of an angry man demanding an explanation from his inferior. “Is that man my father?” he said. “Dolff, this is not a way either to address me or to inquire about your father. Yes, it is your father whom you have just seen, afflicted almost all your lifetime, an object for pity and reverence, not for this angry tone.” “What had he done that you kept him shut up for fifteen years?” “Done!” Even Mrs. Harwood’s steady tones faltered a little. “Why should he have done anything, Dolff? He was mad. If it had been known that I had kept him here he would have been taken from me, and how could I tell that he would have been kindly treated, or humored, or waited on as he would be at home? He was never violent, and I knew Vicars could manage him. If you saw how carefully everything was arranged for him, you would not think it was from want of affection—too much perhaps,” she added, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. “And what is the meaning, then, of this about paying, and the pocket- book?” asked Dolff, half convinced. Mrs. Harwood put her hands together with a little gesture of appeal. “How can I explain the fancies of a mind that is astray?” she said. “He has got something into his head, some distorted recollection of things that happened before. He was not quite fortunate in his business,” she added, with a slight trembling in her voice; “the worry about that was supposed to have something to do with his breakdown.” “Then there were, I suppose, people to pay—whom he thinks he has provided for in that pocket book?” He thought she gave an alarmed glance at some one behind him, and, turning round, caught what seemed to him an answering glance in the eyes of Meredith.
- 30. “He knows,” cried Dolff; “you take him into your confidence, but give only what you can’t help to me!” “Charley is to appear for me before the commissioners,” said Mrs. Harwood, with dignity; “I have given him all the information which was ready for you had you not treated your mother as if she were an enemy trying to injure you. If you do not know, it is your own fault.” Dolff did not know what to think: his courage failed before his mother. Perhaps it was true that Meredith (though he hated him) had stood by the mother more than he, Dolff, had done, and was of more use in this great family emergency. This thought stung him, but he could not escape from it. And to think that if she had but been frank and honest—if he had known of it, as he ought to have done, as soon as he was old enough to understand —— “Oh, mother,” he cried, “why did you keep it from us? Why did I not know long ago?” A slight quiver came over Mrs. Harwood’s face. “What I did I did for the best. One may be mistaken, but I thought it best for you all,” she said. “And I think Mrs. Harwood has had enough agitation for one night,” said Meredith. “You have nothing to do with it!” said Dolff, wildly, “you—what have you to do with our family? What right have you with our secrets?—since we have secrets,” the young man added, in a tone of despair. And Meredith fixed his laughing eyes upon Dolff. He could laugh, however serious the circumstances might be. “There are some secrets,” he said, “which are supposed to be quite safe with me—which it might be awkward for other people were I to let escape.” He looked Dolff full in the eyes, and his laugh drove the young man almost to frenzy. But at the same time it recalled him to himself. He dared not meet Meredith’s laughing eyes. As long as they should both live this fellow would have him at a disadvantage. Dolff drew back with a mortification and humiliation which were unspeakable. He had no longer the courage to question his mother, to assert his own rights. He had the right to know everything, to be the first to be consulted in his own house. But
- 31. that look was enough to silence him, to drive him back. Oh, that he should have put such power into another’s hand! And for what? For whom? “If it will be any satisfaction to you, Dolff,” said Gussy, “I knew all the time—at least, I have known for a year or two. Mamma told me, just as she has told you, that he was—afflicted soon after Ju was born, and that she knew they would not let her keep him if it was known. So it was said he had died abroad, where he was for a little while. Is that so, mamma?” “You are quite right, my dear,” said Mrs. Harwood, who had quite recovered her composure. “But with this in addition: that the news came of his death, and that I had got my widow’s mourning and everything was settled, when I found out that we had been mistaken. Vicars had gone with him, and Vicars brought him back. He sent me a letter to say that your father was not dead, but afflicted, and that he was bringing him back. I could not tell what to do. I did not want to let anybody know.” “Why?” said Dolff, who had plucked up a little courage. This time Gussy and Julia both stood by him. They looked at their mother, the three faces together, all so much alike, lit up with the same sentiment. “Why did you make a mystery of it?” said Dolff. “Would it not have been easier if everything had been frank and above-board?” For a moment there was silence in the room. Mrs. Harwood made no reply. For the first time in all these fifteen years she wavered, her confidence forsook her, she had all but broken down. Another moment and the silence itself would have betrayed that there was something else— another secret still unrevealed. As she looked at them all together, her three children all asking the same question with faces overshadowed by a cloud of doubt, her strong heart almost gave way. “Mrs. Harwood has already told you the reason,” said Meredith behind them. “She knew that she would not be allowed to keep him, that he would be carried off from her to an asylum——” “Oh, children,” cried Mrs. Harwood, with a burst of sobbing which was half relief, “it is hard, hard upon me to drive me back again to that time! I had to take my resolution all at once. I had nobody to advise me. I came up here, and took this house, and prepared it all myself. You may see for yourselves how carefully it is done. I made the curtains and things with my own hands. Oh, I did not spare any trouble to make him comfortable! And we managed everything, Vicars and I. At first, even, when he was not so
- 32. weak, we managed to get him out sometimes to take the air. We did everything for him. I was not laid up then. Why should I defend myself before you as if you were my judges?” she cried, drying her eyes hastily. “It was all for you.” “Mamma,” said Julia, “you said just now it was because you would not be allowed to keep him—because he would be taken from you and put into an asylum: and now you say it was for us——” Mrs. Harwood again raised her head and gave them a look; her countenance changed, a flash of anger came over her face. She had borne everything else, but these exasperating questions were more than she could bear. She was about to answer with unusual passion when Meredith’s voice came in again. “You do not remember,” he said, “that to have a father in a lunatic asylum is not the best thing in the world for a family. Mrs. Harwood desired to save you that, to save you the anxiety of knowing he was here, to bear everything herself and leave your minds free.” “Charley,” cried Gussy, quickly, “thank you, you understand her better than we have done. Oh, mamma, that was why you told me so little—even me.” “I did it for your sakes,” said the mother, yielding at last to an exasperation beyond her power of resistance, and bursting into uncontrolled tears.
- 33. CHAPTER XLIX. The explanation was over, but the family atmosphere was not cleared. Gussy indeed had been moved out of her resentment and doubt, partly for the sake of her lover, partly for the sake of her mother. To stand out against both was more than she had been capable of. And Meredith had been perhaps alarmed by her sudden withdrawal from him, or in some other way (she could not tell how) moved back towards his former devotion. He was more anxious to draw her back, to recover her attention, than he had ever been before in any of the little brief estrangements which Gussy was generally the person to bring to an end. But on this occasion it was entirely he who did it, who sought her pardon, her return of tenderness, all the old attentions that had once been lavished upon him. Gussy could not resist that silent moving back of her heart; and it pleased her that he should defend her mother, whether or not her mother was worthy of it. But the younger ones were not moved by this influence. They were the more dissatisfied with their mother’s defence, because Meredith had chimed in, to put arguments into her mouth when she was about, as they believed, to break down. Had she been permitted to break down, a more full explanation might have been had, and the children might then have forgiven their mother; but, as it was, there had been too much and not enough. An insufficient explanation is the most painful of family misfortunes. It gives a sense of falsehood and insincerity to the mind. When you do not explain at all, it is possible you may be innocent: but when you explain profusely, dwelling upon some sides of the matter while ignoring others, you must be guilty: and the impression left is all the more unhappy and unsatisfactory that it is in its way definitive and final, and all are precluded from opening up the subject again. Unless some new incident took place, or some accident which disturbed the family laws, Dolff could not ask any more questions. He was too young to know what to do, too proud and shame- faced to hazard the credit of the family by making inquiries in other quarters. An uneasy sense that everything was different, that his own position and that of everybody else was changed, that he was no longer sure of the ground on which he stood, or the relations of those around him, was in Dolff’s mind. It must make a difference that his father was alive, even
- 34. though that father was a madman: and vague notions came into his painfully exercised brain—ideas half seen, uncomprehended, of some sense in which his mother might have done what she had done for their sakes, although she had professed in the same breath that it was for her husband’s sake she had done it, that he might not be shut up away from her. Julia, on the other hand who was much more sharp-witted than Dolff, had seized like lightning upon this inconsistency, and could not forget it. “She said it was for him and then she said it was for us,” cried the girl. “How could it be for us when it was for him? It could not be supposed good for us that there should have been some one shut up there in the wing, and when we might have found it out any day.” “I never found it out nor thought of it,” said Dolff. “If I had been told of it I should not have believed it. I should have said my mother was the last person in the world for mysteries—the very last person in the world—and that everything in this house was honest and above-board.” “I never thought like that,” said Julia, shaking her head. “There was always something queer. Vicars, that was our servant, and yet not our servant, and that cry that one heard——” “What cry?” “Oh, an awful cry that we heard sometimes. Janet heard it when she had only been here a week, and she was dreadfully frightened. So was I at first,” said Julia, with dignity. “It has only been for a few years: mamma explained it to me: she said it was the wind in the vacant chimneys that were not used. Oh, Dolff, though she knew very well it was not the wind, and the chimneys were not vacant! Dolff, mamma has said a great many things that are——” “Don’t talk of the mother, Ju—I’m very fond of the mother; and to think she should ever—— Don’t—I think perhaps there might be reasons for our sakes, as she said. The property, you know, came from my grandfather to us. If he were known to have been alive, perhaps—I don’t know so much about business as I ought—perhaps—— It makes my head a little queer to think of all that. She might have reasons.” “If it was simply for him, as she said first, to keep him from being sent to an asylum, it could not be for us as well.” “I’m not so sure of that,” said Dolff stroking fondly, but with a very serious face, his youthful very light moustache, light both in color and texture.
- 35. “I have noticed in ladies,” said quick-witted Julia, “that they like to have a motive, don’t you know—something nice, as if they were always thinking of others, never of themselves; when they do anything, it’s always for their children. Mamma is not like that, to do her justice; when things are going on she says she likes it, not for us only. Oh, Dolff! to think of the parties and romps we have had this Christmas, and people coming to dinner, and him there all the while!” They were both overawed by the thought, and silenced, not venturing even to look at one another, when Julia suddenly cried out, “There’s a party to-morrow, Dolff.” “It mustn’t be,” said the young man; “they must write and say it can’t be.” “What can they say? Nobody is ill; you can’t shut the people out who come to call, and they would see mamma was quite well, and know it was not true. Oh, no; mamma will say we must keep up appearances; and she will be there, looking as nice as possible at the end of the table, and Vicars behind her chair.” “Ju, what did they do with him when Vicars was at all the parties behind her chair?” “He was fastened in, I suppose, the doors all locked. I don’t know. Dolff, suppose he had come downstairs one of these times, as he did last night!” They looked at each other with a shudder. “Perhaps on the whole,” said the young man, “it was better for us that we did not know.” This was how they came to a partial approval of their mother. It rankled in their hearts that she had said to them what was not true, that she had made explanations which they could not refuse yet could not receive; that this tremendous crisis had come and gone in their lives and everything been changed, and yet that they were little wiser than before. And it was still more bitter for Dolff to perceive, what he could not help seeing whenever the family assembled together, that the knowledge that was kept from him was given to Meredith: but yet it had gleamed upon him that after all there might be something reasonable in his mother’s plea. There came, however, in this way to be two parties in the house—one which knew and discussed everything, the other which knew nothing and
- 36. imagined a great deal, and chafed at the ignorance in which it was kept, yet found no means of knowing more or understanding better. Mrs. Harwood talked apart with Gussy and Meredith, who were always about her chair. When the others came into the room there was a momentary silence, and then one of the three would start an indifferent subject. It was enough for Dolff or Julia to come near to stop all conversation of any importance. They were shut out from all that was serious in the house as if they had nothing to do with it, as if their lives were not bound up with it as much—nay, far more than the others! What had Meredith to do with it, at all? Only through Gussy, who, if she married him at last, would go away with him and be a Harwood no longer; whereas Dolff, whatever happened, would always be the representative of the family, though shut out from its councils and kept in ignorance of its affairs. Mrs. Harwood had decided, as Julia foresaw, that the party was to take place, that the world was not to be permitted to see any difference. Such whispers as had crept out could be silenced in no other way. “Of course they have heard something,” she said, “and if they were put off, if we made any excuse, they would believe the most of what they heard, whatever it was; but if they are received the same as ever and have as good a dinner, and see us all just as usual, even the worst-thinking people will be confused. They will not believe we could be such hypocrites as that. They will say whatever it is that has happened must be much exaggerated. The Harwoods look just as usual. Oh, I know the world a little,” she said, with a half laugh. Even Gussy, who knew her so well, was bewildered by her mother’s fortitude, and by the clearness of her vision. “I know the world a little,” Mrs. Harwood said. “I have lived in it a great many years. Nothing makes quite such an impression as we expect. The people who can piece things together and understand exactly what has happened, are the ones that don’t hear of it, and those who do hear haven’t got the clue. I have told Charley already what I think. If we stand together and are bold, we’ll get out of it all, and no great harm will come.” “Yes, you have told me, and I begin to believe,” said Meredith. “What do you mean by harm coming?” said Gussy, surprised. “Gossip about one’s family is not pleasant; but that is all, and what other harm could come?”
- 37. Her mother and her lover looked at each other, and a faint sign passed between them; they did not venture to smile, much less to laugh, at the simplicity which understood nothing. Dolff, too, overheard this talk with an ache of wonder. What did they mean? Something more than gossip, he felt sure; for what did it matter about gossip? The madman in the house would scare and startle the neighbors, but it was not that his mother meant. What did she mean? He was the one that was likely to betray himself at the dinner-party, where he was compelled to take the foot of the table as usual, much against his will. “Why can’t you put Meredith there?” he said; “you trust him a great deal more than you trust me.” “And if I do so,” said Mrs. Harwood, “have I not good reason? He is not always flinging my mistake—if it is a mistake—in my face. He is willing to do what he can for me. To help me without setting up for a judge.” “I have not set up for a judge,” said Dolff. “You have,” his mother said; “you are judging me and finding me wanting whatever I do.” “Why should you have this party?” cried the young man; “why fill the house with strangers when we are all so miserable?” Dolff could have cried with trouble and discontent and a sense of wrong had not his manhood forbidden such an indulgence. He was all wrong, out of place, wherever he turned. “I see no cause you have to be miserable. I am not miserable,” said Mrs. Harwood, “and I hope you will have the sense not to look so, making everybody talk.” This effort, however, on the part of Dolff was impossible. He sat at the foot of the table like a ghost. He scarcely opened his mouth, either to the lady on his right hand or the lady on his left. He ate nothing, making it very evident that he had something on his mind; and it became quite clear to all the guests that Dolff was in great trouble. Rumors about him had flown through the neighborhood, as well as rumors on the other subject, perplexed stories of which it was difficult to make anything. But when his mother’s guests saw Dolff’s looks, they were instantly convinced that the true part of the story was that which concerned him. “Didn’t you remark what a hang-dog look he had? Depend upon it, it is Dolff that is at the bottom of everything. The other thing is probably great
- 38. nonsense, but Dolff is evidently in a bad way.” This was the conclusion arrived at by Mrs. Harwood’s guests, which that inscrutable woman had foreseen, and for which, perhaps, she was scarcely sorry. It is so common for a young man to get into a scrape—and when the said young man is only two-and-twenty it is not so difficult to get him out of it. Even the hardest of judges are tolerant of misdemeanors—when they are not dishonorable—at that age. Therefore, perhaps, the mother calculated —being forced to very deep calculations at this trying period—that it would do no harm to the house to have the trouble in it saddled upon Dolff. “Is that all?” people would say. Whereas to have a family secret divulged—to have curious minds in St. John’s Wood inquiring what was the meaning of that story about a secret inmate in the Harwoods’ house, and who the Harwoods were before they came to that house, and what there was in the antecedents of the family to account for it—that would be a very different matter. When a sympathetic friend, anxious to find out what she could, condoled with her after dinner in the drawing-room about her son’s looks, Mrs. Harwood accepted the kind expressions gratefully. “No,” she said, “I am afraid Dolff is not looking very well, poor boy; he has had a good deal to trouble him: but I hope everything is now in a right way, and he will have no more bother.” “Was it some trouble with his college?” asked the sympathetic friend. “Oh, no! nothing with the college,” said Mrs. Harwood. “He has stayed down for an extra week to look after some business, and he is going back to Oxford in a day or two—it is nothing of that kind.” The friend concluded from this that it was debt which was troubling Dolff, “like all the young men.” And his mother, no doubt, had been obliged to draw her purse. It must have been some writ or something of that sort— which is a thing that still always seems to involve dungeons and horrors to women—which had taken the “police” to the Harwoods: for that the “police” had been at the house of the Harwoods everybody knew. Poor Dolff! but he had evidently got a lesson, and probably it would do good for him in the end, these good people thought. Thus Mrs. Harwood’s plan was successful more than she could have hoped, and it seemed as if all would settle down again, and go well. Meredith had arranged everything for his appearance before the commissioners on her behalf. He had a very touching story to tell. The poor
- 39. wife distracted by the arrival of her husband, whom she had supposed to be dead, but who was brought back to her when she was in her widow’s weeds, not dead, indeed, but mad, and as much severed from life and all its ways as if he had been dead indeed; and how she had no one to advise her, no one to consult with, and had come to a rash but heroic resolution to devote herself to him, to provide for his comfort secretly in her own house; and how he had been carefully tended by an experienced servant, and by herself until rheumatism crippled her and confined her to her chair—which still did not prevent her now and then from paying him visits, at the cost of great agony to herself, to see that all was well. “Such things rarely get into the papers unless there is some special interest in them,” said Meredith. “I think with a little care we may keep it quiet, and then——” “Then all will be safe,” said Mrs. Harwood, “and no secrecy whatever. Oh! my dear Charley, what I shall owe you!—the relief to my mind, above all.” “You will owe me no more than you will pay me,” he said, with a laugh; “which will satisfy him also, as clearing off those debts which are so much on his mind. It is a transaction by which we shall all gain.” This was not a point of view which was agreeable to Mrs. Harwood. “I wish,” she said, “that you would not treat it in that way. It will be Gussy’s fortune. I have a right to give Gussy what I please. She has not said anything to me, but I hope you have spoken to Gussy——” “As soon as the business is over,” he said, “when I shall have won—not only Gussy, but my share——” “Oh! for heaven’s sake,” cried Mrs. Harwood, “do not speak of it like that.”
- 40. CHAPTER L. Meantime Janet, who had nothing to do with dinner-parties or anything of the kind, and who in the agitated state of the house appeared but little, and did not linger a moment longer than could be helped downstairs, had been passing through a period of suspense which was intolerable to her— far more terrible to bear than all the burdens, involving so much, which were on the accustomed shoulders of Mrs. Harwood. It was on Tuesday that she had written that momentous letter—that appeal of her impatient young soul to fate. She had written begging that she might be delivered at once from the position which she could not bear. “All that I was threatened with before I left Clover has come true,” she said, “though not in the way they thought: and I can’t bear it any longer; and, if you meant what you said, come—come and take me away at once. If you don’t come I will know that you didn’t mean it, or that you have changed your mind: and I will do what I can for myself.” On Tuesday! Thursday at the latest should have brought a letter—though what she had expected was, that on Wednesday, the very day he received hers, he would come at once, answering it in person. This was the natural thing to expect. He would come—full of that ardor which had made Janet laugh when in October he had pleaded with her not to go away, to let him take care of her, provide for her. It had seemed to Janet the most ridiculous of suggestions that she should give her hand to the old doctor, and settle down for life in the familiar place where she knew everybody and everything, and where novelty was not, nor change of any kind. And it was only January, the end of January, not much more than three months! was it possible that life had so disgusted this little neophyte, who had faced it so valiantly, that she gave up the battle already? She had asked herself that question as soon as her letter was in the post-office and beyond her control. What was there to hinder her from going on to another chapter, from spurning from her this prelude in which she had not come off a conqueror—three months only, and to throw down her arms! The moment that Janet had dropped her letter into the box at Mimpriss’s that place which had played so large a part in her life, her heart made a great leap, a sort of sickening rebound against what she had done. Oh no;
- 41. her first beginning had not been a success. She had betrayed people who had been so good to her; her quick wit had seen too much, known too much, in the house where she ought to have been a grateful spectator only, making no discoveries. She had not been unwilling, by way of mere fun and distraction, to take Gussy’s lover from her. She had not been unwilling “to make a fool of” the son of the house. She had been there like a little free lance to get what amusement and advantage she could out of them, without giving anything in return. But Janet, though she had succeeded in the most remarkable way in both cases, had come to such a failure in the end as made her loathe herself. She had been met by her match, she had been deluded by a stronger practitioner of those arts, intent upon fun and distraction too, and with as little intention of promoting Janet as of anything else that would involve trouble to himself. How could she ever have thought it? A man who betrayed the woman who loved him to her, a stranger, how could she have supposed that he would be true to her and give up his own interest to proclaim his devotion to the governess! And Dolff, the dolt whom she had said to herself that she could turn round her little finger—Dolff, who had nearly killed the other man who had played with her; but not even that for Janet’s sake. For his sister’s sake, whom Janet had never taken into consideration—Dolff, too, had thrown her off as easily as an old glove when he got into trouble, and more serious matters occupied his mind. These extraordinary failures had altogether overset Janet’s moral equilibrium. Had she been driven out of the house by the jealousy of the women, with the secret sympathy and support of the men, a victim to the spitefulness of her own sex, but assured in her power of attracting and subjugating the other, Janet would have felt this to be quite natural—a thing that is in all the stories, the natural fate of the too attractive dependent. But this was not at all her case. The ladies had been very kind to her; they had never discovered her misdoings. Even Gussy, if she suspected anything, had taken no notice, which was to Janet very humiliating, an immense mortification, though the thing most to be desired by anyone who had retained a morsel of sense. Janet had a great deal of sense, but in this emergency it forsook her—the kindness of the ladies had added a sting to the humiliating insincerity of Meredith and the indignant self-emancipation of Dolff. She had failed every way. It was she who was jealous—the one to be thrown aside; the legitimate
- 42. sentiment had triumphed all along the line, and the little interloper had failed in everything. She had thought that to prove to them at last that she had no need of them, that she had but to hold up a finger to bring her deliverer flying to the rescue, to be carried off triumphant to her own house, to her own people, would be a triumph which would make up for all, while still Meredith was in the house, while Dolff was at home, while everyone could see how little necessity she had to care what they thought! Janet knew, she was certain, that the moment she held up a finger—— And she had held it up—she had summoned her deliverer—without pausing to think. But when she dropped the letter in the letter-box at the window of Mimpriss’s there suddenly came over Janet a vision of Dr. Harding as she had seen him last, rusty, splashed with mud, his hat pushed back on a forehead that was a little bald, his coat-collar rubbed with hair that was iron-gray. He was nearly as old as Meredith and Dolff added up together; a country doctor, called out day and night by whoever pleased to send for him, not even rich. Oh, the agitated night Janet had after that rash step of hers! She had called him to her, and he would come flying on wings of love —i. e., by the quickest express train that never stopped between Clover and London, which flew even past the junction—that terrible train which frightened all the Clover ladies; as quick as the telegraph almost would he be here. Janet held her breath and asked herself how she could have done it? And what if, when he came, holding out his arms to her as he would be sure to do, her heart should fail and she should turn away—turn her back on him after she had summoned him? Oh, that was what she must not, dare not do. She had settled her fate; she had committed herself beyond remedy. If Meredith and Dolff should repent, and fling themselves one after another at her feet, it would do no good now. He might be ready to sacrifice Gussy to her, but she could not sacrifice Dr. Harding to him. Oh, not now—she had settled her fate now! All Wednesday morning Janet was in a state of suspense which defies description. She expected every moment to be called downstairs, to be told that a gentleman had come asking for her. The train arrived at half-past ten, just half-an-hour after the hour at which she sat down with Julia to lessons. Lessons, good heavens! They had never, perhaps, been very excellent of their kind, these lessons, though they had been gone through with steadily enough; but Julia had been quite well aware from the first that Janet’s heart
- 43. was not in them, just as Janet had discovered from the first that Julia would learn no more than she could possibly help learning. And it may be supposed that, with this indifferent mutual foundation, the agitated state of the house, and of the minds of both instructress and instructed, had not improved the seriousness of the studies. Janet calculated that half-an-hour would be wanted to get from the station to St. John’s Wood; half-an-hour would be enough, for of course he would take a hansom, the quickest to be had, instead of the slow four-wheeler which had conveyed her and her luggage on the occasion of her arrival. Then at eleven o’clock! Oh, what should she do, what could she do? There were but two things she could do —run downstairs at the first summons, and rush into Dr. Harding’s arms— or fly away, somewhere, she knew not where, before he came. Sitting dazed by this suspense, her heart beating in her ears, taking no notice of Julia’s proceedings, which were very erratic, listening for the sound of Priscilla’s steps on the stair with the summons feared yet desired, Janet came to herself with a shock at the sound of twelve, struck upon the little French clock on the mantelpiece, and by the larger church clock in St. John’s Wood, at a minute’s interval. Twelve o’clock! It must be eleven, it could not be twelve! It was impossible, impossible! But, like so many other impossible things, it was true. Her heart seemed to sink down into her slippers, and a horrible stillness took the place of all that beating. He had not come! Could such a thing be? He had not come! Then he had not meant it, or he meant it no longer. Dr. Harding, who had been her slave since she was a child, who had pleaded, oh! how he had looked at her, what tones his voice had taken, how he had implored her as if his life depended upon it! while she—had laughed. Her voice had trembled, too, but it was with laughter. She had not given a moment’s consideration to that proposal. She, before whom the world lay open, full of triumphs, she marry the old doctor! It was ludicrous, too absurd to be thought of; she had not been unkind, but she had let him know this very completely; there had been no hesitation, no relenting in her reply. And now he had done the same to her. But Janet could not believe it—she went on expecting him all day. Something might have happened to detain him in the morning. He might have gone out upon his rounds before the letter came—sometimes the postman was very late, at Clover. She knew the life there so well that she could calculate exactly when the letters would reach the doctor’s house. The
- 44. bag was always heavy in the beginning of the year. Clover was one of those places where all the people hear from their friends in the early part of the year. Perhaps there were still some belated Christmas cards or premature valentines to give the postman more to do. And some one might have been ill, and the doctor called out before his usual time. All these things were possible—but not that he should have received her letter and not come. But when Thursday passed without even a letter in reply, and Friday—Friday, the third day!—Janet fell into a state of depression that was miserable to see. She could think of nothing else. Her doubts about the doctor’s age, about his appearance, about his gray hair, and all his disadvantages, disappeared altogether from her mind. Astonishment, humiliation, the sense of having fallen altogether from her high estate, of being a miserable little failure abandoned by everybody, filled Janet’s mind. He had not come, though she had sent for him; he had turned a deaf ear to her appeal. Where could she now go? Never to Clover to give him the chance of exulting over her, though Clover was the only place in which she could find a home. Oh, how foolish, how foolish she had been! She might have gone back to the vicarage with no more ado than saying that she was not happy in her situation. The vicar and his wife had expected as much—they would not have been surprised. But now she had closed in her own face that friendly refuge. She had longed for a triumph, though it would be a homely one, and again she had failed—again she had failed! Anything more subdued, more troubled than Janet could not be. The doctor was no longer in her eyes a makeshift, an expedient—something to restore her amour propre, but whom she shrank from even in appealing to him. She forgot his rusty gray hair, his bald forehead, the mud on his boots. Oh, if he would but still come, if he would come! To let them see that she had someone who cared for her, a man who thought her the first of women while to them she was only the little governess. But when Friday came, Janet gave up the hope. He too had decided against her. She was not the first of women to anybody, but a poor little foolish girl who would not when she might and now had to be said nay. The lessons went on all the time, not, I fear, very profitable lessons, and the two girls went out to have their walks as usual, with what comfort they might, and everything continued like a feverish dream. Janet sat upstairs and heard the sounds and commotion of the dinner-party and did not care. What did it matter that they were feasting below, while she was left all
- 45. alone, neglected by everybody? By everybody, yes! even by people who had loved her: nobody loved her now. She was forgotten, both by those at home and those here. And what did it matter? The school-room, that was the place for a governess. They ought never to have brought her out of it. It was true she ought not to have been deceived by any other thoughts—and it was true that she must calculate on spending all the rest of her life, nobody to give her any triumph, nobody to carry her away like a conqueror, nobody to vindicate her importance so that the Harwoods would see their mistake, and Mr. Meredith bite his lips with envy and dismay. No, that had all been a dream; there was nobody to deliver Janet, and nothing for her but to take a new situation, and perhaps go through the whole again, as poor governesses so often do. On Friday afternoon she had come in from her walk depressed beyond description, feeling that everything had failed her. Julia had gone into the drawing-room to her mother, while Janet, dragging a little behind, as she had begun to do in the prostration of her being, lingered in the hall, loitering by the umbrellas in the stand, untwining her boa from her throat, the boa which Meredith had held, by which he had detained her until she had thrown it upon his hands and escaped from him on their last interview. She was very low; expectation was dead in her—she no longer looked for an answer to her letter, nor for anything that could happen. So dull, indeed, was she in her despondency that she did not heed the ring at the bell, nor the hasty step upon the path when Priscilla opened the door. It would be some visitor, some one for the others—nobody any more for Janet. It was a noisy step which came in at the door, firm, a little heavy, and very hurried and rapid. It was almost twilight; the hall was dark, and Janet in the darkest corner, with her back to the door, slowly untwisting the boa from her neck, when— oh, what was this that burst upon her ear? “No,” very hastily, with an impatient tone, “not Mrs. Harwood. I said ‘Miss Summerhayes.’ I want to see Miss Summerhayes.” “Oh!” Janet turned round and came forward, feeling as if she had wings, as if her feet touched the ground no longer. She called out of the darkness, “Is it you, is it you?” as if she did not know who it was at the first thrill of his voice!
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