JOAN HASTE, H. RIDER HAGGARD [free ereaders TXT] 📗

"Yes, sir," answered Joan. "My aunt was obliged to go out for a little while, and, as you are doing so nicely, she said that she thought I might be trusted to look after you till she came back."

"It is very kind of you, I am sure," said Henry. "Sick rooms are not pleasant places. Perhaps you wouldn't mind giving me some of that horrid stuff--barley-water I think it is. I am thirsty."

Joan handed him the glass and supported his head while he drank. When he had satisfied his thirst he said:

"I have never thanked you yet for your bravery. I do thank you sincerely, Miss Haste, for if I had fallen on to those spikes there would have been an end of me. I saw them as I was hanging, and thought that my hour had come."

"And yet he told me to 'stand clear'!" reflected Joan; but aloud she said:

"Oh! pray, pray don't thank me, sir. It is all my fault that you have met with this dreadful accident, and it breaks my heart to think of it." And as she spoke a great tear ran down her beautiful face.

"Come, please don't cry: it upsets me; if the smash was anybody's fault, it was my own. I ought to have known better."

"I will try not, sir," answered Joan, in a choking voice; "but aunt said that you weren't to talk, and you are talking a great deal."

"All right," he replied: "you stop crying and I'll stop talking."

As may be guessed after this beginning, from that hour till the end of his long and dangerous illness, Joan was Henry's most constant attendant. Her aunt did the rougher work of the sick room, indeed, but for everything else he depended upon her; clinging to her with a strange obstinacy that baffled all attempts to replace her by a more highly trained nurse. On one occasion, when an effort of the sort was made, the results upon the patient were so unfavourable that, to her secret satisfaction, Joan was at once reinstalled.

After some days Henry took a decided turn for the worse. His temperature rose alarmingly, and he became delirious, with short coherent intervals. Blood poisoning, which the doctors feared, declared itself, and in the upshot he fell a victim to a dreadful fever that nearly cost him his life. At one time the doctors were of opinion that his only chance lay in amputation of the fractured limb; but in the end they gave up this idea, being convinced that, in his present state, he would certainly die of the shock were they to attempt the operation.

Then followed three terrible days, while Henry lay between life and death. For the greater part of those days Lady Graves and Ellen sat in the bar-parlour, the former lost in stony silence, the latter pale and anxious enough, but still calm and collected. Even now Ellen did not lose her head, and this was well, for the others were almost distracted by anxiety and grief. Distrusting the capacities of Joan, a young person whom she regarded with disfavour as being the cause of her brother's accident, it was Ellen who insisted upon the introduction of the trained nurses, with consequences that have been described. When the doctors hesitated as to the possibility of an operation, it was Ellen also who gave her voice against it, and persuaded her mother to do the same.

"I know nothing of surgery," she said, with conviction, "and it seems probable that poor Henry will die; but I feel sure that if you try to cut off his leg he will certainly die."

"I think that you are right, Miss Graves," said the eminent surgeon who had been brought down in consultation, and with whom the final word lay. "My opinion is that the only course to follow with your brother is to leave him alone, in the hope that his constitution will pull him through."

So it came about that Henry escaped the knife.

Emma Levinger and her father also haunted the inn, and it was during those dark days that the state of the former's affections became clear both to herself and to every one about her. Before this she had never confessed even to her own heart that she was attached to Henry Graves; but now, in the agony of her suspense, this love of hers arose in strength, and she knew that, whether he stayed or was called away, it must always be the nearest and most constant companion of her life. Why she loved him Emma could not tell, nor even when she began to do so; and indeed these things are difficult to define. But the fact remained, hard, palpable, staring: a fact which she had no longer any care to conceal or ignore, seeing that the conditions of the case caused her to set aside those considerations of womanly reserve that doubtless would otherwise have induced her to veil the secret of her heart for ever, or until circumstances gave opportunity for its legitimate expression.

At length on a certain afternoon there came a crisis to which there was but one probable issue. The doctors and nurses were in Henry's room doing their best to ward off the fate that seemed to be approaching, while Lady Graves, Mr. Levinger, Ellen and Emma sat in the parlour awaiting tidings, and striving to hope against hope. An hour passed, and Emma could bear the uncertainty no longer. Slipping out unobserved, she stole towards the sick room and listened at a little distance from it. Within she could hear the voice of a man raving in delirium, and the cautious tread of those who tended him. Presently the door opened and Joan appeared, walking towards her with ashen face and shaking limbs.

"How is he?" asked Emma in an intense whisper, catching at her dress as she passed.

Joan looked at her and shook her head: speak she could not. Emma watched her go with vacant eyes, and a jealousy smote her, which made itself felt even through the pain that tore her heart in two. Why should this woman be free to come and go about the bedside of the man who was everything to her--to hold his dying hand and to lift his dying head--while she was shut outside his door? Emma wondered bitterly. Surely that should be her place, not the village girl's who had been the cause of all this sorrow. Then she turned, and, creeping back to the parlour, she flung herself into a chair and covered her face with her hands.

"Have you heard anything?" asked Lady Graves.

Emma made no reply but her despair broke from her in a low moaning that was very sad to hear.

"Do not grieve so, dear," said Ellen kindly.

"Let me grieve," she answered, lifting her white face; "let me grieve now and always. I know that Faith should give me comfort, but it fails me. I have a right to grieve," she went on passionately, "for I love him. I do not care who knows it now: though I am nothing to him, I love him, and if he dies it will break my heart."

So great was the tension of suspense that Emma's announcement, startling as it was, excited no surprise. Perhaps they all knew how things were with her; at any rate Lady Graves answered only, "We all love him, dear," and for a time no more was said.

Meanwhile, could she have seen into the little room behind her, Emma might have witnessed the throes of a grief as deep as her own, and even more abandoned; for there, face downwards on her bed, lay Joan Haste, the girl whom she had envied. Sharp sobs shook her frame, notwithstanding that she had thrust her handkerchief between her teeth to check them, and she clutched nervously at the bedclothes with her outstretched hands. Hitherto she had been calm and silent; now, at length, when she was of no more service, she broke down, and Nature took its way with her.

"O my God!" she muttered between her strangling sobs, "spare him and kill me, for it was my fault, and I am his murderess. O my God! my God! What have I done that I should suffer so? What makes me suffer so? Oh! spare him, spare him!"

Another half-hour passed, and the twilight began to gather in the parlour.

"It is very long," murmured Lady Graves.

"While they do not come to call us there is hope," answered Ellen, striving to keep up a show of courage.

Once more there was silence, and the time went on and the darkness gathered.

At length a step was heard approaching, and they knew it for that of Dr. Childs. Instinctively they all rose, expecting the last dread summons. He was among them now, but they could not see his face because of the shadows.

"Is Lady Graves there?" he asked.

"Yes," whispered the poor woman.

"Lady Graves, I have come to tell you that by the mercy of Heaven your son's constitution has triumphed, and, so far as my skill and knowledge go, I believe that he will live."

For a second the silence continued; then, with a short sharp cry, Emma Levinger went down upon the floor as suddenly as though she had been shot through the heart.

Joan also had heard Dr. Child's footsteps, and, rising swiftly from her bed, she followed him to the door of the parlour, where she stood listening to his fateful words--for her anxiety was so intense that the idea of intrusion did not even cross her mind.

Joan heard the words, and she believed that they were an answer to her prayer; for her suffering had been too fierce and personal to admit of her dissociating herself from the issue, at any rate at present. She forgot that she was not concerned alone in this matter of the life or death of Henry Graves--she who, although as yet she did not know it, was already wrapped with the wings and lost in the shadow of a great and tragic passion. She had prayed, and she had been answered. His life had been given back to /her/.

Thus she thought for a moment; the next she heard Emma's cry, and saw her fall, and was undeceived. Now she was assured of what before she had suspected, that this sweet and beautiful lady loved the man who lay yonder; and, in the assurance of that love, she learned her own. It became clear to her in an instant, as at night the sudden lightning makes clear the landscape to some lost wanderer among mountains. As in the darkness such a wanderer may believe that his feet are set upon a trodden road, and in that baleful glare discover himself to be surrounded by dangers, amid desolate wastes; so at this sight Joan understood whither her heart had strayed, and was affrighted, for truly the place seemed perilous and from it there was no retreat. Before her lay many a chasm and precipice, around her was darkness, and a blind mist blew upon her face, a mist wet as though with tears.

Somebody in the parlour called for a light, and the voice brought her back from her vision, her hopeless vision of what was, had been, and might be. What had chanced or could chance to her mattered little, she thought to herself, as she turned to seek the lamp. He would live, and that was what she had desired, what she had prayed for while as yet she did not know why she prayed it, offering her own life in payment. She understood now that her prayer had been answered more fully than she deemed; for she had given her life, her true life, for him and to him, though he might never learn the price that had been exacted of her. Well, he would live--to be happy with Miss Levinger--and though her heart must die because of him, Joan could be glad of it even in