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

single word, either to Joan herself or to anybody else, you need hope for no help from me in your suit. You see I am perfectly frank with you. I ask no promises, but I appeal to your interests."

"I understand, sir; but the mischief of it is, whether you wished it or not, you /have/ made a lady of her, and that is why she looks down on me; or perhaps, being in her blood, it will out."

"It would be possible to suggest other reasons for her unwillingness to accept your offer," replied Mr. Levinger drily; "but this is neither here nor there. On the whole I approve of your suit, provided that you are ready to make proper settlements upon Joan, for I know you are a thriving man, and I see that you are attached to her."

"I'll do anything that I can, sir, for I have no mind to stint money in this matter. But though you are so kind as to wish me well, I don't see how that sets me any forrarder with Joan."

"Perhaps you will in a few days' time, though. And now I've got a bit of advice to give you: don't you bother about that six months' promise. You go at her again--in a week, let us say. You know how she is employed now, do you not?"

"I have heard that she is helping to nurse the Captain."

"Quite so: she is helping to nurse the Captain. Now, please understand that I make no imputations, but I don't know if you consider this a suitable occupation for a beautiful young woman whom you happen to wish to marry. Captain Graves is a very fine fellow, and people sometimes grow intimate under such circumstances. Joan told you that she cared for no man on the tenth of June. Perhaps if you wait till the tenth of December she may not be able to say so much."

By this time the poison of Mr. Levinger's hints had sunk deep into his hearer's mind; though had he known Samuel's character more thoroughly, he might have thought the danger of distilling it greater than any advantage that was to be gained thereby. Indeed, a minute later, he regretted having said so much, for, glancing at him, he saw that Rock was deeply affected. His sallow face had become red, his quivering lips were livid, and he was snatching at his thin beard.

"Damn him!" he said, springing to his feet; "if he leads her that way, fine fellow or not, I'll do for him. I tell you that if he wants to keep a whole skin, he had better leave my ewe-lamb alone."

In an instant Mr. Levinger saw, that he had set fire to a jealousy fierce enough to work endless mischief, and too late he tried to stamp out the flame.

"Sit down, sir," he said quietly, but in the tone of one who at some time in his career had been accustomed to the command of men; "sit down, and never dare to speak before me like that again. Now," he added, as Samuel obeyed him, "you will apologise to me for those words, and you will dismiss all such thoughts from your mind. Otherwise I tell you that I take back everything I have said, and that you shall never even speak to Joan Haste again."

Samuel's fit of passion had passed by now, or perhaps it had been frightened away, for his face grew pale, paler than usual, and the constant involuntary movement of his furtive hands was the only sign left of the storm that shook him.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said in a whining voice: "the Lord knows I beg your pardon; and what's more, I didn't mean nothing of what I said. It was jealousy that made me speak so, jealousy bitter as the grave; and when I heard you talk of her getting fond of that Captain--my Joan fond of another man, a gentleman too, who would be bound to treat her as her mother was treated by some villain--it seemed as though all the wickedness in the world bubbled up in my heart and spoke through my mouth."

"There, that will do," answered Mr. Levinger testily. "See that you do not let such wickedness bubble again in your heart, or anywhere else, that's all; for at the first sign of it--and remember I shall have my eye on you--there will be an end of your courtship. And now you had better go. Take my advice and ask her again in a week or so; you can come and tell me how you get on. Good-day."

Samuel picked up his broad hat, bowed, and departed, walking delicately, like Agag, as though he expected at every moment to put his foot upon an egg.

"Upon my word," thought Mr. Levinger, "I'm half afraid of that fellow! I wonder if it is safe to let the girl marry him. On the whole I should think so; he has a great deal to recommend him, and this kind of thing will pass off. She isn't the woman to stand much of it. Anyway, it seems necessary for everybody's welfare, though somehow I doubt if good will come of all this scheming."

CHAPTER XIII(A MEETING BY THE MERE)

Mr. Levinger's confidential interview with Mrs. Gillingwater was not long in bearing fruit. Joan soon became aware that her aunt was watching her closely, and most closely of all whenever she chanced to be in attendance on Henry, with whom she now was left alone as little as possible. The effect of this knowledge was to produce an intense irritation in her mind. Her conscience was guilty, but Joan was not a woman to take a warning from a guilty conscience. Indeed, its sting only drove her faster along the downward road, much as a high-mettled horse often rebels furiously under the punishment of the whip. There was a vein of self-willed obstinacy and of "devil-may-caredness" in Joan's nature that, dormant hitherto, at this crisis in her life began to assert itself with alarming power. Come what might, she was determined to have her way and not to be thwarted. There is this to be said in excuse for her, that now her whole being was dominated by her passion for Henry. In the ordinary sense of the word it was not love that possessed her, nor was it strictly what is understood by passion, but rather, if it can be defined at all, some strange new force, some absorbing influence that included both love and passion, and yet had mysterious qualities of its own. Fortunately, with English women such infatuations are not common, though they are to found frequently enough among people of the Latin race, where sometimes they result in blind tragedies that seem almost inexplicable to our sober sense. But, whatever the cause, Joan had fallen a victim to this fate, and now it mastered her, body and mind and soul. She had never cared for any one before, and on Henry she let loose the pent-up affections of a lifetime. No breath of passion had ever moved her, and now a look from his eyes or a touch of his hand stirred all the fibres of her nature as the wind stirs every leaf upon a tree. He was her darling, her desire. Till she had learnt to love him she had not know the powers and the possibilities of life, and if she could win his love she would even have been willing to pay for it at the price of her own death.

The approach of such an infatuation would have terrified most girls: they would have crushed it, or put themselves beyond its reach before it took hold of them. But then the majority of young English women, even of those who belong to the humbler walks of life, do not stand by their own strength alone. Either they have an inherited sense of the proprieties that amounts almost to an instinct, or they possess strong religious principles, or there are those about them who guide and restrain any dangerous tendency in their natures. At the very least they are afraid of losing the respect and affection of their friends and relatives, and of becoming a mark for the sneers and scandal of the world in which they move.

In Joan's case these influences were for the most part lacking. From childhood she had lived beneath the shadow of a shame that, in some degree, had withered her moral sense; no father or mother gave her their tender guidance, and of religion she had been taught so little that, though she conformed to its outward ceremonies, it could not be said to have any real part in her life. Relatives she had none except her harsh and coarse-minded aunt; her few friends made at a middle-class school were now lost to her, for with the girls of her own rank in the village she would not associate, and those of better standing either did, or affected to look down upon her. In short, her character was compounded of potentialities for good and evil; she was sweet and strong-natured and faithful, but she had not learned that these qualities are of little avail to bring about the happiness or moral well-being of her who owns them, unless they are dominated by a sense of duty. Having such a sense, the best of us are liable to error in this direction or in that; wanting it, we must indeed be favoured if we escape disaster among the many temptations of life. It was Joan's misfortune rather than her fault, for she was the victim of her circumstances and not of any innate depravity, that she lacked this controlling power, and in this defenceless state found herself suddenly exposed to the fiercest temptation that can assail a woman of her character and gifts, the temptation to give way to a love which, if it did not end in empty misery, could only bring shame upon herself and ceaseless trouble and remorse to its object.

Thus it came about that during these weeks Joan lived in a wild and fevered dream, lived for the hour only, thinking little and caring less of what the future might bring forth. Her purpose, so far as she can be said to have had one, was to make Henry love her, and to the consummation of this end she brought to bear all her beauty and every power of her mind. That success must mean sorrow to her and to him did not affect her, though in her wildest moments she never dreamed of Henry as her husband. She loved him to-day, and to-day he was there for her to love: let the morrow look to itself, and the griefs that it might bring.

If such was Joan's attitude towards Henry, it may be asked what was Henry's towards Joan. The girl attracted him strangely, after a fashion in which he had never been attracted by a woman before. Her fresh and ever-varying loveliness was a continual source of delight to him, as it must have been to any man; but by degrees he became conscious that it was not her beauty alone which