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

words. And, if you don't mind, perhaps you had better go away."

"I don't wish to forget them, although I dare say that they mean nothing; and I am not engaged to Mr. Rock--I hate him," answered Joan in the same slow voice; adding, "If you have patience, will you listen to a story? I should like to tell it you before we part, for I think that we have been good friends, and friends should know each other, so that they may remember one another truly when their affection has become nothing but a memory."

Henry nodded; and still very deliberately, as though she wished to avoid all appearance of haste or of excitement, Joan sat herself down upon a footstool in front of the dying fire and began to speak, always keeping her sad eyes fixed upon his face.

"It is not such a very long story," she said, "and the only part of it that has any interest began on that day when we met. I suppose they have told you that I am nobody, and worse than nobody. I do not know who my father was, though I think"--and she smiled as though some coincidence had struck her--"that he was a gentleman whom my mother fell in love with. Mr. Levinger has to do with me in some way; I believe that he paid for my education when I went to school, but I am not sure even about this, and why he should have done so I can't tell. Mr. Samuel Rock is a dissenter and a farmer; they say that he is the richest man in Bradmouth. I don't know why--it was no fault of mine, for I always disliked him every much--but he took a fancy to me years ago, although he said nothing about it at the time. After I came back from school my aunt urged me continually to accept his attentions, but I kept out of his way until that afternoon when I met you. Then he found me sitting under the tower at Ramborough Abbey, where I had gone to be alone because I was cross and worried; and he proposed to me, and was so strange and violent in his manner that he frightened me. What I was most afraid of, however, was that he would tell my aunt that I had refused him--for I did refuse him--and that she would make my life more of a misery than it is already, for you see I have no friends here, where everybody looks down upon me, and nothing to do. So in the end I struck a bargain with him, that he should leave me alone for six months, and that then I would give him a final answer, provided that he promised to say nothing of what had happened to my aunt. He has not kept his promise, for to-day he waylaid me and was very insolent and brutal, so much so that at last he caught hold of me and kissed me against my will, tearing my dress half off me, and I pushed him away and told him what I thought of him. The end of it was that he swore that he would marry me yet, and left me. Then I came back home, and an hour ago I told my aunt what had happened, and there was a scene. She said that either I should marry Samuel Rock or be turned out of the house in a day or two, so I suppose that I must go. And that is all my story."

"The brute!" muttered Henry. "I wish I had him on board a man-of-war: I'd teach him manners. And what are you going to do, Joan?"

"I don't know. Work if I can, and starve if I can't. It doesn't matter; nobody will miss me, or care what happens to me."

"Don't say that, Joan," he answered huskily; "I--I care, for one."

"It is very good of you to say so, but you see you have others to care for besides me. There is Miss Levinger, for instance."

"I have told you once already that I am not engaged to Miss Levinger."

"Yes, but a time will come when you will tell me, or others, that you are; and I think that you will be right--she is a sweet girl. And now, sir," she added, with a total change of manner, "I think that I had better tidy up and bid you good night, and good-bye, for I dare say that I shall come back here no more. I can't wait to be driven out like a strange dog." And she began to perform her various sickroom duties with a mechanical precision.

Henry watched her for a while, until at length all was done and she made ready to go. Then the heart which he had striven to repress burst its bonds, and he sat up and said to her, in a voice that was almost a cry--

"Oh! Joan, I don't know what has come to me, but I can't bear to part with you, though it is best that you should go, for I cannot offer to marry you. I wish to Heaven that I could."

She came and stood beside him.

"I will remember those words as long as I live," she said, "because I know that they are true. I know also why you could not marry me; for we hear all the gossip, and putting that aside it would be your ruin, though for me it might be heaven."

"Do you really care about me, then, Joan?" he asked anxiously, "and so much as that? You must forgive me, but I am ignorant in these things. I didn't quite understand. I feel that I have become a bit foolish, but I didn't know that you had caught the disease."

"Care about you! Anyway, I care enough not to let you marry me even if you would. I think that to bring ruin and disgrace upon a man and all his family would be a poor way to show one's love for him. You see, you have everything to lose. You are not like me who have nothing, not even a name. Care about you!" she went on, with a strange, almost unnatural energy--and her low, caressing voice seemed to thrill every fibre of his heart and leave them trembling, as harp-strings thrill and tremble beneath the hand of the player--"I wonder if there are any words in the world that could make you understand how much I care. Listen. When first I saw you yonder by the Abbey, a change crept over me; and when you lay there senseless in my arms, I became a new woman, as though I were born again--a woman whose mind I could not read, for it was different from my own. Afterwards I read it; it was when they thought you were dying, and suddenly I learned that you would live. When I heard Miss Levinger cry out and saw her fall, then I read it, and knew that I also loved you. I should have gone; but I didn't go, for I could not tear myself away from you. Oh! pity me, and do not think too hardly of me; for remember who and what I am--a woman who has never had any one to love, father or mother or sister or friend, and yet who desires love above everything. And now it had come to me at last; and that one love of mine made up for all that I had missed, and was greater and stronger in itself than the hundred different loves of happier girls can be. I loved you, and I loved you, and I love you. Yes, I wish you to know it before we part, and I hope that you will never quite forget it, for none will ever love you so much again as I have, and do, and shall do till I die. And now it is all done with, and of it there will remain nothing except some pain for you, and for me my memories and a broken heart. What is that you say again about marrying me? Have I not told you that you shall not do it?--though I shall never forget that you have even thought of such a thing."

"I say that I /will/ marry you, Joan," broke in Henry, in a hoarse voice. "Why should I spoil your life and mine for the sake of others?"

"No, no, you will not. Why should you spoil Emma Levinger's life, and your sister's, and your mother's, and bring yourself to disgrace and ruin for the sake of a girl like me? No, you will not. You will bid me farewell, now and for ever." And she held out her hand to him, while two great tears ran slowly down her face.

He saw the tears, and his heart melted, for they moved him more than all her words.

"My darling!" he whispered, drawing her towards him.

"Yes," she answered: "kiss away my tears this once, that, remembering it, whatever befalls me, I may weep no more for ever."

CHAPTER XV(THE FIRSTFRUITS)

 

Some days had passed since this night of avowal when, very early one morning, Henry was awakened from sleep by the sound of wheels and of knocking at the inn door. A strange apprehension took hold of him, and he rose from his bed and limped to the window. Then he saw that the carriage which had arrived was the old Rosham shooting brake, a long plain vehicle with deal seats running down its length on either side, constructed to carry eight or nine sportsmen to and from the more distant beats. Knocking at the door was none other than Edward Milward, and Henry guessed at once that he must have come to fetch him.

"Well, perhaps it is as well," he thought to himself grimly; then again his heart was filled with fear. What had happened? Why did Milward come thus, and at such an hour?

In another minute Edward had entered the room, followed by Mrs. Gillingwater.

"Your father is dying, Graves," he blurted out. "I don't know what it is; he collapsed suddenly in the middle of the night. If you want to see him alive--and you had better, if you can, while he has got his senses--you must make shift to come along with me at once. I have brought the brake, so that you can lie in it at full length. That was Ellen's idea: I should never have thought of it."

"Great Heaven!" said Henry. Then, assisted by Mrs. Gillingwater, he began to get into his clothes.

In ten minutes they were off, Henry lying flat upon a mattress at the bottom of the brake. Once he lifted his head and looked through the open rails of the vehicle towards the door of the house. Mrs. Gillingwater, who was a shrewd woman, interpreted the glance.

"If you are looking for Joan, sir, to say good-bye to her, it is no use, for she's in her room there sleeping like the dead, and I couldn't wake her. I don't think she is quite herself, somehow; but she'll be sorry to miss you, and so shall I, for the matter of that; but I'll tell