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

You mean an uncertified bankrupt, who won't do the right thing by his family and marry the girl who could set them on their legs again; a pious humbug who preaches to everybody else, but isn't above carrying on a low intrigue with a barmaid, and then having the impudence to say that he means to disgrace us by marrying her."

"I have asked you to lower your voice, Mr. Milward."

"Lower my voice? I think it is high time to raise it when I find myself let in for an engagement with the sister of a man who does such things. You needn't look at /me/, Sir Henry Graves--Sir Henry indeed! I repeat, 'let in.' However, you must mend your manners, or Ellen will suffer for it, that is all; for I shall throw her over and wash my hands of the whole show. The bankruptcy is bad enough, but I'm hanged if I will stand the barmaid. Edward Milward of Upcott with a barmaid for a sister-in-law! Not if he knows it."

Then Henry answered, in a quiet and ominous voice:

"You have been so good, Mr. Milward, doubtless more in kindness than in anger, as to point out to me with great directness the errors, or assumed errors, of my ways. Allow me, before I say anything further, to point out to you an error in yours, about which there is no possibility of doubt. You say that you propose 'to throw over' my sister, not on account of anything that /she/ has done, but because of acts which /I/ am supposed to have done. In my judgment it will indeed be fortunate for her should you take this course. But not the less do I feel bound to tell you, that the man who behaves thus towards a woman, having no cause of offence against her, is not what is usually understood by the term gentleman. So much for my sister: now for myself. It seems to me that there is only one answer possible to conduct and language such as you have thought fit to make use of; and were I well, much as I dislike violence, I should not hesitate to apply it. I should, Mr. Milward, kick you out of this room and down yonder stairs, and, should my strength not fail me, across that garden. Being crippled at present, I am unable to advance this argument. I must, therefore, do the best I can." And, taking up the crutch that stood by his chair, Henry hurled it straight at him. "Now go!" he thundered; and Mr. Milward went.

"I hope that Ellen will feel pleased with the effect of her embassy," thought Henry; then suddenly he turned white, and, choking with wrath, said aloud, "Great Heaven! to think that I should have come so low as to be forced to suffer such insults from a cur like that! What will be the end of it? One thing is clear: I can't stand much more. I'm done for in the Service; but I dare say that I could get a billet as mate on a liner, or even a command of some vessel in the Canadian or Australian waters where I am known. Unless there is a change soon, that is what I'll do, and take Joan with me. Nobody will sneer at her there, anyway--at least, nobody who sees her."

 

Meanwhile Ellen was standing in the hall making pretence to arrange some flowers, but in reality waiting, not without a certain sense of anxiety, to learn the result of the interview which she had been instrumental in bringing about. She hoped that Henry would snub her /fiancé/ in payment of sundry remarks that Edward had made to her, and which she had by no means forgotten, although she was not at present in a position to resent them. She hoped also, with some lack of perspicuity, that Henry would be impressed by Edward's remonstrances, and that, when he came to understand that /her/ future was imperilled, he would hasten to sacrifice his own. But here she made her great mistake, not foreseeing that a man of Milward's moral fibre could not by any possibility neglect to push a fancied vantage home, any more than he could refrain from being insolent and brutal towards one whom he thought at his mercy; for, even in the upper walks of life, individuals do exist who take pleasure in grinding the heads of the fallen deeper into the mire.

Presently Ellen was alarmed to hear Henry's words "Now go" echo through the house, followed by the sound of a banging door. Next instant Edward appeared upon the stairs, and the expression of his features betrayed a wondrous mixture of astonishment, fear and indignation.

"What have you been doing, Edward?" she said, as he approached. "You do not mean to tell me that you have been brawling, and in this house?"

"Brawling? Oh, yes, say that I have been brawling," gasped Edward, when at last he managed to speak. "That infernal brother of yours has thrown a crutch at me; but by all means say that I have been brawling."

"Thrown a crutch? And what had you been doing to make him throw a crutch?"

"Doing? Why, nothing, except tell him that he was a fraud and a bankrupt. He took it all quite quietly till the end, then suddenly he said that if he wasn't a cripple he would kick me downstairs, and threw a crutch at my head; and, by George! I believe from the look of him that if he could he would have done it too!"

"It is very possible," said Ellen, "if you were foolish enough to use such language towards him. You have had an escape. Henry has a fearful temper when roused."

"Then why on earth didn't you say so before you sent me up there? Do you suppose that I enjoy being pelted with crutches by a mad sailor? Possible! Yes, it seems that anything is possible in this house; but I will tell you one thing that isn't, and it is that I should stay here any longer. I scratch, now, on the spot. Do you understand, Ellen? The game is up, and you can marry whom you like."

At this point Ellen touched him on the shoulder, and said, in a cold voice:

"Perhaps you are not aware that there are at least two servants listening to you? Will you be so kind as to follow me into the drawing-room?"

Edward obeyed. When Ellen put on her coldest and most imperious manner he always did obey, and it is probable that he will always continue to do so. He was infuriated, and he was humbled, still he could not resist that invitation into the drawing-room. It was a large apartment, and by some oversight the shutters that were closed for the funeral had never been reopened, therefore its aspect could not be called cheerful, though there was sufficient light to see by.

"Now, Mr. Milward," said Ellen, stationing herself in the centre of a wide expanse of floor, for there were no little tables and knickknacks at Rosham, "I will ask you to be so good as to repeat what you were saying."

Thus adjured, Edward looked around him, and his spirits sank. He could be vociferous enough in the sunlit hall, but here in this darkened chamber, that reminded him unpleasantly of corpses and funerals, with Ellen, of whom he was secretly afraid, standing cool and collected before him, a sudden humility fell upon him.

"Why do you call me Mr. Milward?" he asked: "it doesn't sound right; and as for what I was saying, I was saying that I could not stand this sort of thing any more, and I think that we had better shut up the shop."

"If you mean by 'shutting up the shop' that our engagement is at an end, Mr. Milward, so be it. But unfortunately, as you must understand, questions will be asked, and I shall be glad to know what explanation you propose to furnish."

"Oh! you can settle that."

"Very well; I presume you admit that I am not to blame, therefore we must fall back upon the cause which you have given: that you insulted my brother, who--notwithstanding his crippled condition--inflicted a physical punishment upon you. Indeed, unless I can succeed in stopping it, thanks to your own indiscretion, the story will be all over the place before to-morrow, and I must leave you to judge what will be thought of it in the county, or let us say at the militia mess, which I believe you join next Wednesday."

Edward heard and quailed. He was excessively sensitive to public opinion, and more especially to the chaff of his brother officers in the militia, among whom he was something of a butt. If it became known there that Sir Henry Graves, a man with a broken leg, had driven him out of the room by throwing crutches at his head, he felt that his life would speedily become a burden to him.

"You wouldn't be so mean as that, Ellen," he said.

"So mean as what? To some people it might seem that the meanness is on the other side. There are difficulties here, and you have quarrelled with my brother; therefore, as I understand, you wish to desert me after being publicly engaged to me for some months, and to leave me in an utterly false position. Do so if you will, but you must not be surprised if you find your conduct called by strong names. For my part I am indifferent, but for your own sake I think that you would do well to pause. Do not suppose that I shall sit still under such an affront. You know that I can be a good friend; you have yet to learn that I can be a good enemy. Possibly, though I do not like to think it of you, you believe that we are ruined and of no account. You will find your mistake. There are troubles here, but they can be overcome, and very soon you will live to regret that you dared to put such a deadly affront upon me and my family. You foolish man!" she went on, with gathering vehemence, "have you not yet realized the difference between us? Have you not learned that with all your wealth you are nobody and I am somebody--that though I can stand without you, without me you will fall? Now I am tired of talking: choose, Edward Milward, choose whether you will jilt me and incur an enmity that shall follow you to your death, or whether you will bide by me and be placed where of late it has been the object of my life to set you."

If Edward had quailed before, now he positively trembled, for he knew that Ellen spoke truth. Hers was the master mind, and to a great extent he had become dependent on her. Moreover he had ambitions, for the most part of a social and personal nature--which included, however, his entry into Parliament, where he hoped that his power of the purse would ultimately earn him some sort of title--and these ambitions he felt sure would never be gratified without the help of Ellen. Lastly, he was in his own way sincerely attached to her, and quite appreciated the force of her threats to make of him an object of ridicule among his neighbours and brother-officers. Smarting though he was under a sense of moral and physical injury, the sum of these considerations turned the balance in favour of the continuance of his engagement. Perhaps Ellen was right, and her family would ride out this trouble; but whether they did so or not, he was convinced that without Ellen he should sink below his present level, and what was more, that she would help him on his downward career. So Edward gave in; indeed, it would not be too much to say that he collapsed.

"You shouldn't speak so harshly, dear,"