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

mad, and you should have paid no attention to it."

"I am sorry to give you pain or to press you, Emma, but I should be deeply grateful if you would make matters a little clearer. Never mind about Henry Graves and his attitude towards you: I want to understand yours towards him. As you know, or if you do not know I beg you to believe it, your happiness is the chief object of my life, and to secure that happiness to you I have planned and striven for years. What I wish to learn now is: do you desire to have done with Henry Graves? If so, tell me at once. It will be a great blow to me, for he is the man of all others to whom, for many reasons, I should like to see you married, and doubtless if matters are left alone he will marry you. But in this affair your wish is my law, and if you would prefer it I will wind up the mortgage business, cut the connection to-morrow, and then we can travel for a year in Egypt, or wherever you like. Sometimes I think that this would be the best course. But it is for you to choose, not for me. You are a woman full grown, and must know your own mind. Now, Emma."

"What do you mean by winding up the mortgage business, father?"

"Oh! the Graves's owe us some fifty or sixty thousand pounds, and it is not a paying investment, that is all. But don't you bother about that, Emma: confine yourself to the personal aspect of the question, please."

"It is very hard to have to decide so quickly. Can I not give you an answer in a few days, father?"

"No, Emma, you can't. I will not be kept halting between two opinions any longer. I want to know what line to take at once."

"Well, then, on the whole I think that perhaps you had better not 'wind up the business.' I very much doubt if anything will come of this. I am by no means certain that I wish anything to come of it, but we will let it remain open."

"In making that answer, Emma, I suppose that you are bearing in mind that, though I believe it to be all nonsense, the fact is not to be concealed that there is some talk about Graves and Joan Haste."

"I am bearing it in mind, father. The talk has nothing to do with me. I do not wish to know even whether it is false or true, at any rate at present. True or false, there will be an end of it now, as the girl is going away. I hope that I have made myself clear. I understand that, for reasons of your own, you are very anxious that I should marry Sir Henry Graves, should it come in my way to do so; and I know that his family desire this also, because it would be a road out of their money difficulties. What Sir Henry wishes himself I do not know, nor can I say what I wish. But I think that if I stood alone, and had only myself to consider, I should never see him again. Still I say, let it remain open, although I decline to bind myself to anything definite. And now I must really go and dress."

"I do not know that I am much 'for'arder,' after all, as Samuel Rock says," thought Mr. Levinger, looking after her. "Oh, Joan Haste! you have a deal to answer for." Then he also went to dress.

The two interviews in which Emma had taken part this afternoon--that with Joan and that with her father--had, as it were, unsealed her eyes and opened her ears. Now she saw the significance of many a hint of Ellen's and her father's which hitherto had conveyed no meaning to her, and now she understood what it was that occasioned the forced manner which had struck her as curious in Henry's bearing towards herself, even when he had seemed most at his ease and pleased with her. Doubtless the knowledge that he was expected to marry a particular girl, in order that by so doing he might release debts to the amount of fifty thousand pounds, was calculated to cause the manner of any man towards that girl to become harsh and suspicious, and even to lead him to regard her with dislike. This was why he had been forced to leave the Service, for this reason "his family had desired his presence," and the opening in life, the only one that remained to him, to which he had alluded so bitterly, but significantly enough avoided specifying, was to marry a girl with fortune, to marry her--Emma Levinger.

It was a humiliating revelation, and though perhaps Emma had less pride than most women, she felt it sorely. She was deeply attached to this man; her heart had gone out to him when she first saw him, after the unaccountable fashion that hearts sometimes affect. Still, having learned the truth, she was quite in earnest when she told her father that, were she alone concerned, she would meet him no more. But she was not alone in the matter, and it was this knowledge that made her pause. To begin with, there was Henry himself to be considered, for it seemed that if he did not marry her he would be ruined or something very like it; and, regarding him as she did, it became a question whether she ought not to outrage her pride in order to save him if he would be saved. Also she knew that her father wished for this marriage above all things--that it was, indeed, one of the chief objects of his life; though it was true that in an inexplicable fit of irritation with everything and everybody, he had but now offered to bring the affair to nothing. Why he should be so set upon it she could not understand, any more than she could understand why he should have been so vexed when she illustrated her sense of the hardship of Joan's position by supposing herself to be similarly placed. These were some of the mysteries by which their life was surrounded, mysteries that seemed to thicken daily. After what she had seen and heard this afternoon she began to believe that Joan Haste herself was another of them. Joan had told her that her father had always been kind to her. Taken by itself there was nothing strange about this, for Emma knew him to be charitable to many people, but it was strange that he should have practically denied all knowledge of the girl some few weeks before. Perhaps he knew more about her than he chose to say--even who she was and where she came from.

Now it appeared that her presentiment was coming true, and that Joan herself was playing some obscure and undefined part in the romance or intrigue in which she, Emma, was the principal though innocent actor. In effect, Joan had given her to understand that she was in love with Henry, and yet she had implored her to marry Henry. Why, if Joan was in love with him, should she desire another woman to marry him? It was positively bewildering, also it was painful, and, like everything else connected with this business, humbling to her pride. She felt herself being involved in a network of passions, motives, and interests of which she could only guess the causes, and the issues whereof were dark; and she longed, ah, how she longed to escape from it back into the freedom of clear purpose and honest love! But would she ever escape? Could she ever hope to be the cherished wife of the man whom too soon she had learned to love? Alas! she doubted it. And yet, whatever was the reason, she could not make up her mind to have done with him, either for his sake or her own.

CHAPTER XXI(A LUNCHEON PARTY)

 

Two days after her visit to Mr. Levinger Joan began her simple preparations for departure, for it was her intention to leave Bradmouth by the ten o'clock train on the following morning. First, however, after much thought she wrote this note to Henry:--

"Dear Sir Henry Graves,--

"Thank you for the kind message you sent asking after me. There was never much the matter, and I am quite well again now. I was very sorry to hear of the death of Sir Reginald. I fear that it must have been a great shock to you. Perhaps you would like to know that I am leaving Bradmouth for good and all, as I have no friends here and do not get on well; besides, it is time that I should be working for my own living. I am leaving without telling my aunt, so that nobody will know my address or be able to trouble me to come back. I do not fear, however, but that I shall manage to hold my own in the world, as I am strong and active, and have plenty of money to start with. I think you said that I might have the books which you left behind here, so I am taking them with me as a keepsake. If I live, they will remind me of the days when I used to nurse you, and to read to you out of them, long years after you have forgotten me. Good-bye, dear Sir Henry. I hope that soon you will be quite well again and happy all your life. I do not think that we shall meet any more, so again good-bye.

"Obediently yours, "Joan Haste."

When Joan had finished her letter she read it once, kissed it several times, then placed it in an envelope which she directed to Sir Henry Graves. "There," she thought, as she dropped it into the post-box, "I /must/ go now, or he will be coming to look after me."

On her way back to the inn she met Willie Hood standing outside the grocer's shop, with his coat off and his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat.

"Will you do something for me, Willie?" she asked.

"Anything to oblige a customer, I am sure, Joan Haste," answered that forward youth.

"Very well: then will you come round to-morrow morning with a hand-barrow at six o'clock time--not later, mind--and take a box for me to the station? If so, I will give you a shilling."

"I'll be there," said Willie, "and don't you bother about the shilling. Six o'clock, did you say? Very well, I'll book it. Anything else to-day, miss?"

Joan shook her head, smiling, and returned home, where she busied herself with packing the more valued of her few possessions into the deal box that had been given her when she first went to school. Her wardrobe was not large, but then neither was the box, so the task required care and selection. First there were her few books, with which she could not make up her mind to part--least of all with those that Henry had given her; then there was the desk which she had won at school as a prize for handwriting, a