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

of an easy chair, in which it was Samuel's custom to smoke at night.

"I suppose now, Mr. Rock," said Mrs. Gillingwater, pointing to the grinning gargoyles, "that you don't find it lonesome up here at nights, with those stone parties for company."

"Not a bit of it, Mrs. Gillingwater; why, I've known them all ever since I was a child, as doubtless others have before me, and they are downright good friends to me, they are. I have names for every one of them, and talk to them sometimes too--now this and now that, as the fancy takes me."

"Just what I should have expected of you, Mr. Rock," answered Mrs. Gillingwater significantly; "not but what I dare say it is good training."

"Meaning?" said Samuel.

"Meaning, Mr. Rock, that as it is getting late, and it's a long and windy walk home, we'd better stop talking of stone figures and come to business--that is, if you have a mind for it."

"By all means, Mrs. Gillingwater. But what is the business?"

"Well, it's this: last time we met, when we parted in anger, though through no fault of mine, you said that you wanted Joan's address: and now I've got it."

"You've got it? Then tell it me. Come, be quick!" and he leaned towards her across the polished oak table.

"No, no, Mr. Rock: do you think that I am as green as an alder shoot, that you should ask such a thing of me? I must have the money before you get the address. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Mrs. Gillingwater; but be reasonable. How can you expect me to pay you five-and-twenty pounds for what may be gammon after all?"

"Five-and-twenty pounds, Mr. Rock! No such thing, indeed: it is fifty pounds I want, every farthing of it, or you get nothing out of me."

"Fifty pounds!" answered Samuel; "then I don't think that we need talk no longer, Mrs. Gillingwater, seeing that I ain't going to give you fifty pounds, no, not for the address of all the angels in heaven."

"I dare say not, Mr. Rock: /they'd/ be precious little use to you when you'd got them, either now or at any future time, to judge from what I know of you"--and she glanced significantly at the sculptured demons beneath the ceiling--"but you see Joan's whereabouts is another matter, more especially since she isn't an angel yet, though she's been nigh enough to it, poor dear."

"What do you mean by that, ma'am? Is she ill, then?"

"When I've got the fifty pounds in my pocket, Mr. Rock, I'll be glad enough to tell you all about it, but till then my mouth is sealed. Indeed, it's a great risk that I run letting you know at all, for if the old man yonder finds it out, I think that he'll be the ruin of me. And now, will you pay, or won't you?"

"I won't give you the fifty pounds," he answered, setting his teeth; "I'll give you thirty, and that's the last farthing which you'll screw out of me--and a lot of money too, seeing that there's no reason why I should pay you anything at all."

"That's just where you're wrong, Mr. Rock," she answered: "not that I'm denying that thirty pounds is a lot of money; but then, you see, I've got that to sell that you want to buy, and badly. Also, as I told you, I take risks in selling it."

"What risks?"

"The risks of being turned out of house and home, and being sold up, that's all. Old Levinger don't want no one to know Joan's address; I can't tell you why, but he don't, and if he finds out that I have let on, it will be a bad business for me. Now look here: I fancy that there is another person as wouldn't mind giving a trifle for this address, and if you're so mean that you won't cash up, I shall take a walk out yonder to-morrow morning," and she nodded in the direction of Rosham.

Samuel groaned, for he knew that she was alluding to his rival. "I doubt that he knows it already, curse him," he said, striking his hand upon the table. "Thirty-five--there, that's the last."

"You're getting along, Mr. Rock, but it won't do yet," sneered Mrs. Gillingwater. "See here now, I've got something in my hand that I'll show you just for friendship's sake," and producing Mrs. Bird's letter, she read portions of it aloud, pausing from time to time to watch the effect upon her hearer. It was curious, for as he listened his face reflected the extremes of love, hope, terror and despair.

"O God!" he said, wringing his hands, "to think that she may be dead and gone from me for ever!"

"If she were dead, Mr. Rock, it wouldn't be much use my giving you her address, would it? since, however fond you may be of her, I reckon that you would scarcely care to follow her /there/. No, I'll tell you this much, she is living and getting well again, and I fancy that you're after a live woman, not a dead one. This was written a month ago and more."

"Thank heaven!" he muttered. "I couldn't have borne to lose her like that; I think it would have driven me mad. While she's alive there's hope, but what hope is there in the grave?" Samuel spoke thus somewhat absently, after the fashion of a man who communes with himself, but all the while Mrs. Gillingwater felt that he was searching her with his eyes. Then of a sudden he leant forward, and swiftly as a striking snake he shot out his long arm across the table, and snatched the letter from her grasp.

"You think yourself mighty clever, Mr. Rock," she said, with a harsh laugh; "but you won't get the address for nothing in that way. If you take the trouble to look you'll see that I've tore it off. Ah! you've met your match for once; it is likely that I was going to trust what's worth fifty pounds in reach of your fingers, isn't it?"

He looked at the letter and saw that she spoke truth.

"I didn't take it for that," he said, gnawing his hand with shame and vexation; "I took it to see if there was a letter at all, or if you were making up lies." And he threw it back to her.

"No doubt you did, Mr. Rock," she answered, jeering at him. "Well, and now you're satisfied, I hope; so how about them fifty sovereigns?"

"Forty," he said.

"Fifty. Never a one less."

Samuel sprang up from his seat, and, coming round the table, stood over her.

"Look here," he said in a savage whisper, "you're pushing this game too far: if you're a wise woman you'll take the forty and go, or----"

"Or what?"

"Or I'll twist what I want to know out of that black heart of yours, and not a farthing shall you get for it. Perhaps you've forgotten that the door is locked and we are alone in the house. Yes, you might scream till you brought the roof down, but nobody would hear you; and scream you shall if I take hold of you."

Mrs. Gillingwater glanced at his face, and read something so evil in it, and in the lurid eyes, that she grew frightened.

"Very well," she said, as unconcernedly as possible, "I won't stand out for a tenner between friends: down with the cash, and you shall have it."

"Ah! ma'am, you're afraid of me now--I can feel it--and I've half a mind to beat you down; but I won't, I'll stand by my word. Now you write that address upon this piece of paper and I'll get the coin." And rising he left the room by the door near the fireplace, which he took the precaution of locking behind him.

"The murdering viper!" reflected Mrs. Gillingwater; "I pinched his tail a little too much that time, and I sha'n't be sorry to find myself outside again, though there's precious little chance of that until he chooses, as he's locked me in. Well, I must brazen it out now." And somewhere from the regions of her ample bosom she produced the fragment that she had torn off Mrs. Bird's letter, on which was written the address and a date.

Presently Samuel returned holding a small bag of money in his hand, from which he counted out forty sovereigns.

"There's the cash, ma'am," he said; "but before you touch it be so good as to hand me that bit of writing: no, you needn't be afraid, I'll give you the money as I take the paper."

"I'm not afraid, Mr. Rock; when once I've struck a bargain I stick to it like an honest woman, and so, I know, will you. Never you doubt that the address is the right one; you can see that it is torn off the letter I read to you. Joan is there, and through the worst of her illness, so the party she's lodging with wrote to me; and if you see her I hope you'll give her my love." As she spoke she pushed the scrap of paper to him with her left hand, while with her right she drew the shining heap of gold towards herself.

"Honest!" he said: "I may be honest in my way, Mrs. Gillingwater; but you are about as honest as other traitors who sell innocent blood for pieces of money."

"What do you mean by that, Mr. Rock?" she replied, looking up from her task of securing the forty sovereigns in her pocket-handkerchief. "I've sold no innocent blood; I'd scorn to do such a thing! You don't mean to do any harm to Joan, do you?"

"No, ma'am, I mean her no harm, unless it's a harm to want to make her my wife; but it would have been all one to you if I meant to murder her and you knew it, so your sin is just as great, and verily the betrayers of innocent blood shall have their reward," and he pointed at her with his long fingers. "I've got what I want," he went on, "though I've had to pay a lot of money for it; but I tell you that it won't do you any good; you might as well throw it into the mere and yourself after it, as expect to get any profit out of that forty pounds, the price of innocent blood--the price of innocent blood." Then once more Samuel pointed at her and grinned maliciously, till to her fancy his face looked like that of the stone demon above him.

By now Mrs. Gillingwater was so frightened that for a moment or two she hesitated as to whether it would not be wiser to return the money and free herself from the burden of a dreadful thought. In the end her avarice prevailed, as might have been expected, and without another word she rose and walked towards the front door, which Samuel unlocked and opened for her.

"Good-bye," he said, as she went down the passage. "You've done me a good turn, ma'am, and now I'm sure that I'll marry Joan; but for all that a day shall come when you will wish that your hand had been cut off before you touched those forty sovereigns: you remember my words when you lie a-dying, Mrs. Gillingwater, with all your deeds behind you and all the doom before."

Then the woman fled through the storm and the night, more terrified than ever she had been in her life's day, nor did the gold that she clasped to her heart avail to comfort her. For Rock had spoken truth; it was the price of innocent blood, and she knew it.