Joan Haste, H. Rider Haggard [e book reader free .TXT] 📗

months did she hear anything of Henry; and then

it was through the columns of a penny paper, where, under the heading

of “Society Jottings,” she read that “Sir Henry Graves, Bart., R.N.,

and his beautiful young bride were staying at Shepheard’s Hotel in

Cairo, where the gallant Captain was very popular and Lady Graves was

much admired.” The paragraph added that they were going to travel in

the Holy Land, and expected to return to their seat at Rosham towards

the end of May.

 

It was shortly after she read this that Joan, who from constantly

thinking about death, had convinced herself that she would die, went

through the formality of making a will on a sixpenny form which she

bought for that purpose.

 

To Sir Henry Graves she left the books that he had given her, and a

long letter, which she was at much trouble to compose, and placed

carefully in the same envelope with the will. All the rest of her

property, of any sort whatsoever, whereof she might die possessed—it

amounted to about thirty pounds and some clothes—she devised to Mrs.

Bird for the use of her unborn child, should it live, and, failing

that, to Mrs. Bird absolutely.

 

At last the inevitable hour of her trouble came upon her, and left her

pale and weak, but holding a little daughter in her arms. From the

first the child was sickly, for the long illness of the mother had

affected its constitution; and within three weeks from the day of its

birth it was laid to rest in a London cemetery, leaving Joan to drink

the cup of a new and a deeper agony than any that it had been her lot

to taste.

 

Yet, when her first days of grief and prostration had gone by, almost

could she find it in her heart to rejoice that the child had been

taken from her and placed beyond the possibilities of such a life as

she had led; for, otherwise, how would things have gone with it when

she, its mother, passed into the power of Samuel Rock? Surely he would

have hated and maltreated it, and, if fate had left it without the

protection of her love in the hands of such a guardian, its existence

might have been made a misery. Still, after the death of that infant

those about her never saw a smile upon Joan’s face, however closely

they might watch for it. Perhaps she was more beautiful now than she

had ever been, for the chestnut hair that clustered in short curls

upon her shapely head, and her great sorrowful eyes shining in the

pallor of her sweet face, refined and made strange her loveliness;

moreover, if the grace of girlhood had left her, it was replaced by

another and a truer dignity—the dignity of a woman who has loved and

suffered and lost.

 

One morning, it was on the ninth of June, Joan received a letter from

her husband, who now wrote to her every two or three days. Before she

opened it she knew well from past experience what would be the tenor

of its contents: an appeal to her, more or less impassioned, to

shorten the year of separation for which she had stipulated, and come

to live with him as his wife. She was not mistaken, for the letter

ended thus:—

 

“Oh! Joan, have pity on me and come to me, for if you don’t I think

that I shall go crazed. I have kept my promise to you faithful so

far, so if you are made of flesh and blood, show mercy before you

drive me to something desperate. It’s all over now; the child’s

dead, you tell me, and the man’s married, so let’s turn a new leaf

and begin afresh. After all, Joan, you are my wife before God and

man, and it is to me that your duty lies, not to anybody else.

Even if you haven’t any fondness for me, I ask you in the name of

that duty to listen to me, and I tell you that if I don’t I

believe that I shall go mad with the longing to see your face, and

the sin if it will be upon you. I’ve done up the house comfortable

for you, Joan; no money has been spared, and if you want anything

more you shall have it. Then don’t go on hiding yourself away from

me, but come and take the home that waits you.”

 

“I suppose he is right, and that it is my duty,” said Joan to herself

with a sigh, as she laid down the letter. “Love and hope and happiness

have gone from me, nothing is left except duty, so I had better hold

fast to it. I will write and say that I will go soon—within a few

days; though what the Birds will do without me I do not know, unless

he will let me give them some of my allowance.”

 

Having come to this determination, Joan wrote her letter and posted

it, fearing lest, should she delay, her virtuous resolution might fail

her. As she returned from the pillar box, a messenger, who was

standing on the steps of No. 8, handed her a telegram addressed to

herself. Wondering what it might be, she opened it, to read this

message:—

 

“Come down here at once. I am ill and must see you before it is too

late. The carriage will meet the five o’clock train at Monk’s Vale

station. Wire reply.

 

“Levinger,

“Monk’s Lodge.”

 

“I wonder what he can want to see me for,” thought Joan; then, asking

the boy to wait in the passage, she went in to consult Mrs. Bird.

 

“You had best go, my dear,” she said; “I have always thought that

there was some mystery about this Mr. Levinger, and now I expect that

it is coming out. If you take a cab at once, you will just have time

to catch the twelve o’clock train at Liverpool Street.”

 

Joan nodded, and writing one word upon the prepaid

answer—“Coming,”—gave it to the boy and ran upstairs to pack a few

things in a bag. In ten minutes a hansom was at the door and she was

ready to start. First she bade good-bye to the two invalids, who were

much disturbed at this hurried departure; and then to Mrs. Bird, who

followed her into the passage kissing her again and again.

 

“Do you know, Joan,” she said, beginning to cry, “I feel as if you

were going away for good and I should never see you any more.”

 

“Nonsense, dear,” she answered briefly, for a queer contraction in her

throat made a lengthened speech impossible, “I hope to be back in a

day or two if all is well.”

 

“Yes, Joan—if all is well, and there’s hope for everybody. Well,

good-bye, and God bless you wherever you go—God bless you here and

hereafter, for ever and ever!”

 

Then Joan drove away, and as she went it came into her mind that it

would be best if she returned no more. She had promised to join her

husband in a few days. Why should she not do so at once, and thus

avoid the pain of a formal parting with the Birds, her true and indeed

her only friends?

 

By half-past four that afternoon the train pulled up at Bradmouth,

where she must change into the light railway with tramcar carriages

that runs for fifteen or twenty miles along the coast, Monk’s Vale

being the second station from the junction.

 

The branch train did not start for ten minutes, and Joan employed the

interval in walking up and down the platform, looking at the church

tower, the roofs of the fishing village, the boats upon the beach, and

the familiar view of land and sea. Everything seemed quite unchanged;

she alone was changed, and felt as though a century of time had passed

over her head since that morning when she ran away to London.

 

“Hullo, Joan Rock!” said a half-remembered voice at her elbow. “I’m in

luck, it seems: I saw you off, and here I am to welcome you back. But

you shouldn’t have married him, Joan; you should have waited for me as

I told you. I’m in business for myself now—four saddle donkeys and a

goat chaise, and doing grand. I shall die a rich man, you bet.”

 

Joan turned round to see a youth with impudent blue eyes and a hair of

flaming red, in whom she recognised Willie Hood, much elongated, but

otherwise the same.

 

“Oh! Willie, is that you?” she said, stretching out her hand, for she

was pleased to see a friendly face; “how are you, and how do you know

that I am married?”

 

“Know? Why, if you sent the crier round with a bell to call it, folks

would hear, wouldn’t they? And that’s just about what Mr. Samuel Rock

has done, talking of ‘my wife, Joan Haste as was,’ here, there, and

everywhere; and telling how as you were stopping in foreign parts

awhile for the benefit of your health—which seems a strange tale to

me, and I know a thing or two, I do. Not that it has done you much

good, anyway, to judge from the air of you, for you look like the

ghost of what you used to be. I’ll tell you what, Joan: for the sake

of old times you shall have a ride every morning on my best donkey,

all for love, if Sammy won’t be jealous. That’ll bring the colour back

into your cheeks, you bet.”

 

“How are my uncle and aunt?” asked Joan, hastening to change the

conversation.

 

“How are they? Will you promise to bear up if I tell you? Well, then,

Mrs. G. is lodging for three months at the public expense in Ipswich

jail, which the beaks gave her for assault ‘with intent to do grievous

bodily harm’—them was the words, for I went to hear the case—‘upon

the person of her lawful husband, John Gillingwater’—and my! she did

hammer him too—with a rolling pin! His face was like a squashed

pumpkin, with no eyes left for a sinner to swear by. The guardians

have taken pity on him too, and are nursing him well again, all for

nothing, in the Union. I saw him hoeing taters there the other day,

and he asked me if I couldn’t smuggle him a bottle of gin—yes, and

nearly cried when I told him that it wasn’t to be done unless I had

the cash in hand and a commission.”

 

At this moment Willie’s flow of information was interrupted by the

guard, who told Joan that she must get into the train if she did not

wish to be left.

 

“Ta-ta, Mrs. Rock,” cried Willie after her: “see you again soon; and

remember that the donkey is always ready. Now,” he added to himself,

“I wonder why the dickens she is going that way instead of home to her

loving Sammy? He’s a nasty mean beast, he is, and it’s a rum go her

having married him at all, but it ain’t no affair of mine. All the

same, I mean to let my dickies run down by the meres to-night, for I’m

sure he can’t grudge an armful of rough grass to an old friend of his

wife’s as has been the first to welcome her home. By the way, why

ain’t the holy Samuel here to welcome her home himself?” and Master

Willie scratched his red head and departed speculating, with the full

intention of pasturing his donkeys that night upon lands in the

possession or hire of the said Samuel.

 

At Monk’s Vale station Joan found a dogcart waiting for her.