Joan Haste

JOAN HASTE

sation, or mix in the society of other women, without being reminded – by inference, contrast, or example – of something that she had said or done. His case was by no means helpless; for even now he knew that time would cure the trouble, or at least draw its sting. He was not a lad, to be carried away by the wild passion which is one of the insane privileges of youth; and he had many interests, ambitions, hopes and fears with which this woman was not connected, though, as it chanced at present, her subtle influence seemed to pervade them all.

Meanwhile his position towards her was most painful. She had gone, leaving him absolutely in the dark as to her wishes, motives, or whereabouts; leaving him also to suffer many things on her account, not the least of them being the haunting knowledge of what, in her silence and solitude, she must be suffering upon his.

Well, he had debated the matter till his mind grew weary, chiefly with the object of discovering which among so many conflicting duties were specious and which were sacred, and now he was inclined to give up the problem as insoluble, and to allow things to take their chance.

«By George!» he thought to himself, glancing at the old tower, «this is the kind of thing that they call romance: well, I call it hell. No more romance for me if I can avoid it. And now I am going to stay with old Levinger, and, as I suppose that I shall not be expected to make love to his daughter – at any rate, at present – I’ll try to enjoy myself, and forget for a few days that there is such a thing as a woman in the world».

Henry reached Monk’s Lodge in time to dress for dinner, and was at once shown by Mr. Levinger, who greeted him with

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cordiality and evident pleasure, to his room – a low and manycornered apartment commanding a delightful view of the sea. Having changed, he found his way to the drawing-room, where Emma was waiting to receive him, which she did very courteously, and with more self-possession than might have been expected of her. It struck Henry, as he stood by the window and chatted to her on indifferent subjects in the pearly light of the September evening, that he had never seen her look so charming. Perhaps it was that her secret troubles had added dignity to her delicate face and form, or that the dress she wore became her, or that the old-fashioned surroundings of the place among which she had grown up, and that doubtless had exercised their influence upon her character, seemed to combine with and to set off her quaint and somewhat formal grace of mien and movement. At least it seemed to him that she was almost beautiful that night, not with the rich and human loveliness of a woman like Joan, but in a certain spiritual fashion which was peculiar to her.

Presently they went in to dinner. It was a pleasant meal enough, and Henry enjoyed the change from the cold-looking Rosham dining-room, with its pillars and its dingy old masters, even more than he had hoped to do. Here there were no old masters and no marble, but walls wainscoted with a dado of black oak, and hung with quaint Flemish pictures painted on panels or on copper, such as are still to be picked up by the discerning at sales in the Eastern counties. Here also were no melancholy cedars shutting off the light, but open windows wreathed about with ivy, through which floated the murmur of the sea. The dinner was excellent, moreover, as was

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Mr. Levinger’s champagne; and by the time that they reached the dessert Henry found himself in a better mood than he had known for many a long week.

Abandoning his reserve, he fell into some harmless snare that was set by his host, and began to speak of himself and his experiences – a thing that he very rarely did. Though for the most part he was a somewhat silent man, and at his best could not be called a brilliant conversationalist, Henry could talk well when he chose, in a certain plain and forcible manner that attracted by its complete absence of exaggeration or of straining after effect. He told them tales of wars in Ashantee and Egypt; he described to them a great hurricane off the coast of Madagascar, when the captain and first lieutenant of the ship in which he was serving were swept overboard by a single sea, leaving him in command of her; and several other adventures, such as befall Englishmen who for twenty years or more have served their country in every quarter of the globe. By now the coffee and cigarettes had been brought in; but Emma did not leave the room – indeed, it was not her custom to do so, and the presence of a guest at Monk’s Lodge was so rare an event that it never occurred to her to vary it. She sat, her face hidden in the shadow, listening with wide-opened eyes to Henry’s «moving accidents by flood and field»; and yet she grew sad as she listened, feeling that his talk was inspired by a vain regret which was almost pitiful. He was speaking as old men speak of their past, of events that are gone by, of things in which they have no longer any share.

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Evidently Mr. Levinger felt this also, for he said, «It is unfortunate, Graves, that prospects like yours should have been snapped short. What do you mean to do with yourself now?»

«Yes», answered Henry, «it is very unfortunate; but these things will happen. As for the future it must look after itself. Ninety-nine naval officers out of a hundred have no future. They live – or rather starve – upon their half-pay in some remote village, and become churchwardens – that is, if they do not quarrel with the parson».

«I hope that you will do something more than this», said Mr. Levinger. «I look forward to seeing you member for our division if I live long enough. You might do more good for the Navy in the house than ever you could have done at sea».

«That’s just what a man told me at the Admiralty, and I think I answered him that I preferred a command at sea. Not but that I should like the other thing very well, if it came in my way. However, as both careers are as much beyond my reach as the moon, it is no use talking of them, is it?»

«I don’t agree with you – I don’t agree at all. You will be a great authority yet. And now let us go into the other room».

So they went into the drawing-room, where Emma sang a little, sweetly enough; and after she had bidden them goodnight they adjourned to the study to smoke and drink weak whiskies-and-sodas. Here Mr. Levinger was the talker and Henry the listener, and it seemed to the latter that he had rarely met a man with so much knowledge and power of observation, or one who could bring these to bear in a more interesting manner upon whatever subject he chanced to be discussing. His intellect was keen, his knowledge of life and men

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large and varied, and he seemed to know every book worth reading, and, what is more, to remember its contents.

Thus Henry’s first evening at Monk’s Lodge passed very pleasantly, and as his visit began so it went on and ended. In the daytime he would take his gun, and accompanied by Mr. Levinger on a pony and by an old man, half bailiff and half gamekeeper, would limp through the bracken in search of partridges and rabbits, an occupation in which he took great delight, although he was still too lame to follow it for long at a time.

Failing the shooting, his host organised some expedition to visit a distant church or earthwork, and accompanied by Emma they drove for hours through the mellow September afternoon. Or sometimes they sat upon the beach beneath the cliff, chatting idly on everything under heaven; or, if it chanced to rain, they would take refuge in the study and examine Mr. Levinger’s collection of coins, ancient weapons and other antiquities.

Then at last arrived the dinner-hour, and another delightful evening would be added to the number of those that had gone. Before he had been in the house a week, Henry felt a different man; indeed, had any one told him, when he came to Monk’s Lodge, that he was about to enjoy himself so much, he would not have believed it. He could see also that both Mr. Levinger and his daughter were glad that he should be there. At first Emma was a little stiff in her manner towards him, but by degrees this wore off, and he found himself day by day growing more friendly with her.

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The better they became acquainted, the greater grew their mutual liking, and the more complete their understanding of each other. There was now no question of love-making or even of flirtation between them; their footing was one of friendship, and both of them were glad that it should be so. Soon the sharpest sting of Emma’s shame passed away, since she could not believe that the man who greeted her with such open fellowship had learned the confession which broke from her on that night of her despair, for if it were so, surely he would look down upon her and show it in his manner. Taking this for granted, in some dim and illogical fashion she was grateful to him for not having heard; or if by any chance he had heard, as she was bound to admit was possible, still more was she grateful in that he dissembled his knowledge so completely as to enable her to salve her pride with the thought that he was ignorant. Indeed, in this event, so deeply did she feel upon the point, she was prepared in her own mind to forgive any sins of omission or commission with which he stood charged, setting against them the generosity of his conduct in this particular. Of the future Emma did not think; she was content to live in the present, and to feel that she had never been so happy before. Neither did she think of the past, with its disquieting tales of Joan Haste, and its horrible suggestions that Henry was bring driven into marriage with herself for pecuniary reasons. If a day should ever come when he proposed to her, then it would be time enough to take all these matters into consideration, and to decide whether she should please her pride and do violence to her heart, or sacrifice her pride and satisfy her heart. There was no need to come to a deci-

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sion now, for she could see well that, whatever might be his thoughts with reference to her, Henry had no immediate intention of asking her to be his wife.

Although of course he could not follow all the secret workings of Emma’s mind, Henry grasped the outlines of the situation accurately enough. He knew that this was a time of truce, and that by a tacit agreement all burning questions were postponed to a more convenient season. Mr. Levinger said no word to him of his daughter, of Joan Haste, or even of the fi- nancial affairs connected with the Rosham mortgages, for all these subjects were tabooed under the conditions of their armistice. Tormented as he had been, and as he must shortly be again, he also was deeply grateful for this indulgence, and more than content to forget the past and let the future take care of itself. One thing grew clear to him, however; indeed, before he left Monk’s Lodge he admitted it to himself in so many words: it was, that had there been no Joan Haste and no mortgages in the question, he would certainly ask Emma Levinger to be his wife.

The more he saw of this lady, the more attached he grew to her. She attracted him in a hundred ways – by her gentleness, her delicacy of thought, her ever-present sympathy with distress and with all that was good and noble, and by the quaintness and culture of her mind. For these and many other reasons he could imagine no woman whom he should prefer to marry were he fortunate enough to win her. But always when he thought of it two spectres seemed to rise and stand before him – one of Joan, passionate, lovely and loving, and the oth-

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er shaped like a roll of parchment and labelled «Mortgages, Sixty thousand pounds!»

At length the ten days of his stay came to an end, and upon a certain morning the old Rosham coachman appeared at the door of Monk’s Lodge to drive him home again.

«I don’t know how to thank you, Levinger», he said, «for your kindness and hospitality to me here. I have not had such a good time for many a long day. It has been a rest to me, and I have come to the conclusion that rest is the best thing in the whole world. Now I must go back to face my anxieties».

«Meaning the eleventh of October?» said Mr. Levinger. «Yes, meaning the eleventh of October and other things.

I am sure I do not know what on earth I am to do about those farms. But I won’t begin to bore you with business now. Goodbye, and again, many thanks».

«Good-bye, Graves, and don’t fret. I dare say that something will turn up. My experience is that something generally does turn up – that is to say, when one is the right side of forty».

«Oh, Sir Henry!» said Emma, appearing at the door of the drawing-room, «will you take a note to your sister for me? It is just ready».

«Certainly», he answered, following her to the writingtable.

«It is about my going to town with her next month», she went on. «I have been speaking to my father, and he says that I may if I like. It is a question of trousseau – not that I know anything about such matters, but I am glad of the excuse for a change. Are you going with her?»

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CHAPTER XXIII

A NEW DEPARTURE

Joan reached town in safety. Willie Hood called for her box as he had promised, and conveyed it to the station before anybody at the inn was up, whither she followed after breakfast. It gave Joan a new and strange sensation to sit opposite her aunt, who took the opportunity of a tête-à-tête to scold and grumble at her from one end of the meal to the other, and to reflect that they were about to separate, for aught she knew, never to meet again. She could not pretend any affection for Mrs. Gillingwater, and yet the thought moved her, for after all she belonged to the familiar round of daily life from which Joan was about to cut herself adrift. Still more did it move her, yes, even to silent tears, when for the last time she looked upon the ancient room that had been hers, and in which she had nursed Henry back to health. Here every chair and picture was an old friend, and, what is more, connected with his presence, the presence which to-day she finally refused.

In turning her back upon that room she forsook all hope of seeing him again, and not till she had closed the door behind her did she learn how bitter was this renunciation.

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