Joan Haste

JOAN HASTE

Then Mrs. Bird put her hand into her pocket and produced Henry’s enclosure.

Joan saw the writing, and her poor white hands trembled so that she could not unfasten the envelope. «Open it for me», she whispered. «Oh! I cannot see: read it to me. Quick, quick!» «Don’t be in a hurry, my dear; it won’t fly away», said Mrs. Bird as she took the letter. Then she put on her spectacles,

cleared her throat, and began.

«‘Dearest Joan’ Really, my love, do you not think that you had better read this for yourself? It seems so – very – confidential».

«Oh! I can’t; I must hear it at once. Go on, pray».

Thus encouraged, Mrs. Bird went on, nothing loath, till she reached the last word of the letter.

«Well», she said, laying it upon her knees, «now, that is what I call behaving like a gentleman. At any rate, my dear, you have been lucky in falling into the hands of such a man, for some would not have treated you so well – having begun wicked they would have gone on wickeder. Why, good gracious! what’s the matter with the girl? She’s fainted, I do believe». And she ran to get water, reproaching herself the while for her folly in letting Joan have the letter while she was still so weak. By the time that she returned with the water, the necessity for it had gone by. Joan had recovered, and was seated staring into vacancy, with a rapt smile upon her face that, so thought Mrs. Bird, made her look like an angel.

«You silly girl!» she said: «you gave me quite a turn». «Give me that letter», answered Joan.

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Mrs. Bird picked it up from the floor, where it had fallen, and handed it to her. Joan took it and pressed it to her breast as though it were a thing alive – much, indeed, as a mother may be seen to press her new-born infant when the fear and agony are done with and love and joy remain. For a while she sat thus in silence, holding the letter to her heart, then she spoke: –

«I do not suppose that I shall ever marry him, but I don’t care now: whatever comes I have had my hour, and after this and the rest I can never quite lose him – no, not through all eternity».

«Don’t talk nonsense, Joan», said Mrs. Bird, who did not understand what she meant. «Not marry him, indeed! – why shouldn’t you?»

«Because something is sure to prevent it. Besides, it would be wrong of me to do so. Letting other things alone, he must marry a rich woman, not a penniless girl like me».

«Oh! stuff and nonsense with your ‘rich woman’: the man who’ll go for money when he can get love isn’t worth a row of pins, say I; and this one isn’t of that sort, or he would never have written such a letter».

«He can get both love and money», answered Joan; «and it isn’t for himself that he wants the money – it is to save his family. He had an elder brother who brought them to ruin, and now he’s got to set them up again by taking the girl who holds the mortgages, and who is in love with him, as his wife – at least, I believe that’s the story, though he never told it me himself».

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«A pretty kettle of fish, I am sure. Now look here, Joan, don’t you talk silly, but listen to me, who am older than you are and have seen more. It isn’t for me to blame you, but, whatever was the truth of it, you’ve done what isn’t right, and you know it. Well, it has pleased God to be kind to you and to show you a way out of a mess that most girls never get clear of. Yes, you can become an honest woman again, and have the man you love as a husband, which is more than you deserve perhaps. What I have to say is this: don’t you be a fool and cut your own throat. These money matters are all very well, but you have got nothing to do with them. You get married, Joan, and leave the rest to luck; it will come right in the end. If there’s one thing that’s more of a vanity than any other in this wide world, it is scheming and plotting about fortunes and estates and suchlike, and in nine cases out of ten, the woman who goes sacrificing herself to put cash into her lover’s pocket – or her own either for that matter – does him no good in the long run, but just breaks her heart for nothing, and his too very likely. There, that’s my advice to you, Joan; and I tell you that if I thought that you would go on as you have begun and make this man a bad wife, I shouldn’t be the one to give it. But I don’t think that, dear. No; I believe that you would be as good as gold to him, and that he’d never regret marrying you, even though he is a baronet and you are – what you are».

«Oh! indeed I would», said Joan.

«Don’t say ‘indeed I would,’ dear; say ‘indeed I shall,’ and mind you stick to it. And now I hear the nurse coming back, and it is time for me to go and see about your dinner. Don’t you fuss and make yourself ill again, or she won’t be able to go

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away to-morrow, you know. I shall just write to this gentleman and say that he can come and see you about next Friday; so mind, you’ve got to be well by then. Good-bye».

Weak as she was still from illness, when her first wild joy had passed a great bewilderment took possession of Joan.

As her body had been brought back to the fulness of life from the very pit of death, so the magic of Henry’s letter changed the blackness of her despair to a dawn of hope, by contrast so bright that it dazzled her mind. She had no recollection of writing the letter to which Henry alluded; indeed, had she been herself she would never have written it, and even now she did not know what she had told him or what she had left untold. What she was pleased to consider his goodness and generosity in offering to make her his wife touched her most deeply, and she blessed him for them, but neither the secret pleading of her love nor Mrs. Bird’s arguments convinced her that it would be right to take advantage of them. The gate of what seemed to be an earthly paradise was of a sudden thrown open to her feet: behind her lay solitude, sorrow, sin and agonising shame, before her were peace, comfort, security, and that good report which every civilised woman must desire; but ought she to enter by that gate? A warning instinct answered «No», and yet she had not strength to shut it. Why should she, indeed? If she might judge the future from the past, Fate would do her that disservice; such happiness could not be for one so wicked. Yet – till the blow fell – she might please her fancy by standing upon the threshold of her heaven, and peopling the beyond with unreal glories which her imagination furnished without stay or stint. She was still too weak to strug-

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CHAPTER XXXII

THE CLOSING OF THE GATE

While Lady Graves was standing at the Bradmouth station on that Saturday in November, waiting for the London train, she saw a man whose face she knew and who saluted her with much humility. He was dressed in a semi-clerical fashion, in clothes made of smooth black cloth, and he wore a broad wide-awake, the only spot of colour about him being a neck-scarf of brilliant red, whereof the strange incongruity caught and offended her eye. For a long time she puzzled herself with endeavours to recollect who this individual might be. He did not look like a farmer; and it was obvious that he could not belong to the neighbouring clergy, since no parson in his senses would wear such a tie. Finally Lady Graves concluded that he must be a dissenting minister, and dismissed the matter from her mind. At Liverpool Street, however, she saw him again, although he tried to avoid her, or so she thought; and then it flashed across her that this person was Mr. Samuel Rock of Moor Farm, and she wondered vaguely what his business in London could be.

Had Lady Graves possessed the gift of clairvoyance she would have wondered still more, for Mr. Rock’s business was

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curiously connected with her own, seeing that he also had journeyed to town, for the first time in his life, in order to obtain an interview with Joan Haste, whose address he had purchased at so great a price on the previous day. As yet he had no very clear idea of what he should say or do when he found himself in Joan’s presence. He knew only that he was driven to seek that presence by a desire which he was absolutely unable to control. He loved Joan, not as other men love, but with all the strength and virulence of his distempered nature; and this love, or passion, or incipient insanity, drew him to her with as irresistible a force as a magnet draws the fragment of steel that is brought within its influence. Had he known her to be at the uttermost ends of the earth, it would have drawn him thither; and though he was timid and fearful of the vengeance of Heaven, there was no danger that he would not have braved, and no crime which he would not have committed, that he might win her to himself.

Till he learned to love Joan Samuel Rock had been as free from all human affections as it is possible for a man to be; there was no one creature for whom he cared, and, though he was naturally passionate, his interest and his strict religious training had kept him from giving way to the excesses that in secret he brooded over and desired. During his early manhood all his energies had been devoted to money-making, and in the joy of amassing wealth and of overreaching his fellows in every kind of legitimate business he found consolation for the absence of all that in the case of most men makes life worth living. Then on one evil day he met Joan, grown from a child into a most lovely woman; and that which he had hidden in

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his heart arose suddenly and asserted itself, so that from this hour he became a slave bound to the chariot-wheels of a passion over which he had lost command. The rebuffs that he had received at her hands served only to make the object of his affections dearer and more desirable in his eyes, while the gnawing ache of jealousy and the daily torment of long-continued disappointment drove him by slow degrees to the very edge of madness. She hated him, he knew, as he knew that she loved his rival; but if only he could see her, things might yet go well with him, or if they did not, at least he would have seen her.

But of all this Lady Graves was ignorant, and, had she known it, anxious though she was to win her end, it is probable that she would have shrunk from an enterprise which, if successful, must expose Joan Haste to the persecution of such a man as Samuel Rock, and might end in delivering her into his hands.

On the following afternoon – it was Sunday – Lady Graves informed her hostess that she was going to visit a friend, and, declining the offer of the carriage, walked to the corner of the square, where she chartered a four-wheeled cab, directing the driver to take her to Kent Street. As they crawled up the Edgware Road she let down the window of the cab and idly watched the stream of passers-by. Presently she started, for among the hundreds of faces she caught sight of that of Mr. Samuel Rock. It was pale, and she noticed that as he went the man was muttering to himself and glancing at the corner of a street, as though he were seeking some turn with which he was not familiar.

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«I wonder what that person is doing here», she thought to herself; «positively he seems to haunt me». Then the cab went on, and presently drew up in front of No. 8, Kent Street.

«What a squalid-looking place!» Lady Graves reflected, while she paid the man and rang the bell.

As it chanced, Mrs. Bird was out and the door was answered by the little serving-girl, who, in reply to the question of whether Miss Haste was in, said «Yes» without hesitation and led the way upstairs.

«Some one to see you», she said, opening the door in front of Lady Graves and almost simultaneously shutting it behind her.

Joan, who was seated on the horsehair sofa reading, or pretending to read a book, rose instinctively at the words, and started at her veiled and stately-looking visitor.

«Surely», she said, «you are Lady Graves?»

«Yes, Miss Haste, I am Lady Graves, and I have taken the liberty of coming to see you. I am told that you have been ill».

Joan bowed her head and sank back upon the sofa, pointing towards a chair. At the moment she could not trust herself to speak, for she felt that the blow which she dreaded was about to fall, and that Henry’s mother came as a messenger of ill.

Lady Graves sat down, and for a while there was silence. «I trust that you are better», she said at length.

«Thank you, yes, your ladyship; I am almost well again now». «I am glad of that, Miss Haste, for I do not wish to upset you or retard your recovery, and I have come to speak to you, if I have your permission, upon a very delicate and important

matter».

Again Joan bowed, and Lady Graves went on.

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«Miss Haste, certain things have come to my knowledge of which I need only allude to one – namely, that my son Henry is anxious to make you his wife, as indeed, if what I have learned is true, you have a right to expect», and she paused.

«Please go on», murmured Joan.

«I am here», she continued hesitatingly, «to submit some questions to your consideration; but pray understand that my son knows nothing of this visit, and that I have not come to reproach you in any way. We are all human and liable to fall into temptation, though our temptations vary with age, disposition, and other circumstances: it is quite possible, for instance, that in speaking to you thus I am at this moment yielding to a temptation which I ought to resist. Perhaps I am right in supposing that it is your intention to accept my son’s offer of marriage?»

«I have not made up my mind, Lady Graves».

«Well», she answered, with a faint smile, «you will doubtless make it up when you see him, if you do see him. I think that I may take it for granted that, unless what I have to say to you should change your views, you will very shortly be married to Sir Henry Graves».

«I suppose you do not wish that», said Joan: «indeed, how can you wish it, seeing what I am, and his reason for asking me to marry him?»

«No, I do not wish it, though not altogether for these reasons. You are a very beautiful woman and a sweet one, and I have no doubt but that you could soon learn to fill any position which he might be able to give you, with credit to yourself and to him. As for the rest, he is as much to blame as you are,

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