Joan Haste - H. Rider Haggard (fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

CHAPTER X

AZRAEL’S WING

 

For the next two days, notwithstanding the serious condition of his

broken leg, Henry seemed to go on well, till even his mother and Emma

Levinger, both of whom were kept accurately informed of his state,

ceased to feel any particular alarm about him. On the second day Mrs.

Gillingwater, being called away to attend to some other matter, sent

for Joan—who, although her arm was still in a sling, had now almost

recovered—to watch in the sick room during her absence. She came and

took her seat by the bed, for at the time Henry was asleep. Shortly

afterwards he awoke and saw her.

 

“Is that you, Miss Haste?” he said. “I did not know that you cared for

nursing.”

 

“Yes, sir,” answered Joan. “My aunt was obliged to go out for a little

while, and, as you are doing so nicely, she said that she thought I

might be trusted to look after you till she came back.”

 

“It is very kind of you, I am sure,” said Henry. “Sick rooms are not

pleasant places. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me some of that

horrid stuff—barley-water I think it is. I am thirsty.”

 

Joan handed him the glass and supported his head while he drank. When

he had satisfied his thirst he said:

 

“I have never thanked you yet for your bravery. I do thank you

sincerely, Miss Haste, for if I had fallen on to those spikes there

would have been an end of me. I saw them as I was hanging, and thought

that my hour had come.”

 

“And yet he told me to ‘stand clear’!” reflected Joan; but aloud she

said:

 

“Oh! pray, pray don’t thank me, sir. It is all my fault that you have

met with this dreadful accident, and it breaks my heart to think of

it.” And as she spoke a great tear ran down her beautiful face.

 

“Come, please don’t cry: it upsets me; if the smash was anybody’s

fault, it was my own. I ought to have known better.”

 

“I will try not, sir,” answered Joan, in a choking voice; “but aunt

said that you weren’t to talk, and you are talking a great deal.”

 

“All right,” he replied: “you stop crying and I’ll stop talking.”

 

As may be guessed after this beginning, from that hour till the end of

his long and dangerous illness, Joan was Henry’s most constant

attendant. Her aunt did the rougher work of the sick room, indeed, but

for everything else he depended upon her; clinging to her with a

strange obstinacy that baffled all attempts to replace her by a more

highly trained nurse. On one occasion, when an effort of the sort was

made, the results upon the patient were so unfavourable that, to her

secret satisfaction, Joan was at once reinstalled.

 

After some days Henry took a decided turn for the worse. His

temperature rose alarmingly, and he became delirious, with short

coherent intervals. Blood poisoning, which the doctors feared,

declared itself, and in the upshot he fell a victim to a dreadful

fever that nearly cost him his life. At one time the doctors were of

opinion that his only chance lay in amputation of the fractured limb;

but in the end they gave up this idea, being convinced that, in his

present state, he would certainly die of the shock were they to

attempt the operation.

 

Then followed three terrible days, while Henry lay between life and

death. For the greater part of those days Lady Graves and Ellen sat in

the bar-parlour, the former lost in stony silence, the latter pale and

anxious enough, but still calm and collected. Even now Ellen did not

lose her head, and this was well, for the others were almost

distracted by anxiety and grief. Distrusting the capacities of Joan, a

young person whom she regarded with disfavour as being the cause of

her brother’s accident, it was Ellen who insisted upon the

introduction of the trained nurses, with consequences that have been

described. When the doctors hesitated as to the possibility of an

operation, it was Ellen also who gave her voice against it, and

persuaded her mother to do the same.

 

“I know nothing of surgery,” she said, with conviction, “and it seems

probable that poor Henry will die; but I feel sure that if you try to

cut off his leg he will certainly die.”

 

“I think that you are right, Miss Graves,” said the eminent surgeon

who had been brought down in consultation, and with whom the final

word lay. “My opinion is that the only course to follow with your

brother is to leave him alone, in the hope that his constitution will

pull him through.”

 

So it came about that Henry escaped the knife.

 

Emma Levinger and her father also haunted the inn, and it was during

those dark days that the state of the former’s affections became clear

both to herself and to every one about her. Before this she had never

confessed even to her own heart that she was attached to Henry Graves;

but now, in the agony of her suspense, this love of hers arose in

strength, and she knew that, whether he stayed or was called away, it

must always be the nearest and most constant companion of her life.

Why she loved him Emma could not tell, nor even when she began to do

so; and indeed these things are difficult to define. But the fact

remained, hard, palpable, staring: a fact which she had no longer any

care to conceal or ignore, seeing that the conditions of the case

caused her to set aside those considerations of womanly reserve that

doubtless would otherwise have induced her to veil the secret of her

heart for ever, or until circumstances gave opportunity for its

legitimate expression.

 

At length on a certain afternoon there came a crisis to which there

was but one probable issue. The doctors and nurses were in Henry’s

room doing their best to ward off the fate that seemed to be

approaching, while Lady Graves, Mr. Levinger, Ellen and Emma sat in

the parlour awaiting tidings, and striving to hope against hope. An

hour passed, and Emma could bear the uncertainty no longer. Slipping

out unobserved, she stole towards the sick room and listened at a

little distance from it. Within she could hear the voice of a man

raving in delirium, and the cautious tread of those who tended him.

Presently the door opened and Joan appeared, walking towards her with

ashen face and shaking limbs.

 

“How is he?” asked Emma in an intense whisper, catching at her dress

as she passed.

 

Joan looked at her and shook her head: speak she could not. Emma

watched her go with vacant eyes, and a jealousy smote her, which made

itself felt even through the pain that tore her heart in two. Why

should this woman be free to come and go about the bedside of the man

who was everything to her—to hold his dying hand and to lift his

dying head—while she was shut outside his door? Emma wondered

bitterly. Surely that should be her place, not the village girl’s who

had been the cause of all this sorrow. Then she turned, and, creeping

back to the parlour, she flung herself into a chair and covered her

face with her hands.

 

“Have you heard anything?” asked Lady Graves.

 

Emma made no reply but her despair broke from her in a low moaning

that was very sad to hear.

 

“Do not grieve so, dear,” said Ellen kindly.

 

“Let me grieve,” she answered, lifting her white face; “let me grieve

now and always. I know that Faith should give me comfort, but it fails

me. I have a right to grieve,” she went on passionately, “for I love

him. I do not care who knows it now: though I am nothing to him, I

love him, and if he dies it will break my heart.”

 

So great was the tension of suspense that Emma’s announcement,

startling as it was, excited no surprise. Perhaps they all knew how

things were with her; at any rate Lady Graves answered only, “We all

love him, dear,” and for a time no more was said.

 

Meanwhile, could she have seen into the little room behind her, Emma

might have witnessed the throes of a grief as deep as her own, and

even more abandoned; for there, face downwards on her bed, lay Joan

Haste, the girl whom she had envied. Sharp sobs shook her frame,

notwithstanding that she had thrust her handkerchief between her teeth

to check them, and she clutched nervously at the bedclothes with her

outstretched hands. Hitherto she had been calm and silent; now, at

length, when she was of no more service, she broke down, and Nature

took its way with her.

 

“O my God!” she muttered between her strangling sobs, “spare him and

kill me, for it was my fault, and I am his murderess. O my God! my

God! What have I done that I should suffer so? What makes me suffer

so? Oh! spare him, spare him!”

 

Another half-hour passed, and the twilight began to gather in the

parlour.

 

“It is very long,” murmured Lady Graves.

 

“While they do not come to call us there is hope,” answered Ellen,

striving to keep up a show of courage.

 

Once more there was silence, and the time went on and the darkness

gathered.

 

At length a step was heard approaching, and they knew it for that of

Dr. Childs. Instinctively they all rose, expecting the last dread

summons. He was among them now, but they could not see his face

because of the shadows.

 

“Is Lady Graves there?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” whispered the poor woman.

 

“Lady Graves, I have come to tell you that by the mercy of Heaven your

son’s constitution has triumphed, and, so far as my skill and

knowledge go, I believe that he will live.”

 

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