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

a second the silence continued; then, with a short sharp cry, Emma

Levinger went down upon the floor as suddenly as though she had been

shot through the heart.

 

Joan also had heard Dr. Child’s footsteps, and, rising swiftly from

her bed, she followed him to the door of the parlour, where she stood

listening to his fateful words—for her anxiety was so intense that

the idea of intrusion did not even cross her mind.

 

Joan heard the words, and she believed that they were an answer to her

prayer; for her suffering had been too fierce and personal to admit of

her dissociating herself from the issue, at any rate at present. She

forgot that she was not concerned alone in this matter of the life or

death of Henry Graves—she who, although as yet she did not know it,

was already wrapped with the wings and lost in the shadow of a great

and tragic passion. She had prayed, and she had been answered. His

life had been given back to her.

 

Thus she thought for a moment; the next she heard Emma’s cry, and saw

her fall, and was undeceived. Now she was assured of what before she

had suspected, that this sweet and beautiful lady loved the man who

lay yonder; and, in the assurance of that love, she learned her own.

It became clear to her in an instant, as at night the sudden lightning

makes clear the landscape to some lost wanderer among mountains. As in

the darkness such a wanderer may believe that his feet are set upon a

trodden road, and in that baleful glare discover himself to be

surrounded by dangers, amid desolate wastes; so at this sight Joan

understood whither her heart had strayed, and was affrighted, for

truly the place seemed perilous and from it there was no retreat.

Before her lay many a chasm and precipice, around her was darkness,

and a blind mist blew upon her face, a mist wet as though with tears.

 

Somebody in the parlour called for a light, and the voice brought her

back from her vision, her hopeless vision of what was, had been, and

might be. What had chanced or could chance to her mattered little, she

thought to herself, as she turned to seek the lamp. He would live, and

that was what she had desired, what she had prayed for while as yet

she did not know why she prayed it, offering her own life in payment.

She understood now that her prayer had been answered more fully than

she deemed; for she had given her life, her true life, for him and to

him, though he might never learn the price that had been exacted of

her. Well, he would live—to be happy with Miss Levinger—and though

her heart must die because of him, Joan could be glad of it even in

those miserable moments of revelation.

 

She returned with the lamp, and assisted in loosening the collar of

Emma’s dress and in sprinkling her white face with water. Nobody took

any notice of her. Why should they, who were overcome by the first joy

of hope renewed, and moved with pity at the sight of the fainting

girl? They even spoke openly before her, ignoring her presence.

 

“Do not be afraid,” said Dr. Childs: “I have never known happiness to

kill people. But she must have suffered a great deal from suspense.”

 

“I did not know that it had gone so far with her,” said her father in

a low voice to Lady Graves. “I believe that if the verdict had been

the other way it would have killed her also.”

 

“She must be very fond of him,” answered Lady Graves; “and I am

thankful for it, for now I have seen how sweet she is. Well, if it

pleases God that Henry should recover, I hope that it will all come

right in the end. Indeed, he will be a strange man if it does not.”

 

Just then Ellen, who was watching and listening, seemed to become

aware of Joan’s presence.

 

“Thank you,” she said to her; “you can go now.”

 

So Joan went, humbly enough, suffering a sharper misery than she had

dreamed that her heart could hold, and yet vaguely happy through her

wretchedness. “At least,” she thought to herself, with a flash of

defiant feeling, “I am his nurse, and they can’t send me away from him

yet, because he won’t let them. It made him worse when they tried

before. When he is well again Miss Levinger will take him, but till

then he is mine—mine. Oh! I wish I had known that she was engaged to

him from the beginning: no, it would have made no difference. It may

be wicked, but I should have loved him anyhow. It is my doom that I

should love him, and I would rather love him and be wretched, than not

love him and be happy. I suppose that it began when I first saw him,

though I did not understand it then—I only wondered why he seemed so

different to any other man that I had seen. Well, it is done now, and

there is no use crying over it, so I may as well laugh, if one can

laugh with a heart like a lump of ice.”

 

Once out of danger, Henry’s progress towards recovery was sure, if

slow. Three weeks passed before he learned how near he had been to

death. It was Joan who told him, for as yet he had been allowed only

the briefest of interviews with his mother and Ellen, and on these

occasions, by the doctor’s orders, their past anxieties were not even

alluded to. Now, however, all danger was done with, and that afternoon

Joan had been informed by Dr. Childs that she might read to her

patient if he wished it, or talk to him upon any subject in which he

seemed to take interest.

 

It was a lovely July day, and Joan was seated sewing in Henry’s, or

rather in her own room, by the open window, through which floated the

scent of flowers and a murmuring sound of the sea. Henry had been

dozing, and she laid her work upon her knee and watched him while he

slept. Presently she saw that his eyes were open and that he was

looking at her.

 

“Do you want anything, sir?” she said, hastily resuming her sewing.

“Are you comfortable?”

 

“Quite, thank you; and I want nothing except to go on looking at you.

You make a very pretty picture in that old window place, I assure

you.”

 

She coloured faintly and did not answer. Presently he spoke again.

 

“Joan,” he said—he always called her Joan now—“was I very bad at any

time?”

 

“Yes, sir; they almost gave you up three weeks ago—indeed, they said

the chances were ten to one against your living.”

 

“It is strange: I remember nothing about it. Do you know, it gives me

rather a turn. I have been too busy a man and too occupied with life

to think much of death, and I don’t quite like the sensation of having

been so near to it; though perhaps it is not as bad as one thinks, and

Heaven knows it would have saved me plenty of worry here below,” and

Henry sighed.

 

“I am very grateful to you all,” he went on after a moment’s pause,

“for taking so much trouble about me—especially to you, Joan, for

somehow or other I realised your presence even when I was off my head.

I don’t know how you occupy yourself generally, but I am sure you are

fond of fresh air. It is uncommonly good of you to mew yourself up

here just to look after me.”

 

“Don’t talk like that, sir. It is my business.”

 

“Your business! Why is it your business? You are not a professional

nurse, are you?”

 

“No, sir, though they offered to pay me to-day,” and she flushed with

indignation as she said it.

 

“Well, don’t be angry if they did. Why shouldn’t you have a week’s

wage for a week’s work? I suppose you like to earn something, like the

rest of us.”

 

“Because I don’t choose to,” answered Joan, tapping the floor with her

foot: “I’d rather starve. It is my fault that you got into this

trouble, and it is an insult to offer me money because I am helping to

nurse you out of it.”

 

“Well, there is no need to excite yourself about it. I have no doubt

they thought that you would take a different view, and really I cannot

see why you should not. Tell me what happened on the night that they

gave me up: it interests me.”

 

Then in a few graphic words Joan sketched the scene so vividly, that

Henry seemed to see himself lying unconscious on the bed, and sinking

fast into death while the doctors watched and whispered round him.

 

“Were you there all the time?” he asked curiously.

 

“Most of it, till I was of no further use and could bear no more.”

 

“What did you do then?”

 

“I went to my room.”

 

“And what did you do there? Go to sleep?”

 

“Go to sleep! I—I—cried my heart out. I mean—that I said my

prayers.”

 

“It is very kind of you to take so much interest in me,” he answered,

in a half bantering voice; then, seeming to understand that she was

very much in earnest, he changed the subject, asking, “And what did

the others do?”

 

“They were all in the bar-parlour; they waited there till it grew

dark, and then they waited on in the dark, for they thought that

presently they would be called in to see you die. At last the change

came, and Dr. Childs left you to tell them when he was sure. I heard

his step, and followed him. I had no business to do it, but I could

not help myself. He went into the room and stood still, trying to make

out who was in it, and you might have heard a pin drop. Then he spoke

to your mother, and said that through the mercy of Heaven he believed

that you would live.”

 

“Yes,” said Henry; “and what did they say then?”

 

“Nobody said anything, so far as I could hear; only Miss Levinger

screamed and dropped on the floor in a faint.”

 

“Why did she do that?” asked Henry. “I suppose that they had been

keeping her there without any dinner, and her nerves were upset.”

 

“Perhaps they were, sir,” said Joan sarcastically: “most women’s

nerves would be upset when they learned that the man they were engaged

to was coming back to them from the door of the dead.”

 

“Possibly; but I don’t exactly see how the case applies.”

 

Joan rose slowly, and the work upon which she had been employed fell

from her hand to the floor.

 

“I do not quite understand you, sir,” she said. “Do you mean to say

that you are not engaged to Miss Levinger?”

 

“Engaged to Miss Levinger! Certainly not. Whatever may happen to me if

I get out of this, at the present moment I am under no obligations of

that sort to any human creature.”

 

“Then I am sorry that I said so much,” answered Joan. “Please forget

my silly talk: I have made a mistake. I—think that I hear my aunt

coming, and—if you will excuse me, I will go out and get a little

air.”

 

“All this is Greek to me,” thought Henry, looking after her. “Surely

Ellen cannot have been right! Oh, it is