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

his attention, and he

turned to discover that it had been realized as swiftly as though he

were the owner of Aladdin’s lamp. For there, the candle still in her

hand, stood Joan, looking at him from the farther side of the hearth.

 

It has been said that she was struck by her own appearance as she

passed towards his room; and that the change she saw in herself cannot

have been altogether fancy is evident from the exclamation which burst

from Henry as his eyes fell upon her, an exclamation so involuntary

that he scarcely knew what he was saying until the words had passed

his lips:

 

“Great Heaven! Joan, how lovely you are to-night! What have you been

doing to yourself?”

 

Next second he could have bitten out his tongue: he had hardly ever

paid her a compliment before, and this was the moment that he had

chosen to begin! His only excuse was that he could not help himself;

the sudden effect of her beauty, which was so strangely transfigured,

had drawn the words from him as the sun draws mist.

 

“Am I?” she asked dreamily; “I am glad if it pleases you.”

 

Here was a strange beginning to his pending announcement of departure,

thought Henry. Clearly, he must recover the situation before he made

it.

 

“Where have you been all this afternoon?” he asked in an indifferent

voice.

 

“I have been out walking.”

 

“What, alone, and in the rain?”

 

“I did not say that I was alone.”

 

“Whom were you with, then? It can’t have been your aunt.”

 

“I was with Mr. Samuel Rock: I mean that he met me.”

 

“What, that farmer who Mrs. Gillingwater told me admires you so much?”

 

“Yes. And what else did she tell you?”

 

“Well, I think she said she hoped that he would propose to you; but I

didn’t pay much attention, it seemed too odd.”

 

“Well, however odd it may be, that is just what he has been doing,”

answered Joan deliberately.

 

Now Henry understood it all: Joan had accepted this man, and it was

love for him that made her breast heave and her eyes shine like stars.

He ought to have been delighted—the difficulty was done with, and no

trouble could possibly ensue—and behold, instead he was furious. He

ought to have congratulated her, to have said the right thing in the

right way; but instead of congratulation the only words that passed

his lips were such as might have been uttered by a madly jealous and

would-be sarcastic boy.

 

“He proposed to you, did he, and in the rain? How charming! I suppose

he kissed you too?”

 

“Yes,” replied Joan—“twice.” And slowly she raised her eyes and fixed

them upon his face.

 

What Henry said immediately after that announcement he was never quite

able to remember, but it was something strong and almost incoherent.

Set on fire by his smouldering jealousy, suddenly his passion flamed

up in the magnetised atmosphere of her presence, for on that night her

every word and look seemed to be magnetic and to pierce him through

and through. For a minute or more he denounced her, and all the while

Joan stood silent, watching him with her wide eyes, the light shining

on her face. At last he ceased and she spoke.

 

“I do not understand you,” she said. “Why are you angry with me? What

do you mean?”

 

“I don’t know,” he gasped. “I have no right to be angry, I think I

must be mad, for I can’t even recollect what I have been saying. I

suppose that I was astonished to hear that you were engaged to Mr.

Rock, that’s all. Please forgive me and forget my words. And, if you

don’t mind, perhaps you had better go away.”

 

“I don’t wish to forget them, although I dare say that they mean

nothing; and I am not engaged to Mr. Rock—I hate him,” answered Joan

in the same slow voice; adding, “If you have patience, will you listen

to a story? I should like to tell it you before we part, for I think

that we have been good friends, and friends should know each other, so

that they may remember one another truly when their affection has

become nothing but a memory.”

 

Henry nodded; and still very deliberately, as though she wished to

avoid all appearance of haste or of excitement, Joan sat herself down

upon a footstool in front of the dying fire and began to speak, always

keeping her sad eyes fixed upon his face.

 

“It is not such a very long story,” she said, “and the only part of it

that has any interest began on that day when we met. I suppose they

have told you that I am nobody, and worse than nobody. I do not know

who my father was, though I think”—and she smiled as though some

coincidence had struck her—“that he was a gentleman whom my mother

fell in love with. Mr. Levinger has to do with me in some way; I

believe that he paid for my education when I went to school, but I am

not sure even about this, and why he should have done so I can’t tell.

Mr. Samuel Rock is a dissenter and a farmer; they say that he is the

richest man in Bradmouth. I don’t know why—it was no fault of mine,

for I always disliked him every much—but he took a fancy to me years

ago, although he said nothing about it at the time. After I came back

from school my aunt urged me continually to accept his attentions, but

I kept out of his way until that afternoon when I met you. Then he

found me sitting under the tower at Ramborough Abbey, where I had gone

to be alone because I was cross and worried; and he proposed to me,

and was so strange and violent in his manner that he frightened me.

What I was most afraid of, however, was that he would tell my aunt

that I had refused him—for I did refuse him—and that she would make

my life more of a misery than it is already, for you see I have no

friends here, where everybody looks down upon me, and nothing to do.

So in the end I struck a bargain with him, that he should leave me

alone for six months, and that then I would give him a final answer,

provided that he promised to say nothing of what had happened to my

aunt. He has not kept his promise, for to-day he waylaid me and was

very insolent and brutal, so much so that at last he caught hold of me

and kissed me against my will, tearing my dress half off me, and I

pushed him away and told him what I thought of him. The end of it was

that he swore that he would marry me yet, and left me. Then I came

back home, and an hour ago I told my aunt what had happened, and there

was a scene. She said that either I should marry Samuel Rock or be

turned out of the house in a day or two, so I suppose that I must go.

And that is all my story.”

 

“The brute!” muttered Henry. “I wish I had him on board a man-of-war:

I’d teach him manners. And what are you going to do, Joan?”

 

“I don’t know. Work if I can, and starve if I can’t. It doesn’t

matter; nobody will miss me, or care what happens to me.”

 

“Don’t say that, Joan,” he answered huskily; “I—I care, for one.”

 

“It is very good of you to say so, but you see you have others to care

for besides me. There is Miss Levinger, for instance.”

 

“I have told you once already that I am not engaged to Miss Levinger.”

 

“Yes, but a time will come when you will tell me, or others, that you

are; and I think that you will be right—she is a sweet girl. And now,

sir,” she added, with a total change of manner, “I think that I had

better tidy up and bid you good night, and good-bye, for I dare say

that I shall come back here no more. I can’t wait to be driven out

like a strange dog.” And she began to perform her various sickroom

duties with a mechanical precision.

 

Henry watched her for a while, until at length all was done and she

made ready to go. Then the heart which he had striven to repress burst

its bonds, and he sat up and said to her, in a voice that was almost a

cry—

 

“Oh! Joan, I don’t know what has come to me, but I can’t bear to part

with you, though it is best that you should go, for I cannot offer to

marry you. I wish to Heaven that I could.”

 

She came and stood beside him.

 

“I will remember those words as long as I live,” she said, “because I

know that they are true. I know also why you could not marry me; for

we hear all the gossip, and putting that aside it would be your ruin,

though for me it might be heaven.”

 

“Do you really care about me, then, Joan?” he asked anxiously, “and so

much as that? You must forgive me, but I am ignorant in these things.

I didn’t quite understand. I feel that I have become a bit foolish,

but I didn’t know that you had caught the disease.”

 

“Care about you! Anyway, I care enough not to let you marry me even if

you would. I think that to bring ruin and disgrace upon a man and all

his family would be a poor way to show one’s love for him. You see,

you have everything to lose. You are not like me who have nothing, not

even a name. Care about you!” she went on, with a strange, almost

unnatural energy—and her low, caressing voice seemed to thrill every

fibre of his heart and leave them trembling, as harp-strings thrill

and tremble beneath the hand of the player—“I wonder if there are any

words in the world that could make you understand how much I care.

Listen. When first I saw you yonder by the Abbey, a change crept over

me; and when you lay there senseless in my arms, I became a new woman,

as though I were born again—a woman whose mind I could not read, for

it was different from my own. Afterwards I read it; it was when they

thought you were dying, and suddenly I learned that you would live.

When I heard Miss Levinger cry out and saw her fall, then I read it,

and knew that I also loved you. I should have gone; but I didn’t go,

for I could not tear myself away from you. Oh! pity me, and do not

think too hardly of me; for remember who and what I am—a woman who

has never had any one to love, father or mother or sister or friend,

and yet who desires love above everything. And now it had come to me

at last; and that one love of mine made up for all that I had missed,

and was greater and stronger in itself than the hundred different

loves of happier girls can be. I loved you, and I loved you, and I

love you. Yes, I wish you to know it before we part, and I hope that

you will never quite forget it, for none will ever love you so much

again as I have, and do, and shall do till I die. And now