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

CHAPTER XXI

A LUNCHEON PARTY

 

Two days after her visit to Mr. Levinger Joan began her simple

preparations for departure, for it was her intention to leave

Bradmouth by the ten o’clock train on the following morning. First,

however, after much thought she wrote this note to Henry:—

 

“Dear Sir Henry Graves,—

 

“Thank you for the kind message you sent asking after me. There was

never much the matter, and I am quite well again now. I was very

sorry to hear of the death of Sir Reginald. I fear that it must

have been a great shock to you. Perhaps you would like to know

that I am leaving Bradmouth for good and all, as I have no friends

here and do not get on well; besides, it is time that I should be

working for my own living. I am leaving without telling my aunt,

so that nobody will know my address or be able to trouble me to

come back. I do not fear, however, but that I shall manage to hold

my own in the world, as I am strong and active, and have plenty of

money to start with. I think you said that I might have the books

which you left behind here, so I am taking them with me as a

keepsake. If I live, they will remind me of the days when I used

to nurse you, and to read to you out of them, long years after you

have forgotten me. Good-bye, dear Sir Henry. I hope that soon you

will be quite well again and happy all your life. I do not think

that we shall meet any more, so again good-bye.

 

“Obediently yours,

“Joan Haste.”

 

When Joan had finished her letter she read it once, kissed it several

times, then placed it in an envelope which she directed to Sir Henry

Graves. “There,” she thought, as she dropped it into the post-box, “I

must go now, or he will be coming to look after me.”

 

On her way back to the inn she met Willie Hood standing outside the

grocer’s shop, with his coat off and his thumbs hooked in the armholes

of his waistcoat.

 

“Will you do something for me, Willie?” she asked.

 

“Anything to oblige a customer, I am sure, Joan Haste,” answered that

forward youth.

 

“Very well: then will you come round to-morrow morning with a

hand-barrow at six o’clock time—not later, mind—and take a box for

me to the station? If so, I will give you a shilling.”

 

“I’ll be there,” said Willie, “and don’t you bother about the

shilling. Six o’clock, did you say? Very well, I’ll book it. Anything

else to-day, miss?”

 

Joan shook her head, smiling, and returned home, where she busied

herself with packing the more valued of her few possessions into the

deal box that had been given her when she first went to school. Her

wardrobe was not large, but then neither was the box, so the task

required care and selection. First there were her few books, with

which she could not make up her mind to part—least of all with those

that Henry had given her; then there was the desk which she had won at

school as a prize for handwriting, a somewhat bulky and inconvenient

article, although it contained the faded photograph of her mother and

many other small treasures. Next came the doll that some kind lady had

given her many years before, the companion of her childhood, from

which she could not be separated; and an ink-stand presented to her by

the Rectory children, with “from your loving Tommy” scrawled upon the

bottom of it. These, with the few clothes that she thought good enough

to take with her, filled the box to the brim. Having shut it down,

Joan thrust it under the bed, so that it might escape notice should

her aunt chance to enter the room upon one of her spying expeditions,

for it was Mrs. Gillingwater’s unpleasant habit to search everything

belonging to her niece periodically, in the hope of discovering

information of interest. Her preparations finished, Joan wrote another

letter. It ran thus:—

 

“Dear Aunt,—

 

“When you get this I shall be gone away, for I write to say good-bye

to you and uncle. I am tired of Bradmouth, and am going to try my

fortune in London, with the consent of Mr. Levinger. I have not

told you about it before, because I don’t wish my movements to

come to the ears of other people until I am gone and can’t be

found, and least of all to those of Mr. Rock. It is chiefly on his

account that I am leaving Bradmouth, for I am afraid of him and

want to see him no more. Also I don’t care to stay in a place

where they make so much talk about me. I dare say that you have

meant to deal kindly with me, and I thank you for it, though

sometimes you have not seemed kind. I hope that the loss of the

money, whatever it is, that Mr. Levinger pays on my account, will

not make any great difference to you. I know that my going away

will not put you out otherwise, as I do no work here, and often

and often you have told me what a trouble I am; indeed, you will

remember that the other day you threatened to turn me out of the

house. Good-bye: please do not bother about me, or let any one do

so, as I shall get on quite well.

 

“Your affectionate niece

“Joan.”

 

Mrs. Gillingwater received this letter on the following afternoon, for

Joan posted it at the station just before the train left. When slowly

and painfully she had made herself mistress of its contents, her

surprise and indignation broke forth in a torrent.

 

“The little deceitful cat!” she exclaimed, addressing her husband,

whose beer-soaked intelligence could scarcely take in the position,

even when the letter had been twice read to him—“to think of her

sneaking away like an eel into a rat hole! Hopes the money won’t make

much difference to us, does she! Well, it is pretty well everything we

have to live on, that’s all; though there’s one thing, Joan or no

Joan, that old Levinger shall go on paying, or I’ll know the reason

why. It seems that he helped her off. Well, I think that I can see his

game there, but hang me if I can see hers, unless Sir Henry is going

to look after her wheresoever she’s gone, which ain’t likely, for he

can’t afford it. I call to mind that’s just how her mother went off

two or three and twenty years ago. And you know how she came back

and what was the end of her. Joan will go the same way and come to the

same end, or something like it. It’s in the blood, and you mark my

words, Gillingwater. Oh! that girl’s a master fool if ever there was

one. She might have been the lawful wife of either of them, and now

she’ll let both slip through her fingers to earn six shillings a week

by sewing, or some such nonsense. Well, she did right not to let me

know what she was after, or I’d have given her what for by way of

good-bye. And now what shall I say to Samuel? I suppose that he will

want his money back. No play, no pay—that’ll be his tune. Well, want

must be his master, that’s all. He was a fool not to make a better use

of his chances when he had them. But I shall never get another stiver

out of him unless I can bring her back again. The sly little

hypocrite!” And Mrs. Gillingwater paused exhausted, and shook her fist

in her husband’s face, more from habit than for any other reason.

 

“Do you mean to say that Joan is gone?” said that worthy, twirling his

hat vacantly on the table. “Then I’m sorry.”

 

“Sorry, you lout?—why didn’t you stop her, then?”

 

“I didn’t stop her because I didn’t know that she was going; and if I

had, I shouldn’t have interfered. But I’m real sorry, because she was

a lady, she was, who always spoke soft and civil—nor a red-faced,

screeching varmint of a woman such as some I knows on. Well, she’s

gone, and a good job too for her sake; I wish that I could go after

her,”—and, dodging the blow which his enraged wife aimed at his head,

Mr. Gillingwater sauntered off to drown his regrets at Joan’s

departure in some of the worst beer in Bradmouth.

 

Henry received Joan’s letter in due course of post, and it would be

difficult to analyse the feelings with which he perused it. He could

guess well enough what were the real causes that had led to her

departure from Bradmouth. She desired to escape from Samuel Rock and

the voice of scandal; for by now he knew that there was scandal about

her and himself, though he did not know how loud and persistent it had

become. The hidden tenderness of the letter, and more especially of

those sentences in which she told him that she was taking his books to

remind her, in after years, of the days when she had nursed him,

touched him deeply, and he knew well that no lapse of time would

enable him to attain to that forgetfulness which she prophesied for

him. It was dreadful to him to think that this woman, who had grown so

dear to him, should be cast thus alone into the roaring tide of London

life, to sink or to swim as it might chance. In one sense he had few

fears for her indeed: he felt sure that she would not drift into the

society of disreputable people, or herself become disreputable. He

gathered also that she had sufficient funds to keep her from want,

should she fail in obtaining work, and he hazarded a guess as to who

it was that supplied those funds. Still, even under the most

favourable conditions, in such a position a girl like Joan must of

necessity be exposed to many difficulties, dangers, annoyances and

temptations. From these he desired to shield her, as she had a

right—the best of rights—to be shielded by him; but now, of her own

act, she removed herself beyond his reach and knowledge. More, he was

secretly afraid that, in addition to those which first occurred to

him, Joan had another reason for her flight: he feared lest she should

have gone, or rather vanished, in order that his path might be made

easier for him and his doubts dissolved.

 

What was he to do? To ascertain her whereabouts seemed practically

impossible. Doubtless she had gone to London, but even so how was he

to find her, unless, indeed, he employed detectives to search her out,

which he had not the slightest authority to do? He might, it was true,

make inquiries in Bradmouth, where it