Joan Haste - H. Rider Haggard (fiction books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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“Ain’t you?—then you imitate the article very well.”
“Just what I feared,” murmured Mrs. Bird, shaking her head.
“However,” he went on, “we can overlook that fault; but I have another
doubt about you. You’re too good-looking. Our customers like to see
their things tried on a fine figure, of course, but they don’t like to
see them tried on a girl who makes them look common dowds beside her.
Why, a three-guinea mantle would seem a better thing on your back than
a forty-pound cloak on most of them. You’d show off the goods, I dare
say, but I doubt that you would frighten away custom.”
“I thought that tall people were always wanted,” hesitated Joan.
“Tall people!” said Mr. Waters, with an admiring snigger; “just you
look at yourself in this pier glass, and I think that you will see
something else there beside height. Now, I’ll give you a bit of
advice: you drop this show and go on to the stage. You’ll draw there;
yes, even if you can’t sing or act a bit, there are hundreds who would
pay to come and look at you. By George! I’m not sure that I wouldn’t
myself.”
“I do not wish to go on the stage,” answered Joan stiffly; and Mrs.
Bird behind her murmured, “No! never!” in sympathetic tones. “If you
think that I shall not suit,” she added, “I will not take up your time
any longer.”
“I didn’t say that, miss. Here!”—and he put his head out of the door
and called to a shop-woman—“just give me that velvet mantle, will
you? Now, miss,” he said: “you fancy that Mrs. Bird’s a customer, and
let me see you try to sell her this cloak.”
Joan’s first impulse was to refuse, but presently a sense of the fun
of the situation prevailed, and she rose to it, mincing, smiling, and
praising up the garment, which she hung upon her own shoulders,
bending her graceful shape this way and that to show it in various
lights and attitudes, till at length Mrs. Bird exclaimed, “Well, I
never!—you’re a born actress, my dear. You might have been bred to
the business. I should have bought that cloak long ago, I should,
though, saving your presence, Mr. Waters, I don’t think it is worth
the price asked.”
“You’ll do,” said the manager, rubbing his hands, “if only you can
forget that you are a lady, and have nous enough to flatter when you
see that it is welcome, and that’s always where ladies and their
clothes are concerned. What’s your name?”
“Haste: Joan Haste.”
“Very well, Miss Haste. Let’s see: to-day is Saturday, so you may as
well begin on Monday. Hours nine to seven, dinner and tea provided,
also black silk dress, that you put on when you come and take off when
you leave. I should think that the last young lady’s would fit you
pretty well with a little alteration, unless you like to buy one
yourself at cost price.”
“Thank you, I think that I will buy one for myself.”
“Indeed! Well, so much the better for us. It is usual to ask for
references as to character, and security, or a sum on deposit; but I
understand that Mrs. Bird guarantees all that, so we will say no more
about it. The wages will be eighteen shillings a week for the first
six months, and after that a pound if we are satisfied with you. Do
you agree to these terms?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then. Good morning.”
“There’s a smart girl,” reflected Mr. Waters to himself, “and a real
beauty too. But she’s a fool for all that; she ought to go on the
boards—she’d have a future there. However, it’s her affair, not
mine.”
“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Bird to Joan, “you got through that
capitally. At first I thought that he would never engage you, but he
seemed to take quite a liking to you before the end. What do you think
of him?”
“I think him odious,” said Joan.
“Odious, my dear! What a strong term! Free and easy, if you like, but
not odious. He is much better than most of them, I can tell you.”
“Then the rest must be very bad indeed,” said Joan, and continued on
her way in silence.
“I FORBID YOU.”
On the following Monday morning Joan began her career as a shop-girl,
to describe which in detail would be too long, however instructive it
might prove. Her actual work, especially at this, the dead season of
the year, was not so hard as she had expected, nor was she long in
mastering her duties; but, accustomed as she had been to a country
life and the fresh air, she soon found confinement for so many hours a
day in the close atmosphere of the shop exceedingly irksome. From Kent
Street to Messrs. Black and Parker’s was but a quarter of an hour’s
walk; and, as Joan discovered by experiment, without exposing herself
to many annoyances it was impossible for her to wander about the
streets after dark in search of exercise. As a last resource she was
driven to rising at the peep of day and taking her walks abroad in the
Park so soon as the gates were open—a daily constitutional which, if
wholesome, was not exhilarating, and one that could only be practised
in fine weather and while the days were long. This craving for air,
however, was among the least of her troubles, for soon it became clear
to her that she had no vocation for shop life; indeed, she learned to
loathe it and its surroundings. At first the humours of the business
amused her a little, but very shortly she discovered that even about
these there was a terrible sameness, for one cannot be perpetually
entertained by the folly of old ladies trying to make themselves look
young, or by the vanity of the young ones neglected by nature and
attempting to supply their deficiencies with costly garments.
What galled her chiefly, however, were the attentions with which she
was honoured by the young men of the establishment. Worst of all, the
oiled and curled Mr. Waters singled her out as the object of his
especial admiration, till at length she lost her temper, and answered
him in such a fashion as to check his advances once and for all. He
left her muttering “You shall pay for that”; and he kept his word, for
thenceforth her life was made a misery to her, and it seemed that she
could do nothing right. As it chanced, he could not actually discharge
her, for Joan had attracted the favourable notice of one of the owners
of the business, who, when Mr. Waters made some trumped-up complaint
against her, dismissed it with a hint that he better be more careful
as to his facts in future.
For the rest, she had no amusements and no friends, and during all the
time she spent in London she never visited a theatre or other place of
entertainment. Her only recreation was to read when she could get the
books, or, failing this, to sit with little Mrs. Bird in the Kent
Street parlour and perfect herself in the art of conversation with the
deaf and dumb.
As may be imagined, such an existence did not tend to cause Joan to
forget her past, or the man who was to her heart what the sun is to
the world. She could renounce him, she could go away vowing that she
would never see him more; but to live without him, and especially to
live such a life as hers, ah! that was another matter.
Moreover, as time went on, a new terror took her, that, vague in the
beginning, grew week by week more definite and more dreadful. At first
she could scarcely believe it, for somehow such a thing had never
entered into her calculations; but soon she was forced to acknowledge
it as a fact, an appalling, unalterable fact, which, as yet secret to
herself, must shortly become patent to the whole world. The night that
the truth came home to her without the possibility of further doubt
was perhaps the most terrible which she ever spent. For some hours she
thought that she must go mad: she wept, she prayed, she called upon
the name of her lover, who, although he was the author of her woe, in
some mysterious fashion had grown doubly dear to her, till at last
sleep or insensibility brought her relief. But sleep passes with the
darkness, and she awoke to find this new spectre standing by her
bedside and to know that there it must always stand till the end came.
All that day she went about her work dazed by her secret agony of
mind, but in the evening her senses seemed to come back to her,
bringing with them new and acuter suffering.
Where was she to go and what was she to do, she who had no friend in
the wide world, or at least none in whom she could confide? Soon they
would turn her out upon the streets; even the Bird family would shrink
from her as though she had a leprosy. Would it not be better to end it
at once, and herself with it? Abandoning her usual custom, Joan did
not return home, but wandered about London heedless of the stares and
insults of the passers-by, till at length she came to Westminster
Bridge. She had not meant to come there—indeed, she did not know the
way—but the river had drawn her to its brink, as it has drawn so many
an unfortunate before her. There beneath those dim and swirling waters
she could escape her shame and find peace, or at least take it to a
region beyond all familiar things, whereof the miseries and unrest
would not be those of the earth, even if they surpassed them. Twice
she crossed the bridge; once she tore herself away, walking for a
while along the Embankment; then she returned to it again, brought
back by the irresistible attraction of the darkling river.
Now she thought that she would do it, and now her hand was on the
parapet. She was quite alone for the moment, there were none to stop
her—alone with her fear and fate. Yes, she would do it: but oh! what
of Henry? Had she a right to make him a murderer? Had she the right to
be the murderess of his child? What would he say when he heard, and
what would he think? After all, why should she kill herself? Was it so
wicked to become a mother? According to religion and custom, yes—that
is, such a mother as she would be—but how about nature? As for the
sin, she could not help it. It was done, and she must suffer for it.
She had broken the law of God, and doubtless God would exact
retribution from her; indeed, already He was exacting it. At least she
might plead that she loved this man, and there were many married women
who could bear their children without shame, and could not say as
much. Yet they were virtuous and she was an outcast—that was the
rule. Well, what did it matter to her? They could not put her in
prison, and she had no name to lose. Why should she kill herself? Why
should she not bear her baby and love it for its father’s sake and its
own? Now she came to think of it, there was nothing that she would
like better. Doubtless there would be difficulties and troubles, but
she was answerable to no one. However
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