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

CHAPTER XXVI

A LOVE LETTER

 

Joan never knew how she got through the rest of that afternoon. She

did not faint, but she was so utterly overcome and bewildered that she

could do nothing right. Three times Mr. Waters spoke to her, with

ever-increasing harshness, and on the third occasion she answered him

saying—

 

“I am very sorry, but it is not my fault. I feel ill: let me go home.”

 

“Yes, you’d better go, miss,” he said, “and so far as I am concerned

you can stop there. I shall report your conduct to the proprietors, so

you need not trouble to return unless you hear from me again.”

 

Joan went without a word; and so ended her life as a show-woman, for

never again did she set eyes upon the establishment of Messrs. Black

and Parker, or upon their estimable manager, Mr. Waters.

 

The raw damp of the October evening revived her somewhat, but before

she reached Kent Street she knew that she had not exaggerated when she

said that she was ill—very ill, in body as well as in mind. The long

anxiety and mental torture, culminating in the scene of that

afternoon, together with confinement in the close atmosphere of the

shop and other exciting causes, had broken down her health at last.

Sharp pains shot through her head and limbs; she felt fever burning in

her blood, and at times she trembled so violently that she could

scarcely keep her feet. Sally opened the door to her with an

affectionate smile, for the dumb girl had learned to worship her; but

Joan went straight to her room without noticing her, and threw herself

upon the bed. Presently Mrs. Bird, learning from the girl that

something was wrong, came upstairs bringing a cup of tea.

 

“What is the matter with you, my dear?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know,” answered Joan; “I feel very bad in my head and all

over me.”

 

“Influenza, I expect,” said Mrs. Bird; “there is so much of it about

now. Let me help you off with your cloak and things, then drink this

tea and try to go to sleep. If you are not better to-morrow morning,

we shall have to send for the doctor.”

 

Joan obeyed listlessly, swallowing the tea with an effort.

 

“Are you sure that you have nothing on your mind, my dear?” asked Mrs.

Bird. “I have been watching you for a long while, and I find a great

change in you. You never did seem happy from the hour that you came

here, but of late you have been downright miserable.”

 

Joan laughed: the sound of that laugh gave Mrs. Bird “the creeps,” as

she afterwards expressed it.

 

“Anything on my mind? Yes, I have everything on my mind, enough to

drive me mad twice over. You’ve been very kind to me, Mrs. Bird, and I

shall never forget your goodness; but I am going to leave you

to-morrow—they have dismissed me from the shop already—so before I

go I may as well tell you what I am. To begin with, I am a liar; and

I’m more than that, I am–- Listen!” and she bent her head forward

and whispered into the little woman’s ear. “Now,” she added, “I don’t

know if you will let me stop the night in the house after that. If

not, say so, and I’ll be off at once. I dare say that they would take

me in at a hospital, or a home, or if not there is always the Thames.

I nearly threw myself into it the other day, and this time I should

not change my mind.” And again she laughed.

 

“My poor child! my poor, poor child!” said Mrs. Bird, wiping her eyes,

“please don’t talk like that. Who am I, that I should judge

you?—though it is true that I do like young women to be respectable;

and so they would be if it wasn’t for the men, the villains! I’d just

like to tear the eyes out of this wicked one, I would, who first of

all leads you into trouble and then deserts you.”

 

“Don’t speak of him like that,” said Joan: “he didn’t lead me—if

anything, I led him; and he didn’t desert me, I ran away from him. I

think that he would have married me if I had asked him, but I will

have nothing to do with him.”

 

“Why, the girl must be mad!” said Mrs. Bird blankly. “Is he a

gentleman?”

 

“Yes, if ever there was one; and I’m not mad, only can’t you

understand that one may love a man so much that one would die rather

than bring him into difficulties? There, it’s a long story, but he

would be ruined were he to marry me. There’s another girl whom he

ought to marry—a lady.”

 

“He would be ruined, indeed! And what will you be, pray?”

 

“I don’t know, and I don’t care: dead, I hope, before long. Oh!” and

she wrung her hands piteously, “I saw him in the shop this afternoon;

he was quite close to me. Yes, he looked at a cloak that I was

showing, and never knew me who wore it. That’s what has broken me

down: so long as I did not see him I could bear it, but now my heart

feels as though it would burst. To think that he should have been so

close to me and not have known me, oh! it is cruel, cruel!”

 

“Dear, dear!” said Mrs. Bird, “really I feel quite upset, I am not

accustomed to this sort of thing. If you will excuse me I will go and

look for my salts. And now you get into bed like a good girl, and stop

there.”

 

“Am I not to go away, then?” asked Joan.

 

“Certainly not—at any rate not for the present. You are much too ill

to go anywhere. And now there is just one thing that I should like to

know, and you may as well tell it me as you have told me so much. What

is this gentleman’s name?”

 

“I’ll not tell you,” answered Joan sullenly: “if I told you, you would

be troubling him; besides, I have no right to give away his secrets,

whatever I do with my own.”

 

“Perhaps it is no such great secret after all, my dear. Say now, isn’t

his name Henry Graves, and doesn’t he live at a place called Rosham?”

 

“Who told you that?” asked Joan, springing up and standing over her.

Then she remembered herself, and sat down again on the bed. “No,

that’s not the name,” she said; “I never heard that name.”

 

“Nobody told me,” answered Mrs. Bird quietly, ignoring Joan’s denial.

“I saw the name in those poetry books that you are so fond of, and

which you lent me to read; and I saw one or two notes that you had

made in them also, that’s all. I’ve had to watch deaf-and-dumb people

for many years, my dear, and there’s nothing like it for sharpening

the wits and teaching one how to put two and two together. Also you

could never hear the name of Henry without staring round and blushing,

though perhaps you didn’t know it yourself. Bless you, I guessed it

all a month ago, though I didn’t think that it was so bad as this.”

 

“Oh! it’s mean of you to have spied on me like that, Mrs. Bird,” said

Joan, giving in; “but it’s my fault, like everything else.”

 

“Don’t you fret about your faults, but just go to bed, there’s a good

girl. I will come back in half an hour, and if I don’t find you fast

asleep I shall be very angry.” And she put her arms about her and

kissed her on the forehead, as a mother might kiss her child.

 

“You are too kind to me, a great deal too kind,” said Joan, with a

sob. “Nobody ever was kind to me before, except him, and that’s why I

feel it.”

 

When Mrs. Bird had gone, Joan undressed herself and put on a wrapper,

but she did not get into bed. For a while she wandered aimlessly

backwards and forwards through the doors between the two rooms,

apparently without much knowledge of what she was doing. Some

note-paper was lying on the table in the sitting-room, where the gas

was burning, and it caught her eye.

 

“Why shouldn’t I write?” she said aloud; “not to him, no, but just to

put down what I feel; it will be a comfort to play at writing to him,

and I can tear it up afterwards.”

 

The fancy seemed to please her excited brain; at any rate she sat down

and began to write rapidly, never pausing for a thought or words. She

wrote:—

 

“My Darling,—

 

“Of course I have no business to call you that, but then you see

this is not a real letter, and you will never get it, for I shall

post it presently in the fire: I am only playing at writing to

you. Henry, my darling, my lover, my husband—you can see now that

I am playing, or I shouldn’t call you that, should I?—I am very

ill, I think that I am going to die, and I hope that I shall die

quickly, quickly, and melt away into nothingness, to be blown

about the world with the wind, or perhaps to bloom in a flower on

my own grave, a flower for you to pick, my own. Henry, I saw you

this afternoon; I wore that cloak your sister was choosing, and I

think that I should have spoken to you, only she forbade me, and

looked so fierce that she frightened me. Wasn’t it strange—it

makes me laugh now, though I could have cried then—to think of my

standing there before you with that mantle on my shoulders, and of

your looking at it, and taking no more notice of me than if I were

a dressmaker’s shape? Perhaps that is what you took me for; and

oh! I wish I was, for then I couldn’t feel. But I haven’t told you

my secret yet, and perhaps you would like to know it. I am going

to have a child, Henry—a child with