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

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH

 

“Your daughter!” she said, rising in her astonishment—“you must be

mad! If I were your daughter, could you have lied to me as you did,

and treated me as you have done?”

 

“I pray you to listen before you judge, and at present spare your

reproaches, for believe me, Joan, I am not fit to bear them. Remember

that I need have told you nothing of this; the secret might have been

buried in my grave–-”

 

“As it would have been, sir, had you not feared to die with such

falsehood on your soul.”

 

He made an imploring gesture with his hand, and she ceased.

 

“Joan,” he went on, “I will tell you the whole truth. You are not only

my child, you are also legitimate.”

 

“And Miss Levinger—Lady Graves, I mean—is she legitimate too?”

 

“No, Joan.”

 

She heard, and bit her lip till the blood ran, but even so she could

not keep silence.

 

“Oh!” she cried, “I wonder if you will ever understand what you have

done in hiding this from me. Do you know that you have ruined my

life?”

 

“I pray that you may be mistaken, Joan. Heaven is my witness that I

have tried to act for the best. Listen: many years ago, when I was

still a youngish man, it was my fate to meet and to fall in love with

your mother, Jane Lacon. Like you, she was beautiful, but unlike you

she was hot-tempered, violently jealous, and, when she was angered,

rough of speech. Such as she was, however, she obtained a complete

empire over my mind, for I was headstrong and passionate; indeed, so

entirely did I fall into her power that in the end I consented to

marry her. This, however, I did not dare to do here, for in those days

I was poor and struggling, and it would have ruined me. Separately,

and without a word being said to any one, we went to London, and there

were secretly married in an obscure parish in the East End. In proof

of my words here is a copy of the certificate,”—and, taking a paper

from a despatch-box that stood on the table beside him, he handed it

to Joan, then went on:—

 

“As you may guess, a marriage thus entered into between two people so

dissimilar in tastes, habits and education did not prove successful.

For a month or so we were happy, then quarrels began. I established

her in lodgings in London, and, while ostensibly carrying on my

business as a land agent here, visited her from time to time. With

this, however, she was not satisfied, for she desired to be

acknowledged openly as my wife and to return with me to Bradmouth. I

refused to comply—indeed, I dared not do so—whereupon she reviled me

with ever-increasing bitterness. Moreover she became furiously

jealous, and extravagant beyond the limit of my means. At length

matters reached a climax, for a chance sight that she caught of me

driving in a carriage with another woman, provoked so dreadful an

outburst that in my rage and despair I told her a falsehood. I told

her, Joan, that she was not really my wife, and had no claim upon me,

seeing that I had married her under a false name. This in itself was

true, for my own name is not Levinger; but it is not true that the

marriage was thereby invalidated, since neither she nor those among

whom I had lived for several years knew me by any other. When your

mother heard this she replied only that such conduct was just what she

should have expected from me; and that night I returned to Bradmouth,

having first given her a considerable sum of money, for I did not

think that I should see her again for some time. Two days afterwards I

received a letter from her—here it is,” and he read it:—

 

“‘George,

 

“‘Though I may be what you call me, a common woman and a jealous

scold, at least I have too much pride to go on living with a

scoundrel who has deceived me by a sham marriage. If I were as bad

as you think, I might have the law of you, but I won’t do that,

especially as I dare say that we shall be best apart. Now I am

going straight away where you will never find me, so you need not

trouble to look, even if you care to. I haven’t told you yet that

I expect to have a child. If it comes to anything, I will let you

know about it; if not, you may be sure that it is dead, or that I

am. Good-bye, George: for a week or two we were happy, and though

you hate me, I still love you in my own way; but I will never live

with you again, so don’t trouble your head any more about me.

 

“‘Yours,

“‘Jane –-?

 

“‘P.S.—Not knowing what my name is, I can’t sign it.’

 

“When I received this letter I went to London and tried to trace your

mother, but could hear nothing of her. Some eight or nine months

passed by, and one day a letter came addressed to me, written by a

woman in New York—I have it here if you wish to see it—enclosing

what purports to be a properly attested American certificate of the

death of Jane Lacon, of Bradmouth in England. The letter says that

Jane Lacon, who passed herself off as a widow, and was employed as a

housekeeper in a hotel in New York, died in childbirth with her infant

in the house of the writer, who, by her request, forwarded the

certificate of death, together with her marriage ring and her love.

 

“I grieved for your mother, Joan; but I made no further inquiries, as

I should have done, for I did not doubt the story, and in those days

it was not easy to follow up such a matter on the other side of the

Atlantic.

 

“A year went by and I married again, my second wife being Emma

Johnson, the daughter of old Johnson, who owed a fleet of fishing

boats and a great deal of other property, and lived at the Red House

in Bradmouth. Some months after our marriage he died, and we came to

live at Monk’s Lodge, which we inherited from him with the rest of his

fortune. A while passed, and Emma was born; and it was when her mother

was still confined to her room that one evening, as I was walking in

front of the house after dinner, I saw a woman coming towards me

carrying a fifteen-months’ child in her arms. There was something in

this woman’s figure and gait that was familiar to me, and I stood

still to watch her pass. She did not pass, however; she came straight

up to me and said:—

 

“‘How are you, George? You ought to know me again, though you won’t

know your baby.’

 

“It was your mother, and, Joan, you were that baby.

 

“‘I thought that you were dead, Jane,’ I said, so soon as I could

speak.

 

“‘That’s just what I meant you to think, George,’ she answered, ‘for

at that time I had a very good chance of marrying out there in New

York, and didn’t want you poking about after me, even though you

weren’t my lawful husband. Also I couldn’t bear to part with the baby;

though it’s yours sure enough, and I’ve been careful to bring its

birth papers with me to show you that it is not a fraud; and here they

are, made out in your name and mine, or at least in the name that you

pretended to marry me under.’ And she gave me this certificate, which,

Joan, I now pass on to you.

 

“‘The fact of the matter is,’ she went on, ‘that when it came to the

point I found that I couldn’t marry the other man after all, for in my

heart I hated the sight of him and was always thinking of you. So I