CHAPTER XIV.
JOAN AND HER LOVER.
JOAN said nothing to anyone about Philip Selby’s proposal. She had, indeed, no one to consult on such a subject. She had grown up in the habit of indifference to her mother’s opinions, which originated partly in the difference of their dispositions and the superiority a calm temperament has over a nervous and anxious one, and partly in her father’s contempt of his wife, which her children resented, yet were influenced by. Seeing the number of times when Mrs. Joscelyn was unhappy, and excited as Joan thought about nothing, it was almost impossible for the strong-natured and composed young woman not to feel a certain affectionate and sometimes indignant contempt for the excess of feeling which gave so much trouble, yet never had any result; while, on the other hand, it is almost impossible for a man to treat his wife with systematic scorn without weakening the respect of her children for her, even when, as we have said, they resent his conduct and are more or less her partizans. At the best she was “poor mother,” a person to be defended and accounted for, not looked up to and trusted in. From her early youth Joan had been her own guide and governor. She had none of her mother’s sentiment; her mother’s standard was too high for her; her mother’s feelings overstrained and exaggerated. Among the multitude of “fusses” she was partly disgusted, partly amused, ready to take mother’s part, as has been seen, but always with a protest against the weaknesses which she could apologise for, but not understand. In the matter of Harry, as she shared in some measure the anxiety, she had in some measure understood the sentiment; but her attitude towards her mother was more that of a senior towards a junior, the stronger to the weaker, than the natural subordination which would have become their relationship. Joan knew that, had she consulted her mother about Mr. Selby, Mrs. Joscelyn would have been greatly excited. She would have questioned her daughter as to her love for her suitor, and his love for her, and all the sentimental questions, which Joan felt were well enough in books, but as far as regarded Philip Selby and herself were altogether out of the question. And as for mentioning such a subject to her father, nothing could have been more impossible. She was thus alone in her moderate and sober soul, as Mrs. Joscelyn was in her tender and somewhat excitable being. She could not tell her story to anyone with the hope of aid and guidance—who can? We are all alone when the great problems of life come upon us. Joan, however, thought of this question very soberly, without once regarding it in the light of a great problem. It excited her a good deal privately within her own composed bosom; but, to tell the truth, its first effect was more mirthful than serious. In the seclusion of her own being she laughed, saying to herself that after all the maids had been right, that she had “got a lad” when she was least thinking of it. The laugh was not without a touch of gratification in it, for it is true that a young woman, even when she reaches the mature age of thirty and gives herself out as beyond such vanities, still likes to have “a lad,” and to feel that she is like the others—“respectit like the lave,” not left out in this important particular of life. Joan was pleased with Mr. Selby that he had appreciated her. She thought the more of him for it, as has perhaps been already perceived. She had an honest consciousness of her own value. She knew what she could do, and what her services were worth in the not very satisfactory position she held in her father’s house, where she had the responsibility of everything without either the approbation or the reward to which such work as hers was entitled. And she knew, without any misplaced modesty on the subject, that she would make an excellent wife. But being thirty, and in her own opinion very homely in appearance, and evidently not appreciated in this way, Joan had, with a half-conscious contempt for the fool of a man, whoever he was, who had not “come forward,” and a secret laugh when she thought of it, even at this contempt—put that contingency out of her mind and taken it for granted that she was to be Joan Joscelyn till the end of her days, the manager and soul of the establishment at the White House. If it occurred to her sometimes—as of course it must have done—that the White House could not continue for ever under its present régime, and that the day would come when Will’s wife (and a bonnie hand she would make of it!) must reign in her stead, the idea in no way troubled her; for she knew that no circumstances could arise in which she, Joan Joscelyn, would not be well worth her salt. But now, when she had no thought of any such want, when she had put it entirely out of her mind, here had happened the thing that she thought would never happen! She had got “a lad.” Suddenly the monotonous future in which she had foreseen no change opened before her, showing the pretty little property she had always admired, the place which had once belonged to the Joscelyns; the pasture which was the sweetest in the country-side; the nice house with its sunny aspect, so different from the White House; the best of beasts in the stables, and even the phaeton in the coach-house. It is the greatest wonder in the world that women are not demoralised altogether by the constant possibility of such sudden changes in their existence. From day to day it is always happening. A poor girl, who has been trained to all the pinchings and scrapings of genteel poverty, will suddenly see wealth before her, and consideration, and importance, all in a moment, offered to her acceptance without any virtue of hers. We ask a great deal in asking young women to be wholly insensible to this chance which may happen at any moment to any one of them, and of which everyone knows instances. It was not anything so magnificent which had suddenly fallen in Joan’s way; but it was a great change, an offer as important as if it had come from King Cophetua; far more important indeed, for sensible Joan would have made short work with his majesty. This, however, was the most sensible, the most suitable of arrangements. It was exactly what she would have liked had she exercised the widest choice. The perfect appropriateness of it even subdued the inward mirth with which the idea, when it first presented itself to her mind, had been received. Though she still had a laugh now and then, it was gradually hushed by this conviction. “I thought I might had a waur offer,” she would say to herself now and then. She was like the heroine of that song. Her “braw wooer” was not without a touch of the ridiculous about him. She was disposed to jibe at his good looks, and his politeness, and his fine talk; but notwithstanding:—
“I never let on that I kent or I cared,
But I thought I might had a waur offer, waur offer,
I thought I might had a waur offer.”
Joan was no singer; but it was astonishing how often that refrain came from her lips about this time. She was no singer; but she was a woman who sang at her work, as women used to do more than they do now. Perhaps drawingroom performers sing all the better because our ears have grown more particular; but of all cheerful things in this uncheerful world there are few so pleasant as the half-conscious song with which a cheery worker accompanies his or her occupations. Joan was always giving vent to some snatch of homely music in this way. But at the present moment she confined herself to that refrain: “I thought I might had a waur offer, waur offer. I thought I might had a waur offer.
“You are always singing that, Joan,” Mrs. Joscelyn said. “I never hear you sing anything else.”
“Am I?” said Joan, with a laugh; and then she grew red, and grave and silent all at once. It was so suitable! Nothing could have been more appropriate. But then, “I’m not partial to him,” she said to herself.
This would have been more on her mind, however, and probably would have come to a more rapid conclusion, if it had not been for the increasing uneasiness about Harry. He did not reply to his mother’s letter; the “course of post” in which she had begged to be answered was far exceeded. That they had not thought much of; but when day succeeded day and no letter came, Mrs. Joscelyn became daily more unhappy, and Joan was more disturbed than she would allow. Even Ralph Joscelyn himself, finding out, no one knew how, for he was not in the habit of interesting himself in the family correspondence, that there was no news of Harry, began to be seen looking out for the postman, and keeping a watch upon the countenances of the women and their communications together. He was uneasy as he had never been known to be before. When he was found to share that anxiety about the post which was so habitual to the others he looked confused, and murmured something about the Sister to Scythian and a bargain which had fallen through. Then his disquietude got so great that he spoke—not to his wife, whose constant wringing of her hands, and drawn countenance and anxious eyes called from him continual bursts of abuse—but to Joan, who, daily becoming more and more anxious herself, was exasperated by them also.
“You have word of that lad, I suppose?” Joscelyn said.
“No, we have no word.”
“He’s a young devil,” said his father, “he’s putting out his temper on you.”
“You’ve always set him a good example in that way,” said Joan, promptly; “maybe he is, and maybe not.”
“Hold your dashed tongue,” said Joscelyn; “what else could it be?”
“How am I to answer you if I hold my tongue? There’s a many reasons possible. He may have made up his mind to write no more to a house he was turned out of.”
“Stuff and nonsense! he was coming in at a disgraceful hour, and the door was locked, at a time when every honest door is locked.”
“I’m glad you can ease your conscience in that way,” said Joan; “it was at no disgraceful hour; all the boys have been out later, you’ve been out later, many’s the time, yourself. He may have made up his mind as I say,” she added, distinctly, “to disown the house as his home, at which I for one would not wonder: or he may,” and here her voice faltered, “he may—and that’s what I fear—have gone off as lads do——”
“Rubbish! blanked nonsense!” cried the father, but his ruddy countenance paled a little. “What do you mean by going off as lads do?”
“I cannot tell you,” said Joan, with sober disdain, “if you don’t know.”
“It’s just a dashed story you’ve got up,” her father said.
“It’s no story at all, for I hope it isn’t so, and I don’t know what it is—but to my mind that’s the most like. I wouldn’t put it into mother’s head for all the world, poor dear!”
“Dash you!” cried Joscelyn, “you are finely taken up with your mother. I never saw the like before; you have been easy enough about your mother and all her whining and complaining. What makes you set up this dashed nonsense, enough to make a man sick, now?”
“I never minded before,” said Joan, “maybe more shame to me. I’m very anxious about Harry myself, and that makes me understand the trouble mother’s in, poor dear!”
“Dash you and her too! It’s all the blanked nonsense he’s got from her, the young idiot!”
“That’s true: he has a deal of mother in him, poor lad!” Joan said, drying her eyes.
Joscelyn lifted his hand, and clenched his fist as if he would have given her a blow.
“You’re all a set of —— ——s!” he cried, launching furiously forth into the kind of eloquence which was habitual to him; but furious as he was, and brutal, there was a keen arrow of pain in his heart too; he was angry with himself. He could have beaten himself with that big fist. What a fool he had been to expose himself, to put it in the power of any lad to expose him! There was nothing he could not have done to himself in the rage of self-reproach and shame which had come upon him. It was a little for Harry—he was not unnatural, and he had a feeling for his offspring—but it was much more that he had laid himself open to the remarks of the county, and every friend and every enemy who might like to gossip about him and say the worst that there was to say.
Perhaps there was a little satisfaction in Joan’s bosom at the sight of the disturbance in her father’s. He deserved to be disturbed. She was glad that he should suffer, that he should get in some degree the recompense of his ill-doings. But this was only a transitory diversion to the painful strain of her thoughts. The waiting was hard to bear. How their hearts beat when they saw the postman approaching along the dusty road, and there was a terrible moment of doubt as to whether or not he would turn up the path to the White House! And when he came there was a still hotter excitement as Joan, with fingers which never had trembled before, turned over the letters. She could not trust herself to speak, but only shook her head, looking at her mother at the window. How many days? It seemed to have been going on for years, not days, this intolerable suspense, which, though it was unbearable, had to be borne. Only about a fortnight had elapsed, however, when there came a packet with the Liverpool postmark. It was a large one, and seemed to contain so much that for the first moment Joan scarcely noticed that the address was not written in her brother’s hand. She took it into the parlour, her heart beating loudly, and broke open the envelope, while her mother, trembling, hurried to her side full of eager joy. There tumbled out upon the table, however, four or five closed letters, all addressed to Harry—and nothing more. Then it was that Joan turned the envelope and looked at what was written upon it: and only then discovered that the packet was addressed to Harry, and bore the stamp of his office. Mrs. Joscelyn’s letter was among the other contents. Harry had never received it. The two looked at each other blankly, turning over the letters which had fallen on the table with trembling hands. It was like touching something dead.
“What does it mean? Oh Joan, what is the meaning of it?” Mrs. Joscelyn said.
Joan turned them all over again, aghast, almost stupid in her dismay. “It means he has never got your letter, mother; then how could he answer it, poor lad?” she said, with a keen impulse of angry despair.
This seemed reasonable enough in the first stupefaction; but afterwards the mother gave a lamentable cry. “Why did he not get it?—why did he not get my letter, Joan?”
“He has not been there, mother.” Joan spoke in a low tone of terror, as if she were afraid to trust the air with that too evident conclusion—for where, if he were not there, could Harry be? Then she examined the outside envelope over again with anxious futility, as if that could give her any information. Written inside the flap was the request, “Please acknowledge receipt.” The envelope bore the office stamp. All was done in the most business-like way. She had seen Harry’s letters come to him in exactly the same envelope when he was at home for one of his holidays. The inference that he was still at home, that all was peaceful and well, and his letters forwarded to him in the usual course, overpowered Joan, calm as she was. A few great tears, looking like large raindrops as they pelted down upon the letters, fell from her eyes in spite of herself. “There never was such a fool as I am,” she cried with a hysterical laugh, “I’m worse than mother or anybody. What’s so wonderful about it? He’s gone to London or somewhere, having still his time to himself—why should he have gone back to the office and spoiled his holiday. That would just have been—preposterous.” This big word gave her a certain relief. It seemed to take some of the weight off her heart as she brought it out. “Preposterous,” she repeated, looking almost angrily at her mother. “You might see that, without asking me.”
Mrs. Joscelyn gazed at her, half carried away by this outburst of what looked like argument; but then she sank into a chair and wrung her hands, and began to weep. “Oh Joan, where is he, where is he, if he is not there? What has happened to my boy?”
That was a terrible day to everybody concerned. Joscelyn himself came in under pretence of wanting something, and seeing the letters lying on the table stooped to look at them with a face which grew very dark in spite of himself. He looked at the women, one seated crying in her chair, the other standing stupefied, staring about her, not knowing what she did.
“Has he come back?” he said, the words escaping him in spite of himself.
And these two who had been under his rule so long, the timid, feeble wife, the sober-minded daughter, rose, as it were, and flung themselves upon him. They who had been so voiceless hitherto, fell upon him like a hail-storm, taking him by surprise, beating him down with a sudden storm of wrath and reproach. His wife, who had never ventured to say her soul was her own; who had lain still, weeping and terrified, allowing him to be the master on that night when all the harm had been done; and Joan, who had borne his fury so often with stolid composure, making no reply. All the pent up grievances of years he heard of now, with an astonishment, to hear their opinion of him, which was equal to his stupefaction at their rebellion. Even the harshest domestic tyrant finds it difficult to face the fact that he is a terror to his surroundings, still more that they see through his external bigness, and know him to be at bottom a coward and a bully. Joscelyn was absolutely cowed by this revelation. He tried a few volleys of oaths, like those which usually forced them into silence; but without effect. He raised his voice and thundered; but they did not care. It was Mrs. Joscelyn who led this attack.
“Come back?” she cried; “he will never come back—how dare you stand there and look at his letters that are like his graveclothes, and ask ‘Has he come back?’ You that have driven him from his home—that have turned his sweetness into bitterness; that have driven my boy from me, and broken my heart. Oh, you may shake your fist at me! What do I care? what do you suppose I care? Do you think I mind if you killed me? You have done far worse; you have driven away my boy, and in all the world I do not know where he is. Oh man, get out of my sight. I cannot endure the sight of you. I cannot endure the sight of you!” she cried.
And Joscelyn stood aghast. He was pale at first, then a purple flood of rage came over him. “You dashed old witch—you miserable blanked old cat—you —— —— ——” He caught his breath in his consternation and fury. He did not know what to say.
“Oh, what do I care for your swearing,” she cried, with an almost majestic wave of her thin white hand. “Go away, for God’s sake, go away—what are your oaths and your bad words to me? I’m used to them now. Many a time I have been terrified by them; but you can’t frighten me now. What do they mean?—nothing! I am used to them; you might as well save yourself the trouble. I am not afraid of anything you can do. You’ve done your worst, Ralph Joscelyn; you have driven away my boy, my boy. Oh Joan, where is my boy?” the poor woman cried, turning from her husband with another indignant wave of her hand, to her daughter, with whom she never had been linked in such tender and close union before.
“By ——!” cried Joscelyn, “I’ll teach you, madam, to defy me. Your boy, as you call him, had better never show his face again here. Your boy! if you come to that, what have you got to do with one of them? They’re my children, and you’re my wife, and it’s me you’ve got to look to and take your orders from, you dashed old wild-cat, you blanked old ——!”
“Oh, hold your tongue, father!” Joan cried, turning her head in angry impatience. “Mother’s quite right, we’re used to all that.”
What could a man so assailed do? He could not get over his astonishment. He remained finally master of the field, in so far that they left him there volleying forth those thunders which they disdained, and saw to be nothing but words. Joscelyn recognized with the strangest humiliation that they were but words, when his women, his slaves, first ventured to let him know that they saw through him, and found them all to be froth and emptiness. If somebody had discovered Jove’s thunderbolts to be but fireworks, the Father of the Gods must have fallen to the ground like an exhausted rocket. Joscelyn felt something like this. He came down whirling from his imaginary eminence, down into an abyss of emptiness and darkness, and struck blankly against a real something which resisted him, which he could move no longer. He was not without feeling, and he became suddenly dumb as they closed the door, leaving him a much discomfited hero in possession of the field. Rebellion in his house, his slaves emancipated, the boy lost, and the whole story likely to be published over the length and breadth of the county, and himself exposed to every petty gossip and critical assembly in it. This was a terrible downfall for such a man to bear.
That day messengers were sent off to Tom and Will, who came, in haste, thinking it was a funeral to which they were summoned, to hear all the tale, and to give their solemn verdict against their father. They were not afraid of him now; they could swear themselves almost as fiercely as he could, and he did not overawe them as he used to do.
“The governor oughtn’t to have done it,” Will said to Tom.
“He ought to have had more consideration,” Tom replied. “It doesn’t do to treat young fellows so; I wouldn’t have put up with it myself, and no more will Harry.”
“If we’ve seen the last of him,” said the other, “we know where to lay the fault.”
There could not have been a more complete family unanimity on this point at least.