CHAPTER XIII.
A MEETING BY THE MERE.
Mr. Levinger’s confidential interview with Mrs. Gillingwater was not long in bearing fruit. Joan soon became aware that her aunt was watching her closely, and most closely of all whenever she chanced to be in attendance on Henry, with whom she was now left alone as little as possible. The effect of this knowledge was to produce an intense irritation in her mind. Her conscience was guilty, but Joan was not a woman to take warning from a guilty conscience. Indeed, its sting only drove her faster along the downward road, much as a high-mettled horse often rebels furiously under the punishment of the whip. There was a vein of self-willed obstinacy and of “devil-may-cared-ness” in Joan’s nature that, dormant hitherto, at this crisis of her life began to assert itself with alarming power. Come what might, she was determined to have her way and not to be thwarted. There is this to be said in excuse for her, that now her whole being was dominated by her passion for Henry. In the ordinary sense of the word it was not love that possessed her, nor was it strictly what is understood by passion, but rather, if it can be defined at all, some strange new force, some absorbing influence that included both love and passion, and yet had mysterious qualities of its own. Fortunately, with English women such infatuations are not common, though they are to be found frequently enough among people of the Latin race, where sometimes they result in blind tragedies that seem almost inexplicable to our sober sense. But, whatever the cause, Joan had fallen a victim to this fate, and now it mastered her, body and mind and soul. She had never cared for any one before, and on Henry she let loose the pent-up affections of a lifetime. No breath of passion had ever moved her, and now a look from his eyes or a touch of his hand stirred all the fibres of her nature as the wind stirs every leaf upon a tree. He was her darling, her desire. Till she had learnt to love him she had not known the powers and the possibilities of life, and if she could win his love she would even have been willing to pay for it at the price of her own death.
The approach of such an infatuation would have terrified most girls: they would have crushed it, or put themselves beyond its reach before it took hold of them. But then the majority of young English women, even of those who belong to the humbler walks of life, do not stand by their own strength alone. Either they have an inherited sense of the proprieties that amounts almost to an instinct, or they possess strong religious principles, or there are those about them who guide and restrain any dangerous tendency in their natures. At the very least they are afraid of losing the respect and affection of their friends and relatives, and of becoming a mark for the sneers and scandal of the world in which they move.
In Joan’s case these influences were for the most part lacking. From childhood she had lived beneath the shadow of a shame that, in some degree, had withered her moral sense; no father or mother gave her their tender guidance, and of religion she had been taught so little that, though she conformed to its outward ceremonies, it could not be said to have any real part in her life. Relatives she had none except her harsh and coarse-minded aunt; her few friends made at a middle-class school were now lost to her, for with the girls of her own rank in the village she would not associate, and those of better standing either did, or affected to look down upon her. In short, her character was compounded of potentialities for good and evil; she was sweet and strong-natured and faithful, but she had not learned that these qualities are of little avail to bring about the happiness or moral well-being of her who owns them, unless they are dominated by a sense of duty. Having such a sense, the best of us are liable to error in this direction or in that; wanting it, we must indeed be favoured if we escape disaster among the many temptations of life. It was Joan’s misfortune rather than her fault, for she was the victim of her circumstances and not of any innate depravity, that she lacked this controlling power, and in this defenceless state found herself suddenly exposed to the fiercest temptation that can assail a woman of her character and gifts, the temptation to give way to a love which, if it did not end in empty misery, could only bring shame upon herself and ceaseless trouble and remorse to its object.
Thus it came about that during these weeks Joan lived in a wild and fevered dream, lived for the hour only, thinking little and caring less of what the future might bring forth. Her purpose, so far as she can be said to have had one, was to make Henry love her, and to the consummation of this end she brought to bear all her beauty and every power of her mind. That success must mean sorrow to her and to him did not affect her, though in her wildest moments she never dreamed of Henry as her husband. She loved him to-day, and to-day he was there for her to love: let the morrow look to itself, and the griefs that it might bring.
If such was Joan’s attitude towards Henry, it may be asked what was Henry’s towards Joan. The girl attracted him strangely, after a fashion in which he had never been attracted by a woman before. Her fresh and ever-varying loveliness was a continual source of delight to him, as it must have been to any man; but by degrees he became conscious that it was not her beauty alone which moved him. Perhaps it was her tenderness—a tenderness apparent in every word and gesture; or more probably it may have been the atmosphere of love that surrounded her, of love directed towards himself, which gradually conquered him mind and body, and broke down the barrier of his self-control. Hitherto Henry had never cared for any woman, and if women had cared for him he had not understood it. Now he was weak and he was worried, and in his way he also was rebellious, and fighting against a marriage that men and circumstances combined to thrust upon him. Under such conditions it was not perhaps unnatural that he should shrink back from the strict path of interest, and follow that of a spontaneous affection. Joan had taken his fancy from the first moment that he saw her, she had won his gratitude by her bravery and her gentle devotion, and she was a young and beautiful woman. Making some slight allowance for the frailties of human nature, perhaps we need not seek for any further explanation of his future conduct.
For a week or more nothing of importance occurred between them. Indeed, they were very seldom alone together, for whenever Joan’s duty took her to the sick room Mrs. Gillingwater, whom Henry detested, made a point of being present, or did she chance to be called away, his sister Ellen would be certain to appear to take her place, accompanied at times by Edward Milward.
At length, on a certain afternoon, Mrs. Gillingwater ordered Joan to go out walking. Joan did not wish to go out, for the weather threatened rain, also for her own reasons she preferred to remain where she was. But her aunt was peremptory, and Joan started, setting her face towards Ramborough Abbey. Very soon it came on to rain and she had no umbrella, but this accident did not deter her. She had been sent out to walk, and walk she would. To tell the truth, she was thinking little of the weather, for her mind was filled with resentment against her aunt. It was unbearable that she should be interfered with and ordered about like a child. There were a hundred things that she wished to do in the house. Who would give Captain Graves his tea? And she was sure that he would never remember about the medicine unless she was there to remind him.
As Joan proceeded on her walk along the edge of the cliff, she noticed the figure of a man, standing about a quarter of a mile to her right on the crest or hog’s back of land, beyond which lay the chain of melancholy meres, and wondered vaguely what he could be doing there in such weather. At length it occurred to her that it was time to return, for now she was near to Ramborough Abbey. She was weary of the sight of the sea, that moaned sullenly beneath her, half hidden by the curtain of the rain; so she struck across the ridge of land, heedless of the wet saline grasses that swept against her skirt, purposing to walk home by the little sheep-track which follows the edge of the meres in the valley. As she was crossing the highest point of the ridge she saw the man’s figure again. Suddenly it disappeared, and the thought struck her that he might have been following her, keeping parallel to her path. For a moment Joan hesitated, for the country just here was very lonely, especially in such weather; but the next she dismissed her fears, being courageous by nature, and passed on towards the first mere. Doubtless this person was a shepherd looking for a lost sheep, or perhaps a gamekeeper.
The aspect of the lakes was so dreary, and the path so sopping wet, that soon Joan began to wish that she had remained upon the cliff. However, she trudged on bravely, the rain beating in her face till her thin dress was soaked and clung to her shape in a manner that was picturesque but uncomfortable. At the head of the second mere the sheep-walk ran past some clumps of high reeds; and as she approached them Joan, whose eye for natural objects was quick, observed that something had disturbed the wild fowl which haunted the place, for a heron and a mallard rose and circled high in the air, and a brace of curlew zigzagged away against the wind, uttering plaintive cries that reached her for long after they vanished into the mist. Now she had come to the first clump of reeds, when she heard a stir behind them, and a man stepped forward and stood in the middle of the path within three paces of her.
The man was Samuel Rock, clad in a long cloak; and, recognising him, Joan understood that she had been waylaid. She halted and said angrily—for her first feeling was one of indignation:
“What are you doing here, Mr. Rock?”
“Walking, Miss Haste,” he answered nervously; “the same as you.”
“That is not true, Mr. Rock: you were hiding behind those reeds.”
“I took shelter there against the rain.”
“I see; you took shelter from the rain, and on the weather side of the reeds,” she said contemptuously. “Well, do not let me keep you standing in this wet.” And she attempted to pass him.
“It is no use telling you lies,” he muttered sullenly: “I came here to speak to you, where there ain’t none to disturb us.” And as he spoke Samuel placed himself in such a position that it was impossible for her to escape him without actually breaking into a run.
“Why do you follow me,” she said in an indignant voice— “after what you promised, too? Stand aside and let me go home.”
Samuel made no move, but a curious light came into his blue eyes, a light that was not pleasant to see.
“I am thinking I’ve stood aside enough, Joan,” he answered, “and I ain’t a-going to stand aside till all the mischief is done and I am ruined. As for promises, they may go hang: I can’t keep no more of them. So please, you’ll just stand for once, and listen to what I have to say to you. If you are wet you can take my cloak. I don’t mind the rain, and I seem to want some cooling.”
“I’d rather drown than touch anything that belongs to you,” she replied, for her hatred of the man mastered her courtesy and reason. “Say what you’ve got to say and let me go on.”
The remark was an unfortunate one, for it awoke in Samuel’s breast the fury that accompanied and underlay his passion, that fury which had astonished Mr. Levinger.
“Would you, now!” he broke out, his lips turning white with rage. “Well, if half I hear is true, there’s others whose things you don’t mind touching.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Rock?”
“I mean that Captain whom you’re not ashamed to be hanging after all day long. Oh, I know about you. I heard how you was found holding him in your arms, the first day that you met him by the tower yonder, after you’d been flirting with him like any street girl, till you brought him to break his leg. Yes, holding him in those arms of yours—nothing less.”
“Oh! how dare you! How dare you!” she murmured, for no other words would come to her.
“Dare? I dare anything. You’ve worked me up to that, my beauty. Now I dare ask you when you’ll let me make an honest woman of you, if it isn’t too late.”
By this time Joan was positively speechless, so great were the rage and loathing with which this man and his words filled her.
“Oh! Joan,” he went on, with a sudden change of tone, “do you forgive me if I have said sharp things, for it’s you that drives me to them with your cruelty; and I’m ready to forgive you all yours—ay! I’d bear to hear them again, for you look so beautiful when you are like that.”
“Forgive you!” gasped Joan.
But he did not seem to hear. “Let’s have done with this cat-and-dog quarrelling,” he went on; “let’s make it up and get married, the sooner the better—to-morrow if you like. You will never regret it; you’ll be happier then than with that Captain who loves Miss Levinger, not you; and I, I shall be happy too—happy, happy!” And he flung his arms wide, in a kind of ecstasy.
Of all this speech only one sentence seemed to reach Joan’s understanding, at any rate at the time: “who loves Miss Levinger, not you.” Oh! was it true? Did Captain Graves really love Miss Levinger as she knew that Emma loved him? The man spoke certainly, as though he had knowledge. Even in the midst of her unspeakable anger, the thought pierced her like a spear and caused her face to soften and her eyes to grow troubled.
Samuel saw these signs, and misinterpreted them, thinking that her resentment was yielding beneath his entreaties. For a moment he stood searching his mind for more words, but unable to find them; then suddenly he sought to clinch the matter in another fashion, for, following the promptings of an instinct that was natural enough under the circumstances, however ill-advised it might be, suddenly he caught Joan in his long arms, and drawing her to him, kissed her twice passionately upon the face. At first Joan scarcely seemed to understand what had happened—indeed, it was not until Samuel, encouraged by his success, was about to renew his embraces, that she awoke to the situation. Then her action was prompt enough. She was a strong woman, and the emergency doubled her strength. With a quick twisting movement of her form and a push of her hands, she shook off Samuel so effectively, that in staggering back his foot slipped in the greasy soil and he fell upon his side, clutching in his hand a broad fragment from the bosom of Joan’s dress, at which he had caught to save himself.
“Now,” she said, as Samuel rose slowly from the mire, “listen to me. You have had your say, and I will have mine. First understand this: if ever you try to kiss me again it will be the worse for you; for your own sake I advise you not, for I think that I should kill you if I could. I hate you, Samuel Rock, for you have lied to me, and you have insulted me in a way that no woman can forgive. I will never marry you I had rather beg my bread; so if you are wise, you will forget all about me, or at the least keep out of my way.”
Samuel faced the beautiful woman, who, notwithstanding her torn and draggled dress, looked royal in her scorn and anger. He was very white, but his passion seemed to have left him, and he spoke in a quiet voice.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “I’m not going to try and kiss you again. I have kissed you twice; that is enough for me at present. And what’s more, though you may rub your face, you can’t rub it out of your mind. But you are wrong when you say that you won’t marry me, because you will. I know it. And the first time I kiss you after we are married, I will remind you of this, Joan Haste. I am not going to ask you to have me again. I shall wait till you ask me to take you, and then I shall be revenged upon you. That day will come, the day of your shame and need, the day of my reward, when, as I have lain in the dirt before you, you will lie in the dirt before me. That is all I have to say. Good-bye.” And he walked past her, vanishing behind the reeds.
Now it was for the first time that Joan felt afraid. The insult and danger had gone by, yet she was frightened, horribly frightened; for though the thing seemed impossible, it was borne in upon her mind that Samuel Rock’s presentiment was true, and that an hour might come when, in some sense, she would lie in the mire before him and seek a refuge as his wife. She could not conceive any circumstances in which a thing so horrible might happen, for however sore her necessity, though she shrank from death, it seemed to her that it would be better to die rather than to suffer such a fate. Yet so deeply did this terror shake her, that she turned and looked upon the black waters of the mere, wondering if it would not be better to give it the lie once and for all. Then she thought of Henry, and her mood changed, for her mind and body were too healthy to allow her to submit herself indefinitely to such forebodings. Like many women, Joan was an opportunist, and lived very much in the day and for it. These things might be true, but at least they were not yet; if she was destined to be the wife of Samuel Rock in the future, she was her own mistress in the present, and the shadow of sorrow and bonds to come, so she argued, suggested the strongest possible reasons for rejoicing in the light and liberty of the fleeting hour. If she was doomed to an earthly hell, if her hands must be torn by thorns and her eyes grow blind with tears, at least she was minded to be able to remember that once she had walked in Paradise, gathering flowers there, and beholding her heart’s desire.
Thus she reasoned in her folly, as she tramped homewards through the rain, heedless of the fact that no logic could be more fatal, and none more pleasing to that tempter who as of old lurks in paradises such as her fancy painted.
When she reached home Joan found her aunt awaiting her in the bar parlour.
“Who has been keeping you all this time in the wet, Joan?” she asked in a half expectant voice.
Joan lit a candle before she answered, for the place was gloomy.
“Do you wish to know?” she said: “then I will tell you. Your friend, Mr. Samuel Rock, whom you set after me.”
“My friend? And what if he is my friend? I’d be glad if I had a few more such.” By this time the light had burnt up, and Mrs. Gillingwater saw the condition of her niece’s attire. “Good gracious! girl, what have you been doing?” she asked. “Ain’t you ashamed to walk about half stripped like that?”
“People must do what they can’t help, aunt. That’s the work of the friend you are so proud of. I may as well tell you at once, for if I don’t, he will. He came making love to me again, as he has before, and finished up by kissing me, the coward, and when I threw him off he tore my dress.”
“And why couldn’t you let him kiss you quietly, you silly girl?” asked her aunt with indignation. “Now I dare say that you have offended him so that he won’t come forward again, to say nothing of spoiling your new dress. It ain’t a crime for a man to kiss the girl he wants to marry, is it?”
“Why? Because I would rather kiss a rat that’s all. I hate the very sight of him; and as for coming forward again, I only hope that he won’t, for my sake and for his too.”
Now Mrs. Gillingwater arose in her wrath; her coarse face became red and her voice grew shrill.
“You good-for-nothing baggage!” she said; “so that is your game, is it? To go turning up your nose and chucking your impudence in the face of a man like Mr. Rock, who is worth twenty of you, and does you honour by wishing to make a wife of you, you that haven’t a decent name to your back, and he rich enough to marry a lady if he liked, or half a dozen of them for the matter of that. Well, I tell you that you shall have him, or I will know the reason why—ay, and so will others too.”
“I can’t be violent, like you, aunt,” answered Joan, who began to feel as though this second scene would be too much for her; “it isn’t in my nature, and I hate it. But whether I have a name or not—and it is no fault of mine if I have none, though folk don’t seem inclined to let me forget it—I say that I will not marry Samuel Rock. I am a woman full grown and of age; and I know this, that there is no law in the land which can force me to take a husband whom I don’t want. And so perhaps, as we have got to live together, you’ll stop talking about him.”
“Stop talking about him? Never for one hour, till I see you signing your name in the book with him, miss. And as for living together, it won’t be long that we shall do that, unless you drop these tantrums and become sensible. Else you may just tramp it for your living, or go and slave as a housemaid if any one will take you, which I doubt they won’t without a character, for nobody here will say a good word for you, you wilful, stuck-up thing, for all your fine looks that you are so proud of, and that’ll be the ruin of you yet if you’re not careful, as they were of your mother before you.”
Joan sank into a chair and made no answer. The woman’s violence beat her down and was hateful to her. Almost rather would she have faced Samuel Rock, for with him her sex gave her a certain advantage.
“I know what you are after,” went on Mrs. Gillingwater, with gathering vehemence. “Do you suppose that I have not seen through you all these weeks, though you are so cunning? You are making up to him, you are; not that I have a word to say against him, for he is a nice gentleman enough, only, like the rest of them, so soft that he’ll let a pretty face fool him for all his seafaring in foreign parts. Well, look here, Joan: I’ll speak to you plain and plump. We never were mother and daughter, so it is no use pretending what we don’t feel, and I won’t put up with that from you which I might perhaps from my own child, if I had one. You’ve given me lots of truck with your contrary ways, ever since you were a little one, and I’m not minded to stand much more of it, for the profit don’t run to the worry. What I want you to understand is, that I am set on your pulling it off with Samuel Rock like a broody hen on a nest egg, and I mean to see that chick hatch out; never you mind for why—that’s my affair. If you can’t see your way to that, then off you go, and pretty sharp too. There, I have said my say, and you can think it over. Now you had best change your clothes and go and look after the Captain, for I have got business abroad to-night. If you don’t mend your manners, it will be for the last time, I can tell you.”
Joan rose and obeyed without a word.
Mrs. Gillingwater watched her pass, and fell into a reflective mood.
“She is a beauty and no mistake,” she thought to herself; “I never saw such another in all my born days. Her mother was well enough, but she wasn’t in it with Joan; and what’s more, I like her pride. Why should she take that canting chap if she don’t want to? I’m paid to back him, and a day’s work for a day’s wage, that’s my motto. But I’d rather see her marry the Captain, and sit in the church a lady, with a fur round her neck and a carriage waiting outside, than snuffle in a chapel praising the Lord with a pack of oily-faced children. If she had the go of a heifer calf, she would marry him though; he is bound to be a baronet, and it would make a ladyship of her, which with a little teaching is just what she is fit to be; for if he ain’t almost as sweet on her and small wonder after all that nursing as she is on him, I was born in the Flegg Hundred, that’s all. But go is just what Joan ain’t got, not when she can make anything for herself out of it anyway; she’d do what you like for love, but she wouldn’t turn her finger round a teacup to crown herself a queen. Well, there is no helping them as won’t help themselves, so I am all for Samuel Rock and a hundred pounds in my pocket, especially as I dare say that I can screw another hundred out of him if I square Joan, to say nothing of a trifle from the Captain over and above the board for holding my tongue. I suppose he will marry old Levinger’s girl, the Captain will; a pale, puling-faced thing she is, and full of soft words as a boiled potato with flour, but she’s got plenty of that as will make her look rosy to any landlord in these times. Still, hang me, if I was a man, if I wouldn’t rather take Joan and those brown eyes of hers, and snap my fingers at the world, the flesh, and the devil.”
Who or what Mrs. Gillingwater meant by “the world, the flesh, and the devil” is not quite evident, but certainly they symbolised persons or conveyed some image to her mind in this connection, for, suiting the action to the word, she snapped her fingers thrice at the empty air, and then sought her bonnet prior to some private expedition in pursuance of pleasure, or more probably of profit.