Joan went to her room and took off her wet things, for she was soaked to the skin, clothing herself anew in her Sunday dress a soft grey garment, with little frills about the neck and wrists. Then she brushed her waving brown hair, twisting it into a loose knot at the back of her head; and, though she did not think of it, no style could have been more becoming to her. Her toilet completed, a few minutes after her aunt had left the house, she went to the parlour to get herself some tea, of which she drank two or three cups, for she felt unusually thirsty, but she could scarcely swallow a mouthful. The food seemed to choke her, and when she attempted to eat the effort brought on a feeling of dizziness and a tingling sensation in her limbs.
“I wonder what is the matter with me?” she said to herself. “I feel as though my veins were on fire. I suppose that these scenes have upset me; or perhaps that tea was too strong. Well, I must go and look after Captain Graves. Aunt won’t be back till twelve o’clock or so, and it’s my last night, so I had better make the most of it. I dare say that they will turn me out of the house to-morrow.” And, with a bitter little laugh, she took up the candle preparatory to going to Henry’s room.
Near the door Joan paused, and, whether by chance or by design, turned to look at herself in an oak-framed mirror that hung upon the wall, whither doubtless it had been brought from some old house in the neighbourhood, for it was costly and massive in make. Her first glance was cursory, then she held up the candle and began to examine herself more attentively, since, perhaps for the first time in her life, her appearance fascinated her, and she became fully aware of her own loveliness. Indeed, in that moment she was lovely as lovely as we may imagine the ancient Helen to have been, or any of those women who have set the world aflame. Her brown eyes were filled with a strange light beneath their curving lashes and the clear-cut heavy lids; her sweet mouth drooped a little, like that of a sleeping child, showing the ivory of her teeth between the parted lips; her cheeks glowed like the bloom on a peach; and above, the masses of her gold-brown hair shone faintly in the candlelight. Perhaps it was that the grey dress set it off more perfectly than usual at least it seemed to Joan, considering herself critically, that her form was worthy of the face above it; and, in truth, it would have been hard to find a woman cast in a more perfect mould. Tall, and somewhat slender for her height, her every movement was full of grace, and revealed some delicacy of limb or neck or carriage.
Seeing herself thus, a new light broke upon Joan’s mind, and she understood how it came about that Samuel Rock worshipped her so madly. Well, if mere beauty could move one man thus, why should not beauty and tenderness and love—ah! love that could not be measured—suffice to move another? She smiled at the thought—a slow, sweet smile; and with the smile a sense of her own power entered into her, a power that she had never learned until this moment.
Except for the occasional visits of Mrs. Gillingwater, bringing him his tea or dinner, Henry had been alone that day since one o’clock. Nearly nine weeks had passed from the date of his accident, and although he did not dare as yet to set his injured limb to the ground, in all other respects he was perfectly well, but thinner in the face, which was blanched by confinement and adorned with a short chestnut-coloured beard. So well was he, indeed, that he had been allowed to leave his bed and to take exercise on crutches in the room, though the doctor considered that it would not be wise for him to risk the shaking of a journey home, or even to venture out at present. In this view Henry had acquiesced, although his sister Ellen pooh-poohed it, saying that she was certain that he could be brought back safely. The truth was that at the time he had no yearning for the society of his family, or indeed for any other society than that in which he found himself. He was glad to be away from Rosham and the carking care that brooded on the place; he was glad to escape from Ellen and the obnoxious Edward.
Nor did he wish to visit Mr. Levinger at present, for he knew that then he would be expected to propose to his daughter, which for many reasons he did not desire to do. Although she had exaggerated its effects—for, in fact, the matter had almost slipped from his memory—Emma, poor girl, had been right to some extent in her forebodings as to the results of her passionate outburst upon Henry’s mind, should he ever hear the story of it. Not that he thought the worse of her: no man thinks the worse of a woman because she either is, or pretends to be, in love with him; but the incident irritated him in that it gave a new twist to a tangled skein. How could he remain on terms of ordinary friendship with a girl who had made such an avowal? It seemed to him difficult, if not impossible. Surely he must either place himself in regard to her upon the footing which she appeared to desire, or he must adopt the easier alternative and keep away from her altogether.
No, he wanted none of their company, and he was glad that it was still unsafe for him to travel, though he longed for the fresh air. But that he did wish for some company became evident to him this afternoon, although he had received with a certain amount of resignation a note in which Ellen informed him that their father seemed so fidgety and unwell that she could not drive over to Bradmouth that day. He could no longer disguise the truth from himself, it was the society of Joan that he desired; and of Joan he had seen less and less during the last fortnight. Neither she nor anybody else had said anything to that effect, but he was convinced that she was being kept out of his way. Why should she be kept out of his way? A guilty conscience gave him the answer readily enough: because it was not desirable that they should remain upon terms of such intimacy. Alas! it was so. He had fought against the fact, ridiculing and denying it up to this very hour, but now that fact had become too strong for him, and as he sat a prey to loneliness and uncomfortable thoughts, he was fain to acknowledge before the tribunal of his own heart that, if he was not in love with Joan, he did not know what was the matter with him. At the least it had come to this: her presence seemed necessary to him, and the prospective pain of parting from her absolutely intolerable.
It is not too much to say that this revelation of his sad plight dismayed Henry. For a moment, indeed, his faculties and judgment were paralysed. To begin with, for him it was a new experience, and therefore the more dangerous and crushing. If this were not a mere momentary madness, and if the girl cared for him as it would appear that he cared for her, what could be the issue? He had no great regard for the prejudice and conventions of caste, but, circumstanced as he was, it seemed absolutely impossible that he should marry her. Had he been independent, provided always that she did care for him, he would have done it gladly enough. But he was not independent, and such an act would mean the utter ruin of his family. More, indeed: if he could bring himself to sacrifice them, he had now no profession and no income. And how would a man hampered and dragged down by a glaring mésalliance be able to find fresh employment by means of which he could support a wife?
No, there was an end of it. The thing could not possibly be done. What, then, was the alternative? Clearly one only. To go, and at once. Some men so placed might have found a third solution, but Henry did not belong to this class. His character and sense of right rebelled against any such notion, and the habits of self-restraint in which he had trained himself for years afforded what he believed to be an impregnable rampart, however frail might be the citadel within.
So thought Henry, who as yet had never matched himself in earnest in such a war. There he sat, strong in his rectitude and consciousness of virtue, however much his heart might ache, making mental preparations for his departure on the morrow, till at last he grew tired of them, and found himself wishing that Joan would come to help him to get ready.
He was lying with his back to the door on a sofa placed between the bed and the wide hearth, upon which a small fire had been lighted, for the night was damp and chilly; and just as this last vagrant wish flitted through his mind, a sound attracted his attention, and he turned to discover that it had been realized as swiftly as though he were the owner of Aladdin’s lamp. For there, the candle still in her hand, stood Joan, looking at him from the farther side of the hearth.
It has been said that she was struck by her own appearance as she passed towards his room; and that the change she saw in herself cannot have been altogether fancy is evident from the exclamation which burst from Henry as his eyes fell upon her, an exclamation so involuntary that he scarcely knew what he was saying until the words had passed his lips:
“Great Heaven! Joan, how lovely you are to-night! What have you been doing to yourself?”
Next second he could have bitten out his tongue: he had hardly ever paid her a compliment before, and this was the moment that he had chosen to begin! His only excuse was that he could not help himself; the sudden effect of her beauty, which was so strangely transfigured, had drawn the words from him as the sun draws mist.
“Am I?” she asked dreamily; “I am glad if it pleases you.”
Here was a strange beginning to his pending announcement of departure, thought Henry. Clearly, he must recover the situation before he made it.
“Where have you been all this afternoon?” he asked in an indifferent voice.
“I have been out walking.”
“What, alone, and in the rain?”
“I did not say that I was alone.”
“Whom were you with, then? It can’t have been your aunt.”
“I was with Mr. Samuel Rock: I mean that he met me.”
“What, that farmer who Mrs. Gillingwater told me admires you so much?”
“Yes. And what else did she tell you?”
“Well, I think she said she hoped that he would propose to you; but I didn’t pay much attention, it seemed too odd.”
“Well, however odd it may be, that is just what he has been doing,” answered Joan deliberately.
Now Henry understood it all: Joan had accepted this man, and it was love for him that made her breast heave and her eyes shine like stars. He ought to have been delighted—the difficulty was done with, and no trouble could possibly ensue—and behold, instead he was furious. He ought to have congratulated her, to have said the right thing in the right way; but instead of congratulation the only words that passed his lips were such as might have been uttered by a madly jealous and would-be sarcastic boy.
“He proposed to you, did he, and in the rain? How charming! I suppose he kissed you too?”
“Yes,” replied Joan, “twice.” And slowly she raised her eyes and fixed them upon his face.
What Henry said immediately after that announcement he was never quite able to remember, but it was something strong and almost incoherent. Set on fire by his smouldering jealousy, suddenly his passion flamed up in the magnetised atmosphere of her presence, for on that night her every word and look seemed to be magnetic and to pierce him through and through. For a minute or more he denounced her, and all the while Joan stood silent, watching him with her wide eyes, the light shining on her face. At last he ceased and she spoke.
“I do not understand you,” she said. “Why are you angry with me? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he gasped. “I have no right to be angry. I think I must be mad, for I can’t even recollect what I have been saying. I suppose that I was astonished to hear that you were engaged to Mr. Rock, that’s all. Please forgive me and forget my words. And, if you don’t mind, perhaps you had better go away.”
“I don’t wish to forget them, although I dare say that they mean nothing; and I am not engaged to Mr. Rock—I hate him,” answered Joan in the same slow voice; adding, “If you have patience, will you listen to a story? I should like to tell it you before we part, for I think that we have been good friends, and friends should know each other, so that they may remember one another truly when their affection has become nothing but a memory.”
Henry nodded; and still very deliberately, as though she wished to avoid all appearance of haste or of excitement, Joan sat herself down upon a footstool in front of the dying fire and began to speak, always keeping her sad eyes fixed upon his face.
“It is not such a very long story,” she said, “and the only part of it that has any interest began on that day when we met. I suppose they have told you that I am nobody, and worse than nobody. I do not know who my father was, though I think”—and she smiled as though some coincidence had struck her—“that he was a gentleman whom my mother fell in love with. Mr. Levinger has to do with me in some way; I believe that he paid for my education when I went to school, but I am not sure even about this, and why he should have done so I can’t tell. Mr. Samuel Rock is a dissenter and a farmer; they say that he is the richest man in Bradmouth. I don’t know why it was no fault of mine, for I always disliked him very much but he took a fancy to me years ago, although he said nothing about it at the time. After I came back from school my aunt urged me continually to accept his attentions, but I kept out of his way until that afternoon when I met you. Then he found me sitting under the tower at Ramborough Abbey, where I had gone to be alone because I was cross and worried; and he proposed to me, and was so strange and violent in his manner that he frightened me. What I was most afraid of, however, was that he would tell my aunt that I had refused him for I did refuse him and that she would make my life more of a misery to me than it is already, for you see I have no friends here, where everybody looks down upon me, and nothing to do. So in the end I struck a bargain with him, that he should leave me alone for six months, and that then I would give him a final answer, provided that he promised to say nothing of what had happened to my aunt. He has not kept his promise, for to-day he waylaid me and was very insolent and brutal, so much so that at last he caught hold of me and kissed me against my will, tearing my dress half off me, and I pushed him away and told him what I thought of him. The end of it was that he swore that he would marry me yet, and left me. Then I came back home, and an hour ago I told my aunt what had happened, and there was a scene. She said that either I should marry Samuel Rock or be turned out of the house in a day or two, so I suppose that I must go. And that is all my story.”
“The brute!” muttered Henry. “I wish I had him on board a man-of-war: I’d teach him manners. And what are you going to do, Joan?”
“I don’t know. Work if I can, and starve if I can’t. It doesn’t matter; nobody will miss me, or care what happens to me.”
“Don’t say that, Joan,” he answered huskily; “I—I care, for one.”
“It is very good of you to say so, but you see you have others to care for besides me. There is Miss Levinger, for instance.”
“I have told you once already that I am not engaged to Miss Levinger.”
“Yes, but a time will come when you will tell me, or others, that you are; and I think that you will be right—she is a sweet girl. And now, sir,” she added, with a total change of manner, “I think that I had better tidy up and bid you good night, and good-bye, for I dare say that I shall come back here no more. I can’t wait to be driven out like a strange dog.” And she began to perform her various sick-room duties with a mechanical precision.
Henry watched her for a while, until at length all was done and she made ready to go. Then the heart which he had striven to repress burst its bonds, and he sat up and said to her, in a voice that was almost a cry,—
“Oh! Joan, I don’t know what has come to me, but I can’t bear to part with you, though it is best that you should go, for I cannot offer to marry you. I wish to Heaven that I could.”
She came and stood beside him.
“I will remember those words as long as I live,” she said, “because I know that they are true. I know also why you could not marry me; for we hear all the gossip, and putting that aside it would be your ruin, though for me it might be heaven.”
“Do you really care about me, then, Joan?” he asked anxiously, “and so much as that? You must forgive me, but I am ignorant in these things. I didn’t quite understand. I feel that I have become a bit foolish, but I didn’t know that you had caught the disease.”
“Care about you! Anyway, I care enough not to let you marry me even if you would. I think that to bring ruin and disgrace upon a man and all his family would be a poor way to show one’s love for him. You see, you have everything to lose. You are not like me who have nothing, not even a name. Care about you!” she went on, with a strange, almost unnatural energy—and her low, caressing voice seemed to thrill every fibre of his heart and leave them trembling, as harp-strings thrill and tremble beneath the hand of the player—“I wonder if there are any words in the world that could make you understand how much I care. Listen. When first I saw you yonder by the Abbey, a change crept over me; and when you lay there senseless in my arms, I became a new woman, as though I were born again—a woman whose mind I could not read, for it was different from my own. Afterwards I read it; it was when they thought that you were dying, and suddenly I learned that you would live. When I heard Miss Levinger cry out and saw her fall, then I read it, and knew that I also loved you. I should have gone; but I didn’t go, for I could not tear myself away from you. Oh! pity me, and do not think too hardly of me; for remember who and what I am—a woman who has never had any one to love, father or mother or sister or friend, and yet who desires love above everything. And now it had come to me at last; and that one love of mine made up for all that I had missed, and was greater and stronger in itself than the hundred different loves of happier girls can be. I loved you, and I loved you, and I love you. Yes, I wish you to know it before we part, and I hope that you will never quite forget it, for none will ever love you so much again as I have, and do, and shall do till I die. And now it is all done with, and of it there will remain nothing except some pain for you, and for me my memories and a broken heart. What is that you say again about marrying me? Have I not told you that you shall not do it? though I shall never forget that you have even thought of such a thing.”
“I say that I will marry you, Joan,” broke in Henry, in a hoarse voice. “Why should I spoil your life and mine for the sake of others?”
“No, no, you will not. Why should you spoil Emma Levinger’s life, and your sister’s, and your mother’s, and bring yourself to disgrace and ruin for the sake of a girl like me? No, you will not. You will bid me farewell, now and for ever.” And she held out her hand to him, while two great tears ran slowly down her face.
He saw the tears, and his heart melted, for they moved him more than all her words.
“My darling!” he whispered, drawing her towards him.
“Yes,” she answered: “kiss away my tears this once, that, remembering it, whatever befalls me, I may weep no more for ever.”