Joan Haste by H. Rider Haggard (cat reading book .TXT) 📖
- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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result is that he will never be the same man again.”
Her father spoke with so much suppressed energy that Emma looked at
him in astonishment, for of late years, at any rate, he had been
accustomed to act calmly and to speak temperately.
“Is Captain Graves’s case so serious?”
“From what young Salter tells me I gather that it is about as bad as
it can be of its kind. He has fractured his leg in a very awkward
place, there is some hæmorrhage, and he lay exposed for nearly five
hours, and had to be carried several miles.”
“What will happen to him, then?” asked Emma in alarm. “I thought that
the worst of it was over.”
“I can’t tell you. It depends on Providence and his constitution; but
what seems likely is that they will be forced to amputate his leg and
make him a hopeless cripple for life.”
“Oh!” said Emma, catching her breath like one in pain; “I had no idea
that it was so bad. This is terrible.” And for a moment she leant on
the back of a chair to support herself.
“Yes, it is black enough; but we cannot help by stopping here, so we
may as well drive home. I will send to inquire for him this evening.”
So they went, and never had Emma a more unhappy drive. She was looking
forward so much to Captain Graves’s visit, and now he lay
wounded—dangerously ill. The thought wrung her heart, and she could
almost find it in her gentle breast to detest the girl who, however
innocently, had been the cause of all the trouble.
AZRAEL’S WING
For the next two days, notwithstanding the serious condition of his
broken leg, Henry seemed to go on well, till even his mother and Emma
Levinger, both of whom were kept accurately informed of his state,
ceased to feel any particular alarm about him. On the second day Mrs.
Gillingwater, being called away to attend to some other matter, sent
for Joan—who, although her arm was still in a sling, had now almost
recovered—to watch in the sick room during her absence. She came and
took her seat by the bed, for at the time Henry was asleep. Shortly
afterwards he awoke and saw her.
“Is that you, Miss Haste?” he said. “I did not know that you cared for
nursing.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Joan. “My aunt was obliged to go out for a little
while, and, as you are doing so nicely, she said that she thought I
might be trusted to look after you till she came back.”
“It is very kind of you, I am sure,” said Henry. “Sick rooms are not
pleasant places. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me some of that
horrid stuff—barley-water I think it is. I am thirsty.”
Joan handed him the glass and supported his head while he drank. When
he had satisfied his thirst he said:
“I have never thanked you yet for your bravery. I do thank you
sincerely, Miss Haste, for if I had fallen on to those spikes there
would have been an end of me. I saw them as I was hanging, and thought
that my hour had come.”
“And yet he told me to ‘stand clear’!” reflected Joan; but aloud she
said:
“Oh! pray, pray don’t thank me, sir. It is all my fault that you have
met with this dreadful accident, and it breaks my heart to think of
it.” And as she spoke a great tear ran down her beautiful face.
“Come, please don’t cry: it upsets me; if the smash was anybody’s
fault, it was my own. I ought to have known better.”
“I will try not, sir,” answered Joan, in a choking voice; “but aunt
said that you weren’t to talk, and you are talking a great deal.”
“All right,” he replied: “you stop crying and I’ll stop talking.”
As may be guessed after this beginning, from that hour till the end of
his long and dangerous illness, Joan was Henry’s most constant
attendant. Her aunt did the rougher work of the sick room, indeed, but
for everything else he depended upon her; clinging to her with a
strange obstinacy that baffled all attempts to replace her by a more
highly trained nurse. On one occasion, when an effort of the sort was
made, the results upon the patient were so unfavourable that, to her
secret satisfaction, Joan was at once reinstalled.
After some days Henry took a decided turn for the worse. His
temperature rose alarmingly, and he became delirious, with short
coherent intervals. Blood poisoning, which the doctors feared,
declared itself, and in the upshot he fell a victim to a dreadful
fever that nearly cost him his life. At one time the doctors were of
opinion that his only chance lay in amputation of the fractured limb;
but in the end they gave up this idea, being convinced that, in his
present state, he would certainly die of the shock were they to
attempt the operation.
Then followed three terrible days, while Henry lay between life and
death. For the greater part of those days Lady Graves and Ellen sat in
the bar-parlour, the former lost in stony silence, the latter pale and
anxious enough, but still calm and collected. Even now Ellen did not
lose her head, and this was well, for the others were almost
distracted by anxiety and grief. Distrusting the capacities of Joan, a
young person whom she regarded with disfavour as being the cause of
her brother’s accident, it was Ellen who insisted upon the
introduction of the trained nurses, with consequences that have been
described. When the doctors hesitated as to the possibility of an
operation, it was Ellen also who gave her voice against it, and
persuaded her mother to do the same.
“I know nothing of surgery,” she said, with conviction, “and it seems
probable that poor Henry will die; but I feel sure that if you try to
cut off his leg he will certainly die.”
“I think that you are right, Miss Graves,” said the eminent surgeon
who had been brought down in consultation, and with whom the final
word lay. “My opinion is that the only course to follow with your
brother is to leave him alone, in the hope that his constitution will
pull him through.”
So it came about that Henry escaped the knife.
Emma Levinger and her father also haunted the inn, and it was during
those dark days that the state of the former’s affections became clear
both to herself and to every one about her. Before this she had never
confessed even to her own heart that she was attached to Henry Graves;
but now, in the agony of her suspense, this love of hers arose in
strength, and she knew that, whether he stayed or was called away, it
must always be the nearest and most constant companion of her life.
Why she loved him Emma could not tell, nor even when she began to do
so; and indeed these things are difficult to define. But the fact
remained, hard, palpable, staring: a fact which she had no longer any
care to conceal or ignore, seeing that the conditions of the case
caused her to set aside those considerations of womanly reserve that
doubtless would otherwise have induced her to veil the secret of her
heart for ever, or until circumstances gave opportunity for its
legitimate expression.
At length on a certain afternoon there came a crisis to which there
was but one probable issue. The doctors and nurses were in Henry’s
room doing their best to ward off the fate that seemed to be
approaching, while Lady Graves, Mr. Levinger, Ellen and Emma sat in
the parlour awaiting tidings, and striving to hope against hope. An
hour passed, and Emma could bear the uncertainty no longer. Slipping
out unobserved, she stole towards the sick room and listened at a
little distance from it. Within she could hear the voice of a man
raving in delirium, and the cautious tread of those who tended him.
Presently the door opened and Joan appeared, walking towards her with
ashen face and shaking limbs.
“How is he?” asked Emma in an intense whisper, catching at her dress
as she passed.
Joan looked at her and shook her head: speak she could not. Emma
watched her go with vacant eyes, and a jealousy smote her, which made
itself felt even through the pain that tore her heart in two. Why
should this woman be free to come and go about the bedside of the man
who was everything to her—to hold his dying hand and to lift his
dying head—while she was shut outside his door? Emma wondered
bitterly. Surely that should be her place, not the village girl’s who
had been the cause of all this sorrow. Then she turned, and, creeping
back to the parlour, she flung herself into a chair and covered her
face with her hands.
“Have you heard anything?” asked Lady Graves.
Emma made no reply but her despair broke from her in a low moaning
that was very sad to hear.
“Do not grieve so, dear,” said Ellen kindly.
“Let me grieve,” she answered, lifting her white face; “let me grieve
now and always. I know that Faith should give me comfort, but it fails
me. I have a right to grieve,” she went on passionately, “for I love
him. I do not care who knows it now: though I am nothing to him, I
love him, and if he dies it will break my heart.”
So great was the tension of suspense that Emma’s announcement,
startling as it was, excited no surprise. Perhaps they all knew how
things were with her; at any rate Lady Graves answered only, “We all
love him, dear,” and for a time no more was said.
Meanwhile, could she have seen into the little room behind her, Emma
might have witnessed the throes of a grief as deep as her own, and
even more abandoned; for there, face downwards on her bed, lay Joan
Haste, the girl whom she had envied. Sharp sobs shook her frame,
notwithstanding that she had thrust her handkerchief between her teeth
to check them, and she clutched nervously at the bedclothes with her
outstretched hands. Hitherto she had been calm and silent; now, at
length, when she was of no more service, she broke down, and Nature
took its way with her.
“O my God!” she muttered between her strangling sobs, “spare him and
kill me, for it was my fault, and I am his murderess. O my God! my
God! What have I done that I should suffer so? What makes me suffer
so? Oh! spare him, spare him!”
Another half-hour passed, and the twilight began to gather in the
parlour.
“It is very long,” murmured Lady Graves.
“While they do not come to call us there is hope,” answered Ellen,
striving to keep up a show of courage.
Once more there was silence, and the time went on and the darkness
gathered.
At length a step was heard approaching, and they knew it for that of
Dr. Childs. Instinctively they all rose, expecting the last dread
summons. He was among them now, but they could not see his face
because of the shadows.
“Is Lady Graves there?” he asked.
“Yes,” whispered the poor woman.
“Lady Graves, I have come to tell you that by the mercy of Heaven your
son’s constitution has triumphed, and, so far as my skill and
knowledge go, I believe that he will live.”
For
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