Joan Haste by H. Rider Haggard (cat reading book .TXT) đź“–
- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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Levinger went down upon the floor as suddenly as though she had been
shot through the heart.
Joan also had heard Dr. Child’s footsteps, and, rising swiftly from
her bed, she followed him to the door of the parlour, where she stood
listening to his fateful words—for her anxiety was so intense that
the idea of intrusion did not even cross her mind.
Joan heard the words, and she believed that they were an answer to her
prayer; for her suffering had been too fierce and personal to admit of
her dissociating herself from the issue, at any rate at present. She
forgot that she was not concerned alone in this matter of the life or
death of Henry Graves—she who, although as yet she did not know it,
was already wrapped with the wings and lost in the shadow of a great
and tragic passion. She had prayed, and she had been answered. His
life had been given back to her.
Thus she thought for a moment; the next she heard Emma’s cry, and saw
her fall, and was undeceived. Now she was assured of what before she
had suspected, that this sweet and beautiful lady loved the man who
lay yonder; and, in the assurance of that love, she learned her own.
It became clear to her in an instant, as at night the sudden lightning
makes clear the landscape to some lost wanderer among mountains. As in
the darkness such a wanderer may believe that his feet are set upon a
trodden road, and in that baleful glare discover himself to be
surrounded by dangers, amid desolate wastes; so at this sight Joan
understood whither her heart had strayed, and was affrighted, for
truly the place seemed perilous and from it there was no retreat.
Before her lay many a chasm and precipice, around her was darkness,
and a blind mist blew upon her face, a mist wet as though with tears.
Somebody in the parlour called for a light, and the voice brought her
back from her vision, her hopeless vision of what was, had been, and
might be. What had chanced or could chance to her mattered little, she
thought to herself, as she turned to seek the lamp. He would live, and
that was what she had desired, what she had prayed for while as yet
she did not know why she prayed it, offering her own life in payment.
She understood now that her prayer had been answered more fully than
she deemed; for she had given her life, her true life, for him and to
him, though he might never learn the price that had been exacted of
her. Well, he would live—to be happy with Miss Levinger—and though
her heart must die because of him, Joan could be glad of it even in
those miserable moments of revelation.
She returned with the lamp, and assisted in loosening the collar of
Emma’s dress and in sprinkling her white face with water. Nobody took
any notice of her. Why should they, who were overcome by the first joy
of hope renewed, and moved with pity at the sight of the fainting
girl? They even spoke openly before her, ignoring her presence.
“Do not be afraid,” said Dr. Childs: “I have never known happiness to
kill people. But she must have suffered a great deal from suspense.”
“I did not know that it had gone so far with her,” said her father in
a low voice to Lady Graves. “I believe that if the verdict had been
the other way it would have killed her also.”
“She must be very fond of him,” answered Lady Graves; “and I am
thankful for it, for now I have seen how sweet she is. Well, if it
pleases God that Henry should recover, I hope that it will all come
right in the end. Indeed, he will be a strange man if it does not.”
Just then Ellen, who was watching and listening, seemed to become
aware of Joan’s presence.
“Thank you,” she said to her; “you can go now.”
So Joan went, humbly enough, suffering a sharper misery than she had
dreamed that her heart could hold, and yet vaguely happy through her
wretchedness. “At least,” she thought to herself, with a flash of
defiant feeling, “I am his nurse, and they can’t send me away from him
yet, because he won’t let them. It made him worse when they tried
before. When he is well again Miss Levinger will take him, but till
then he is mine—mine. Oh! I wish I had known that she was engaged to
him from the beginning: no, it would have made no difference. It may
be wicked, but I should have loved him anyhow. It is my doom that I
should love him, and I would rather love him and be wretched, than not
love him and be happy. I suppose that it began when I first saw him,
though I did not understand it then—I only wondered why he seemed so
different to any other man that I had seen. Well, it is done now, and
there is no use crying over it, so I may as well laugh, if one can
laugh with a heart like a lump of ice.”
Once out of danger, Henry’s progress towards recovery was sure, if
slow. Three weeks passed before he learned how near he had been to
death. It was Joan who told him, for as yet he had been allowed only
the briefest of interviews with his mother and Ellen, and on these
occasions, by the doctor’s orders, their past anxieties were not even
alluded to. Now, however, all danger was done with, and that afternoon
Joan had been informed by Dr. Childs that she might read to her
patient if he wished it, or talk to him upon any subject in which he
seemed to take interest.
It was a lovely July day, and Joan was seated sewing in Henry’s, or
rather in her own room, by the open window, through which floated the
scent of flowers and a murmuring sound of the sea. Henry had been
dozing, and she laid her work upon her knee and watched him while he
slept. Presently she saw that his eyes were open and that he was
looking at her.
“Do you want anything, sir?” she said, hastily resuming her sewing.
“Are you comfortable?”
“Quite, thank you; and I want nothing except to go on looking at you.
You make a very pretty picture in that old window place, I assure
you.”
She coloured faintly and did not answer. Presently he spoke again.
“Joan,” he said—he always called her Joan now—“was I very bad at any
time?”
“Yes, sir; they almost gave you up three weeks ago—indeed, they said
the chances were ten to one against your living.”
“It is strange: I remember nothing about it. Do you know, it gives me
rather a turn. I have been too busy a man and too occupied with life
to think much of death, and I don’t quite like the sensation of having
been so near to it; though perhaps it is not as bad as one thinks, and
Heaven knows it would have saved me plenty of worry here below,” and
Henry sighed.
“I am very grateful to you all,” he went on after a moment’s pause,
“for taking so much trouble about me—especially to you, Joan, for
somehow or other I realised your presence even when I was off my head.
I don’t know how you occupy yourself generally, but I am sure you are
fond of fresh air. It is uncommonly good of you to mew yourself up
here just to look after me.”
“Don’t talk like that, sir. It is my business.”
“Your business! Why is it your business? You are not a professional
nurse, are you?”
“No, sir, though they offered to pay me to-day,” and she flushed with
indignation as she said it.
“Well, don’t be angry if they did. Why shouldn’t you have a week’s
wage for a week’s work? I suppose you like to earn something, like the
rest of us.”
“Because I don’t choose to,” answered Joan, tapping the floor with her
foot: “I’d rather starve. It is my fault that you got into this
trouble, and it is an insult to offer me money because I am helping to
nurse you out of it.”
“Well, there is no need to excite yourself about it. I have no doubt
they thought that you would take a different view, and really I cannot
see why you should not. Tell me what happened on the night that they
gave me up: it interests me.”
Then in a few graphic words Joan sketched the scene so vividly, that
Henry seemed to see himself lying unconscious on the bed, and sinking
fast into death while the doctors watched and whispered round him.
“Were you there all the time?” he asked curiously.
“Most of it, till I was of no further use and could bear no more.”
“What did you do then?”
“I went to my room.”
“And what did you do there? Go to sleep?”
“Go to sleep! I—I—cried my heart out. I mean—that I said my
prayers.”
“It is very kind of you to take so much interest in me,” he answered,
in a half bantering voice; then, seeming to understand that she was
very much in earnest, he changed the subject, asking, “And what did
the others do?”
“They were all in the bar-parlour; they waited there till it grew
dark, and then they waited on in the dark, for they thought that
presently they would be called in to see you die. At last the change
came, and Dr. Childs left you to tell them when he was sure. I heard
his step, and followed him. I had no business to do it, but I could
not help myself. He went into the room and stood still, trying to make
out who was in it, and you might have heard a pin drop. Then he spoke
to your mother, and said that through the mercy of Heaven he believed
that you would live.”
“Yes,” said Henry; “and what did they say then?”
“Nobody said anything, so far as I could hear; only Miss Levinger
screamed and dropped on the floor in a faint.”
“Why did she do that?” asked Henry. “I suppose that they had been
keeping her there without any dinner, and her nerves were upset.”
“Perhaps they were, sir,” said Joan sarcastically: “most women’s
nerves would be upset when they learned that the man they were engaged
to was coming back to them from the door of the dead.”
“Possibly; but I don’t exactly see how the case applies.”
Joan rose slowly, and the work upon which she had been employed fell
from her hand to the floor.
“I do not quite understand you, sir,” she said. “Do you mean to say
that you are not engaged to Miss Levinger?”
“Engaged to Miss Levinger! Certainly not. Whatever may happen to me if
I get out of this, at the present moment I am under no obligations of
that sort to any human creature.”
“Then I am sorry that I said so much,” answered Joan. “Please forget
my silly talk: I have made a mistake. I—think that I hear my aunt
coming, and—if you will excuse me, I will go out and get a little
air.”
“All this is Greek to me,” thought Henry, looking after her. “Surely
Ellen cannot have been right! Oh, it is
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