Joan Haste by H. Rider Haggard (cat reading book .TXT) 📖

by the very obvious pride Mrs.

Gillingwater took in her beauty. In these circumstances Joan had often

wondered why she was not dismissed to seek her fortune. More than

once, when after some quarrel she sought leave to go, she found that

there was no surer path to reconciliation than to proffer this

request; and speeches of apology, which, as she knew well, were not

due to any softening of Mrs. Gillingwater’s temper, or regret for

hasty misbehaviour, were at once showered upon her.

 

To what, then, were they due? The question was one that Joan took some

years to answer satisfactorily. Clearly not to love, and almost as

clearly to no desire to retain her services, since, beyond attending

to her own room, she did but little work in the way of ministering to

the wants and comforts of the few customers of the Crown and Mitre,

nor was she ever asked to interest herself in such duties.

 

Gradually a solution to the riddle forced itself onto Joan’s

intelligence—namely, that in some mysterious way her aunt and uncle

lived on her, not she on them. If this were not so, it certainly

became difficult to understand how they did live, in view of the fact

that Mr. Gillingwater steadily consumed the profits of the tap-room,

if any, and that they had no other visible means of subsistence. Yet

money never seemed to be wanting; and did Joan need a new dress, or

any other luxury, it was given to her without demur. More, when some

years since she had expressed a sudden and spontaneous desire for

education; after a few days’ interval, which, it seemed to her, might

well have been employed in reference to superior powers in the

background, she was informed that arrangements had been made for her

to be sent to a boarding school in the capital of the county. She

went, to find that her fellow-pupils were for the most part the

daughters of shopkeepers and large farmers, and that in consequence

the establishment was looked down upon by the students of similar, but

higher-class institutions in the same town, and by all who belonged to

them. Joan being sensitive and ambitious, resented this state of

affairs, though she had small enough right to do so, and on her return

home informed her aunt that she wished to be taken away from that

school and sent to another of a better sort. The request was received

without surprise, and again there was a pause as though to allow of

reference to others. Then she was told that if she did not like her

school she could leave it, but that she was not to be educated above

her station in life.

 

So Joan returned to the middle-class establishment, where she remained

till she was over nineteen years of age. On the whole she was very

happy there, for she felt that she was acquiring useful knowledge

which she could not have obtained at home. Moreover, among her

schoolfellows were certain girls, the daughters of poor clergymen and

widows, ladies by birth, with whom she consorted instinctively, and

who did not repel her advances.

 

At the age of nineteen she was informed suddenly that she must leave

her school, though no hint of this determination had been previously

conveyed to her. Indeed, but a day or two before her aunt had spoken

of her return thither as if it were a settled thing. Pondering over

this decision in much grief, Joan wondered why it had been arrived at,

and more especially whether the visit that morning of her uncle’s

landlord, Mr. Levinger, who came, she understood, to see about some

repairs to the house, had anything to do with it. To Mr. Levinger

himself she had scarcely spoken half a dozen times in her life, and

yet it seemed to her that whenever they met he regarded her with the

keenest interest. Also on this particular occasion Joan chanced to

pass the bar-parlour where Mr. Levinger was closeted with her aunt,

and to overhear his parting words, or rather the tag of them—which

was “too much of a lady,” a remark that she could not help thinking

had to do with herself. Seeing her go by, he stopped her, keeping her

in conversation for some minutes, then abruptly turned upon his heel

and left the house with the air of a man who is determined not to say

too much.

 

Then it was that Joan’s life became insupportable to her. Accustomed

as she had become to more refined associations, from which henceforth

she was cut off, the Crown and Mitre, and most of those connected with

it, grew hateful in her sight. In her disgust she racked her brain to

find some means of escape, and could think of none other than the

time-honoured expedient of “going as a governess.” This she asked

leave to do, and the permission was accorded after the usual pause;

but here again she was destined to meet with disappointment. Her

surroundings and her attainments were too humble to admit of her

finding a footing in that overcrowded profession. Moreover, as one

lady whom she saw told her frankly, she was far too pretty for this

walk of life. At length she did obtain a situation, however, a modest

one enough, that of nursery governess to the children of the rector of

Bradmouth, Mr. Biggen. This post she held for nine months, till Mr.

Biggen, a kind-hearted and scholarly man, noting her beauty and

intelligence, began to take more interest in her than pleased his

wife—a state of affairs that resulted in Joan’s abrupt dismissal on

the day previous to the beginning of this history.

 

To come to the last and greatest of her troubles: it will be obvious

that such a woman would not lack for admirers. Joan had several, all

of whom she disliked; but chiefly did she detest the most ardent and

persistent of them, the favoured of her aunt, Mr. Samuel Rock. Samuel

Rock was a Dissenter, and the best-to-do agriculturalist in the

neighbourhood, farming some five hundred acres, most of them rich

marsh-lands, of which three hundred or more were his own property

inherited and acquired. Clearly, therefore, he was an excellent match

for a girl in the position of Joan Haste, and when it is added that he

had conceived a sincere admiration for her, and that to make her his

wife was the principal desire of his life, it becomes evident that in

the nature of things the sole object of hers ought to have been to

meet his advances half-way. Unfortunately this was not the case. For

reasons which to herself were good and valid, however insufficient

they may have appeared to others, Joan would have nothing to do with

Samuel Rock. It was to escape from him that she had fled this day to

Ramborough Abbey, whither she fondly hoped he would not follow her. It

was the thought of him that made life seem so hateful to her even in

the golden afternoon; it was terror of him that caused her to search

out every possible avenue of retreat from the neighbourhood of

Bradmouth.

 

She might have spared herself the trouble, for even as she sighed and

sought, a shadow fell upon her, and looking up she saw Samuel Rock

standing before her, hat in hand and smiling his most obsequious

smile.