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Read books online » Fiction » Joan Haste by H. Rider Haggard (cat reading book .TXT) 📖

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of thing any more, and I think that we had better shut up the

shop.”

 

“If you mean by ‘shutting up the shop’ that our engagement is at an

end, Mr. Milward, so be it. But unfortunately, as you must understand,

questions will be asked, and I shall be glad to know what explanation

you propose to furnish.”

 

“Oh! you can settle that.”

 

“Very well; I presume you admit that I am not to blame, therefore we

must fall back upon the cause which you have given: that you insulted

my brother, who—notwithstanding his crippled condition—inflicted a

physical punishment upon you. Indeed, unless I can succeed in stopping

it, thanks to your own indiscretion, the story will be all over the

place before to-morrow, and I must leave you to judge what will be

thought of it in the county, or let us say at the militia mess, which

I believe you join next Wednesday.”

 

Edward heard and quailed. He was excessively sensitive to public

opinion, and more especially to the chaff of his brother officers in

the militia, among whom he was something of a butt. If it became known

there that Sir Henry Graves, a man with a broken leg, had driven him

out of the room by throwing crutches at his head, he felt that his

life would speedily become a burden to him.

 

“You wouldn’t be so mean as that, Ellen,” he said.

 

“So mean as what? To some people it might seem that the meanness is on

the other side. There are difficulties here, and you have quarrelled

with my brother; therefore, as I understand, you wish to desert me

after being publicly engaged to me for some months, and to leave me in

an utterly false position. Do so if you will, but you must not be

surprised if you find your conduct called by strong names. For my part

I am indifferent, but for your own sake I think that you would do well

to pause. Do not suppose that I shall sit still under such an affront.

You know that I can be a good friend; you have yet to learn that I can

be a good enemy. Possibly, though I do not like to think it of you,

you believe that we are ruined and of no account. You will find your

mistake. There are troubles here, but they can be overcome, and very

soon you will live to regret that you dared to put such a deadly

affront upon me and my family. You foolish man!” she went on, with

gathering vehemence, “have you not yet realized the difference between

us? Have you not learned that with all your wealth you are nobody and

I am somebody—that though I can stand without you, without me you

will fall? Now I am tired of talking: choose, Edward Milward, choose

whether you will jilt me and incur an enmity that shall follow you to

your death, or whether you will bide by me and be placed where of late

it has been the object of my life to set you.”

 

If Edward had quailed before, now he positively trembled, for he knew

that Ellen spoke truth. Hers was the master mind, and to a great

extent he had become dependent on her. Moreover he had ambitions, for

the most part of a social and personal nature—which included,

however, his entry into Parliament, where he hoped that his power of

the purse would ultimately earn him some sort of title—and these

ambitions he felt sure would never be gratified without the help of

Ellen. Lastly, he was in his own way sincerely attached to her, and

quite appreciated the force of her threats to make of him an object of

ridicule among his neighbours and brother-officers. Smarting though he

was under a sense of moral and physical injury, the sum of these

considerations turned the balance in favour of the continuance of his

engagement. Perhaps Ellen was right, and her family would ride out

this trouble; but whether they did so or not, he was convinced that

without Ellen he should sink below his present level, and what was

more, that she would help him on his downward career. So Edward gave

in; indeed, it would not be too much to say that he collapsed.

 

“You shouldn’t speak so harshly, dear,” he said, “for you know that I

did not really mean what I told you about breaking off our engagement.

The fact is that, what between one thing and another, I scarcely knew

what I was saying.”

 

“Indeed!” answered Ellen. “Well, I hope that you know what you are

saying now. If our engagement is to be continued, there must be no

further talk of breaking it off on the next occasion that you happen

to have a quarrel with my brother, or to be angry about the mortgages

on this property.”

 

“The only thing that I bargain about your brother is, that I shall not

be asked to see him, or have anything to do with him. He can go to the

deuce in his own way so far as I am concerned, and we can cut him when

we are married—that is, if he becomes bankrupt and the rest of it. I

am sorry if I have behaved badly, Ellen; but really and truly I do

mean what I say about our engagement, and I tell you what, I will go

home and put it on paper if you like, and bring you the letter this

afternoon.”

 

“That is as you like, Edward,” she answered, with a perceptible

softening of her manner. “But after what has happened, you may think

yourself fortunate that I ever consent to see you again.”

 

Edward attempted no reply, at least in words, for he was crushed; but,

bending down, he imprinted a chaste salute upon Ellen’s smooth

forehead, which she acknowledged by touching him frostily on the cheek

with her lips.

 

This, then, is the history of the great quarrel between these lovers,

and of their reconciliation.

 

“Upon my word,” said Ellen to herself, as she watched him depart, “I

am by no means certain that Henry’s obstinacy and violence have not

done be a good turn for once. They have brought things to a crisis,

there has been a struggle, and I have won the day. Whatever happens, I

do not think it likely that Edward will try to match himself against

me again, and I am quite certain that he will never talk any more of

breaking off our engagement.”

CHAPTER XVII

BETWEEN DUTY AND DUTY

 

For a while Ellen stood silent, enjoying the luxury of a well-earned

victory; then she turned and went upstairs to Henry’s room. The first

thing that she saw was the crutch which her brother had used as a

missile of war with such effect, still lying where it had fallen on

the carpet. She picked it up and placed it by his chair.

 

“How do you do, Henry?” she said blandly. “I hear that you have

surpassed yourself this morning.”

 

“Now, look here, Ellen,” he answered, in a voice that was almost

savage in its energy, “if you have come to bait me, I advise you to

give it up, for I am in no mood to stand much more. You sent Mr.

Milward up here to insult me, and I treated him as he deserved; though

now I regret that under intolerable provocation I forgot myself so far

as to condescend to violence. I am very sorry if I have interfered

with your matrimonial projects, though there is a certain justice

about it, seeing how constantly you attempt to interfere with mine;

but I could not help it. No man of honour could have borne the things

that fellow thought fit to say, and it is your own fault for

encouraging him to say them.”

 

“Oh, pray, my dear Henry, let us leave this cant about ‘men of honour’

out of the question. It really seems to me that after all that has

happened and is happening, the less said of honour the better. It is

quite useless for you to look angry, since I presume that you will not

try to silence me by throwing things in my face. And now let me tell

you that, although you have done your best, you have not succeeded in

‘interfering with my matrimonial projects,’ which, in fact, were never

so firmly established as they are at this moment.”

 

“Do you mean to say,” asked Henry in astonishment, “that the man has

put up with—well, with what I was obliged to inflict upon him, and

that you still contemplate marrying him after the way in which he has

threatened to jilt you?”

 

“Certainly I mean to say it. We have set the one thing against the

other and cried quits, though of course he has bargained that he shall

have nothing more to do with you, and also that, should you persist in

your present conduct, he shall not be forced to receive you at his

house after our marriage.”

 

“Really he need not have troubled to make that stipulation.”

 

“We are not all fools, Henry,” Ellen went on; “and I did not feel

called upon to break an engagement that in many ways suits me very

well because you have chosen to quarrel with Edward and to use

violence towards him. Do not be afraid, Henry: I have not come here to

lecture you; I come to say that I wash my hands of you. In the

interests of the family, of which you are the head, I still venture to

hope that you will repent of the past and that better counsels may

prevail as to the future. I hope, for instance, that you will come to

see that your own prosperity and good name should not be sacrificed in

order to gratify a low passion. But this is merely a pious wish and by

the way. You are a middle-aged man, and must take your own course in

life; only I decline to be involved in your ruin. If in the future I

should however be able to do anything to mitigate its consequences so

far as this property is concerned, I will do it; for I at least think

more of my family than of myself, and most of all of the dying wishes

of our father. And now, Henry, as a sister to a brother I say good-bye

to you for so long as you persist in your present courses. Henceforth

when we meet it will be as acquaintances and no more. Good-bye,

Henry.” And she left the room.

 

“That is a pleasant speech to have to listen to,” reflected Henry as

the door closed behind her. “Of the two I really think that I prefer

Mr. Milward’s mode of address, for he can be answered, or at any rate

dealt with; but it is difficult to answer Ellen, seeing that to a

great extent she has the right on her side. What a position for a man!

If I had tried, I could not have invented a worse one. I shall never

laugh again at the agonies of a heroine placed between love and duty,

for it is my own case. Or rather let us leave the love out of it, and

say that I stand between duty and duty, the delicate problem to

deceive being: Which is the higher of these duties and who shall be

sacrificed?”

 

As he thought thus, sadly enough, there was a knock upon his door, and

Lady Graves entered the room, looking very sorrowful and dignified in

her widow’s robe.

 

“So I haven’t seen the worst of it,” Henry muttered. “Well, I may as

well

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