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

CHAPTER XXV

“I FORBID YOU.”

 

On the following Monday morning Joan began her career as a shop-girl,

to describe which in detail would be too long, however instructive it

might prove. Her actual work, especially at this, the dead season of

the year, was not so hard as she had expected, nor was she long in

mastering her duties; but, accustomed as she had been to a country

life and the fresh air, she soon found confinement for so many hours a

day in the close atmosphere of the shop exceedingly irksome. From Kent

Street to Messrs. Black and Parker’s was but a quarter of an hour’s

walk; and, as Joan discovered by experiment, without exposing herself

to many annoyances it was impossible for her to wander about the

streets after dark in search of exercise. As a last resource she was

driven to rising at the peep of day and taking her walks abroad in the

Park so soon as the gates were open—a daily constitutional which, if

wholesome, was not exhilarating, and one that could only be practised

in fine weather and while the days were long. This craving for air,

however, was among the least of her troubles, for soon it became clear

to her that she had no vocation for shop life; indeed, she learned to

loathe it and its surroundings. At first the humours of the business

amused her a little, but very shortly she discovered that even about

these there was a terrible sameness, for one cannot be perpetually

entertained by the folly of old ladies trying to make themselves look

young, or by the vanity of the young ones neglected by nature and

attempting to supply their deficiencies with costly garments.

 

What galled her chiefly, however, were the attentions with which she

was honoured by the young men of the establishment. Worst of all, the

oiled and curled Mr. Waters singled her out as the object of his

especial admiration, till at length she lost her temper, and answered

him in such a fashion as to check his advances once and for all. He

left her muttering “You shall pay for that”; and he kept his word, for

thenceforth her life was made a misery to her, and it seemed that she

could do nothing right. As it chanced, he could not actually discharge

her, for Joan had attracted the favourable notice of one of the owners

of the business, who, when Mr. Waters made some trumped-up complaint

against her, dismissed it with a hint that he better be more careful

as to his facts in future.

 

For the rest, she had no amusements and no friends, and during all the

time she spent in London she never visited a theatre or other place of

entertainment. Her only recreation was to read when she could get the

books, or, failing this, to sit with little Mrs. Bird in the Kent

Street parlour and perfect herself in the art of conversation with the

deaf and dumb.

 

As may be imagined, such an existence did not tend to cause Joan to

forget her past, or the man who was to her heart what the sun is to

the world. She could renounce him, she could go away vowing that she

would never see him more; but to live without him, and especially to

live such a life as hers, ah! that was another matter.

 

Moreover, as time went on, a new terror took her, that, vague in the

beginning, grew week by week more definite and more dreadful. At first

she could scarcely believe it, for somehow such a thing had never

entered into her calculations; but soon she was forced to acknowledge

it as a fact, an appalling, unalterable fact, which, as yet secret to

herself, must shortly become patent to the whole world. The night that

the truth came home to her without the possibility of further doubt

was perhaps the most terrible which she ever spent. For some hours she

thought that she must go mad: she wept, she prayed, she called upon

the name of her lover, who, although he was the author of her woe, in

some mysterious fashion had grown doubly dear to her, till at last

sleep or insensibility brought her relief. But sleep passes with the

darkness, and she awoke to find this new spectre standing by her

bedside and to know that there it must always stand till the end came.

All that day she went about her work dazed by her secret agony of

mind, but in the evening her senses seemed to come back to her,

bringing with them new and acuter suffering.

 

Where was she to go and what was she to do, she who had no friend in

the wide world, or at least none in whom she could confide? Soon they

would turn her out upon the streets; even the Bird family would shrink

from her as though she had a leprosy. Would it not be better to end it

at once, and herself with it? Abandoning her usual custom, Joan did

not return home, but wandered about London heedless of the stares and

insults of the passers-by, till at length she came to Westminster

Bridge. She had not meant to come there—indeed, she did not know the

way—but the river had drawn her to its brink, as it has drawn so many

an unfortunate before her. There beneath those dim and swirling waters

she could escape her shame and find peace, or at least take it to a

region beyond all familiar things, whereof the miseries and unrest

would not be those of the earth, even if they surpassed them. Twice

she crossed the bridge; once she tore herself away, walking for a

while along the Embankment; then she returned to it again, brought

back by the irresistible attraction of the darkling river.

 

Now she thought that she would do it, and now her hand was on the

parapet. She was quite alone for the moment, there were none to stop

her—alone with her fear and fate. Yes, she would do it: but oh! what

of Henry? Had she a right to make him a murderer? Had she the right to

be the murderess of his child? What would he say when he heard, and

what would he think? After all, why should she kill herself? Was it so

wicked to become a mother? According to religion and custom, yes—that

is, such a mother as she would be—but how about nature? As for the

sin, she could not help it. It was done, and she must suffer for it.

She had broken the law of God, and doubtless God would exact

retribution from her; indeed, already He was exacting it. At least she

might plead that she loved this man, and there were many married women

who could bear their children without shame, and could not say as

much. Yet they were virtuous and she was an outcast—that was the

rule. Well, what did it matter to her? They could not put her in

prison, and she had no name to lose. Why should she kill herself? Why

should she not bear her baby and love it for its father’s sake and its

own? Now she came to think of it, there was nothing that she would

like better. Doubtless there would be difficulties and troubles, but

she was answerable to no one. However