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

Book online «Joan Haste by H. Rider Haggard (cat reading book .TXT) 📖». Author H. Rider Haggard



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in I’ll holler what I’ve got say outside the house.”

 

Alarmed by the violence of her antagonist, the girl retreated, and,

returning presently, showed Mrs. Gillingwater into the study without a

word. Here she found Mr. Levinger standing by the fire, his face white

with anger.

 

“Be seated, Mrs. Gillingwater,” he said in a quiet voice, “and tell me

what you mean by coming to make a disturbance here.”

 

“I mean that I want to see you, sir,” she answered sullenly, “and that

I won’t be driven away from your door like a dog. Once for all I tell

you, sir, that you’d better be careful how you treat me, for if you

turn dirty on me, I’ll turn dirty on you. It’s only the dead that

don’t speak, sir, and I’m very much alive, I am.” Then she paused and

added threateningly, “You can’t treat me as I’ve heard say you did

another, Mr. Levinger.”

 

“Have you quite done?” he asked. “Very well, then; be so good as to

listen to me: you can tell nothing about me, for the best of all

possible reasons, that you know nothing. On the other hand, Mrs.

Gillingwater, I can, if necessary, tell something about you—perhaps

you may remember to what I refer, if not I can refresh your

memory—ah! I see that there is no need. A moment’s reflection will

show you that you are entirely in my power. If you dare to make any

attack upon my character, or even to repeat such a disturbance as you

have just caused, I will ruin you and drive you to the workhouse,

where, except for me, you would have been long ago. In earnest of what

I say, your husband will receive to-morrow a summons for the rent that

he owes me, and a notice to quit my house. I trust that I have made

myself clear.”

 

Mrs. Gillingwater knew Mr. Levinger well enough to be aware that he

would keep his word if she drove him to it; and, growing frightened at

the results of her own violence, she began to whimper.

 

“You never would be so cruel as to deal with a poor woman like that,

sir,” she said. “If I’ve spoken rash and foolish it’s because I’m as

full of troubles as a thistle-head with down; yes, I’m driven mad,

that’s what I am. What with having lost the license, and that brute of

a husband of mine always drunk, and Joan, my poor Joan, who was like a

daughter to me, a-dying–-”

 

“What did you say?” said Mr. Levinger. “Stop that snivelling, woman,

and tell me.”

 

“Now you see, sir, that you would have done foolish to send me away,”

Mrs. Gillingwater jerked out between her simulated sobs, “with the

news that I had to tell you. Not as I can understand why it should

trouble you, seeing that of course the poor dear ain’t nothing to you;

though if it had been Sir Henry Graves that I’d gone to, it wouldn’t

have been surprising.”

 

“Will you tell me what you are talking about?” broke in Mr. Levinger,

striking his stick upon the floor. “Come, out with it: I’m not to be

trifled with.”

 

Mrs. Gillingwater glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes,

wondering if it would be safe to keep up the game any longer. Coming

to an adverse conclusion, she produced Mrs. Bird’s letter, saying,

“This is what told me about it, sir.”

 

He took, or rather snatched the letter from her hand, and read it

through with eagerness. Apparently its contents moved him deeply, for

he muttered, “Poor girl! to think of her being so ill! Pray Heaven she

may not die.” Then he sat down at the table, and taking a telegram

form, he filled it in as follows:—

 

“To Mrs. Bird, 8 Kent Street, London, W.

 

“Your letter to Mrs. Gillingwater received. Spare no expense. Am

writing by to-day’s post.

 

“James Levinger, Monk’s Lodge, Bradmouth.”

 

“Would you mind ringing the bell, Mrs. Gillingwater?” said Mr.

Levinger, as he re-read the telegram and, placing it in an envelope,

directed it to the postmaster at Bradmouth. “No, stay: I will see to

the matter myself.” And he left the room.

 

Presently he returned. “I do not know that I need keep you, Mrs.

Gillingwater,” he said, “or that I have anything more to say. I shall

do my best to look after your niece, and I will let you know how she

goes on.”

 

“Thank you, sir; and about the rent and the notice?”

 

“At present, Mrs. Gillingwater, I shall dispense with both of them. I

do not wish to deal hardly with you unless you force me to it. I

suppose that you are in a bad way, as usual?”

 

“Well, yes, sir, I am. In fact, I don’t quite know what I can do

unless I get a little help.”

 

“Ten pounds?” suggested Mr. Levinger.

 

“That will tide me over for a bit, sir.”

 

“Very well, then, here you are,” and he produced the money. “But mind,

I give you this for the sake of old associations, little as you

deserve it; and if there is any more trouble you will get nothing

further from me. One more thing: I expect you to hold your tongue

about poor Joan’s illness and her address—especially to Sir Henry

Graves and Mr. Rock. Do you understand me?”

 

“Perfectly, sir.”

 

“Then remember what I say, and good morning; if you want to

communicate with me again, you had better write.”

 

Mrs. Gillingwater departed humbly enough, dropping an awkward curtsey

at the door.

 

“Like the month of March, she came in like a lion and has gone out

like a lamb,” reflected Mr. Levinger as the door closed behind her.

“She is a dangerous woman, but luckily I have her in hand. A horrible

woman I call her. It makes me shudder to think of the fate of anybody

who fell into the power of such a person. And now about this poor

girl. If she were to die many complications would be avoided; but the

thing is to keep her alive, for in the other event I should feel as

though her blood were on my hands. Much as I hate it, I think that I

will go to town and see after her. Emma is to start for home

to-morrow, and I can easily make an excuse that I have come to fetch

her. Let me see: there is a train at three o’clock that would get me

to town at six. I could dine at the hotel, go to see about Joan

afterwards, and telegraph to Emma that I would fetch her in time for

the eleven o’clock train to-morrow morning. That will fit in very

well.”

 

Two hours later Mr. Levinger was on his road to London.

 

Mrs. Gillingwater returned to Bradmouth, if not exactly jubilant, at

least in considerably better spirits than she had left it. She had

wrung ten pounds out of Mr. Levinger, which in itself was something of

a triumph; also she had hopes of other pickings, for now she knew

Joan’s address, which it seemed was a very marketable commodity. At

present she had funds in hand, and therefore there was no need to

approach Samuel Rock—which indeed she feared to do in the face of Mr.

Levinger’s prohibition; still it comforted her not a little to think

that those five-and-twenty sovereigns also were potentially her own.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PRICE OF INNOCENT BLOOD

 

A month went by, and at the end of it every farthing of Mr. Levinger’s

ten pounds was spent, for the most part in satisfying creditors who

either had sued, or were threatening to sue, for debts owing to them.

Finding herself once more without resources, Mrs. Gillingwater

concluded that it was time to deal with Samuel Rock, taking the chance

of her breach of confidence being found out and visited upon her by

Mr. Levinger. Accordingly, towards dusk one evening—for she did not

wish her errand to be observed by the curious—Mrs. Gillingwater

started upon her mission to Moor Farm.

 

Moor Farm is situated among the wind-torn firs that line the ridge of

ground which separates the sea heath between Bradmouth and Ramborough

from the meadows that stretch inland behind it. Perhaps in the whole

county there is no more solitary or desolate building, with its

outlook on to the heath and the chain of melancholy meres where Samuel

had waylaid Joan, beyond which lies the sea. The view to the west is

more cheerful, indeed, for here are the meadows where runs the Brad;

but, as though its first architect had determined that its windows

should look on nothing pleasant, the house is cut off from this

prospect by the straggling farm buildings and the fir plantation

behind them.

 

The homestead, which stands quite alone, for all the labourers

employed about the place live a mile or more away in the valley, is

large, commodious, and massively built of grey stone robbed from the

ruins of Ramborough. When the Lacons, Joan’s ancestors on the mother’s

side, who once had owned the place, went bankrupt, their land was

bought by Samuel Rock’s grandfather, an eccentric man, but one who was

very successful in his business as a contractor for the supply of hay

to His Majesty’s troops. After he had been the possessor of Moor Farm

for little more than a year, this James Rock went suddenly mad; and

although his insanity was of a dangerous character, for reasons that

were never known his wife would not consent to his removal to an

asylum, but preferred to confine him in the house, some of the windows

of which are still secured by iron bars. The end of the tale was

tragic, for one night the maniac, having first stunned his keeper,

succeeded in murdering his wife while she was visiting him. This event

took place some seventy years before the date of the present story,

but the lapse of two generations has not sufficed to dispel the evil

associations connected with the spot, and that portion of the house

where the murder was committed has remained uninhabited from that day

to this.

 

Mrs. Gillingwater was not a person much troubled by imaginative fears,

but the aspect of Moor House as she approached it on that November

evening affected her nerves, rudimentary as they were. The day had

been very stormy, and angry rays from the setting sun shone through

gaps in the line of naked firs behind the house, and were reflected

from the broken sky above on to the surface of the meres and of the

sea beyond them. The air was full of the voices of wind and storm, the

gale groaned and shrieked among the branches of the ancient trees;

from the beach a mile away came the sound of the hiss of the surge and

of the dull boom of breakers, while overhead a flock of curlews

appeared and disappeared as they passed from sunbeam into shadow and

from shadow into sunbeam, until they faded among the uncertain lights

of the distance, whence the echo of their unhappy cries still floated

to the listener’s ear. The front of the house was sunk in gloom, but

there was still light enough to enable Mrs. Gillingwater, standing by

the gate of what in other times had been a little pleasure garden, but

was now a wilderness overrun with sea grasses, to note its desolate

aspect, and even the iron bars that secured the windows of the rooms

where once the madman was confined. Nobody could be seen moving about

the place, and she observed no lamp in the sitting-room.

 

“I hope those brutes

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