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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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a wise woman you’ll take the forty and go, or–-”

 

“Or what?”

 

“Or I’ll twist what I want to know out of that black heart of yours,

and not a farthing shall you get for it. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that

the door is locked and we are alone in the house. Yes, you might

scream till you brought the roof down, but nobody would hear you; and

scream you shall if I take hold of you.”

 

Mrs. Gillingwater glanced at his face, and read something so evil in

it, and in the lurid eyes, that she grew frightened.

 

“Very well,” she said, as unconcernedly as possible, “I won’t stand

out for a tenner between friends: down with the cash, and you shall

have it.”

 

“Ah! ma’am, you’re afraid of me now—I can feel it—and I’ve half a

mind to beat you down; but I won’t, I’ll stand by my word. Now you

write that address upon this piece of paper and I’ll get the coin.”

And rising he left the room by the door near the fireplace, which he

took the precaution of locking behind him.

 

“The murdering viper!” reflected Mrs. Gillingwater; “I pinched his

tail a little too much that time, and I sha’n’t be sorry to find

myself outside again, though there’s precious little chance of that

until he chooses, as he’s locked me in. Well, I must brazen it out

now.” And somewhere from the regions of her ample bosom she produced

the fragment that she had torn off Mrs. Bird’s letter, on which was

written the address and a date.

 

Presently Samuel returned holding a small bag of money in his hand,

from which he counted out forty sovereigns.

 

“There’s the cash, ma’am,” he said; “but before you touch it be so

good as to hand me that bit of writing: no, you needn’t be afraid,

I’ll give you the money as I take the paper.”

 

“I’m not afraid, Mr. Rock; when once I’ve struck a bargain I stick to

it like an honest woman, and so, I know, will you. Never you doubt

that the address is the right one; you can see that it is torn off the

letter I read to you. Joan is there, and through the worst of her

illness, so the party she’s lodging with wrote to me; and if you see

her I hope you’ll give her my love.” As she spoke she pushed the scrap

of paper to him with her left hand, while with her right she drew the

shining heap of gold towards herself.

 

“Honest!” he said: “I may be honest in my way, Mrs. Gillingwater; but

you are about as honest as other traitors who sell innocent blood for

pieces of money.”

 

“What do you mean by that, Mr. Rock?” she replied, looking up from her

task of securing the forty sovereigns in her pocket-handkerchief.

“I’ve sold no innocent blood; I’d scorn to do such a thing! You don’t

mean to do any harm to Joan, do you?”

 

“No, ma’am, I mean her no harm, unless it’s a harm to want to make her

my wife; but it would have been all one to you if I meant to murder

her and you knew it, so your sin is just as great, and verily the

betrayers of innocent blood shall have their reward,” and he pointed

at her with his long fingers. “I’ve got what I want,” he went on,

“though I’ve had to pay a lot of money for it; but I tell you that it

won’t do you any good; you might as well throw it into the mere and

yourself after it, as expect to get any profit out of that forty

pounds, the price of innocent blood—the price of innocent blood.”

Then once more Samuel pointed at her and grinned maliciously, till to

her fancy his face looked like that of the stone demon above him.

 

By now Mrs. Gillingwater was so frightened that for a moment or two

she hesitated as to whether it would not be wiser to return the money

and free herself from the burden of a dreadful thought. In the end her

avarice prevailed, as might have been expected, and without another

word she rose and walked towards the front door, which Samuel unlocked

and opened for her.

 

“Good-bye,” he said, as she went down the passage. “You’ve done me a

good turn, ma’am, and now I’m sure that I’ll marry Joan; but for all

that a day shall come when you will wish that your hand had been cut

off before you touched those forty sovereigns: you remember my words

when you lie a-dying, Mrs. Gillingwater, with all your deeds behind

you and all the doom before.”

 

Then the woman fled through the storm and the night, more terrified

than ever she had been in her life’s day, nor did the gold that she

clasped to her heart avail to comfort her. For Rock had spoken truth;

it was the price of innocent blood, and she knew it.

CHAPTER XXIX

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

 

Upon his arrival in town, Mr. Levinger drove to a private hotel in

Jermyn Street, where he was in the habit of staying on the rare

occasions when he visited London. He dressed and dined; then, having

posted a letter to Emma stating that he would call for her and Miss

Graves on the following morning in time to catch the eleven o’clock

train, and escort them home, he ordered a hansom and told the cabman

to take him to 8, Kent Street.

 

“It’s many a year since I have been in this place,” he thought to

himself with a sigh, as the cab turned out of the Edgware Road, “and

it doesn’t seem much changed. I wonder how she came to go to another

house. Well, I shall know the worst, or the best of it, presently.”

And again he sighed as the horse stopped with a jerk in front of No.

8.

 

Telling the man to wait, he rang the bell. The door was opened by Mrs.

Bird herself, who, seeing an elderly gentleman in a fur coat, dropped

a polite curtsey.

 

“Is this Mrs. Bird’s house, pray?” he asked in his gentle voice.

 

“Yes, sir; I am Mrs. Bird.”

 

“Indeed: then perhaps you received a telegram from me this

morning—Mr. Levinger?”

 

“Yes, sir, it came safely, and I ordered some things on the strength

of it. Will you be so good as to step in, sir? I have heard poor Joan

speak of you, though I never could make out what you were to her from

her father down.”

 

“In a certain sense, madam, I am her guardian. Will you allow me to

help you with that door? And now, how is she?”

 

“About as bad as she can be, sir; and if you are her guardian, I only

wish that you had looked after her a little before, for I think that

being so lonesome has preyed upon her mind, poor dear. And now perhaps

you’ll step upstairs into her sitting-room, making as little noise as

possible. The doctor and the nurse are with her, and you may wish to

see them; it’s not a catching fever, so you can come up safely.”

 

He bowed, and followed Mrs. Bird to the little room, where she offered

him a chair. Through the thin double doors that separated them from

the bedchamber he could hear the sound of whispering, and now and

again of a voice, still strong and full, that spoke at random. “Don’t

cut my hair,” said the voice: “why do you cut my hair? He used to

praise it; he’d never know me without my hair.”

 

“That’s her raving, poor love. She’ll go on in this kind of way for

hours.”

 

Mr. Levinger turned a shade paler. He was a sensitive man, and these

voices of the sick room pained him; moreover, he may have found a

meaning in them.

 

“Perhaps you will give me a few details, Mrs. Bird,” he said, drawing

his chair close to the window. “You might tell me first how Joan Haste

came to be your lodger.”

 

So Mrs. Bird began, and told him all the story, from the day when she

had seen Joan sitting upon her box on the opposite doorstep till the

present hour—that is, she told it to him with certain omissions. Mr.

Levinger listened attentively.

 

“I was very wrong,” he said, when she had finished, “to allow her to

come to London in this fashion. I reproach myself much about it, but

the girl was headstrong and—there were reasons. It is most fortunate

that she should have found so kind a friend as you seem to have been

to her.”

 

“Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Bird severely, “I must say that I think you

were wrong. London is not a place to throw a young woman like Joan

into to sink or to swim, even though she may have given you some

trouble; and if anything happens to her I think that you will always

have it on your conscience.” And she put her head on one side and

looked at him through her spectacles.

 

Mr. Levinger winced visibly, and did not seem to know what to answer.

At that moment the doctor came out of the sick room, leaving the door

open; and, looking through it, Mr. Levinger saw a picture that he

could never forget. Joan was lying upon an iron bedstead, and on a

chair beside it, shimmering in the light, lay the tumbled masses of

her shorn hair. Her face was flushed, and her large eyes shone with an

unnatural brightness. One hand hung downwards almost to the floor, and

with the other she felt feebly at her head, saying in a piteous voice,

“Where is my hair? What have you done with my hair? He will never know

me like this, or if he does he will think me ugly. Oh! please give me

back my hair.” Then the nurse closed the door, and Mr. Levinger was

glad of it.

 

“This is the gentleman, Doctor,” said Mrs. Bird, “who is interested

in–-”

 

The doctor bowed stiffly; then, seeing what manner of man Mr. Levinger

was, relaxed, and said, “I beg your pardon. I suppose that your

interest in my patient is of a parental character?”

 

“Not exactly, sir, but I consider myself in loco parentis. Can you

give me any information, or perhaps I should say—any hope?”

 

“Hope? Oh yes—lots of it,” answered the doctor, who was an able

middle-aged man of the brusque and kindly order, one who understood

his business, but took pleasure in disparaging both himself and it. “I

always hope until I see a patient in his coffin. Not that things are

as bad as that in this case. I trust that she will pull through—I

fancy that she will pull through; but all the same, as I understand

that expense is no longer an object, I am going to get in a second

opinion to-morrow. You see I am barely forty myself, and my experience

is consequently limited,” and he smiled satirically. “I have my views,

but I dare say that they stand in need of correction; at any rate,

without further advice I don’t mean to take the responsibility of the

rather heroic treatment which I propose to adopt. The case is a

somewhat peculiar one. I can’t understand why the girl should be in

this way at all, except on the hypothesis that she is suffering from

some severe mental shock; and I purpose, therefore, to try and doctor

her mind as well as her body. But it is useless to

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