Joan Haste

Emma Levinger and her father also haunted the inn, and it was during those dark days that the state of the former’s affections became clear both to herself and to every one about her. Before this she had never confessed even to her own heart that she was attached to Henry Graves; but now, in the agony of her suspense, this love of hers arose in strength, and she knew that, whether he stayed or was called away, it must always be the nearest and most constant companion of her life. Why she loved him Emma could not tell, nor even when she began to do so; and indeed these things are difficult to define. But the fact remained, hard, palpable, staring: a fact which she had no longer any care to conceal or ignore, seeing that the conditions of the case caused her to set aside those considerations of womanly reserve that doubtless would otherwise have induced her to veil the secret of her heart for ever, or until circumstances gave opportunity for its legitimate expression.

At length on a certain afternoon there came a crisis to which there was but one probable issue. The doctors and nurses were in Henry’s room doing their best to ward off the fate that seemed to be approaching, while Lady Graves, Mr. Levinger, Ellen and Emma sat in the parlour awaiting tidings, and striving to hope against hope. An hour passed, and Emma could bear the uncertainty no longer. Slipping out unobserved, she stole towards the sick room and listened at a little distance from it. Within she could hear the voice of a man raving in delirium, and the cautious tread of those who tended him. Presently the door opened and Joan appeared, walking towards her with ashen face and shaking limbs.

“How is he?” asked Emma in an intense whisper, catching at her dress as she passed.

Joan looked at her and shook her head: speak she could not. Emma watched her go with vacant eyes, and a jealousy smote her, which made itself felt even through the pain that tore her heart in two. Why should this woman be free to come and go about the bedside of the man who was everything to her – to hold his dying hand and to lift his dying head – while she was shut outside his door? Emma wondered bitterly. Surely that should be her place, not the village girl’s who had been the cause of all this sorrow. Then she turned, and, creeping back to the parlour, she flung herself into a chair and covered her face with her hands.

“Have you heard anything?” asked Lady Graves.

Emma made no reply but her despair broke from her in a low moaning that was very sad to hear.

“Do not grieve so, dear,” said Ellen kindly.

“Let me grieve,” she answered, lifting her white face; “let me grieve now and always. I know that Faith should give me comfort, but it fails me. I have a right to grieve,” she went on passionately, “for I love him. I do not care who knows it now: though I am nothing to him, I love him, and if he dies it will break my heart.”

So great was the tension of suspense that Emma’s announcement, startling as it was, excited no surprise. Perhaps they all knew how things were with her; at any rate Lady Graves answered only, “We all love him, dear,” and for a time no more was said.

Meanwhile, could she have seen into the little room behind her, Emma might have witnessed the throes of a grief as deep as her own, and even more abandoned; for there, face downwards on her bed, lay Joan Haste, the girl whom she had envied. Sharp sobs shook her frame, notwithstanding that she had thrust her handkerchief between her teeth to check them, and she clutched nervously at the bedclothes with her outstretched hands. Hitherto she had been calm and silent; now, at length, when she was of no more service, she broke down, and Nature took its way with her.

“O my God!” she muttered between her strangling sobs, “spare him and kill me, for it was my fault, and I am his murderess. O my God! my God! What have I done that I should suffer so? What makes me suffer so? Oh! spare him, spare him!”

* * *

Another half-hour passed, and the twilight began to gather in the parlour.

“It is very long,” murmured Lady Graves.

“While they do not come to call us there is hope,” answered Ellen, striving to keep up a show of courage.

Once more there was silence, and the time went on and the darkness gathered.

At length a step was heard approaching, and they knew it for that of Dr. Childs. Instinctively they all rose, expecting the last dread summons. He was among them now, but they could not see his face because of the shadows.

“Is Lady Graves there?” he asked.

“Yes,” whispered the poor woman.

“Lady Graves, I have come to tell you that by the mercy of Heaven your son’s constitution has triumphed, and, so far as my skill and knowledge go, I believe that he will live.”

For a second the silence continued; then, with a short sharp cry, Emma Levinger went down upon the floor as suddenly as though she had been shot through the heart.

* * *

Joan also had heard Dr. Child’s footsteps, and, rising swiftly from her bed, she followed him to the door of the parlour, where she stood listening to his fateful words – for her anxiety was so intense that the idea of intrusion did not even cross her mind.

Joan heard the words, and she believed that they were an answer to her prayer; for her suffering had been too fierce and personal to admit of her dissociating herself from the issue, at any rate at present. She forgot that she was not concerned alone in this matter of the life or death of Henry Graves – she who, although as yet she did not know it, was already wrapped with the wings and lost in the shadow of a great and tragic passion. She had prayed, and she had been answered. His life had been given back to her.

Thus she thought for a moment; the next she heard Emma’s cry, and saw her fall, and was undeceived. Now she was assured of what before she had suspected, that this sweet and beautiful lady loved the man who lay yonder; and, in the assurance of that love, she learned her own. It became clear to her in an instant, as at night the sudden lightning makes clear the landscape to some lost wanderer among mountains. As in the darkness such a wanderer may believe that his feet are set upon a trodden road, and in that baleful glare discover himself to be surrounded by dangers, amid desolate wastes; so at this sight Joan understood whither her heart had strayed, and was affrighted, for truly the place seemed perilous and from it there was no retreat. Before her lay many a chasm and precipice, around her was darkness, and a blind mist blew upon her face, a mist wet as though with tears.

Somebody in the parlour called for a light, and the voice brought her back from her vision, her hopeless vision of what was, had been, and might be. What had chanced or could chance to her mattered little, she thought to herself, as she turned to seek the lamp. He would live, and that was what she had desired, what she had prayed for while as yet she did not know why she prayed it, offering her own life in payment. She understood now that her prayer had been answered more fully than she deemed; for she had given her life, her true life, for him and to him, though he might never learn the price that had been exacted of her. Well, he would live – to be happy with Miss Levinger – and though her heart must die because of him, Joan could be glad of it even in those miserable moments of revelation.

She returned with the lamp, and assisted in loosening the collar of Emma’s dress and in sprinkling her white face with water. Nobody took any notice of her. Why should they, who were overcome by the first joy of hope renewed, and moved with pity at the sight of the fainting girl? They even spoke openly before her, ignoring her presence.

“Do not be afraid,” said Dr. Childs: “I have never known happiness to kill people. But she must have suffered a great deal from suspense.”

“I did not know that it had gone so far with her,” said her father in a low voice to Lady Graves. “I believe that if the verdict had been the other way it would have killed her also.”

“She must be very fond of him,” answered Lady Graves; “and I am thankful for it, for now I have seen how sweet she is. Well, if it pleases God that Henry should recover, I hope that it will all come right in the end. Indeed, he will be a strange man if it does not.”

Just then Ellen, who was watching and listening, seemed to become aware of Joan’s presence.

“Thank you,” she said to her; “you can go now.”

So Joan went, humbly enough, suffering a sharper misery than she had dreamed that her heart could hold, and yet vaguely happy through her wretchedness. “At least,” she thought to herself, with a flash of defiant feeling, “I am his nurse, and they can’t send me away from him yet, because he won’t let them. It made him worse when they tried before. When he is well again Miss Levinger will take him, but till then he is mine – mine. Oh! I wish I had known that she was engaged to him from the beginning: no, it would have made no difference. It may be wicked, but I should have loved him anyhow. It is my doom that I should love him, and I would rather love him and be wretched, than not love him and be happy. I suppose that it began when I first saw him, though I did not understand it then – I only wondered why he seemed so different to any other man that I had seen. Well, it is done now, and there is no use crying over it, so I may as well laugh, if one can laugh with a heart like a lump of ice.”

* * *

Once out of danger, Henry’s progress towards recovery was sure, if slow. Three weeks passed before he learned how near he had been to death. It was Joan who told him, for as yet he had been allowed only the briefest of interviews with his mother and Ellen, and on these occasions, by the doctor’s orders, their past anxieties were not even alluded to. Now, however, all danger was done with, and that afternoon Joan had been informed by Dr. Childs that she might read to her patient if he wished it, or talk to him upon any subject in which he seemed to take interest.

It was a lovely July day, and Joan was seated sewing in Henry’s, or rather in her own room, by the open window, through which floated the scent of flowers and a murmuring sound of the sea. Henry had been dozing, and she laid her work upon her knee and watched him while he slept. Presently she saw that his eyes were open and that he was looking at her.

“Do you want anything, sir?” she said, hastily resuming her sewing. “Are you comfortable?”

“Quite, thank you; and I want nothing except to go on looking at you. You make a very pretty picture in that old window place, I assure you.”

She coloured faintly and did not answer. Presently he spoke again.

“Joan,” he said – he always called her Joan now – ”was I very bad at any time?”

“Yes, sir; they almost gave you up three weeks ago – indeed, they said the chances were ten to one against your living.”

“It is strange: I remember nothing about it. Do you know, it gives me rather a turn. I have been too busy a man and too occupied with life to think much of death, and I don’t quite like the sensation of having been so near to it; though perhaps it is not as bad as one thinks, and Heaven knows it would have saved me plenty of worry here below,” and Henry sighed.

“I am very grateful to you all,” he went on after a moment’s pause, “for taking so much trouble about me – especially to you, Joan, for somehow or other I realised your presence even when I was off my head. I don’t know how you occupy yourself generally, but I am sure you are fond of fresh air. It is uncommonly good of you to mew yourself up here just to look after me.”

“Don’t talk like that, sir. It is my business.”

“Your business! Why is it your business? You are not a professional nurse, are you?”

“No, sir, though they offered to pay me to-day,” and she flushed with indignation as she said it.

“Well, don’t be angry if they did. Why shouldn’t you have a week’s wage for a week’s work? I suppose you like to earn something, like the rest of us.”

“Because I don’t choose to,” answered Joan, tapping the floor with her foot: “I’d rather starve. It is my fault that you got into this trouble, and it is an insult to offer me money because I am helping to nurse you out of it.”

“Well, there is no need to excite yourself about it. I have no doubt they thought that you would take a different view, and really I cannot see why you should not. Tell me what happened on the night that they gave me up: it interests me.”

Then in a few graphic words Joan sketched the scene so vividly, that Henry seemed to see himself lying unconscious on the bed, and sinking fast into death while the doctors watched and whispered round him.