A MEETING BY THE MERE.
Mr. Levinger’s confidential interview with Mrs. Gillingwater was not long
in bearing fruit. Joan soon became aware that her aunt was watching her
closely, and most closely of all whenever she chanced to be in attendance on
Henry, with whom she was now left alone as little as possible. The effect of
this knowledge was to produce an intense irritation in her mind. Her conscience
was guilty, but Joan was not a woman to take warning from a guilty conscience.
Indeed, its sting only drove her faster along the downward road, much as a
high-mettled horse often rebels furiously under the punishment of the whip.
There was a vein of self-willed obstinacy and of
“devil-may-cared-ness” in Joan’s nature that, dormant
hitherto, at this crisis of her life began to assert itself with alarming
power. Come what might, she was determined to have her way and not to be
thwarted. There is this to be said in excuse for her, that now her whole being
was dominated by her passion for Henry. In the ordinary sense of the word it
was not love that possessed her, nor was it strictly what is understood by
passion, but rather, if it can be defined at all, some strange new force, some
absorbing influence that included both love and passion, and yet had mysterious
qualities of its own. Fortunately, with English women such infatuations are not
common, though they are to be found frequently enough among people of the Latin
race, where sometimes they result in blind tragedies that seem almost
inexplicable to our sober sense. But, whatever the cause, Joan had fallen a
victim to this fate, and now it mastered her, body and mind and soul. She had
never cared for any one before, and on Henry she let loose the pent-up
affections of a lifetime. No breath of passion had ever moved her, and now a
look from his eyes or a touch of his hand stirred all the fibres of her nature
as the wind stirs every leaf upon a tree. He was her darling, her desire. Till
she had learnt to love him she had not known the powers and the possibilities
of life, and if she could win his love she would even have been willing to pay
for it at the price of her own death.
The approach of such an infatuation would have terrified most girls: they would
have crushed it, or put themselves beyond its reach before it took hold of
them. But then the majority of young English women, even of those who belong to
the humbler walks of life, do not stand by their own strength alone. Either
they have an inherited sense of the proprieties that amounts almost to an
instinct, or they possess strong religious principles, or there are those about
them who guide and restrain any dangerous tendency in their natures. At the
very least they are afraid of losing the respect and affection of their friends
and relatives, and of becoming a mark for the sneers and scandal of the world
in which they move.
In Joan’s case these influences were for the most part lacking. From
childhood she had lived beneath the shadow of a shame that, in some degree, had
withered her moral sense; no father or mother gave her their tender guidance,
and of religion she had been taught so little that, though she conformed to its
outward ceremonies, it could not be said to have any real part in her life.
Relatives she had none except her harsh and coarse-minded aunt; her few friends
made at a middle-class school were now lost to her, for with the girls of her
own rank in the village she would not associate, and those of better standing
either did, or affected to look down upon her. In short, her character was
compounded of potentialities for good and evil; she was sweet and
strong-natured and faithful, but she had not learned that these qualities are
of little avail to bring about the happiness or moral well-being of her who
owns them, unless they are dominated by a sense of duty. Having such a sense,
the best of us are liable to error in this direction or in that; wanting it, we
must indeed be favoured if we escape disaster among the many temptations of
life. It was Joan’s misfortune rather than her fault, for she was the
victim of her circumstances and not of any innate depravity, that she lacked
this controlling power, and in this defenceless state found herself suddenly
exposed to the fiercest temptation that can assail a woman of her character and
gifts, the temptation to give way to a love which, if it did not end in empty
misery, could only bring shame upon herself and ceaseless trouble and remorse
to its object.
Thus it came about that during these weeks Joan lived in a wild and fevered
dream, lived for the hour only, thinking little and caring less of what the
future might bring forth. Her purpose, so far as she can be said to have had
one, was to make Henry love her, and to the consummation of this end she
brought to bear all her beauty and every power of her mind. That success must
mean sorrow to her and to him did not affect her, though in her wildest moments
she never dreamed of Henry as her husband. She loved him to-day, and to-day he
was there for her to love: let the morrow look to itself, and the griefs that
it might bring.
If such was Joan’s attitude towards Henry, it may be asked what was
Henry’s towards Joan. The girl attracted him strangely, after a fashion
in which he had never been attracted by a woman before. Her fresh and
ever-varying loveliness was a continual source of delight to him, as it must
have been to any man; but by degrees he became conscious that it was not her
beauty alone which moved him. Perhaps it was her tenderness—a tenderness
apparent in every word and gesture; or more probably it may have been the
atmosphere of love that surrounded her, of love directed towards himself, which
gradually conquered him mind and body, and broke down the barrier of his
self-control. Hitherto Henry had never cared for any woman, and if women had
cared for him he had not understood it. Now he was weak and he was worried, and
in his way he also was rebellious, and fighting against a marriage that men and
circumstances combined to thrust upon him. Under such conditions it was not
perhaps unnatural that he should shrink back from the strict path of interest,
and follow that of a spontaneous affection. Joan had taken his fancy from the
first moment that he saw her, she had won his gratitude by her bravery and her
gentle devotion, and she was a young and beautiful woman. Making some slight
allowance for the frailties of human nature, perhaps we need not seek for any
further explanation of his future conduct.
For a week or more nothing of importance occurred between them. Indeed, they
were very seldom alone together, for whenever Joan’s duty took her to the
sick room Mrs. Gillingwater, whom Henry detested, made a point of being
present, or did she chance to be called away, his sister Ellen would be certain
to appear to take her place, accompanied at times by Edward Milward.
At length, on a certain afternoon, Mrs. Gillingwater ordered Joan to go out
walking. Joan did not wish to go out, for the weather threatened rain, also for
her own reasons she preferred to remain where she was. But her aunt was
peremptory, and Joan started, setting her face towards Ramborough Abbey. Very
soon it came on to rain and she had no umbrella, but this accident did not
deter her. She had been sent out to walk, and walk she would. To tell the
truth, she was thinking little of the weather, for her mind was filled with
resentment against her aunt. It was unbearable that she should be interfered
with and ordered about like a child. There were a hundred things that she
wished to do in the house. Who would give Captain Graves his tea? And she was
sure that he would never remember about the medicine unless she was there to
remind him.
As Joan proceeded on her walk along the edge of the cliff, she noticed the
figure of a man, standing about a quarter of a mile to her right on the crest
or hog’s back of land, beyond which lay the chain of melancholy meres,
and wondered vaguely what he could be doing there in such weather. At length it
occurred to her that it was time to return, for now she was near to Ramborough
Abbey. She was weary of the sight of the sea, that moaned sullenly beneath her,
half hidden by the curtain of the rain; so she struck across the ridge of land,
heedless of the wet saline grasses that swept against her skirt, purposing to
walk home by the little sheep-track which follows the edge of the meres in the
valley. As she was crossing the highest point of the ridge she saw the
man’s figure again. Suddenly it disappeared, and the thought struck her
that he might have been following her, keeping parallel to her path. For a
moment Joan hesitated, for the country just here was very lonely, especially in
such weather; but the next she dismissed her fears, being courageous by nature,
and passed on towards the first mere. Doubtless this person was a shepherd
looking for a lost sheep, or perhaps a gamekeeper.
The aspect of the lakes was so dreary, and the path so sopping wet, that soon
Joan began to wish that she had remained upon the cliff. However, she trudged
on bravely, the rain beating in her face till her thin dress was soaked and
clung to her shape in a manner that was picturesque but uncomfortable. At the
head of the second mere the sheep-walk ran past some clumps of high reeds; and
as she approached them Joan, whose eye for natural objects was quick, observed
that something had disturbed the wild fowl which haunted the place, for a heron
and a mallard rose and circled high in the air, and a brace of curlew zigzagged
away against the wind, uttering plaintive cries that reached her for long after
they vanished into the mist. Now she had come to the first clump of reeds, when
she heard a stir behind them, and a man stepped forward and stood in the middle
of the path within three paces of her.
The man was Samuel Rock, clad in a long cloak; and, recognising him, Joan
understood that she had been waylaid. She halted and said angrily—for her
first feeling was one of indignation:
“What are you doing here, Mr. Rock?”
“Walking, Miss Haste,” he answered nervously; “the same as
you.”
“That is not true, Mr. Rock: you were hiding behind those reeds.”
“I took shelter there against the rain.”
“I see; you took shelter from the rain, and on the weather side of the
reeds,” she said contemptuously. “Well, do not let me keep you
standing in this wet.” And she attempted to pass him.
“It is no use telling you lies,” he muttered sullenly: “I
came here to speak to you, where there ain’t none to disturb us.”
And as he spoke Samuel placed himself in such a position that it was impossible
for her to escape him without actually breaking into a run.
“Why do you follow me,” she said in an indignant voice—
“after what you promised, too? Stand aside and let me go home.”
Samuel made no move, but a curious light came into his blue eyes, a light that
was not pleasant to see.
“I am thinking I’ve stood aside enough, Joan,” he answered,
“and I ain’t a-going to stand aside till all the mischief is done
and I am ruined. As for promises, they may go hang: I can’t keep no more
of them. So please, you’ll just stand for once, and listen to what I have
to say to you. If you are wet you can take my cloak. I don’t mind the
rain, and I seem to want some cooling.”
“I’d rather drown than touch anything that belongs to you,”
she replied, for her hatred of the man mastered her courtesy and reason.
“Say what you’ve got to say and let me go on.”
The remark was an unfortunate one, for it awoke in Samuel’s breast the
fury that accompanied and underlay his passion, that fury which had astonished
Mr. Levinger.
“Would you, now!” he broke out, his lips turning white with rage.
“Well, if half I hear is true, there’s others whose things you
don’t mind touching.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Rock?”
“I mean that Captain whom you’re not ashamed to be hanging after
all day long. Oh, I know about you. I heard how you was found holding him in
your arms, the first day that you met him by the tower yonder, after
you’d been flirting with him like any street girl, till you brought him
to break his leg. Yes, holding him in those arms of yours—nothing
less.”
“Oh! how dare you! How dare you!” she murmured, for no other words
would come to her.
“Dare? I dare anything. You’ve worked me up to that, my beauty. Now
I dare ask you when you’ll let me make an honest woman of you, if it
isn’t too late.”
By this time Joan was positively speechless, so great were the rage and
loathing with which this man and his words filled her.
“Oh! Joan,” he went on, with a sudden change of tone, “do you
forgive me if I have said sharp things, for it’s you that drives me to
them with your cruelty; and I’m ready to forgive you all yours—ay!
I’d bear to hear them again, for you look so beautiful when you are like
that.”
“Forgive you!” gasped Joan.
But he did not seem to hear. “Let’s have done with this cat-and-dog
quarrelling,” he went on; “let’s make it up and get married,
the sooner the better—to-morrow if you like. You will never regret it;
you’ll be happier then than with that Captain who loves Miss Levinger,
not you; and I, I shall be happy too—happy, happy!” And he flung
his arms wide, in a kind of ecstasy.
Of all this speech only one sentence seemed to reach Joan’s
understanding, at any rate at the time: “who loves Miss Levinger, not
you.” Oh! was it true? Did Captain Graves really love Miss Levinger as
she knew that Emma loved him? The man spoke certainly, as though he had
knowledge. Even in the midst of her unspeakable anger, the thought pierced her
like a spear and caused her face to soften and her eyes to grow troubled.
Samuel saw these signs, and misinterpreted them, thinking that her resentment
was yielding beneath his entreaties. For a moment he stood searching his mind
for more words, but unable to find them; then suddenly he sought to clinch the
matter in another fashion, for, following the promptings of an instinct that
was natural enough under the circumstances, however ill-advised it might be,
suddenly he caught Joan in his long arms, and drawing her to him, kissed her
twice passionately upon the face. At first Joan scarcely seemed to understand
what had happened—indeed, it was not until Samuel, encouraged by his
success, was about to renew his embraces, that she awoke to the situation. Then
her action was prompt enough. She was a strong woman, and the emergency doubled
her strength. With a quick twisting movement of her form and a push of her
hands, she shook off Samuel so effectively, that in staggering back his foot
slipped in the greasy soil and he fell upon his side, clutching in his hand a
broad fragment from the bosom of Joan’s dress, at which he had caught to
save himself.
“Now,” she said, as Samuel rose slowly from the mire, “listen
to me. You have had your say, and I will have mine. First understand this: if
ever you try to kiss me again it will be the worse for you; for your own sake I
advise you not, for I think that I should kill you if I could. I hate you,
Samuel Rock, for you have lied to me, and you have insulted me in a way that no
woman can forgive. I will never marry you I had rather beg my bread; so if you
are wise, you will forget all about me, or at the least keep out of my
way.”
Samuel faced the beautiful woman, who, notwithstanding her torn and draggled
dress, looked royal in her scorn and anger. He was very white, but his passion
seemed to have left him, and he spoke in a quiet voice.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “I’m not going to try
and kiss you again. I have kissed you twice; that is enough for me at present.
And what’s more, though you may rub your face, you can’t rub it out
of your mind. But you are wrong when you say that you won’t marry me,
because you will. I know it. And the first time I kiss you after we are
married, I will remind you of this, Joan Haste. I am not going to ask you to
have me again. I shall wait till you ask me to take you, and then I shall be
revenged upon you. That day will come, the day of your shame and need, the day
of my reward, when, as I have lain in the dirt before you, you will lie in the
dirt before me. That is all I have to say. Good-bye.” And he walked past
her, vanishing behind the reeds.
Now it was for the first time that Joan felt afraid. The insult and danger had
gone by, yet she was frightened, horribly frightened; for though the thing
seemed impossible, it was borne in upon her mind that Samuel Rock’s
presentiment was true, and that an hour might come when, in some sense, she
would lie in the mire before him and seek a refuge as his wife. She could not
conceive any circumstances in which a thing so horrible might happen, for
however sore her necessity, though she shrank from death, it seemed to her that
it would be better to die rather than to suffer such a fate. Yet so deeply did
this terror shake her, that she turned and looked upon the black waters of the
mere, wondering if it would not be better to give it the lie once and for all.
Then she thought of Henry, and her mood changed, for her mind and body were too
healthy to allow her to submit herself indefinitely to such forebodings. Like
many women, Joan was an opportunist, and lived very much in the day and for it.
These things might be true, but at least they were not yet; if she was destined
to be the wife of Samuel Rock in the future, she was her own mistress in the
present, and the shadow of sorrow and bonds to come, so she argued, suggested
the strongest possible reasons for rejoicing in the light and liberty of the
fleeting hour. If she was doomed to an earthly hell, if her hands must be torn
by thorns and her eyes grow blind with tears, at least she was minded to be
able to remember that once she had walked in Paradise, gathering flowers there,
and beholding her heart’s desire.
Thus she reasoned in her folly, as she tramped homewards through the rain,
heedless of the fact that no logic could be more fatal, and none more pleasing
to that tempter who as of old lurks in paradises such as her fancy painted.
When she reached home Joan found her aunt awaiting her in the bar parlour.
“Who has been keeping you all this time in the wet, Joan?” she
asked in a half expectant voice.
Joan lit a candle before she answered, for the place was gloomy.
“Do you wish to know?” she said: “then I will tell you. Your
friend, Mr. Samuel Rock, whom you set after me.”
“My friend? And what if he is my friend? I’d be glad if I had a few
more such.” By this time the light had burnt up, and Mrs. Gillingwater
saw the condition of her niece’s attire. “Good gracious! girl, what
have you been doing?” she asked. “Ain’t you ashamed to walk
about half stripped like that?”
“People must do what they can’t help, aunt. That’s the work
of the friend you are so proud of. I may as well tell you at once, for if I
don’t, he will. He came making love to me again, as he has before, and
finished up by kissing me, the coward, and when I threw him off he tore my
dress.”
“And why couldn’t you let him kiss you quietly, you silly
girl?” asked her aunt with indignation. “Now I dare say that you
have offended him so that he won’t come forward again, to say nothing of
spoiling your new dress. It ain’t a crime for a man to kiss the girl he
wants to marry, is it?”
“Why? Because I would rather kiss a rat that’s all. I hate the very
sight of him; and as for coming forward again, I only hope that he won’t,
for my sake and for his too.”
Now Mrs. Gillingwater arose in her wrath; her coarse face became red and her
voice grew shrill.
“You good-for-nothing baggage!” she said; “so that is your
game, is it? To go turning up your nose and chucking your impudence in the face
of a man like Mr. Rock, who is worth twenty of you, and does you honour by
wishing to make a wife of you, you that haven’t a decent name to your
back, and he rich enough to marry a lady if he liked, or half a dozen of them
for the matter of that. Well, I tell you that you shall have him, or I will
know the reason why—ay, and so will others too.”
“I can’t be violent, like you, aunt,” answered Joan, who
began to feel as though this second scene would be too much for her; “it
isn’t in my nature, and I hate it. But whether I have a name or
not—and it is no fault of mine if I have none, though folk don’t
seem inclined to let me forget it—I say that I will not marry Samuel
Rock. I am a woman full grown and of age; and I know this, that there is no law
in the land which can force me to take a husband whom I don’t want. And
so perhaps, as we have got to live together, you’ll stop talking about
him.”
“Stop talking about him? Never for one hour, till I see you signing your
name in the book with him, miss. And as for living together, it won’t be
long that we shall do that, unless you drop these tantrums and become sensible.
Else you may just tramp it for your living, or go and slave as a housemaid if
any one will take you, which I doubt they won’t without a character, for
nobody here will say a good word for you, you wilful, stuck-up thing, for all
your fine looks that you are so proud of, and that’ll be the ruin of you
yet if you’re not careful, as they were of your mother before you.”
Joan sank into a chair and made no answer. The woman’s violence beat her
down and was hateful to her. Almost rather would she have faced Samuel Rock,
for with him her sex gave her a certain advantage.
“I know what you are after,” went on Mrs. Gillingwater, with
gathering vehemence. “Do you suppose that I have not seen through you all
these weeks, though you are so cunning? You are making up to him, you are; not
that I have a word to say against him, for he is a nice gentleman enough, only,
like the rest of them, so soft that he’ll let a pretty face fool him for
all his seafaring in foreign parts. Well, look here, Joan: I’ll speak to
you plain and plump. We never were mother and daughter, so it is no use
pretending what we don’t feel, and I won’t put up with that from
you which I might perhaps from my own child, if I had one. You’ve given
me lots of truck with your contrary ways, ever since you were a little one, and
I’m not minded to stand much more of it, for the profit don’t run
to the worry. What I want you to understand is, that I am set on your pulling
it off with Samuel Rock like a broody hen on a nest egg, and I mean to see that
chick hatch out; never you mind for why—that’s my affair. If you
can’t see your way to that, then off you go, and pretty sharp too. There,
I have said my say, and you can think it over. Now you had best change your
clothes and go and look after the Captain, for I have got business abroad
to-night. If you don’t mend your manners, it will be for the last time, I
can tell you.”
Joan rose and obeyed without a word.
Mrs. Gillingwater watched her pass, and fell into a reflective mood.
“She is a beauty and no mistake,” she thought to herself; “I
never saw such another in all my born days. Her mother was well enough, but she
wasn’t in it with Joan; and what’s more, I like her pride. Why
should she take that canting chap if she don’t want to? I’m paid to
back him, and a day’s work for a day’s wage, that’s my motto.
But I’d rather see her marry the Captain, and sit in the church a lady,
with a fur round her neck and a carriage waiting outside, than snuffle in a
chapel praising the Lord with a pack of oily-faced children. If she had the go
of a heifer calf, she would marry him though; he is bound to be a baronet, and
it would make a ladyship of her, which with a little teaching is just what she
is fit to be; for if he ain’t almost as sweet on her and small wonder
after all that nursing as she is on him, I was born in the Flegg Hundred,
that’s all. But go is just what Joan ain’t got, not when she can
make anything for herself out of it anyway; she’d do what you like for
love, but she wouldn’t turn her finger round a teacup to crown herself a
queen. Well, there is no helping them as won’t help themselves, so I am
all for Samuel Rock and a hundred pounds in my pocket, especially as I dare say
that I can screw another hundred out of him if I square Joan, to say nothing of
a trifle from the Captain over and above the board for holding my tongue. I
suppose he will marry old Levinger’s girl, the Captain will; a pale,
puling-faced thing she is, and full of soft words as a boiled potato with
flour, but she’s got plenty of that as will make her look rosy to any
landlord in these times. Still, hang me, if I was a man, if I wouldn’t
rather take Joan and those brown eyes of hers, and snap my fingers at the
world, the flesh, and the devil.”
Who or what Mrs. Gillingwater meant by “the world, the flesh, and the
devil” is not quite evident, but certainly they symbolised persons or
conveyed some image to her mind in this connection, for, suiting the action to
the word, she snapped her fingers thrice at the empty air, and then sought her
bonnet prior to some private expedition in pursuance of pleasure, or more
probably of profit.