A PRESENT HELP.
“WHAT did you say the other day to make my father ill?”
Joan put the question in abrupt point-blank fashion, with no sort of
circumlocution. Mr. Brooke’s hauteur of manner increased, and so also
did his aristocratic paleness. He was annoyed at her fearless manner.
He would have liked to feel his own power over her, would have liked
to suppress and tame her by look and word. Then too Joan’s resemblance
to his long-lost son struck a chord within him, and set it vibrating
painfully.
“I was not aware that Mr. Rutherford had been ill,” he said coldly.
[Illustration: “Might not comfort be found here?”]
“Father was taken worse directly you left. Something you said did
him harm. It was very wrong of you to force yourself upon him like
that—very wrong,” repeated Joan, with troubled eyes and saddened lips.
“He was just getting a little better, and now he is all thrown back
again. He hasn’t been able to tell me yet what passed: and I want to
know, if you please. I might be able to comfort him.”
Mr. Brooke was not accustomed to endure blame from another, and his
face grew rigid. “Your opinion of my action can have very little
weight,” he observed slowly. “But it would be as well that you should
remember to whom you are speaking—if indeed you have yet been informed
of the relationship.”
“I know that you call yourself my grandfather,” Joan answered. “I don’t
know how you prove it.”
“You are at liberty to disbelieve the fact, if you wish, Joan Brooke.”
A pause; and then—“Was it that which startled father so much? I don’t
think it need. I could never leave him to go to anybody else. No
relatives could be to me now what he is.”
“I, at least, assert no such claim,” said Mr. Brooke.
Joan did not seem to be making way. She lifted her soft, yet defiant,
eyes, and said—“How am I to know?”
“To know that you are my granddaughter?”
A curious smile passed over Mr. Brooke’s face. He felt suddenly that
he had Joan in his power. “There could be no possible difficulty in
proving the fact. If my word is not sufficient, you have only to go to
Marian Brooke, the widow of my unhappy son, and the daughter of old
Cairns. She will supply you with all necessary information.”
“Marian—Brooke!” Joan was growing white as ashes.
“Marian Brooke—your mother.”
For a moment he thought Joan would have fainted dead away on the spot;
but she did not. Every vestige of color left her lips, and a strong
shudder of repulsion passed through her whole frame. But the next
moment her dark eyes were looking him again steadily in the face.
“Marian is the name of the person from Cairns farm who nursed my mother
in her illness last autumn—Mrs. Rutherford, I mean,” added Joan.
“Indeed—singular, if she did! Marian Brooke!”
“No; she only called herself Marian! She seemed ashamed of her surname,
and would not tell it.”
“H’m! A very singular person,” said Mr. Brooke. “However, that woman,
Marian Brooke of Cairns farm, is, as I say, the widow of my unhappy
son, Hubert Brooke. When my son married into the Cairns family, I gave
up all connection with him and his. But for the dying wish of my wife,
I should not now be in connection with—with—”
“His daughter—if I really am that,” said Joan. Her eyes flashed, and
her cheeks grew crimson, as she stood up, with a sudden haughtiness of
manner equal to his own.
“You need not be afraid. I shall never trouble you!” she said briefly.
“If I would ever leave my own dear father for anybody in the world, I
would rather go to Cairns farm than live with you. But I shall not do
either. Good-bye.”
Mr. Brooke had an uncomfortable sense of being worsted. He forced a
smile, and said—“If my granddaughter should find herself ever in want
of friends—”
“I would never come to you—never!” cried Joan, in her anger and pain.
“If your story is true, you ought to have told it long ago, or else
never have said anything at all.”
She went so resolutely towards the door that Mr. Brooke had no choice
but to hold it open for her. Joan passed straight out, pressing her
lips together, and gazing past the old gentleman with a studied
indifference.
“Good-bye,” Mr. Brooke said. “Remember, if ever you should be in want—”
But Joan was gone.
Once in the road, she hurried homewards—passionately,
vehemently—allowing herself no time for thought. A great blow had
fallen upon her; but she crushed aside all recollections of Marian.
Only to get back to the Hall, back to her beloved father, this was her
one desire. Ah, if he were but still as he once had been, she would
have taken her trouble to him, and half the burden would be gone. Now
she might not venture to speak; now it must be borne alone, with no
human helper.
Everything looked dark and hopeless to Joan, through that long
way between Mrs. St. John’s and the Hall. She had never found any
distance so great before. Would it ever come to an end? She grew
so utterly weary that it became almost impossible to drag one foot
before the other. When home was at last in sight, the garden appeared
interminable; and when Joan reached the Hall, she stood within the
front door, leaning on the balustrade at the foot of the staircase,
unable to ascend.
“Joan, is anything wrong?” asked Dulcibel, coming up. “Why—Joan!”
Joan burst into tears. “I am so dreadfully tired, mother.” She spoke
the last words with an unwonted tenderness. Who could tell how much
longer Dulcibel Rutherford would be “mother” to Joan?
“Tired! You poor child, I should think you were!” said Dulcibel. “Come
upstairs to your own room and rest. What made you go so far?”
Joan attempted no explanation, and obeyed with difficulty, dragging
herself from step to step, with that same feeling of leaden-weighted
hopelessness. Once in the room, she dropped down, not on the bed but on
the floor.
“Please let me—please let me lie still, mother dear!” she pleaded, in
answer to Dulcibel’s alarmed remonstrance. “I’m not faint—only so very,
very tired. Nothing rests like the floor. Please!”
Dulcibel submitted wonderingly. She brought a pillow for Joan’s head,
and threw a shawl over her; then stood looking down at the pale cheeks
and dark brows.
“I can’t think what is the matter, Joan,” she said. “I hope you are not
going to be ill.”
“Oh no!” Joan said, with a long breath. “I shall be rested soon. Please
kiss me, mother—one kiss, and then I’ll be alone. Don’t tell father.”
Dulcibel stooped to comply, and afterwards took herself softly off, to
enter into a troubled consultation with Nessie as to the probable cause
of Joan’s “odd state.”
Joan lay meantime in a kind of crushed silence and languor, not
stirring, not even thinking, only conscious of a black cloud over her
life. She dared not let herself look the matter fully in the face. She
was capable at first of nothing but endurance. For nearly an hour this
pause of body and mind lasted, and then the vigor of her young strong
nature began to assert itself. Joan slowly sat up, pushed back the hair
from her brow, and sighed deeply.
“I shall have to tell mother,” were the first words that passed her
lips. “She and Nessie must know—and Leo.” Joan was surprised at the
sudden shrinking which assailed her there. “Leo—must Leo be told? Yes,
of course; he is one of us. Why not? I can’t deceive any of them. The
sooner I speak, the better. And father—oh, dear, dear father!” sobbed
Joan—“it would never make any difference to him. Perhaps to others, not
to him. But doesn’t he know already?”
Joan stood up and went to the bow-window, where her little
writing-table stood. How often she had sat there, looking out on the
fair expanse of lawn and flower-beds, trees, and shrubs, and distant
meadows! Everything was just the same as always, only Joan’s own
condition seemed so changed.
“Cairns farm! Cairns farm, my real mother’s home! And that old man
my grandfather!” Joan shivered. “I don’t believe it—I can’t believe
it. And Marian— Oh, I never, never could think of her as mother! It
can’t be true—it can’t be true!” moaned the poor girl, in a low-voiced
anguish. “Father would never turn me away—never, never! But what will
mother say? I don’t know how to tell her! And Leo? If only I could hide
my head, and never see anybody again, except my own dear, dear father!”
Joan leant her forehead against the windowpane, sighing heavily again.
“If mother should turn against me—mother thinks so much of family and
position. And father—now he is weak—if she should persuade him! No,
that would be too terrible! I could not leave father. But when mother
knows who really is my mother and my grandfather—that old farmer and
her nurse—and my other grandfather too proud to have to do with me! I
don’t care about him; but this—this; it does seem so strange. Father is
not proud; but still—the Cairns living so near; and if mother—oh, if I
could be sure they would not mind, I could bear anything—but if mother
and Nessie turn against me—and Leo—”
Grief and distress were rising, to an over-powering pitch. Joan left
the window, and walked to and fro with hasty, uncertain steps.
“How can I bear it? What can I do? If there were any help for me! If
there were any help!”
As the words left Joan’s lips, her eyes fell upon the Bible which
always lay on her writing-table, a well bound, handsome volume, one of
George Rutherford’s numberless gifts to his adopted child.
And a sudden longing came over Joan. Might not comfort be found here?
She turned over a few pages slowly. Here and there a light pencil-mark
drew attention to a particular passage—George’s doing again.
“A VERY PRESENT HELP IN TROUBLE.”
Joan did not see the words, but they came into her mind. She turned at
once to the 46th Psalm.
“‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.’”
Was not that enough?
At all events, Joan went no farther. She sat looking at the words,
which seemed to grow in strength and beauty as she gazed, and once more
the dark eyes filled and overflowed. Joan closed the book, and knelt
down just where she had been standing.
“O God, I am in such trouble; please, please help me, for Jesus
Christ’s sake,” she sobbed.
No simpler prayer could well have been uttered; but more was not
needed. Again and again she repeated the pleading words; and a strange
sweet sense of coming help crept over her.
“Will he help me? I think he will. I do think he will,” murmured Joan,
kneeling still, but looking up.
“Joan may I come in?” asked Nessie’s voice at the door, and Joan rose
at once, going to meet her.
“Mother didn’t like me to disturb you; but she thought I ought. Father
seems so surprised not to see you. We think it worries him. Are you
more rested, Joan?”
“Yes, quite,” Joan answered. “I’ll go to father directly. Do I look as
if I had been crying, Nessie?”
Nessie made a sound of assent. “But the blinds are half down in the
study,” she said; “so father may not see.”
Joan had not much hope. Altered as George Rutherford might be in many
respects, he was keenly observant still, and no change of expression in
the faces of those he loved ever passed unnoticed by him. Joan had not
been five minutes in the study before he was asking—
“What is the matter, my dear?”
Dulcibel, just in the act of quitting the room, turned back to say—
“She went too far, George, and tired herself. It was a great pity. But
she looks better now.”
“Was that the case?” asked George, as Dulcibel vanished. “Nothing but
that?”
“I was tired, father.”
George Rutherford examined her narrowly, and a look of care came into
his own face.
“Tell me all about it, Joan,” he said gravely.
“Another day, please, father. It is over now.”
“My dear, it will worry me more not to know. I can see that you have
been unhappy. Perhaps if we both speak openly, each may be some help to
the other.”
Joan turned her head away.
“I went to see old Mr. Brooke,” she said. “And he told me what he had
said to you—about himself—and about—”
“Marian?” asked George cautiously. If Joan did not yet know this thing,
he was in no haste to tell her. There were times still when George, if
not flurried or excited, had much of his old presence of mind: and it
was so now.
“Yes, father.”
“My poor little girl!” was his response.
“Mother doesn’t know yet,” Joan said, drawing a long breath. “But she
must, of course.”
“I should have told her, if I had felt equal to speaking!”
“Father, you must not try. I will tell her and Nessie.”
Then a deep silence, broken at length by Joan.
“Father, you would never give me up—even if others wished it? Mrs.
Brooke has no right over me—and I don’t think mother will wish me to
go, even when she knows. You would never give me up.”
Not the answer she expected came, but only a clasping hand and
continued silence.
“Say you would not,” entreated Joan.
George spoke slowly, as if he had a difficulty in utterance. “If it
were right—if it should be our duty—” and Joan looked up, to see the
signs of suffering which she too well knew.
“I cannot weigh the matter yet. It is all confusion,” he said.
“No, not a word more. I have been wrong to let you talk,” Joan said
calmly. “Lie still, dear father, and try not even to think.”