JOAN STRONG, AVENGER
At an attic window, from which stretched a Babylonic wilderness of
slated roofs and cowled chimney pots, two girls were sitting. The tan
of the wind and the sun was upon their cheeks, their clothes lacked the
cheap smartness of the Londoner. They were both in mourning for their
father, Gideon Strong.
"Suicide, nay! I'll never believe that it was Douglas," Joan declared
firmly. "Nay, but I know the lad too well. He was ever pining for
London, for gay places and the stir of life. There was evil in his
blood. It was the books he read, and the strange taste he had for
solitude. What else? But he'd not the pluck of a rabbit. He never
killed himself--not he! He's a living man to-day, and as I'm a living
woman I'll drop my hand upon his shoulder before long."
"God forbid it!" Cicely cried fervently. "Please God if it was Douglas
who sinned so grievously that he may be dead."
Joan rose slowly to her feet. In her sombre garb, fashioned with almost
pitiless severity, her likeness to her father became almost striking.
There were the same high cheek-bones, the heavy eyebrows, the mouth of
iron. The blood of many generations of stern yeomen was in her veins.
"'Tis well for you, Cicely," she said, and her voice, metallic enough at
all times, seemed, for the bitterness of it, to bite the close air like
a rasp. "'Tis well enough for you, Cicely, who had but little to do
with him, but do you forget that I was his affianced wife? I have stood
up in the Meeting House at Feldwick, and we prayed together for grace.
The hypocrite. The abandoned wastrel. That he, who might have been the
pastor of Feldwick, ay, and have been chosen to serve in the towns even,
should have wandered so miserably."
The younger girl was watching a smoke-begrimed sparrow on the sill with
eyes at once vacant and tender. She was slighter and smaller than her
sister, of different complexion, with soft, grey eyes and a broad,
humorous mouth. Her whole expression was kindly. She had a delicate
prettiness of colouring, and a vivacity which seemed to place her
amongst a different order of beings. Never were sisters more like and
unlike in this world.
"Sometimes," she said reflectively, "I have wondered whether Father was
not very hard upon Douglas. He was so different from everybody else
there, so fond of books and pictures, clever people, and busy places.
There was no one in Feldwick with whom he could have had any tastes at
all in common--not a scholar amongst the lot of us."
Joan frowned heavily. Her dark brows contracted, the black eyes
flashed.
"Pictures and books," she muttered. "What has a minister of the gospel
to do with these? Douglas Guest had chosen his path in life."
"Nay," Cicely interrupted eagerly. "It was chosen for him. He was
young, and Father was very stern and obstinate, as who should know
better than ourselves, Joan? Douglas never seemed happy after he came
back from college. His life was not suitable for him."
Joan was slowly getting angry.
"Not suitable for him?" she retorted. "What folly! Who was he, to pick
and choose? It was rare fortune for him that father should have brought
him up as he did. You'll say next that I was forced on him, that he
didna ask me to be his wife--ay, and stand hand in hand with me before
all of them. You've forgotten it, maybe."
But Cicely, to whom that day had been one of agony, marked with a black
stone, never to be forgotten, shook her head with a little shudder.
"I'm sure I never hinted at it, Joan," she said; "but for all you can
say, I believe he's dead."
"Maybe," Joan answered coldly, "but I'm not yet believing it. It's led
astray I believe he was, and heavy's the penalty he'll have to pay.
It's my notion he's alive in this city, and that's why I'm here. It'll
be a day of reckoning when we meet him, but it'll come, Cicely. I've
dreamed of it, and it'll come. I'll never bend the knee at Meeting till
I've found him."
Cicely shuddered.
"It'll never bring poor Father back to life," she murmured. "You'd best
go back to Feldwick, Joan. There's the farm--you and Reuben Smith could
work it well enough. Folks there will think you're out of your mind
staying on here in London."
"Folks may think what they will," she answered savagely. "I'll not go
back till Douglas Guest hangs."
"Then may you never see Feldwick again," Cicely prayed.
"You're but a poor creature yourself," Joan cried, turning upon her with
a sudden passion. "You would have him go unpunished then, robber,
murderer, deceiver. Oh, don't think that I never saw what was in your
mind. I know very well what brings you here now. You want to save him.
I saw it all many a time at Feldwick, but you've none so much to flatter
yourself about. He took little enough notice of me, and none at all of
you. He deceived us all, and as I'm a living woman he shall suffer for
it."
Cicely rose up with pale face.
"Joan," she said, "you are talking of the dead."
But Joan only scoffed. She was a woman whose beliefs once allowed to
take root in the mind were unassailable, proof against probability,
proof against argument. Douglas Guest was alive, and it was her mission
to bid him stand forth before the world. She was the avenger--she
believed in herself. The spirit of the prophetess was in her veins.
She grew more tolerant towards her younger sister. After all she was of
weaker mould. How should she see what had come even to her only as an
inspiration?
"Come, Cicely," she said, "I'm not for bandying words with you. The
world is wide enough for both of us. Let us live at peace towards one
another, at any rate. There's tea coming--poor stuff enough, but it's
city water and city milk. You shall sit down and tell me what has
brought you here, for it's not only to see me, I guess."
The tea was brought; they sat and discussed their plans. Cicely had
followed her sister to London, utterly unable to live any longer in a
place so full of horrible memories. They had a little money--Cicely,
almost enough to live on, but she wanted work. Joan listened, but for
her part she had little to say. Only as the clock drew near seven
o'clock she grew restless. Her attention wandered. She looked often
towards the window.
"You'll stay the night here anyhow, sister?" she said at last.
"Why, I'd counted on it," Cicely admitted.
"Well, that's settled then. This is mostly the time I go out. Are you
going with me, or will you rest a bit?"
Cicely rose up briskly.
"I'll come along," she said. "A walk will do me good. The air's so
cruel close up here."
Joan hesitated.
"I'm a fast walker," she said, "and I go far."
But Cicely, who divined something of the truth, hesitated no longer, not
even for a second.
"I will come," she said.
* * * * *
They passed out into the streets, and the younger girl knew from the
first that their walk was a quest. They chose the most frequented
thoroughfares, and where the throng was thickest there only they
lingered. There was a new look in the face of the elder girl, a grim
tightening of the lips, a curious doggedness about the jaws, a light in
the black eyes which made her sister shudder to look upon. For there
were in Joan Strong, daughter of many generations of north country
yeomen, the possibilities of tragedy, a leaven of that passionate
resistless force, which when once kindled is no more to be governed than
the winds. Narrow she was, devoid of imagination, and uneducated, yet,
married to the man whom she had boldly and persistently sought after,
she would have been a faithful housewife, after the fashion of her kind.
But with the tragedy in her home, the desertion of the man whom she had
selected for her husband, another woman had leaped into life. Something
in her nature had been touched which, in an ordinary case, would have
lain dormant for ever. Cicely knew it and was terrified. This was her
sister, and yet a stranger with whom she walked, this steadfast,
untiring figure, ever with her eyes mutely questioning the passing
throngs. They had become a great way removed during these last few
weeks, and, save her sister, there was no one else left in the world.
With aching feet and tears in her eyes, Cicely kept pace as well as she
could with the untiring, relentless figure by her side. Many people
looked at them curiously--the tall, Cassandra-like figure of the elder
woman, and the pretty, slight girl struggling to keep pace with her, her
lips quivering, her eyes so obviously full of fear. The loiterers on
the pavement stared. Joan's fierce, untiring eyes took no more notice
of them than if they had been dumb figures. Cicely was continually
shrinking back from glances half familiar, half challenging. More than
once they were openly accosted, but Joan swept such attempts away with
stony indifference. For hour after hour they walked steadily on--then,
with a little sob of relief, Cicely saw at last that they had reached
their own street. The elder girl produced a key and drew a long sigh.
Then she looked curiously down at her companion.
"You'll go back to Feldwick to-morrow, or maybe Saturday, Cicely," she
said. "You understand now?"
"How long--will this go on?"
Joan drew herself up. The fierceness of the prophetess was in her dark
face.
"Till my hands are upon him," she said. "Till I have dragged him out
from the shadows of this hateful city."