Transcriber's notes: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
[Illustration: SEATING HERSELF ON A FALLEN LOG, AND GAZING DOWN UPON
THE SMILING VALLEYS BELOW, JOAN FELL INTO A REVERIE.]
JOAN'S HANDFUL
BY
AMY LE FEUVRE
Author of "Herself and Her Boy," "Four Gates," etc.
GOLDEN CROWN SERIES
[Illustration]
PICKERING & INGLIS
14 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.4
229 BOTHWELL STREET, GLASGOW, C.2
GOLDEN CROWN LIBRARY
1 HERSELF AND HER BOY
BY AMY LE FEUVRE
2 MINISTERING CHILDREN
BY M. L. CHARLESWORTH
3 HER HUSBAND'S HOME
BY EVELYN EVERETT GREEN
4 PEPPER & CO.
BY ESTHER E. ENOCK
S ELDWYTH'S CHOICE
BY LAURA A. BARTER-SNOW
6 MARTYRLAND
BY ROBERT SIMPSON
7 ANDY MAN
BY AMY LE FEUVRE
8 THE BASKETMAKER'S SHOP
BY M. L. CHARLESWORTH
9 FOUR GATES
BY AMY LE FEUVRE
10 URSULA
BY LAURA A. BARTER-SNOW
11 A MADCAP FAMILY
BY AMY LE FEUVRE
12 NORAH'S VICTORY
BY LAURA A. BARTER-SNOW
13 JOAN'S HANDFUL
BY AMY LE FEUVRE
Made and Printed in Great Britain
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
1. THE PAINTER
2. THE TRAVELLERS
3. A BUSY DAY
4. RECTORY LIFE
5. RENUNCIATION
6. A MOTHER'S CONFIDENCES
7. THE MAJOR'S HOSPITALITY
8. AN ENCOUNTER WITH WILMOT
9. JOAN'S GODMOTHER
10. OFF TO THE RIVIERA
11. LITERARY ATTEMPTS
12. TROUBLE AT ROLLESTON COURT
13. A FATEFUL TELEGRAM
14. STRUGGLING IN THE NET
15. DERRICK TO THE RESCUE
16. JOAN'S ILLNESS
17. A VISIT TO IRELAND
18. THE CHURCH IN THE HILLS
19. CECIL'S ENGAGEMENT
20. BANTY'S ACCIDENT
21. A CHANCE FOR CECIL
22. HEART TO HEART
23. THE LUCK OF ROLLESTON COURT
ILLUSTRATIONS.
SEATING HERSELF ON A FALLEN LOG, AND GAZING
DOWN UPON THE SMILING VALLEYS BELOW, JOAN FELL
INTO A REVERIE _Frontispiece_
JOAN WENT DOWN ON HER KNEES BEFORE HER MOTHER
IMPULSIVELY, AND TOOK HER HANDS IN HERS
JOAN AND BANTY CHATTED TOGETHER IN LIGHT-HEARTED
FASHION WHEN THEY WERE SITTING DOWN
WATCHING FOR THE KETTLE TO BOIL
SHE WAS DEEP IN THOUGHT AND PRAYER WHEN A
WELL-KNOWN VOICE MADE JOAN START
JOAN HEARD A CHILD'S SHRILL CRY FOR HELP, AND
LOOKING OUT UPON A ROCK CLOSE TO THE SEA, SHE
SAW A SMALL FIGURE WAVING A HANDKERCHIEF
"BETTER IS AN HANDFUL WITH QUIETNESS,
THAN BOTH THE HANDS FULL
WITH TRAVAIL AND VEXATION OF SPIRIT"
(ECCLES. iv. 6).
JOAN'S HANDFUL
CHAPTER I
THE PAINTER
AN October afternoon, bright and sunny; the touch of frost in the
previous night had only accentuated the vividness of colour in the
beech trees that surrounded Old Bellerton Rectory. In the cobbled
stone yard at the back was Joan Adair, busy with paint and paintbrush.
She had tucked her skirt up, and was enveloped in a huge white apron.
Her deep blue eyes were so intent upon her handiwork that she did
not notice the approach of a stalwart young man in a rough shooting
costume, who stood leaning against the stable door, and surveyed her
with amused appreciation.
"Ahem!"
Joan started. She turned a fresh fair face towards the onlooker. It was
a typical English face, not particularly beautiful, but essentially
bonny; and when she smiled, a dimple came and went in a most
distracting fashion. Her bright brown hair gleamed with gold, though at
present an old straw hat, with a crow's feather sticking up jauntily on
one side, concealed most of her glory.
"Derrick! How like you! Have you dropped from the sky?"
"Do I look like a cherub? No; I'm out for slaughter. See my gun?
Have had an invite to the Hall for a week to help old Jossy with his
pheasants. What on earth are you doing?"
Joan waved her brush proudly. It was no sketch of autumn beauty which
occupied her clever fingers, but a very shabby little jingle which was
being liberally plastered with black and red paint.
"Our chariot," she said laughing. "Oh, Derrick, I can't tell you how I
am revelling in the country! Every day here is too exquisite for words."
"How is Dominie?"
"He is as pleased as I am. We're as happy as the day is long; but
perhaps that does not say much, as the days are getting short now!"
"I never knew the day that did not see you happy," said the young man.
"Is tea coming on? I've got a thirst which needs a drop of something,
and I know the Dominie won't give me a whisky and soda."
"Go in and talk to him. I must finish my job. Shan't we look smart?"
"You'll be taken for the Royal Mail. How fond you are of red! You
always were. Do you remember when your red frock was baptised with ink?
How you howled! Here, let me take a hand."
He seized her brush. Joan stood and watched him.
"Any crest to go on?"
"You can paint Dad's name."
Derrick did so; but when Joan looked over his shoulder she found
"Joan's a dear!" added in large letters.
"Derrick, haven't you grown up yet?" Joan said severely.
"I'm trying to," he said meekly.
Then he threw down his brush, and she led the way into the house.
It was one of those very old-fashioned English rectories which are
delightful to look at and to live in, if it were not for the thought
of repairs. A low, square, oak-panelled hall, dark, and with rather
a musty atmosphere; low, long sitting-rooms opening out of it, with
oak beams across the ceilings, and deep casement windows overlooking
a rather untidy and leaf-bestrewed garden. Pictures and books seemed
to cover all the walls, a few shelves of fragile old china lightened
the rather gloomy little drawing-room; but Derrick was led into the
rector's study, where Mr. Adair was immersed amongst his books. Here
there was a cheerful fire burning, and a square tea-table set by its
side. A copper kettle was singing away on the hob.
"Dad, dear, here is one of your former pupils—the black sheep amongst
them."
Mr. Adair turned round and greeted the young man heartily.
Joan's father was getting on in years, but he enjoyed excellent health.
His face was ruddy and cheerful and clean shaven; his white hair and
the stoop in his shoulders were the only signs of age.
"I must wash my hands," said Joan. "We will have tea in a few minutes."
She left the room humming a little song under her breath. A green
baize door opened at one end of the hall, and an elderly woman's face
appeared with rather an anxious look upon it.
"Is it visitors, Miss Joan?"
Joan laughed. Such a clear, happy laugh! Everyone smiled on hearing it,
and the old servant was no exception.
"Mr. Derrick, Sophia! We will not make company of him."
"I'll send in some buttered toast. I remember his liking for it."
"Be careful with the butter," cautioned Joan, the dimple in her cheek
appearing as she ran lightly up the wide, shallow stairs. She made her
way along a passage till she opened the door of her room.
It was very small, but it bore the characteristics of the
owner—whitewashed walls, white dimity bed-hangings, and white dimity
curtains in the wide casement window. The carpet was thin and
threadbare, but there was a chintz-covered easy chair by the window,
and a little table with books and writing materials upon it. A bowl
of late roses was on the window ledge over the small dressing-table,
and suspended from a mirror hanging on the wall was a bunch of fresh
lavender, and a bookcase on the opposite side was crowded with
well-worn, shabby books.
It did not take Joan long to tidy herself, but just for one moment she
leant her elbows on her windowsill and gazed with far-seeing eyes over
the scene before her. An old lawn sloped down to a row of beech trees;
beyond, the fields rose up again till they met a belt of pines on the
horizon. Behind these pines the sun was already slowly sinking, sending
rosy rays across the dusky sky. Rooks were cawing in a rookery close
by, there was a smell of wood fires, and a slight whiff of hot bread
which delighted her senses.
"What a haven it is!"
Joan breathed the words; then a little shadow stole into her blue eyes.
"Oh, I hope they will be pleased—they must be!" A quick sigh escaped
her, then she made her way downstairs and re-entered the study like a
fresh breeze.
Derrick glanced at her as she sat down and began making the tea. He was
three years her senior, and they had played together and learnt in this
old rectory as a boy and girl when his grandfather had been the rector
here, and Mr. Adair had been his curate and lived with his young family
in a whitewashed cottage at the entrance to the village.
Mr. Adair had gone to a busy town later on, and had taken pupils.
Derrick Colleton had gone to him there and renewed his acquaintance
with his old playmate. Then he had gone to Oxford, and thence had
drifted first into law, and then, not finding that satisfy either his
purse or his intellect, had taken a post as private secretary to a
member of the Cabinet. He had never lost his boyish spirits, and as his
humorous, twinkling eyes met Joan's, she laughed.
"I'd like to know your thoughts," she said.
"I didn't think I'd tumble into such domesticity," he said. "Joan
of the inkpot and of midnight studies I remember—never Joan of the
tea-table!"
"But Dad must have his tea," said Joan. "He and I have settled down
here together with infinite peace. I left Girton two years ago."
"And where is Mrs. Adair? Still abroad with Cecil?"
"They are coming home at the end of this week," Mr. Adair said quickly.
There was a light in his eye as he spoke.
Derrick looked round the room, then out into the dusky garden.
"It's so queer your coming back here after all these years. I see my
marks still upon that window shutter. I was shut and locked in here one
day by my grandfather. He rued his deed when he opened the door. My
knife had been busy on every bit of wood in the room!"
"You were an awful little brat!" said Joan, her dimple appearing.
"Yes," said Mr. Adair gravely. "It is queer, I suppose, but very
mercifully ordained by God, I consider. Sir Joseph, by giving me the
living, has enabled us to be one united family again. I am sure this
bracing country air will be quite as good for Cecil as that of the
Swiss places in which she has been living, and the house will be far
more comfortable for my dear wife."
There was a moment's silence. Derrick was casting his mind back to the
narrow terraced house in a dingy street in which the Adairs had lived
for the past ten years. He saw again Mrs. Adair moving about it in her
restless, preoccupied fashion, her graceful figure and dainty dress—a
strangely incongruous sight in that shabby house. He wondered if this
country rectory would be more to her liking.
Then he turned to Joan.
"How's the learning? I saw you had taken any amount of degrees and
honours. What good is it going to do you?"
Joan's eyes flashed.
"It has done me good. It has quickened and fed the mental part of me.
It has developed—"
"Oh, Pax! Don't flood me with your rhetoric. If you want to be pleasant
to your neighbours, let the past be buried deep. Your Girton knowledge
won't be wanted here."
"I'm not going to argue with you," said Joan suddenly, smiling. "You're
only a man. All men are dreadfully afraid of cultured women."
"I shall never be afraid of you, Joan—never!"
Sophia at this instant opened the door. She bore a plate of hot
buttered toast, and when Derrick saw her, he seized it from her and
wrung her by the hand.
"Good old Sophia, you're going strong yet! And your toast is as balmy
as ever!"
"Mr. Derrick, I hope you're well."
Sophia dropped an old-fashioned curtsy. She was evidently a privileged
servant, for she went on:
"I knew your tea would be nothing without a bit of toast; and what the
boy is, that will be the man. I fancy you, sir, going through life and
looking for buttered toast and takin' it as your right—the right to
enjoy what other folks have worked to give you, which is, so to say, a
parable. Buttered toast comes to some quite easy, but 'tis not always
wise."
"Oh, Sophia, stop," said Joan, laughing. "Don't give us a treatise
on buttered toast. If you spoil Derrick, don't blame him for being
spoiled."
Sophia edged towards the door. Looking over her shoulder, she said:
"Mr. Derrick be one of fortune's favourites. He has never met
discipline yet."
"There, Derrick! Sophia knows all about you."
Derrick nodded.
"Have you and Banty met yet?" he asked, munching his toast with much
appreciation.
"Yes," said Joan. "I have spoken to her after church. She is usually
out when I call. I know Lady Gascoigne best. She is always at home.
Banty and I are strangers; she has nothing left of the small girl I
used to know. She was a fat baby then."
"Only a couple of years younger than yourself," said Derrick with a
laugh. "Banty is very good sport. She's as good a shot as her father,
which is saying a good deal. What do you think of the cousin living
with them? He's a queer fish if ever there was one!"
"I haven't met him. He has been up in town. Does he live here? Lady
Gascoigne talks of him as if he is a kind of secretary or upper
servant. He's a Gascoigne, isn't he?"
"He's the son of a younger brother—Wilmot, his name is. He has
travelled a good bit, I believe, is mad over books, and old Jossy
is keeping him busy cataloguing his library and sorting out family
chronicles. It's the fashion nowadays to publish family reminiscences,
and I believe this fellow is trying to do it. He's too literary for me.
Those book fellows are always such self-assertive brutes; I longed to
pull his nose!"
"By which I know he snubbed you," said Joan with her dimpling smile.
Mr. Adair had sat listening in silence; now he engaged Derrick's
attention by asking him questions about the glebe fields and various
other matters upon which he hoped he might be able to throw some light.
Joan slipped away to finish her cart before darkness stopped her.
Derrick came out to her on his way back to the Hall.
"So you're settling down into a country parson's daughter," he said. "I
heard you played the organ better than old Tabbs did. Had he chucked it
before you came?"
"Was he the old schoolmaster? Yes; we have a modern schoolmistress now
who is practising hard to become organist. She has no idea of time,
unfortunately, which is funny, because of course she teaches part
singing in school. No, Derrick; I love it here, but I am not settling
down. Shall I tell you a secret?" She stood up, and a grave, earnest
look came into her face. "Yesterday I had the offer of a post in a
first-class high school which will bring me in from £150 to £200 a
year."
"Good for you! But, oh, my dear Joan, don't you take to
schoolmistressing! You don't know how much better I like you in your
present setting!"
"Being a man, that goes without saying," said Joan cheerfully. "But
I am panting for higher, wider interests. I don't want to let my
knowledge rust, and I love—I adore—imparting knowledge; they say I have
the knack of it. Some, you know, have the brains, but not the faculty
for teaching."
"How can your father spare you?"
"That is the rub! Of course he could not, unless Mother and Cecil are
here; but it would do Cecil such a lot of good to take my place and run
the parish. She wants an interest in life. She is so much stronger than
she thinks she is, and I dread her getting self-centred. Dad and I are
hopeful that they will settle down. We're going to do our very best to
make them like it. Oh, what am I saying? But you know us, Derrick; it's
no good hiding it from you."
"Not a little bit!" said Derrick hastily. "But mark my words, your
mother is not old enough to settle down in this quiet spot. In your
heart you want to be up and away, and so will she. Your mother won't
fit into this part. I'll bet you ten quid she won't!"
Joan put out her hand as if to ward off a blow.
"Don't say it. Wait and see. Dad has been a new man since he came
here—so much brighter and more hopeful. He said to me last night:
'Please God your mother and I will spend our old age together here. It
is all I ask.'"
Joan's voice shook, then she laughed.
"Go away, Derrick; you're making me too communicative, only I know
you're as safe as a post! Here, give me a hand and push this into the
coachhouse. Have you seen our old pony? He is over twenty, I am told,
but he goes like steam. We bought the cart and harness from Dray Farm,
and they threw the pony in for an extra three pounds. Wanted a good
home for him, they said. I like those Drays."
Derrick took hold of the cart and pushed her aside. Then for an
instant, he let his hand rest on her shoulder.
"Joan, for auld lang syne, don't you leave poor Dominie in his old age!
He's worth more than brats of girls who don't know one teacher from
another."
He gave her no time for reply, shouldered his gun, and vaulted clean
over the white gate that led out into the road. Then, waving his hat,
he cried:
"If Jossy doesn't send you some of the pheasants that I help him to
bring down, I'll give the order to his keeper myself. Au revoir!"
Joan stood for a moment leaning her arms on the gate and watching his
retreating figure in the dusk, then she gave a quick sigh and went
indoors.