Joan Haste by H. Rider Haggard (ereader manga .txt) đź“•
She might have spared herself the trouble, for even as she sighed and sought, a sha
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Alarmed by the violence of her antagonist, the girl retreated, and,
returning presently, showed Mrs. Gillingwater into the study without a
word. Here she found Mr. Levinger standing by the fire, his face white
with anger.
“Be seated, Mrs. Gillingwater,” he said in a quiet voice, “and tell me
what you mean by coming to make a disturbance here.”
“I mean that I want to see you, sir,” she answered sullenly, “and that
I won’t be driven away from your door like a dog. Once for all I tell
you, sir, that you’d better be careful how you treat me, for if you
turn dirty on me, I’ll turn dirty on you. It’s only the dead that
don’t speak, sir, and I’m very much alive, I am.” Then she paused and
added threateningly, “You can’t treat me as I’ve heard say you did
another, Mr. Levinger.”
“Have you quite done?” he asked. “Very well, then; be so good as to
listen to me: you can tell nothing about me, for the best of all
possible reasons, that you know nothing. On the other hand, Mrs.
Gillingwater, I can, if necessary, tell something about you—perhaps
you may remember to what I refer, if not I can refresh your
memory—ah! I see that there is no need. A moment’s reflection will
show you that you are entirely in my power. If you dare to make any
attack upon my character, or even to repeat such a disturbance as you
have just caused, I will ruin you and drive you to the workhouse,
where, except for me, you would have been long ago. In earnest of what
I say, your husband will receive to-morrow a summons for the rent that
he owes me, and a notice to quit my house. I trust that I have made
myself clear.”
Mrs. Gillingwater knew Mr. Levinger well enough to be aware that he
would keep his word if she drove him to it; and, growing frightened at
the results of her own violence, she began to whimper.
“You never would be so cruel as to deal with a poor woman like that,
sir,” she said. “If I’ve spoken rash and foolish it’s because I’m as
full of troubles as a thistle-head with down; yes, I’m driven mad,
that’s what I am. What with having lost the license, and that brute of
a husband of mine always drunk, and Joan, my poor Joan, who was like a
daughter to me, a-dying–-”
“What did you say?” said Mr. Levinger. “Stop that snivelling, woman,
and tell me.”
“Now you see, sir, that you would have done foolish to send me away,”
Mrs. Gillingwater jerked out between her simulated sobs, “with the
news that I had to tell you. Not as I can understand why it should
trouble you, seeing that of course the poor dear ain’t nothing to you;
though if it had been Sir Henry Graves that I’d gone to, it wouldn’t
have been surprising.”
“Will you tell me what you are talking about?” broke in Mr. Levinger,
striking his stick upon the floor. “Come, out with it: I’m not to be
trifled with.”
Mrs. Gillingwater glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes,
wondering if it would be safe to keep up the game any longer. Coming
to an adverse conclusion, she produced Mrs. Bird’s letter, saying,
“This is what told me about it, sir.”
He took, or rather snatched the letter from her hand, and read it
through with eagerness. Apparently its contents moved him deeply, for
he muttered, “Poor girl! to think of her being so ill! Pray Heaven she
may not die.” Then he sat down at the table, and taking a telegram
form, he filled it in as follows:—
“To Mrs. Bird, 8 Kent Street, London, W.
“Your letter to Mrs. Gillingwater received. Spare no expense. Am
writing by to-day’s post.
“James Levinger, Monk’s Lodge, Bradmouth.”
“Would you mind ringing the bell, Mrs. Gillingwater?” said Mr.
Levinger, as he re-read the telegram and, placing it in an envelope,
directed it to the postmaster at Bradmouth. “No, stay: I will see to
the matter myself.” And he left the room.
Presently he returned. “I do not know that I need keep you, Mrs.
Gillingwater,” he said, “or that I have anything more to say. I shall
do my best to look after your niece, and I will let you know how she
goes on.”
“Thank you, sir; and about the rent and the notice?”
“At present, Mrs. Gillingwater, I shall dispense with both of them. I
do not wish to deal hardly with you unless you force me to it. I
suppose that you are in a bad way, as usual?”
“Well, yes, sir, I am. In fact, I don’t quite know what I can do
unless I get a little help.”
“Ten pounds?” suggested Mr. Levinger.
“That will tide me over for a bit, sir.”
“Very well, then, here you are,” and he produced the money. “But mind,
I give you this for the sake of old associations, little as you
deserve it; and if there is any more trouble you will get nothing
further from me. One more thing: I expect you to hold your tongue
about poor Joan’s illness and her address—especially to Sir Henry
Graves and Mr. Rock. Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“Then remember what I say, and good morning; if you want to
communicate with me again, you had better write.”
Mrs. Gillingwater departed humbly enough, dropping an awkward curtsey
at the door.
“Like the month of March, she came in like a lion and has gone out
like a lamb,” reflected Mr. Levinger as the door closed behind her.
“She is a dangerous woman, but luckily I have her in hand. A horrible
woman I call her. It makes me shudder to think of the fate of anybody
who fell into the power of such a person. And now about this poor
girl. If she were to die many complications would be avoided; but the
thing is to keep her alive, for in the other event I should feel as
though her blood were on my hands. Much as I hate it, I think that I
will go to town and see after her. Emma is to start for home
to-morrow, and I can easily make an excuse that I have come to fetch
her. Let me see: there is a train at three o’clock that would get me
to town at six. I could dine at the hotel, go to see about Joan
afterwards, and telegraph to Emma that I would fetch her in time for
the eleven o’clock train to-morrow morning. That will fit in very
well.”
Two hours later Mr. Levinger was on his road to London.
Mrs. Gillingwater returned to Bradmouth, if not exactly jubilant, at
least in considerably better spirits than she had left it. She had
wrung ten pounds out of Mr. Levinger, which in itself was something of
a triumph; also she had hopes of other pickings, for now she knew
Joan’s address, which it seemed was a very marketable commodity. At
present she had funds in hand, and therefore there was no need to
approach Samuel Rock—which indeed she feared to do in the face of Mr.
Levinger’s prohibition; still it comforted her not a little to think
that those five-and-twenty sovereigns also were potentially her own.
THE PRICE OF INNOCENT BLOOD
A month went by, and at the end of it every farthing of Mr. Levinger’s
ten pounds was spent, for the most part in satisfying creditors who
either had sued, or were threatening to sue, for debts owing to them.
Finding herself once more without resources, Mrs. Gillingwater
concluded that it was time to deal with Samuel Rock, taking the chance
of her breach of confidence being found out and visited upon her by
Mr. Levinger. Accordingly, towards dusk one evening—for she did not
wish her errand to be observed by the curious—Mrs. Gillingwater
started upon her mission to Moor Farm.
Moor Farm is situated among the wind-torn firs that line the ridge of
ground which separates the sea heath between Bradmouth and Ramborough
from the meadows that stretch inland behind it. Perhaps in the whole
county there is no more solitary or desolate building, with its
outlook on to the heath and the chain of melancholy meres where Samuel
had waylaid Joan, beyond which lies the sea. The view to the west is
more cheerful, indeed, for here are the meadows where runs the Brad;
but, as though its first architect had determined that its windows
should look on nothing pleasant, the house is cut off from this
prospect by the straggling farm buildings and the fir plantation
behind them.
The homestead, which stands quite alone, for all the labourers
employed about the place live a mile or more away in the valley, is
large, commodious, and massively built of grey stone robbed from the
ruins of Ramborough. When the Lacons, Joan’s ancestors on the mother’s
side, who once had owned the place, went bankrupt, their land was
bought by Samuel Rock’s grandfather, an eccentric man, but one who was
very successful in his business as a contractor for the supply of hay
to His Majesty’s troops. After he had been the possessor of Moor Farm
for little more than a year, this James Rock went suddenly mad; and
although his insanity was of a dangerous character, for reasons that
were never known his wife would not consent to his removal to an
asylum, but preferred to confine him in the house, some of the windows
of which are still secured by iron bars. The end of the tale was
tragic, for one night the maniac, having first stunned his keeper,
succeeded in murdering his wife while she was visiting him. This event
took place some seventy years before the date of the present story,
but the lapse of two generations has not sufficed to dispel the evil
associations connected with the spot, and that portion of the house
where the murder was committed has remained uninhabited from that day
to this.
Mrs. Gillingwater was not a person much troubled by imaginative fears,
but the aspect of Moor House as she approached it on that November
evening affected her nerves, rudimentary as they were. The day had
been very stormy, and angry rays from the setting sun shone through
gaps in the line of naked firs behind the house, and were reflected
from the broken sky above on to the surface of the meres and of the
sea beyond them. The air was full of the voices of wind and storm, the
gale groaned and shrieked among the branches of the ancient trees;
from the beach a mile away came the sound of the hiss of the surge and
of the dull boom of breakers, while overhead a flock of curlews
appeared and disappeared as they passed from sunbeam into shadow and
from shadow into sunbeam, until they faded among the uncertain lights
of the distance, whence the echo of their unhappy cries still floated
to the listener’s ear. The front of the house was sunk in gloom, but
there was still light enough to enable Mrs. Gillingwater, standing by
the gate of what in other times had been a little pleasure garden, but
was now a wilderness overrun with sea grasses, to note its desolate
aspect, and even the iron bars that secured the windows of the rooms
where once the madman was confined. Nobody could be seen moving about
the place, and she observed no lamp in the sitting-room.
“I hope those brutes
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