“I am very glad you think me a clever man, Miss Joscelyn. I’m afraid I haven’t much to say for myself. They offered me the job, and I took it. If I hadn’t taken it, somebody else would; and it is not my affair. I am making it as good a piece of work as I can. Perhaps something else may come of it,” he said.
“Well, I hope something else may come of it,” said Joan, “for your sake. I don’t think very much will come of it, itself. It’s fine making roads when there is somebody to walk upon them: and the Fell country’s a fine country—but perhaps not fit for railways. You see,” said Joan, “there never can be much of a population; you can’t break down the hills, and sow corn upon them. One line straight through, that stands to reason—but I would have nothing to do with more, for my part.”
“What you say is very sensible, Miss Joscelyn. What do you think of Brokenriggs as a bit of land? They tell me it has a good aspect, and is capable of being improved—”
“Brokenriggs? you are not taking the railway there? Oh, you were meaning in the way of farming? It’s a good enough aspect, but it’s cold soil. Speak to old Isaac Oliver about that, and he will tell you; it’s not a generous soil. You put a great deal into it, and take little out; that’s what I’ve always heard. Indeed, I’ve seen it for myself, as you may too, any day, if you turn down by the old tower—what they call Joscelyn tower, you know; but the house is a very poor place; I hope you were not thinking of it for yourself?”
“It was for—a friend,” said Selby, with a smile.
“Then tell him no; I would not recommend it. There’s another place. It was once in our family, so I’ve always heard; but we are people, as I daresay you know, that have come down in the world.”
“Have had losses—like—so many people,” said Selby. He was going to say Dogberry, but the words woke no consciousness in Joan’s eyes.
“So many losses, that we’ve got little left. It is about ten miles from here, Heatonshaw. It’s a nice little property, and a house that could be repaired: they say it was once the Dowerhouse in our family when we were grander folk. A nice bit of pasture,” said Joan, with enthusiasm. “I have always thought if I could turn out my cows there, there would not be butter like it in all the North country. There is not much to better my butter anyhow, I can tell you—though I say it that shouldn’t,” she said, with a little pride, then laughed at herself.
“And this—what do you call it, Heatonshaw? is a place you would like for yourself.”
“Dearly,” said Joan, “I was telling you—there’s no better pasture; a bit of meadow, just as sweet as honey, and all the hill-side above. And there’s a good bit of arable land lying very well for the sun. I have heard of great crops in some of the fields; I cannot tell you how many bushels to the acre, but you will easily find out. And if your friend has a taste for a dairy—that’s what I could give my opinion upon.”
“There is nobody whose opinion he would sooner take,” Selby said, and as he did so he looked at Joan in a way that somewhat startled her. It was not such a look as she had been in the habit of seeing directed to herself. She had seen other people so regarded, and had laughed. Somehow this gave her an odd sensation, a sensation chiefly of surprise; then she felt inclined to laugh also, though at herself. Bless us all, what had the man got into his head? surely not any nonsense of that sort! It so tickled Joan that she felt herself shaking with laughter, to which she dared not give vent—and she turned her eyes upon her stocking, which was the last thing she ever looked at, lest an incautious contact with someone else’s should produce an explosion of mirth.
“Are you rested now, mother?” she said, “I’ll have to go presently and look after Bess.” Bess was the dairy woman, who had no head for anything, but was Joan’s dutiful slave.
“I was not so tired as you thought, Joan,” said Mrs. Joscelyn, half aggrieved, “I have been doing my work, as you might see—”
“Now, mother, that is a real deception; when I thought you were taking a doze, and was entertaining Mr. Selby with country matters, to let you get your rest! however when there’s a question of farms or the lie of the land, or anything like that, I may take it upon me to say I am better than mother, though she’s far cleverer than me,” said Joan, laying aside her knitting. Selby got up to open the door for her, which was an attention quite unusual, and increased the overpowering desire to laugh with which she had been seized.
“I wonder if I might ask to see your dairy?” he said in a low tone, detaining her at the door.
“Not to-day,” said Joan, briskly, “I never let anybody see my dairy but when it is in prime order; and we are busy to-day.”
“I am sure no dairy of yours is ever in anything but prime order,” he said, with another look that completely overpowered Joan’s gravity. She almost pulled the door from his hand, shutting it quickly between them, and ran off, not to the dairy, as she had said, but to her own room, giving forth suppressed chokes of sound at spasmodic intervals as she flew upstairs. Joan’s was no fairy foot, but a firm substantial tread, which made the old stairs creak. When she got into the shelter of her own chamber, she threw herself into a chair, and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. “The lasses have been true prophets after all; I believe I have gotten a lad at last,” she said to herself. But even when her fit of laughter was over, she did not venture downstairs, or near the dairy, until she was certain that Philip Selby must have taken himself away. She bustled about the room, looking over clothes that wanted mending, and “tidying” drawers which wanted no tidying, still pausing now and then to give vent to another laugh; nothing so laughable had occurred before in Joan’s career. She had been asked in marriage by an enterprising “vet” when she was a girl, a poor fellow who had not considered the daughter of a man who was an evident horse-dealer to be so very far above him, but who was all but kicked out of the house by Ralph Joscelyn, and his long-legged sons. Joan had never heard of it even, till after the episode was over, and though she was duly indignant at his presumption, she had felt rather an interest in the man himself, hoping to hear for some time that his disappointment had not affected his health, or interfered with his career. But the “vet” had found a more suitable match, and all had gone well with him, which utterly ended any little bit of romance she might have had a capacity for. Since that time Joan had not had any “lad.” Everybody who was good enough for a Joscelyn to marry, was too good for Ralph Joscelyn’s daughter, and though she was homely she was proud. She could work like a dairy-maid, but she would not have married beneath her. Besides, she was not a marrying woman. There is such a variety of the species, just as there is a non-marrying man; and the more independent women get to be, no doubt the more this class will increase, though it is in a very small minority now. Joan was not at all independent in means, but she was independent in her character, and her work. There was no one to interfere with her in her share of the labours of the establishment. Her mother did not even understand what that work was, and her father, though he was a bold man, did not venture to interfere. She had everything her own way, and guided the house in general according to her will, notwithstanding an occasional outburst, which she soon quieted, on her father’s part. Having thus a great deal to do, a position of weight, and domestic authority, an absolute sovereignty so far as it went, why should she have wanted to marry? She did not; and it was the sentimental consciousness of Selby’s looks that was too much for her gravity. “Just like a dog when it’s singing music,” said Joan to herself. When she went down to the dairy Selby was gone, and Mrs. Joscelyn all uncomprehending seated alone in the parlour. Her mending (which she was always doing; never was a man who wore out his under-clothing so!) required her eyes and her full attention, not like Joan’s knitting; she had never even seen those looks which Joan called “sheep’s eyes.” But Joan herself was much on the alert afterwards, and fully foresaw what was going to happen if she did not take care; and, indeed, notwithstanding all her care, something did happen, as will be seen, within the short space of two days.
CHAPTER XIII.
A PROPOSAL.
THE White House had begun to be slightly agitated by the expectation of letters from Harry, when Mr. Selby came again. There was no immediate acknowledgment of the arrival of the boxes, or reply to the letter which Mrs. Joscelyn had written instantly, as soon as they heard that he had returned to Liverpool; but this both mother and daughter thought was natural enough. Harry no doubt would be sulky; even his mother and sister would be included in his anger against the house, though they had done nothing which he ought to have taken in ill part. He was not a great letter-writer, however, and they were both indulgent to Harry, and willing to give him a little time to get over his “pet,” as Joan called it. Joan took the whole matter cheerily. He was only “in a pet.” He had been “in a pet” before now, and had kept his mother uneasy, refusing to write; but it had gone off, and all had come right again. No doubt it would be the same now: only this time he had some reason for his “pet,” and might be excused if he was a little sulky. “You know, mother,” said Joan, “Harry’s terrible young for his age. He’s just a baby for his age, and he has a deal of you in him. We must let him get over his pet.”
“Oh, Joan, do you think I would keep anybody anxious that was fond of me?” said Mrs. Joscelyn, “but,” she added, with a sigh, “nobody would care very much if it was only me. It is this that gives you all the pull over me, that I care, and you don’t.”
Joan could not contradict this; and there gleamed over her a momentary compassion for her mother, whose lot it seemed to be always to “care,” while nobody cared for her. “You must try and not care so much, mother. We’re none of us worth it,” she said, “but, as for Harry, he’s just in a pet. Leave him alone, and he’ll soon come to himself. My fine ham! I wouldn’t have wasted it on a person that didn’t deserve it. If he don’t write within the week, I will say he’s not worth the salt it’s cured with; but we’ll give him a week; by that time he’ll come round, if he’s a bit sulky just at first. I don’t blame him, for my part.”
Mrs. Joscelyn’s hands had crept together, and clasped each other, with that earnest appeal she was always making to earth and heaven: but they slid asunder hastily when she met Joan’s eyes. She was thankful to allow that it was quite reasonable that Harry should be sulky. “Though he might have thought a little upon me. He might have thought I would suffer most of all. He might have remembered how little I can do, and that I must support everything,” she said to herself, with a few quiet tears. She did not venture to say it even to Joan, though Joan was so much more sympathetic than she could have hoped. Nobody ever thought of anything she might have to suffer. Perhaps on the whole she was supposed to enjoy it. “Making a fuss,” was one of her specialities in everybody’s opinion. Her children were all disposed to think it did not matter very much what the object of “the fuss” was. And thus she was left in her parlour with her mending, a woman surrounded with people belonging to her by nature and the dearest ties, yet altogether alone, as lonely as any poor old maiden in her garret. Nor is this any unusual thing; a fact in which the solitary may find a little uncomfortable alleviation of their special woes.
Mr. Selby came back while the house was in this state of expectation, not anxious as yet, but on the eve of becoming so. He did not send in his card now, but usually presumed so far as to go straight to the parlour door by himself, where he always knocked, however, before entering. This time, he came in the morning, when he knew Joan was not likely to be in the parlour. He was a little nervous, though perhaps it would be too much to say that his heart beat. After forty, a man’s heart requires a very strong inducement to make it beat, that is to say, in any violent manner. But he was a little nervous, and half ashamed at what he was about to do. He went doubtfully to the dairy door, which was standing wide open. Inside Joan could be seen moving briskly about, and her voice was very audible in not very gentle tones. Selby paused a little, and listened to it with a comical concern upon his face. His brow contracted a little with anxious care, though his mouth laughed. Joan was scolding, nothing more or less. “Talk to me about not having time!” she said, “You have time to dress yourself up, and go out to court your lad, night after night. Is that what you call your duty to your neighbour? My word, if your lads were your neighbours, you would keep the commandments easy. Did ever any mortal see such bowls, to be in a Christian person’s dairy? Woman! where do you expect to go? A dairy’s not a dairy if the Queen of England might not eat her dinner off every shelf in it, and give a prize for every brick. That’s what makes the butter sweet, not your lads, or the tricks that you play. Get out of my sight! I could take my hands to you, if I did not think too much of myself.”
Philip Selby stood in the yard with a comical look on his face, and listened. Was it fright? There could not be the least doubt that Joan was scolding violently, and even using threats of personal violence, to the lass, who, half in sorrow, but more than half in anger, was sobbing in the background. The very sound of her foot and its rapid tap upon the floor, was angry, and scolded too. He paused, and a look of alarm came over his face. The Joscelyns were known for hot tempers all over the county. Ralph Joscelyn was a man whom people avoided any sort of argument with on this account, and all his sons shared, more or less, his disposition. What if Joan shared it too? It was alarming to a man bent on the special errand which had brought Selby here. Perhaps the doubt was not romantic, but, on the whole, neither was the errand. If she should say to him, “Get out of my sight!” if she should threaten to “take her hands” to him in any domestic difficulty, it would not be agreeable. He stopped short in the yard, where old Simon was cleaning his milk-pails; through the dairy window the milk-bowls were visible, ranged in perfect order, and a glimpse of Joan’s trim substantial figure, passing and re-passing, with no sort of languor about her, such as is supposed to encourage love. The would-be lover had a visible movement of doubt. He caught old Simon’s eye and blushed, though he had long supposed himself to be past blushing, and gave an uneasy laugh, which sounded shy, though it was twenty years, Mr. Selby thought, since he knew what the word meant. Old Simon was a man with a very wandering eye, an eye to be spoken of in strict correctness in the singular number. One of them he always kept upon his work, the other moved about, finding out everything that was unwilling to be seen; this time he perceived Mr. Selby’s sentiment at the first glance.
“Ye needn’t be feared,” he said, taking one hand from his pail to wave it in the direction of the dairy, “ye needn’t be feared. She’s not a lass to be feared for, our Miss Joan. Her bark’s worse than her bite. Bless you, not the hundredth part of that she don’t mean.”
Philip Selby felt more alarmed still. That a woman should scold when she meant it, that was supportable; but when she scolded, not meaning it, that indeed was something to be frightened for. The smile upon his mouth became a nervous one. He faltered in spite of himself.
“Lord!” said old Simon, turning his head aside, “six feet high, and na mair heart than that. Is that what ye ca’ a man?”
“Hist!” said Selby, beckoning him close; he had half-a-crown between his finger and thumb, “is that, now, a thing that happens very often? Tell me the truth, and I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Terrible often,” said Simon, with a grin of derision, “most days—and twa or three times a day.”
“And how do you manage to live with her?” said the panic-stricken suitor.
“We cannot bide her out of our sight,” said Simon, his grin growing more and more disdainful, “naething goes right when she’s—away. You may make what you like out o’ that. It’s what they ca’ a paradox at the night school.”
And he went off clashing his pails against each other in a manner which caught Joan’s keen ear, as she paused for a moment before the open window. “What are you doing with those pails?” she said; “have all the folk about the town gone out of their wits to day? Do you not know, Simon, that you started all the hoops last summer, and brought us in a bill as long as my arm? Bless me, can nothing be done right in this house, unless I put to my own hand, and do it myself?”
“Hear to her!” said Simon, tranquilly, taking no other notice of this energetic address, “you can see for yourself. She’s often like that, less or more.”
At this moment there came the sound of a laugh from within. “It’s Mr. Selby, I declare,” said Joan, “to see the dairy! and all in such disorder, ye lazy, big, soft——I told you I would let nobody in unless we were tidied up, and we’re not tidied up, not a bit; but you’ll have to come in, I suppose, as you’re here. Step in; we must not grudge the welcome, since it’s all you’re likely to get. I’m in a passion; that’s the fact,” said Joan, with a laugh, “I’m raging like a bull of Bashan. You heard me as you were coming through the yard, I make no doubt; and that’s how I have to go on very near every day.”
“Oh no, Miss Joan!” said the lass who had been bearing the brunt of the storm; and Selby, looking round, saw that this aggrieved personage was grinning from ear to ear.
“That’s just your deception,” said Joan, “that’s trying to get at my weak side. When they get a laugh out of me, they think no more about it; and it’s far too easy,” Joan added, shaking her head with comical distress, “to get a laugh out of me, far too easy; but don’t you think it’s fun, for I am as serious as I can be,” she cried, turning round upon the culprit, who flew to her work with an alacrity which showed Joan’s admonition to be not without effect, though she was cramming her apron into her mouth all the time, that she might not laugh. Joan took Selby all over the dairy, and showed him everything. She was an enthusiast in all that concerned this portion of rural work. She took him out to the fields behind the house afterwards to see her pet cows. It was a breezy spring day, the sun shining, but the wind blowing, and cold though sunny. Joan went out with the light shining in her trim and smooth brown hair, and without a thought even of a shawl. “Cold? oh no, I’m not cold,” she said, “I don’t trouble hats much, if it is not in the height of summer, when you can really say there’s something like a sun. This doesn’t count; there is no headache in it,” said Joan, looking affectionately at the temperate ruler of the day, who makes no unnecessary show in the North. “But you might catch cold,” suggested the middle-aged lover. “Bless us,” said Joan, “me catch cold! why, such a thing was never thought of; I’ve seen a fuss made about Harry for taking cold; but never me. The air on the Fells never gives cold. It is your fat damp air in the level, it’s not our hill air that ever does any harm.”
“I am trying to think that, too. I am tired wandering about the world with a regiment of navvies,” said Selby; “I’m thinking of settling down.”
“That’s not a bad thing to do; but you must have led a cheery life roaming about the world as you say. I don’t know that I would like it myself; but change is lightsome. You must have seen a deal in your day,” said Joan, looking at her companion. And as she did so she could not but allow that he was a very “wise-like man.” It would be difficult to give in other words the full force of this phrase. It does not mean good-looking, or respectable, or tall, or wealthy, or well-dressed, or well-mannered, but it means all of these together. And Philip Selby was a little more—he was really handsome, though he was no longer young.
“I have seen a great deal in my day,” he said, “and my day has been a good long one, for I’ve been afloat upon the world for more than twenty years; but I don’t know that I ever saw anything so much to my mind as I see to-day—a fine, breezy hillside, and fine cattle, and a thriving country, not to say somebody by my side that——”
“Oh, you need not reckon me,” said Joan; “there’s women in all countries. It’s a great pity there’s so many of us; we would be a great deal more thought of if there were but a few.”
“Perhaps you would be angry,” said Selby, “if I said there were not many like Miss Joan Joscelyn, wherever a man may go.”
“Oh, no, far from angry,” said Joan, with a laugh. “I should think it was a very nice compliment; compliments are not common things in our parts. You that have been about the world you know how to flatter country folk—but among the Fells they’re but little known. Look at that beast now,” she said, stroking tenderly the face of a great, soft-eyed cow, “did you ever see a bonnier creature? There’s not a lady in all England has such a balmy breath. And she’s better than she’s bonnie. She’s a small fortune to us. And that little thing, that’s one from France, of the Brittany kind, small feeders and good milkers; that belongs to our little Liddy. You have never seen Liddy, Mr. Selby? She’s the pet of the family; and when she’s not here we make a pet of her little cow. Some are fond of Alderneys, some like this French breed. Which do you like best?”
“I have no opinion. I am no judge. I know a horse when I see one, but not a cow. I like the kind, Miss Joan, that you like best.”
“Well,” said Joan, laughing, “our tastes agree in some things. You remember that brown colt? The last time I saw him he was just what I expected—turning out a fine beast, far better than that Sister to Scythian that father set such store upon. I think you and me were right there.”
“I am sure we were right,” said Selby; “two heads are better than one. Do you know, Miss Joan, I think our tastes are very likely to agree. I have been to see Heatonshaw—which was the place you said you would dearly like yourself.”
“Did I say I would dearly like it? That was strong. But it’s a bonnie place, there is little doubt of that.”
“I think it is a sweet place; and a house that would just do for——I’ve something more to say to you, Miss Joan, if you will have the patience to listen. A wandering life is very pleasant for a time, but as a man gets on in years he wants to settle down. But,” said Selby, lifting his hand to stop her, for she was just about to interrupt him—and putting a great emphasis upon the word, “but—not by himself. He must have somebody to settle down with him, or it’s no settling at all.”
“That’s true,” said Joan, with great external sobriety, though the demon of laughter with which she had fought so severe a battle during their last interview had sprung again into life within her, “That’s very true. You’ll have to get a wife; but you cannot be at much loss about that, Mr. Selby, for women are plenty—more’s the pity. There’s no place you can go but you’ll find them in dozens. Men are real well off nowadays, they have nothing to do but to pick and choose.”
“That would be very nice if anyone would do,” said Selby, with a countenance the gravity of which contrasted strangely with the twinkle in Joan’s eye and the quiver about the corner of her mouth, “but I should not be content to pick and choose. The thing is, there is only one that I want. If I cannot get her, another will not serve my purpose, which is what you seem to think. Miss Joan, I know yours is a fine old family, much above mine, though the Selbys have always been respectable. You may think it presumptuous in me to ask you, but to tell the plain truth it’s you I want.”
“Me you want?” she cried, a little confused—for though she had seen what was coming, and had been quite prepared to make a joke of it, and even now scarcely dared to meet his eye lest she should laugh, the seriousness of the actual proposal bewildered her a little when it was made. She did not think it would have been half such a serious business. Joan, though she was not shy, and had treated the whole matter as a great joke up to this moment, cast down her eyes in spite of herself, and was confused, and for a moment did not know what to say.
“It’s just you I want,” said Selby; “you are the one I’ve had my eye on since ever I came into the Fell-country. When first I saw your face, I said to myself, ‘That’s the woman for me.’ You see, I was on the look out,” he added, with a smile. “I have put by a little money, and I had some from those that went before me. There’s enough to be comfortable upon, especially if the wife had a little of her own. And neither you nor me would like to be idle. You could set up your dairy, with all the last improvements, at Heatonshaw, and there would be plenty for me to do on the farm. I think we could make a very good thing out of it, and yet keep up a very pleasant position. I would never be against seeing friends, and you would have no need to exert yourself, but only to be the head of everything, and keep all going. I could see my way to a neat little carriage for you, or even a riding horse if you would like that—and as to allowances and so forth, even if you had nothing of your own——”
“I’m thinking you’re going too fast, Mr. Selby,” said Joan. The laughing spirit was exorcised. She no longer felt any inclination to burst forth into that fou rire which comes at the most inappropriate moments. He had sobered her by his own perfect sobriety. Joan felt that this was a grave business affair, and not a frivolous piece of nonsense inappropriate to her serious years. Some lingering wish, perhaps, to hear a real love tale in her own person had been lurking in her mind along with the certainty that she would laugh at it if it were told. And many ludicrous pictures had come before her when she first espied Mr. Selby’s “intentions.” She had wondered, with a comical mixture of inexperienced faith and cynicism, whether he would go down on his knees and call her by all sorts of endearing names. She was bursting with laughter at the sentimental personage who intended to make a divinity of Joan Joscelyn. Nevertheless, perhaps, she was a little conscious, secretly and underneath all, though she never acknowledged it to herself, that this was the way in which a woman had a right to be addressed once in her life—Joan Joscelyn as well as another. But that was a very great secret, and deep down; so deep that she had never confessed it even to herself. And now she was out in all her calculations, and there was nothing sentimental to laugh at. It was a very sensible sort of bargain that was proposed to her, and she did not know where to find a word against it. Her laugh came to an entire end. “I’m thinking,” she said, “that you’re going too fast.”
“It lies with you to say that,” said Selby; “but, Joan, remember” (he had given up the Miss, and she perceived it), “that what I am saying I’m ready to do, and it’s only for you to say the word. I’ve thought of it since ever I saw you. ‘That’s the woman for me,’ I said, and you know how we agreed about the colt. We agree, too, about the place. I went to look at it because you said you would like it, and I like it, too. And we’re both partial to the same kind of life. If we couldn’t get on together I don’t know who should. And in everything else I’ll do whatever you please.”
“You miss out one thing, Mr. Selby,” said Joan, “we ought to be partial to each other as well as to the kind of life.”
“Well, I am,” said Selby, fervently; “that’s the truth. I can’t speak for you; but I am. I’m partial to your looks and your ways, and everything about you. I like the way you sit still and knit, and I like you in your dairy and out here. You’re just all I want as far as I can see. I like you when you’re scolding. I was a little bit frightened at first; but afterwards I liked that as well as the rest.”
“Well, you’re a bold man to be partial to a woman when she’s scolding,” said Joan, a little mollified; “but I don’t know much about you, Mr. Selby, and I can’t say I’m partial to you.”
“That’s because you don’t know me,” he said promptly; “make as many inquiries as you like, I am not afraid of them. You’ll find I have a good character wherever I’ve been. I don’t see why I shouldn’t make you happy as well as another. I’ve nothing behind me that I’m ashamed of. You and I at Heatonshaw, with plenty of beasts in the stables, and the house furnished to please you, and a bit of a phaeton in the coach-house: I don’t see why we mightn’t be very snug together,” he said, and as he spoke he took Joan’s hand, which, though a little red in the fingers and brown on the back, was a shapely hand notwithstanding all her work. Then she was seized all at once, and without warning, with that fou rire.
“If you mean courting, Mr. Selby, it’s a bit public here,” she said, discharging a load from her breast in that peal of laughter. He was a little offended for the moment; but then he comforted himself that laughing was near to crying, and that crying would have been a very good sign indeed. At his age he had a little experience more than falls to the lot of a youth at the ordinary love-making age.
“I hope you’re not just laughing at me, Joan.”
“I’m laughing at myself as well—and at you too. I’m old to have a lad, and I never looked for such a thing—and you’re old,” Joan added. “I think you’re too old for me.”
“I am forty-one; which is not a bad age. Just suitable, I think,” he said.
Then she looked at him again with the laughter in her eyes. He was a very “wiselike” man—nothing to be ashamed at, whoever saw him—very good-looking indeed; more satisfactory in that way than Joan felt herself to be. And Heatonshaw was a pretty place; and a house all of her own was better than a house in which her father might interfere arbitrarily every day, or even her mother change all the arrangements some fine morning in a fit of absence or compunction. She turned round and began to walk towards the house, suddenly becoming serious. Selby turned too and walked with her. He did not say a word as they went over the fields and through the garden of the White House, but waited her pleasure in a deferential way which went to Joan’s heart. But she was not “partial” to him. “We can talk of this some other time” was all that she said.
CHAPTER XIV.
JOAN AND HER LOVER.
JOAN said nothing to anyone about Philip Selby’s proposal. She had, indeed, no one to consult on such a subject. She had grown up in the habit of indifference to her mother’s opinions, which originated partly in the difference of their dispositions and the superiority a calm temperament has over a nervous and anxious one, and partly in her father’s contempt of his wife, which her children resented, yet were influenced by. Seeing the number of times when Mrs. Joscelyn was unhappy, and excited as Joan thought about nothing, it was almost impossible for the strong-natured and composed young woman not to feel a certain affectionate and sometimes indignant contempt for the excess of feeling which gave so much trouble, yet never had any result; while, on the other hand, it is almost impossible for a man to treat his wife with systematic scorn without weakening the respect of her children for her, even when, as we have said, they resent his conduct and are more or less her partizans. At the best she was “poor mother,” a person to be defended and accounted for, not looked up to and trusted in. From her early youth Joan had been her own guide and governor. She had none of her mother’s sentiment; her mother’s standard was too high for her; her mother’s feelings overstrained and exaggerated. Among the multitude of “fusses” she was partly disgusted, partly amused, ready to take mother’s part, as has been seen, but always with a protest against the weaknesses which she could apologise for, but not understand. In the matter of Harry, as she shared in some measure the anxiety, she had in some measure understood the sentiment; but her attitude towards her mother was more that of a senior towards a junior, the stronger to the weaker, than the natural subordination which would have become their relationship. Joan knew that, had she consulted her mother about Mr. Selby, Mrs. Joscelyn would have been greatly excited. She would have questioned her daughter as to her love for her suitor, and his love for her, and all the sentimental questions, which Joan felt were well enough in books, but as far as regarded Philip Selby and herself were altogether out of the question. And as for mentioning such a subject to her father, nothing could have been more impossible. She was thus alone in her moderate and sober soul, as Mrs. Joscelyn was in her tender and somewhat excitable being. She could not tell her story to anyone with the hope of aid and guidance—who can? We are all alone when the great problems of life come upon us. Joan, however, thought of this question very soberly, without once regarding it in the light of a great problem. It excited her a good deal privately within her own composed bosom; but, to tell the truth, its first effect was more mirthful than serious. In the seclusion of her own being she laughed, saying to herself that after all the maids had been right, that she had “got a lad” when she was least thinking of it. The laugh was not without a touch of gratification in it, for it is true that a young woman, even when she reaches the mature age of thirty and gives herself out as beyond such vanities, still likes to have “a lad,” and to feel that she is like the others—“respectit like the lave,” not left out in this important particular of life. Joan was pleased with Mr. Selby that he had appreciated her. She thought the more of him for it, as has perhaps been already perceived. She had an honest consciousness of her own value. She knew what she could do, and what her services were worth in the not very satisfactory position she held in her father’s house, where she had the responsibility of everything without either the approbation or the reward to which such work as hers was entitled. And she knew, without any misplaced modesty on the subject, that she would make an excellent wife. But being thirty, and in her own opinion very homely in appearance, and evidently not appreciated in this way, Joan had, with a half-conscious contempt for the fool of a man, whoever he was, who had not “come forward,” and a secret laugh when she thought of it, even at this contempt—put that contingency out of her mind and taken it for granted that she was to be Joan Joscelyn till the end of her days, the manager and soul of the establishment at the White House. If it occurred to her sometimes—as of course it must have done—that the White House could not continue for ever under its present régime, and that the day would come when Will’s wife (and a bonnie hand she would make of it!) must reign in her stead, the idea in no way troubled her; for she knew that no circumstances could arise in which she, Joan Joscelyn, would not be well worth her salt. But now, when she had no thought of any such want, when she had put it entirely out of her mind, here had happened the thing that she thought would never happen! She had got “a lad.” Suddenly the monotonous future in which she had foreseen no change opened before her, showing the pretty little property she had always admired, the place which had once belonged to the Joscelyns; the pasture which was the sweetest in the country-side; the nice house with its sunny aspect, so different from the White House; the best of beasts in the stables, and even the phaeton in the coach-house. It is the greatest wonder in the world that women are not demoralised altogether by the constant possibility of such sudden changes in their existence. From day to day it is always happening. A poor girl, who has been trained to all the pinchings and scrapings of genteel poverty, will suddenly see wealth before her, and consideration, and importance, all in a moment, offered to her acceptance without any virtue of hers. We ask a great deal in asking young women to be wholly insensible to this chance which may happen at any moment to any one of them, and of which everyone knows instances. It was not anything so magnificent which had suddenly fallen in Joan’s way; but it was a great change, an offer as important as if it had come from King Cophetua; far more important indeed, for sensible Joan would have made short work with his majesty. This, however, was the most sensible, the most suitable of arrangements. It was exactly what she would have liked had she exercised the widest choice. The perfect appropriateness of it even subdued the inward mirth with which the idea, when it first presented itself to her mind, had been received. Though she still had a laugh now and then, it was gradually hushed by this conviction. “I thought I might had a waur offer,” she would say to herself now and then. She was like the heroine of that song. Her “braw wooer” was not without a touch of the ridiculous about him. She was disposed to jibe at his good looks, and his politeness, and his fine talk; but notwithstanding:—
But I thought I might had a waur offer, waur offer,
I thought I might had a waur offer.”
Joan was no singer; but it was astonishing how often that refrain came from her lips about this time. She was no singer; but she was a woman who sang at her work, as women used to do more than they do now. Perhaps drawingroom performers sing all the better because our ears have grown more particular; but of all cheerful things in this uncheerful world there are few so pleasant as the half-conscious song with which a cheery worker accompanies his or her occupations. Joan was always giving vent to some snatch of homely music in this way. But at the present moment she confined herself to that refrain: “I thought I might had a waur offer, waur offer. I thought I might had a waur offer.
“You are always singing that, Joan,” Mrs. Joscelyn said. “I never hear you sing anything else.”
“Am I?” said Joan, with a laugh; and then she grew red, and grave and silent all at once. It was so suitable! Nothing could have been more appropriate. But then, “I’m not partial to him,” she said to herself.
This would have been more on her mind, however, and probably would have come to a more rapid conclusion, if it had not been for the increasing uneasiness about Harry. He did not reply to his mother’s letter; the “course of post” in which she had begged to be answered was far exceeded. That they had not thought much of; but when day succeeded day and no letter came, Mrs. Joscelyn became daily more unhappy, and Joan was more disturbed than she would allow. Even Ralph Joscelyn himself, finding out, no one knew how, for he was not in the habit of interesting himself in the family correspondence, that there was no news of Harry, began to be seen looking out for the postman, and keeping a watch upon the countenances of the women and their communications together. He was uneasy as he had never been known to be before. When he was found to share that anxiety about the post which was so habitual to the others he looked confused, and murmured something about the Sister to Scythian and a bargain which had fallen through. Then his disquietude got so great that he spoke—not to his wife, whose constant wringing of her hands, and drawn countenance and anxious eyes called from him continual bursts of abuse—but to Joan, who, daily becoming more and more anxious herself, was exasperated by them also.
“You have word of that lad, I suppose?” Joscelyn said.
“No, we have no word.”
“He’s a young devil,” said his father, “he’s putting out his temper on you.”
“You’ve always set him a good example in that way,” said Joan, promptly; “maybe he is, and maybe not.”
“Hold your dashed tongue,” said Joscelyn; “what else could it be?”
“How am I to answer you if I hold my tongue? There’s a many reasons possible. He may have made up his mind to write no more to a house he was turned out of.”
“Stuff and nonsense! he was coming in at a disgraceful hour, and the door was locked, at a time when every honest door is locked.”
“I’m glad you can ease your conscience in that way,” said Joan; “it was at no disgraceful hour; all the boys have been out later, you’ve been out later, many’s the time, yourself. He may have made up his mind as I say,” she added, distinctly, “to disown the house as his home, at which I for one would not wonder: or he may,” and here her voice faltered, “he may—and that’s what I fear—have gone off as lads do——”
“Rubbish! blanked nonsense!” cried the father, but his ruddy countenance paled a little. “What do you mean by going off as lads do?”
“I cannot tell you,” said Joan, with sober disdain, “if you don’t know.”
“It’s just a dashed story you’ve got up,” her father said.
“It’s no story at all, for I hope it isn’t so, and I don’t know what it is—but to my mind that’s the most like. I wouldn’t put it into mother’s head for all the world, poor dear!”
“Dash you!” cried Joscelyn, “you are finely taken up with your mother. I never saw the like before; you have been easy enough about your mother and all her whining and complaining. What makes you set up this dashed nonsense, enough to make a man sick, now?”
“I never minded before,” said Joan, “maybe more shame to me. I’m very anxious about Harry myself, and that makes me understand the trouble mother’s in, poor dear!”
“Dash you and her too! It’s all the blanked nonsense he’s got from her, the young idiot!”
“That’s true: he has a deal of mother in him, poor lad!” Joan said, drying her eyes.
Joscelyn lifted his hand, and clenched his fist as if he would have given her a blow.
“You’re all a set of —— ——s!” he cried, launching furiously forth into the kind of eloquence which was habitual to him; but furious as he was, and brutal, there was a keen arrow of pain in his heart too; he was angry with himself. He could have beaten himself with that big fist. What a fool he had been to expose himself, to put it in the power of any lad to expose him! There was nothing he could not have done to himself in the rage of self-reproach and shame which had come upon him. It was a little for Harry—he was not unnatural, and he had a feeling for his offspring—but it was much more that he had laid himself open to the remarks of the county, and every friend and every enemy who might like to gossip about him and say the worst that there was to say.
Perhaps there was a little satisfaction in Joan’s bosom at the sight of the disturbance in her father’s. He deserved to be disturbed. She was glad that he should suffer, that he should get in some degree the recompense of his ill-doings. But this was only a transitory diversion to the painful strain of her thoughts. The waiting was hard to bear. How their hearts beat when they saw the postman approaching along the dusty road, and there was a terrible moment of doubt as to whether or not he would turn up the path to the White House! And when he came there was a still hotter excitement as Joan, with fingers which never had trembled before, turned over the letters. She could not trust herself to speak, but only shook her head, looking at her mother at the window. How many days? It seemed to have been going on for years, not days, this intolerable suspense, which, though it was unbearable, had to be borne. Only about a fortnight had elapsed, however, when there came a packet with the Liverpool postmark. It was a large one, and seemed to contain so much that for the first moment Joan scarcely noticed that the address was not written in her brother’s hand. She took it into the parlour, her heart beating loudly, and broke open the envelope, while her mother, trembling, hurried to her side full of eager joy. There tumbled out upon the table, however, four or five closed letters, all addressed to Harry—and nothing more. Then it was that Joan turned the envelope and looked at what was written upon it: and only then discovered that the packet was addressed to Harry, and bore the stamp of his office. Mrs. Joscelyn’s letter was among the other contents. Harry had never received it. The two looked at each other blankly, turning over the letters which had fallen on the table with trembling hands. It was like touching something dead.
“What does it mean? Oh Joan, what is the meaning of it?” Mrs. Joscelyn said.
Joan turned them all over again, aghast, almost stupid in her dismay. “It means he has never got your letter, mother; then how could he answer it, poor lad?” she said, with a keen impulse of angry despair.
This seemed reasonable enough in the first stupefaction; but afterwards the mother gave a lamentable cry. “Why did he not get it?—why did he not get my letter, Joan?”
“He has not been there, mother.” Joan spoke in a low tone of terror, as if she were afraid to trust the air with that too evident conclusion—for where, if he were not there, could Harry be? Then she examined the outside envelope over again with anxious futility, as if that could give her any information. Written inside the flap was the request, “Please acknowledge receipt.” The envelope bore the office stamp. All was done in the most business-like way. She had seen Harry’s letters come to him in exactly the same envelope when he was at home for one of his holidays. The inference that he was still at home, that all was peaceful and well, and his letters forwarded to him in the usual course, overpowered Joan, calm as she was. A few great tears, looking like large raindrops as they pelted down upon the letters, fell from her eyes in spite of herself. “There never was such a fool as I am,” she cried with a hysterical laugh, “I’m worse than mother or anybody. What’s so wonderful about it? He’s gone to London or somewhere, having still his time to himself—why should he have gone back to the office and spoiled his holiday. That would just have been—preposterous.” This big word gave her a certain relief. It seemed to take some of the weight off her heart as she brought it out. “Preposterous,” she repeated, looking almost angrily at her mother. “You might see that, without asking me.”
Mrs. Joscelyn gazed at her, half carried away by this outburst of what looked like argument; but then she sank into a chair and wrung her hands, and began to weep. “Oh Joan, where is he, where is he, if he is not there? What has happened to my boy?”
That was a terrible day to everybody concerned. Joscelyn himself came in under pretence of wanting something, and seeing the letters lying on the table stooped to look at them with a face which grew very dark in spite of himself. He looked at the women, one seated crying in her chair, the other standing stupefied, staring about her, not knowing what she did.
“Has he come back?” he said, the words escaping him in spite of himself.
And these two who had been under his rule so long, the timid, feeble wife, the sober-minded daughter, rose, as it were, and flung themselves upon him. They who had been so voiceless hitherto, fell upon him like a hail-storm, taking him by surprise, beating him down with a sudden storm of wrath and reproach. His wife, who had never ventured to say her soul was her own; who had lain still, weeping and terrified, allowing him to be the master on that night when all the harm had been done; and Joan, who had borne his fury so often with stolid composure, making no reply. All the pent up grievances of years he heard of now, with an astonishment, to hear their opinion of him, which was equal to his stupefaction at their rebellion. Even the harshest domestic tyrant finds it difficult to face the fact that he is a terror to his surroundings, still more that they see through his external bigness, and know him to be at bottom a coward and a bully. Joscelyn was absolutely cowed by this revelation. He tried a few volleys of oaths, like those which usually forced them into silence; but without effect. He raised his voice and thundered; but they did not care. It was Mrs. Joscelyn who led this attack.
“Come back?” she cried; “he will never come back—how dare you stand there and look at his letters that are like his graveclothes, and ask ‘Has he come back?’ You that have driven him from his home—that have turned his sweetness into bitterness; that have driven my boy from me, and broken my heart. Oh, you may shake your fist at me! What do I care? what do you suppose I care? Do you think I mind if you killed me? You have done far worse; you have driven away my boy, and in all the world I do not know where he is. Oh man, get out of my sight. I cannot endure the sight of you. I cannot endure the sight of you!” she cried.
And Joscelyn stood aghast. He was pale at first, then a purple flood of rage came over him. “You dashed old witch—you miserable blanked old cat—you —— —— ——” He caught his breath in his consternation and fury. He did not know what to say.
“Oh, what do I care for your swearing,” she cried, with an almost majestic wave of her thin white hand. “Go away, for God’s sake, go away—what are your oaths and your bad words to me? I’m used to them now. Many a time I have been terrified by them; but you can’t frighten me now. What do they mean?—nothing! I am used to them; you might as well save yourself the trouble. I am not afraid of anything you can do. You’ve done your worst, Ralph Joscelyn; you have driven away my boy, my boy. Oh Joan, where is my boy?” the poor woman cried, turning from her husband with another indignant wave of her hand, to her daughter, with whom she never had been linked in such tender and close union before.
“By ——!” cried Joscelyn, “I’ll teach you, madam, to defy me. Your boy, as you call him, had better never show his face again here. Your boy! if you come to that, what have you got to do with one of them? They’re my children, and you’re my wife, and it’s me you’ve got to look to and take your orders from, you dashed old wild-cat, you blanked old ——!”
“Oh, hold your tongue, father!” Joan cried, turning her head in angry impatience. “Mother’s quite right, we’re used to all that.”
What could a man so assailed do? He could not get over his astonishment. He remained finally master of the field, in so far that they left him there volleying forth those thunders which they disdained, and saw to be nothing but words. Joscelyn recognized with the strangest humiliation that they were but words, when his women, his slaves, first ventured to let him know that they saw through him, and found them all to be froth and emptiness. If somebody had discovered Jove’s thunderbolts to be but fireworks, the Father of the Gods must have fallen to the ground like an exhausted rocket. Joscelyn felt something like this. He came down whirling from his imaginary eminence, down into an abyss of emptiness and darkness, and struck blankly against a real something which resisted him, which he could move no longer. He was not without feeling, and he became suddenly dumb as they closed the door, leaving him a much discomfited hero in possession of the field. Rebellion in his house, his slaves emancipated, the boy lost, and the whole story likely to be published over the length and breadth of the county, and himself exposed to every petty gossip and critical assembly in it. This was a terrible downfall for such a man to bear.
That day messengers were sent off to Tom and Will, who came, in haste, thinking it was a funeral to which they were summoned, to hear all the tale, and to give their solemn verdict against their father. They were not afraid of him now; they could swear themselves almost as fiercely as he could, and he did not overawe them as he used to do.
“The governor oughtn’t to have done it,” Will said to Tom.
“He ought to have had more consideration,” Tom replied. “It doesn’t do to treat young fellows so; I wouldn’t have put up with it myself, and no more will Harry.”
“If we’ve seen the last of him,” said the other, “we know where to lay the fault.”
There could not have been a more complete family unanimity on this point at least.
CHAPTER XV.
NO NEWS.
BUT neither Will nor Tom had any suggestion to make, or knew what to do in such an emergency. They thought it might be well to write to the office and ask what was known of him, or to his Liverpool lodgings; and for themselves, they were anxious to get back to their own homes, their wives, and their work. Even before the afternoon was out they had so far exhausted the subject of Harry that they were not unwilling to join their father in an examination of the Sister to Scythian, and “pass their opinion” on her, and the high hopes Joscelyn entertained of her. Joan looked on at this change of sentiment and subject with a half understanding and half bewilderment. In other family troubles before this she too had been glad to escape from the monotony of a painful subject with a half scorn and whole impatience of her mother’s persistence in it, exactly like the sentiment her brothers showed now. Only this time her own heart was profoundly engaged; she felt like her mother, and along with her comprehension of the feeling of “the boys,” had a perfectly new and bitter sense of their heartlessness, their stupid indifference, their desire to escape from this one thing which was more important than anything else in earth or heaven. What was the Sister to Scythian in comparison with Harry? And they had all allowed that Harry’s disappearance was a serious matter: they had not deceived themselves, or made it out to be some “nonsense of mother’s.” This time they had been obliged to confess there was grave cause for anxiety; and then they had gone to the stables with the father whom they had been unanimous in blaming, and had given all their minds to the points of the horse. Joan had never been given to investigating the feebleness of human character. She would scarcely have understood the words had they been suggested to her, or, at least, would have treated them as too high-flown for ordinary meaning; but for once in a way the wonder was brought home to her, and she saw and understood it. “The boys” were sorry about their brother, sorry that such a thing should have occurred; annoyed that their domestic affairs should thus be thrown open to the public, and more or less sympathetic with their mother, though not quite sure that it did not serve her right for making a favourite of her youngest son; but when they had expressed these feelings, what more were they to say? They could not go on talking about it for ever; they could not bring Harry back if they talked till doomsday; and besides, when once their opinion was expressed and their regrets said, Harry was not a subject of very great importance to them—whereas the Sister to Scythian might advance the interests of the family and make the Joscelyn stable celebrated. And Joan understood it all, she knew it by herself: yet was angry with a harsh and disappointed pain which all her reason could not subdue. Mrs. Joscelyn in the parlour, absorbed in that one passion of anxiety, did not even appreciate this failure of the interest of the others in what was so great a matter to herself so much as her daughter did.
“What do the boys say? What do they think we should do?” she asked Joan a hundred times. “What shall we do? Oh! Joan, what do they think we should do?”
“They are not thinking anything about it, mother,” Joan said. “They are off to the stables, looking at that beast. They are more taken up with her than with Harry. An ill-conditioned brute! I wish, for my part, she was at the bottom of the sea; but set a horse before the men, and they think of nothing else—if all the brothers in the world were perishing before their eyes.”
“Miss Joan,” said a voice behind her, “I am astonished to hear you say that; you whom I have always taken to be such an excellent judge of a horse yourself.”
The two women turned upon the new-comer with mingled feelings, half angry that he had intruded upon them, half excited by a sudden wild hope that a stranger might have some new light to throw upon a subject which they had exhausted, for they could not hide their trouble from him. Mrs. Joscelyn could not speak without an overflow of tears, and even Joan’s eyes were red, and there was that look of irritation and vexation and impatience in her face which comes so naturally to a capable person suddenly set down before a painful difficulty which she can see no way in her experience of coping with. Selby looked at her with anxious eyes. Was she angry with him? but, if so, there was a sudden gleam of expectation in her face too, suddenly looking up at him, as if she had said within herself, “If help is possible it is here—” which gave him courage; and he hastened to explain with that look and tone of sympathy in which strangers so often excel those who ought to be the natural consolers.
“I see I have come in at a wrong time,” he said. “I knocked, but I suppose you did not hear. I ought to go away, but I want to stay: for you are in trouble, and if I could be of any use to you——”
“Mr. Selby is—a true well-wisher,” said Joan, looking with almost timidity at her mother. She was not given to blushing, but she blushed now all over her face and her throat, and made such an appeal with her eyes as those eyes had never made before. “It will be best to tell him,” she said: “he, maybe, could think of something; and what is the use of trying to hide it? it will soon be all over the country-side.”
“Indeed I am a well-wisher,” he cried; “if I can do anything, I will do it with all my heart. If it’s about your brother Harry, I’ve heard something—” and he looked from Joan to Mrs. Joscelyn with eyes so full of sympathy that they felt the look as a sick man feels a cool hand laid upon his hot forehead.
They told him their story with anxious questions as to what he had heard. He had heard, of course, a great deal more than there was to hear, that Harry had come to blows with his father, that there had been a struggle and a fight, and that the young man had been kicked out of the house. Some added that he lay on the Fells all night, so much injured was he; and there were whispers of vice on Harry’s part as the cause of such a violent proceeding, which Selby was too wise to betray to the poor women. When they had told him all they knew, he sprang up to his feet and looked at his watch with an air of readiness and capability which at once gave them hope.
“It is quite clear what must be done,” he said; “you must send somebody to Liverpool at once, this very night. It’s too late for the mid-day train, but the night one will do.”
“Send somebody to Liverpool!” Joan’s countenance flushed again while her mother’s grew pale.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Joscelyn, “but who can we get to go?” while Joan, who had never been beyond Carlisle in her life, stood up unconsciously with such a gasp as catches the breath after a sudden plunge into the sea. She knew nothing about the world, and she belonged to a generation which believed that a woman could do nothing out of her own home; but a rush of blood came to her face, and of tremendous energy to her heart. In the suggestion there seemed so much hope, although almost as much fear.
“Who will you get to go? Me if you like,” said Selby, with the benevolent glow of a man who feels himself a sort of good angel to women in trouble. “I have nothing very particular to do, and I have a pass on the railway, and I’m used to travelling. I will go to-night, and come back to-morrow night. You will hear sooner that way than any other way, and it is far easier to make inquiries personally than by letter—and far more satisfactory.”
The colour left Joan’s cheek; there was a little falling back of relief, yet half disappointment, from the sudden alarmed temerity of impulse that had come upon her. She looked at him with, in the midst of her trouble, a faint—the very faintest—touch of a smile at one corner of her mouth. “Aha, my lad! I know what that is for!” Joan said to herself, swift as lightning; but even the interested motive thus revealed was not displeasing to her, and the whole suggestion went through her mind like an arrow on the wind, showing only for a second against the dark atmosphere of anxiety within.
“Oh, Mr. Selby, how could I ask you to do that for me? How could I ever repay you for such kindness?” Mrs. Joscelyn cried, wringing her tremulous hands. There was no complication of ideas in her mind. She was bewildered by the suggestion, by the offer, by this unexampled effort of friendship. No one had ever offered her such a service before. To imagine that it was for the love of Joan that it was offered to her did not enter her mind. She knew no motive possible, and it filled her with astonishment—astonishment almost too great for hope. A journey was a thing which, in her experience, was only undertaken after great preparations and much thought. To go to-day and return to-morrow was a proceeding unknown to her. And then why should he, a stranger, not belonging to her, undertake such a journey for her? and how could she repay him? She had not even money to pay his expenses if she could have offered payment, and how was she to make it up to him? In this strait she turned her eyes anxiously upon Joan, who was standing by, silenced by an agitation such as had never been seen in her before.
“It is far, far too much trouble,” Joan faltered. “If I could go myself——”
“You!” cried the mother, upon whom the weakness of her sex and its incapacity had always been strongly impressed. “Oh, what could you do, Joan? what can a woman do? They will not even let a woman into these offices—or so I’ve heard. Oh no, no, not you—and it’s far too much, far too much, as you say, to ask—”
“You are not asking,” said Selby, beaming. “It is I who am offering to do it. I should like to do it; it would give me pleasure. You need not fear I will say anything to hurt his feelings. I will act as if he were a young brother of my own. As for the travelling it is nothing, and it will cost me even next to nothing, for I have my pass, being engaged on the railway. Not that I make much of that—for if it cost me ever so much I should be all the more glad to do it, Mrs. Joscelyn. To ease your mind I would do anything,” he said, and this time he glanced at Joan with a corner of his eye; but with meaning enough to make it very distinct to her prepared intelligence. And at the corner of Joan’s mouth, that infinitesimal curve, became for a second almost a dimple. How could she help seeing through him?—but she was not displeased.
“And if I find any difficulty in tracing him,” said Selby, a little carried away by his enthusiasm, “I will engage a detective—”
But at this Mrs. Joscelyn threw up her hands with a sudden paleness, and almost fainted; while Joan looked at him with a sternness that made the heart of her suitor tremble, as it had done for a moment when he heard her scolding Bess in the dairy.
“Do you think my brother is a lad that should have the police set after him?” she said.
“It is not the police,” said Selby mildly; but they were ignorant of all modern habits in this way, and the suggestion was so great an offence to them, that it nearly took away all their gratitude and hope in the proposal he had made. He was prudent enough to say no more about it; but took Harry’s address at his lodgings and at his office, making careful note of everything in a way that went to Mrs. Joscelyn’s heart. Her courage rose as she saw him make these notes. They looked like something doing, an effort which must come to some result. To-morrow early this good friend would be on the spot; would see with his eyes and hear with his ears everything that could be heard or seen; and she could not doubt that he would bring light out of the darkness. Her tears dried as she looked at him; the feeble wringing of her hands was stayed—they clasped each other instead with a tremulous patience and almost steadiness. Never before had there been a reasonable being like this, kind and sympathetic and understanding, to stand by her in any of her troubles; it seemed an almost miraculous goodness to the heart-broken woman. And Harry must hear reason at the hands of such a man. If he did so much for her, surely he would do more for Harry. She was comforted beyond measure by the very sight of him as he stood and took down the address. And that he should be willing to do so much for her, seemed miraculous to her. She could not think of any other reason for his kindness.
As for Joan, she was consoled too, partly by gratitude like her mother’s, but partly also by her insight into Selby’s real motive, which her mother did not guess. Her brow and her eyes were very grave and heavy still with anxiety; but the dimple remained at the corner of her mouth. She saw through him very well; he was not generous or disinterested, as her mother thought. She knew his motive. And Joan was not sure yet that it would do him any good notwithstanding her gratitude. She was by no means free from a little sidelong sense of that knavery which is common enough in such matters. She meant to accept, as far as this went, his self-devotion, but she was not sure that the hopes he was building upon it might not be fallacious hopes, and secretly entertained in her inmost heart a half-determination to cheat him yet, and prove him wrong in his reliance upon the services he was going to render her. But mingled as this process of thought was, it was on the whole exhilarating. Her heart rose a little. She thought more of herself as she caught a glimpse of herself in Philip Selby’s eyes, and as her self-esteem received a sensible stimulus, her hopes increased with it. The more we think of ourselves the more sure we are that good and not evil will happen to us. There is nothing more terrible in misfortune than the depression and sense of demerit which it brings with it. Joan thought better of herself through the spectacles which Selby provided, and she could not help feeling an incipient certainty, not altogether new to her, that with a person possessing such qualities as hers all must go well.
Fortified by these hopes, the mother and daughter saw Tom and Will depart with equanimity.
“Well, mother,” Will said, as he shook her by the hand (North-country people are not given to demonstrations of affection), “I hope you’ll soon have word of that boy. You needn’t fret: we’ve been in a good many scrapes, but we’ve always got safe out of them.”
Will was the best fellow of the two. Tom took it altogether more easily.
“Yes, yes, you’ll hear,” he said; “I’m not the least afraid. Harry’s like the ill-penny that always turns up. There’s nothing that I can see to fret about.”
Joan nodded to them when they got on their horses with a friendly satisfaction to be quit of them. She had no ideal to be offended in her brothers. Mrs. Joscelyn, when her momentary buoyancy of new hope was over, felt bitterly to the depths of her foolish heart that her sons were of a very common, selfish grain, such as some years ago it would have broken her heart to think of. She had been drilled into it, and had yielded to necessity; but still when something made her observation clearer she remembered and felt the downfall. The slow coming down of heart and hope by which a woman arrives at the fact that her child is not ideal, nor even excellent, nor superior in any way to the coarsest common pâte of man, is very gradual. Perhaps the greater number do not reach it at all, but are content to deceive themselves and think all their offspring right and perfect. But Mrs. Joscelyn was not of this kind. She could not get over her sons’ indifference. “Another man going out to bring me news—taking all that trouble—a stranger that is nothing to us—and my own boys, my own boys caring nothing.” Over this again the poor soul, faithful in all the devices of self-torment, shed a few bitter tears.