THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 JOAN 
 
 2 "oTak 
 
 BY 
 
 RHODA BROUGHTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 ^'CO.METH UP AS A FLOWER " "RED AS A ROSE IS SHE " " GOOD-JJVE SWEET- 
 HEART!" "nancv" "not wisely but too well" 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON 
 
 iaitblishcrs in (Dviin-.iri] to ^]tt ^ixycstv the (Qnun 
 1876 
 
 (A// J\i^/Us Jxescrz'i'ci)
 
 J o a:k. 
 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 " And ye shall walk in silk attire, 
 And siUer hae to spare !" 
 
 OLFERSTAN is liummino' this 
 very softly to himself, half under 
 his breath, half over. A girl at 
 the house he is staying at sang it last night, 
 and it runs in his head yet ; a girl whose 
 music leaves he turned, whose music stool 
 he screwed up, and three of whose finger^ he 
 succeeded in squeezing when he gave her her 
 
 VOL. I. ^d'^-C^. ^"l 1 
 
 
 «->
 
 2 JOAN. 
 
 candle at bed-time. Wolferstan has not got 
 it on his conscience that he ever in all his life 
 missed an opportunity of squeezing a woman's 
 hand. 
 
 " And siller hae to spare !" ' 
 
 "Ah! that is just what I am afraid she 
 will not have, poor soul !" 
 
 It is not the girl whose fingers he squeezed 
 of whom he is thinkinsc, but another. It is 
 Easter Day, in the afternoon, Wolferstan 
 is sittinof on an old tree trunk that once was 
 a stout oak-tree, but through whose dry old 
 veins not even this strong young spring, 
 vigorously awakening, can send the green 
 sap-blood racing. Before Wolferstan's eyes 
 spread the ups and downs, the dead fern and 
 live deer; the mighty single trees roomily 
 stretching great arms on all sides of them 
 into the free and wholesome air, and the 
 bosky coppices of an English park. In his 
 ears is the austere music of church bells from 
 different parishes^ all seeming to tell with
 
 JOAN. 3 
 
 solemn mirth tliat " Christ is risen." Wol- 
 ferstan is not going to church. He went this 
 morning, and found her places in the hymn- 
 book (out of which he afterwards warbled 
 with her) for the girl with the fingers. Ho 
 is bound on a much disao-reeabler errand now : 
 and so he thinks. He is going to pay a visit 
 of condolence ; yes — to condole with a young 
 lady upon the loss of her grandfather. 
 
 The death of a grandfather is generally a 
 very supportable affliction. But a small 
 bottle would hold the tears that most people 
 shed for their grandparents. Most of us can 
 kiss that rod. But in the present case grand- 
 father is a wide word. It means father, 
 mother, brother, sister, home, standing, soft 
 lying, high feeding, pretty nearly everything 
 that makes life a morsel to be eaten Avith 
 slow relish instead of a physic draught to be 
 quickly swallowed with wry faces. It is 
 difficult to offer comfort to a person who has 
 lost all these at one sweep. So Wolferstan 
 feels. ThouE^h he has been sitting on his 
 
 1—2
 
 4 JOAN. 
 
 tree trunk for a good lialf-hour, cudgelling 
 such, brains as God has given him, nothing 
 that sounds even to himself in tlie least 
 degree consolatory occurs to him. The only 
 thing that will persistently recur to him — 
 often and angrily as he has driven it away 
 as utterly inadmissible — is the old and 
 homely saw that ''it is no use crying over 
 spilt milk." He cannot get rid of it. It 
 comes back like a gnat, and sticks like a burr. 
 Its rude philosophy thrusts itself between him 
 and all suitabler forms of speech. 
 
 In despair he jumps up at last, and begins 
 to walk through the quickening freshening 
 grass towards the great old Hall, with four 
 cold gray towers ivy-muffled, that stands 
 amid level velvet gardens fronting him. The 
 bells are still ringing. The air is temperately 
 cool ; neither balmy nor yet sharp : the sky 
 looks high and chill and palely coloured. 
 Heaven seems far off, though it is Easter 
 Day. Last time that he was here it was 
 Avinter, and the hounds met here. A small
 
 JOAN. 5 
 
 bright rime lay on tlie grass ; flashes of scarlet 
 warmed up the cold and sunless colours of the 
 weather-scarred gray walls. The old Squire 
 was pottering about on his old horse. Well, 
 the old Squire is dead now ! dead suddenly. 
 He was not among- those who fumble and 
 bunoie long at the lock which shuts in the 
 great secret. I think that more people than 
 used to do so, go suddenly nowadays. We 
 have increased the speed of our travelling 
 over this earth, why not also the quickness of 
 our journey from this world into the next ? 
 Anyhow, he went quickly : not even in his 
 own house or his own bed ; but in a public 
 place, at a pubhc meeting. With one stoop 
 forward of his gray head — with one groaning 
 breath, he went and took the great and un- 
 avoidable stride without time for any pain or 
 fear. 
 
 Poor old Squire I Yes, and that same day 
 on which the hounds met here, Joan stood 
 on the top of the steps in a mouse-coloured 
 velvet gown, shading with one hand the
 
 6 JOAN. 
 
 laughter of lier eyes from the low cool 
 winter sun which stared so hard at her. 
 And the sun had good taste : she was worth 
 staring at. He has reached the Hall door 
 by now; mounted the steps, and rung the 
 bell. 
 
 " Nothing is changed !" he says to himself 
 with a sort of irrational surprise, looking back 
 at the park across which he has come, and at 
 a herd of stags that are trooping from one 
 glade to another, with a tossing of great 
 horns and whisking of tiny tails. 
 
 But after all Avhy should the grass look 
 withered and the deer's plump flanks fall in 
 because an old man is dead 1 It w^ould be 
 much odder if they did. At least the foot- 
 man who opens the door is changed. He 
 has moulted his gay blue and yellow j^lumage, 
 and now the sable rook is not blacker than 
 he. 
 
 As Wolferstan follows liim through half a 
 dozen rooms, big and little, he looks round 
 him affectionately. One always feels rather
 
 JOAX. 7 
 
 fondly towards a house where one has been 
 happy, and Wolferstan has had many jovial 
 moments in this one. Here stand the statues 
 — -just as they did on the night of the theatri- 
 cals — when Joan made such a sweet widow 
 that he very nearly asked her to run the 
 chance of being his. Here is Psyche, 
 slenderly nude, with her butterfly on her 
 finger. The little serpent is still stinging 
 Eurydice's cold white heel, and Hadrian still 
 stands stern in his panoply. 
 
 When at last they reach the sitting-room, 
 towards which they finally tend, they find it 
 empty. In it there is neither man nor mouse, 
 nor woman either. The only live thing is a 
 small faint fire that the sun is trying hard to 
 kill — a little fire from whose dull heart a red 
 glow shines reflected in the old Dutch tiles, 
 where Eve's gluttony and Noah's carouse are 
 devoutly, yet grotesquely, wrought in blue 
 and white. Near the hearth is draAvn up an 
 arm-chair, which, though it is not at all rucked 
 up or disarranged, as it infallibly would have
 
 8 JOAN. 
 
 been had a man occu2:)ied it, yet has the in- 
 describable air of having been lately sat in. 
 A book with its back still Avarm and warped 
 from having been held over the fire gapes- 
 half open on the table. There are flowers — 
 flowers everywhere ! They seem to have 
 Avalked in through the open door of the 
 neighbouring conservatory. 
 
 She has not come yet : perhaps she does 
 not mean to come at all. He walks about 
 nervousl}^-, saying over to himself his prepared 
 speech, and trying to keep the spilt milk out 
 of it. He strolls into the conservatory, and 
 looks at the great and fragrant array of 
 flourishing blooms : a regiment of cyclamens^ 
 each with its sweet white ears laid back ; 
 tulips, the vividness of whose varnished coats 
 makes one wink ; an army of cinerarias, each 
 blossom a little scentless sun-disk of blazing 
 colour; heavy bashful roses that set one 
 dreaming of June. Poor, poor Joan ! What 
 will she do without her flowers ? Poor little 
 Joan !
 
 JOAN. ^ 
 
 As lie thus kindly and pitifully addresses 
 her, in his own soul, and mentally strokes 
 her, she enters. The tall old door opens, and 
 she comes in with a soft and dragging step. 
 For so slender a thing she treads heavily, 
 does not she ? but sorrow puts leaden weights 
 in one's feet. Wolferstan has hardly ever 
 before seen iier that she has not been either 
 quite laughing, or else w4th unborn or half- 
 born laug-hter hoverino- in the corners of her 
 happy eyes. It is not that she has pulled 
 a long face, even now, or is dressed in the 
 mourner's airs, that some people, although 
 truly sorrowing, think it right in such cases 
 to wear. 
 
 She comes to meet him with a smile, but, 
 alas ! it has so clearly been put on only just 
 outside the door, and is kept with such diffi- 
 culty from brinily drowning itself. She looks 
 half the size that he remembers her when last 
 they parted, not that she ever was of the 
 buxom sort. Hers was never one of your 
 great luscious Rubens bodies, in whose depths
 
 iO ' JOAN. 
 
 of creamy flesh the poor Uttle soul is oftenest 
 lost and smothered. But now you can almost, 
 as they say, see through her. One is always 
 tenderly disjDosed towards thin j^eople, though, 
 in reality, they are not nearly such objects of 
 compassion as the ^preposterously fat, towards 
 Avhom no one's heart yearns. 
 
 Before he in the least knows what he is 
 meaning to do (Wolferstan's actions mostly 
 get ahead of his intentions), he is standing 
 before her, holding both her hands ; though 
 the amount of their hitherto acquaintance 
 would not justify more than the moderate 
 shaking of one. 
 
 The trite and unconsolinof consolations over 
 which he laboured so heavily on his tree trunk 
 depart to the limbo appointed for all abortions, 
 and he finds himself saying hurriedly : 
 
 '' Do you mind my coming ? do I bother 
 you ? shall I go T 
 
 *' No, don't !" she answers with a sort of 
 eagerness, giving his hands a little uninten- 
 tional squeeze of detention ; '' it is good to
 
 JOAN. 11 
 
 see some one ! I was so glad wlieii they 
 came and told me ; I thought I never was 
 gomg to see any one again, and I have been 
 alone — alone — such a long time !" Her very 
 voice is changed : it sounds faint, and yet 
 hoarse, as if all its substance and sweetness 
 had been soaked away in tears. " This is a 
 bad house to be alone in, I can tell you," she 
 goes on in the same weak spent kind of tone, 
 hfting her eyes with a sort of relief to the 
 pity of his face ; '' you do not know how 
 ghostly the statues look at night — you have 
 only seen the gallery when it has been well 
 lit up ; and the suits of armour are worse- — 
 oh ! far worse ! last night I stared at them — 
 I could not help it— until I could have sv/orn 
 that there was a skeleton head under each 
 visor ! 
 
 She speaks the last words so low and 
 so quickly that he finds it hard to hear 
 them. 
 
 " Poor soul !" he says, taking both the chill 
 little hands, which are gradually growing
 
 12 JOAN. 
 
 warmer in bis close clasp, into one of his, in 
 which they lie quite comfortably, and stroking 
 their smooth backs with his freed one, " Why 
 did not you send for me "?" 
 
 " That would have been so likely !" she 
 says, with a little flash of maiden mirth 
 struggling into her drowned eyes ; " if I had 
 you would have thought that grief had un- 
 settled my wits ! And not a soul has been 
 near me," she continues presently, raising her 
 voice a little, and speaking with slow emphasis, 
 while her eyes still rest on his full and solemn, 
 and with no more apparent consciousness in 
 them of his being man, and herself woman, 
 than if he had been the grandfather she 
 deplores. " Not a soul ! except the doctor 
 twice — he said both times that I was to keep 
 up, and take a fizzing draught, and not think 
 of anything disagreeable, and remember that 
 everybody died — ha ! ha ! — and the lawyer 
 once " 
 
 " Yes ; and what did he say to you ?" in- 
 terrupts Wolferstan eagerly.
 
 JOAX. P(2/)t^ y 13 
 
 '' He said — but why do you make me tell 
 you ? I see by your face that you know ! 
 there is not a hedger and ditcher about that 
 does not know — he said, ^My dear young 
 friend ' (I never used to be his ' dear young 
 friend !' I used to be ' Miss Dering,' " drawing 
 up her little milk-white throat) " ' my dear 
 young friend, I am sorry that it has devolved 
 upon me to be the bearer of ill tidings to you, 
 
 but ' " (turning her head restlessly about 
 
 like some poor dumb beast in physical pain), 
 " ' that I was a beggar in short,' those were 
 not his words, of course ; he said it much 
 more lengthily and roundaboutly. I think 
 he kept me on the rack for ten good minutes, 
 but that was what it came to !" 
 
 " And was that all 1 did he tell you — did 
 he say nothing else 1" asks the young fellow 
 with quick anxiety. 
 
 " Was that all f she repeats with an 
 almost angry emphasis, opening her eyes as 
 widely as they will go ; '' was not that 
 enough ? Good Heavens ! what else would
 
 14 JOAN. 
 
 you have had him say ? what could be 
 worse ?" 
 
 Wolferstan does not answer aloud, but to 
 his own heart he says " Thank God !" 
 
 ''When he first told me," she goes on, as 
 if speech were a relief, " I said I did not 
 care a straAv. I did not then : he thouo-ht 
 it was bravado, but it was not; now I am 
 beginning to care, dreadfully ! it is enough 
 to make any one care, is not it V 
 
 " ]Merciful God ! I should think it was !" 
 
 For a moment or two they stand silent, 
 their position unaltered. It does not occur 
 to them to sit down or to loose each other's 
 hands. Sometimes, in trouble, the contact 
 of warm human flesh is more comfortino- 
 than any spoken words. And the sun comes 
 in merrily, through the open window, and 
 kisses them both, as not knowing which he 
 likes best, and gives one stab more to the 
 sick fire.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 UT how is it," resumes Wolferstan 
 presently, harking back to her 
 former speech, ''that you say no 
 one has been near you 1 Was not your uncle 
 down here 1 they told me that he was." 
 
 ''He came down here for the^— the— I 
 need not say it— you know," she answers, 
 shying away with unconquerable repugnance 
 from the grim word; "but he went away 
 next day ; and while he was here I did not 
 see him — I would not : he is master here 
 now, you know, and you may say that it 
 was quarrelling with my bread-and-butter,,
 
 16 JOAN. 
 
 but I could not ; I stayed in my room ; lie 
 never was at all kind or dutiful to him.'' 
 
 At the last words her voice altogether 
 breaks^ and snatching away both her hands 
 from his, she covers all her small and woful 
 face with them. It is perhaps as well ; since 
 otherwise he would probably have gone on 
 holding them to the present day. 
 
 " You have heard all about it, I suppose V 
 she says after a pause, sitting listlessly down 
 near the window, and pulling out of her 
 pocket a pocket-handkerchief rather finer 
 than a cobweb, and with an inky border a 
 foot deep ; according to our sensible fashion 
 of makino" even our reluctant noses mourn 
 our dead. " I suppose you saw it in the 
 papers. I read the account of it in them 
 all. I tried to fancy that it had nothing to 
 say to me : there were two other sudden 
 deaths in the Times on the same day — a 
 young woman and a little child — I wondered 
 how many people each of them had to be 
 sorry for them : the worst part of crying,"
 
 JOAN. 17 
 
 she says, with a slow and dragging accent, 
 " is when one cries alone. I was the only 
 person who cried for him." 
 
 Wolferstan looks down contritely. There 
 is no earthly reason why he should have 
 wept for old Squire Dering, and yet he 
 Avould give fifty pounds to be able, truth- 
 fully, to tell her that he had shed tears for 
 him. Even though, untruthfully, he would 
 tell her so, only that he knows she Avould 
 not believe him. He tries to mutter some- 
 thing to the effect that one may be very 
 sorry for a tiling without crying about it; 
 but she goes on without paying the slightest 
 heed to his well-meant mumble. 
 
 '' Do you know," she says, leaning forward, 
 and looking solemnly at him, " that only the 
 evening before — after I had bidden him 
 good-night, and was half-way upstairs to 
 bed — something drove me back to have one 
 other look at him ? he was sitting, so " (rest- 
 ing one elbow on a little table near her, and 
 pushing her fingers through her hair and 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 18 JOAN. 
 
 looking as unlike any old man as it is well 
 possible to look) " yon know what beautiful 
 white hair he had — mine is coarse in com- 
 parison of it — and, young as you are, it was 
 as thick as yours ! He asked me Avhy I had 
 come back, and I could not say, I had no^ 
 reason !" 
 
 " Poor soul !" 
 
 Wolferstan is aware that he has said this 
 two or three times before, and would be glad 
 to vary it, did he know how, but there are 
 few ejaculations that hit the tepid medium 
 between the very much too warm and the 
 rather too cold. 
 
 " The next morning," she goes on, by-and- 
 by, with a long, low, sighing breath, " the 
 morning, you understand, I went out to the 
 Hall door to see him mount his horse, £\,s I 
 always do — always did, I mean " (changing 
 the tense with a sort of sob), '' and just as he 
 was riding away, he turned half round and 
 said, 'Go in, my Joan, this wind will cut 
 you in two !' those were the very last words
 
 JOAN. 19 
 
 I ever heard him say ! does not it seem odd " 
 (turning with awed yet puzzled appeal more 
 fully towards him) "'that such a trivial speech 
 should be the very last I should have heard, 
 or ever shall hear now from him ?" Then she 
 adds in a lower key, and more as a specula- 
 tion than a complaint, " Who will care how 
 the wind cuts me now, I wonder "? No, don't 
 say that you will ; it is very kind of you, but 
 it is nonsense ! there is no reason why you 
 should !" 
 
 Again there is a silence, a longer one. 
 Wolferstan breaks it at last. 
 
 " And so you have to turn out of the old 
 house ?" he says pityingly, casting his eyes 
 regretfully round him, looking up at the 
 painted ceiling, where water gods and sea 
 nymphs are frolicking, naked and unashamed, 
 in a sapphire sea ; and then at the tapestried 
 walls, where gray-faced knights and leaden- 
 coloured ladies have been bowing and 
 parading and twanging guitars for the last 
 four hundred years. 
 
 2—2
 
 20 JOAN. 
 
 " Yes/' she answers, her eyes followmg 
 his ; " and if my soul were to have to be torn 
 out of my body, I think it could hardly be 
 Avith a worse wrench ! There is to be a sale, 
 you know," she goes on in a monotonous key 
 of utter spiritlessness ; " my uncle hates the 
 place : he is going to sell everything, even the 
 pictures — think of that ! — he says that his an- 
 cestors may go as cheap as Charles Surface's, 
 for all he cares ! If I were not sure " (with a 
 melancholy yet gracious smile) '' that you 
 had plenty of your own, I Avould ask you to 
 buy them !" 
 
 *' Shall I ?" he cries eagerly ; " I will bid 
 for them with pleasure, if you like !" nor does 
 he, in his compassionate readiness to saddle 
 himself with all her forefathers, for one 
 moment reflect on Avhat he will do with the 
 seventy or eighty odd Derings, when he has 
 got them. 
 
 But she shakes her head, and says, " I was 
 only joking!" Another pause. '' You must 
 not think," begins Joan again, finally drying
 
 JOAN. 21 
 
 her poor eyes on the gossamer pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, which is adapted neither for a great 
 grief nor a cold ; '^ that I mean always to 
 go on moaning and whimpering like this : I 
 suppose it is seeing you that has set me off 
 again; else for three days — nearly four — I 
 have not shed a tear : I hoped I had come to 
 the end of them ; there must be some end to 
 one's stock, must not there "? and I think " 
 (drawing herself together, as one that nerves 
 himself for a hard struggle) ''that I have 
 some little pluck about me somewhere, if I 
 could only come at it." 
 
 After an interval : 
 
 " Even if I could have had my own choice," 
 she says, with a deep gravity, " I would not 
 always have been prosperous : I do not think 
 that the people who always have things their 
 own way are ever worth much ; of course " 
 (shuddering) " I would not have chosen such 
 a trouble as this ; but, after all, if one always 
 had smooth sailing, it could never be known 
 - — one could never know oneself what sort of
 
 22 JOAN. 
 
 stuff one was made of : I have a good chance 
 now of showing what sort of stuff I am made 
 of, have not 1 1" 
 
 He looks at her with a compassion too 
 deep for words. He is always sorry for 
 every woman ; merely for being a woman, 
 and for being by this dismal accident debarred 
 from all the sinful and most of the unsinful 
 diversions of this life. His pity is centupled 
 in the case of this frail kniafht-errant g-oino- 
 out SO valiantly in her paste-board armour to 
 battle with the great and ruthless dragon of 
 this bitter world. 
 
 " At least," she says, clenching one slight 
 hand, and looking upward, as one that 
 registers a vow; "at least I will not be 
 knocked down by this first blow, like ripe 
 corn by a hail storm ! They have almost 
 explained away God nowadays, have not 
 they ?" she says, putting her hand in a sort 
 of bewildered way to her forehead ; " so 
 perhaps it is not He, but yet I feel that 
 there is something outside of me— something
 
 JOAN. 23 
 
 not me — that will help me if I make a good 
 fight !" 
 
 " You do not look as if it would take a 
 very big blow to knock you down," he says 
 sadly, looking at her with a deep commisera- 
 tion, that is almost angry in its helplessness. 
 For a moment he even weavers in his hitherto 
 inviolable fidelity to fat Avomen, as he notices 
 how prettily and carelessly her slim young 
 body lies in the great arm-chair into which 
 she has thrown herself. It would hold three 
 Joans. 
 
 " And yet," she answers, lifting her white 
 lids, and considering his face awhile, full- 
 eyed, with a quiet smile, as if taking his 
 measure ; *' and yet perhaps — who knows ? — 
 a heavier one than would be needed to 
 demolish you ; it is not the bulky Samsons 
 of this world that are the really strong ones : 
 it is the small and wiry people, who, even if 
 they are thrown down, are up again in a 
 moment, and none the worse !" 
 
 "^ Am I a bulky Samson ?" he asks, with a
 
 24 JOAN. 
 
 half laugh ; ''if Samson were only five foot 
 eleven in his shooting boots^ and rode only 
 thirteen stone, histoiy has been very partial 
 to hiin !" A clock strikes ; wrongly of course. 
 Who ever heard of a drawing-room clock with 
 a face looking out from amid a lovely flourish 
 of Dresden china flowers that told the hours 
 aright ? But its voice^ though a mistaken one,, 
 reminds Wolferstan that there is such a thing 
 as time, " I have been here an hour/' he 
 says, " and I meant to stay ten minutes ; I 
 will go, but first— tell me — or, of course, if 
 you do not like, do not tell me — what your 
 plans are ? with whom you will live ? whither 
 you are going ? I know that if I counted the 
 number of times that we have met, I should 
 find that I had no business to ask ; but I will 
 not count. Tell me — what is going to become 
 of you 1" 
 
 He has drawn much nearer to her, and is 
 asfain lookino- at her with the same over- 
 powering yet consciously useless compassion. 
 As society stands, a young man is so very
 
 JOAN. 25. 
 
 powerless to help a young woman. To 
 many her is the one doubtful kindness he 
 can show her : and marriage, as at present 
 constituted, does not find favour in Wolfer- 
 stan's eyes. 
 
 *' Do not be afraid !" she answers, with a 
 smile that, though sorrowful, is neither 
 cowardly nor broken-spirited. " I am not 
 going to the Workhouse, nor yet to the 
 Home for Lost Dogs or Decayed Gentle- 
 Avomen ; I am going to stay with an aunt of 
 mine — a sister of my mother's : though she is 
 my aunt, I have never seen her nor even 
 heard much about her. He never talked to 
 me about my mother's people." 
 
 She is looking at him, but he has turned 
 away his face, and is staring out of the 
 window. 
 
 '' Did not he '?" he answers rather indis- 
 tinctly. A moment after : '^ An aunt ? only 
 an aunt ? no uncle ?" 
 
 " He is dead." 
 
 ^' Any cousins V
 
 26 JOAN. 
 
 " I fancy so : she says something about the 
 girls." 
 
 - Sons r 
 
 "I do not know ; I hojoe not : I dishke 
 male cousins ; there is a sort of spurious 
 brotherhood about them !" 
 
 " And you will make your home with this 
 aunt ? will live with her V 
 
 " Until I can draw breath, and look about 
 me. 
 
 He gives an impatient sigh, and a kick to 
 a neighbouring foot-stool. 
 
 " Do not look so lamentable !" she says, 
 iilmost laughing; "it does sound deplorable, 
 I own ; almost as bad as some of the cases 
 in the Report of the Governesses' Institution ; 
 no present income, no future prospects I But, 
 after all, it might be worse : since I am 
 letting you into my private affairs, I may 
 tell you that I have a thousand pounds that 
 my godfather left me : that, at five per cent., 
 will bring in fifty pounds a year ; one cannot 
 positively starve on fifty pounds a year."
 
 JOAN. 27 
 
 " Enough to buy one gown and perhaps a 
 bonnet, you would have said a week ago." 
 
 " Yes/' she answers, with a small but 
 stifled sigh ; '' I must give up being fond of 
 my clothes." 
 
 He shakes his head, as if to say that her 
 affairs are beyond his mending. 
 
 " Well, in what part of the world am I to 
 tliink of you, then ?" he says, with another 
 sigh, reluctantly taking up his hat. 
 
 "I do not flatter myself that you Avill 
 think of me much, in any part of the world," 
 she says, a little dryly, and without any 
 coquetry ; though it is a sentence decidedly 
 susceptible of a coquettish treatment; "but 
 I shall be in Blankshire." 
 
 " My thoughts will have no long journey 
 then ; that is my county : do you know what 
 your post town is V 
 
 " It looks like Helmsley," she answers, 
 drawing from her pocket a large and musky 
 envelope, on which blazes a giant monogram, 
 aflame with all the colours of the prism, and
 
 28 JOAN. 
 
 several more besides ; "■ pah ! how I hate 
 patchouh ! it has infected my pocket-hand- 
 kerchief and all my other letters !" 
 
 " IleJmsley /" he repeats, with a brighten- 
 ing of eye and alacrity of tone ; "is that so^ 
 really ? Then the plot is thickening : 
 Helmsley is our post town too ; we are 
 not much more than three miles from it ; 
 Avhat is your aunt's name '? of course I must 
 know her I" 
 
 " Her name is Moberley — Mrs. Moberley.'^ 
 Wolferstan looks puzzled. " I know a 
 Mrs. Moberley — at least — yes — I suppose I 
 may be said to know her — certainly, quite as 
 much of her as I ever wish to know — but 
 she is not your aunt 1 ha I ha ! I wish you 
 could see her— it is odd !" (wrinkling his 
 forehead, and putting one hand up to it as 
 if to help his recollection) ; " but I thought I 
 knew every living soul within a radius of ten 
 miles of Helmsley. Moberley ! Moberley ! — 
 how stupid of me ! — ctin you tell me the 
 name of her house T
 
 JOAN. 29 
 
 " Portland Villa," replies Joan, following 
 the instinct wliicli prompts us always to 
 swallow three times as often as usual if we 
 have a sore throat, and to turn our eyes a 
 second time towards any disagreeable object 
 which has accidentally regaled them, by 
 smelling her aunt's letter again and making 
 ^ face over it. 
 
 Wolferstan's jaw has dropped ; in one 
 second the complacence has died out of his 
 face. 
 
 " Then it is the same !" he says in a low 
 and awe-struck key ; " but — you were joking ! 
 — she is not your aunt — it is impossible ! — 
 she cannot be !" 
 
 " But she is !" replied Joan, looking in 
 some surprise at his aghast and discomfited 
 features ; "' why should not she be ? is she 
 too young to have a niece T 
 
 " And are the Miss Moberleys your 
 cousins — your Jirst cousins ?" continues the 
 young man, still speaking with a slow and 
 horror-struck emphasis.
 
 30 JOAN. 
 
 " Naturally ! if slie is my aunt and they 
 are her daughters," says Joan a little tartly ; 
 " that is not a very hard sum to do." 
 
 " Gracious Heavens above us !" 
 
 " I wish/' cries the girl, reddening a little, 
 " that you would be more explicit and less 
 ejaculatory ; if you know anything very bad 
 about them, j)lease tell me directly I are they 
 Tiiad ? have they done anything disgrace- 
 ful r' 
 
 His face catches the flush from hers, but 
 the emotion which expresses itself by the 
 colour of a faint fine sunset on her cheeks is 
 painted in full deep copper tints on his. 
 
 '' You are making me very uncomfortable," 
 she goes on after a moment's waiting, during 
 which, bathed over head and ears in con- 
 fusion, he is vainly struggling to overtake a 
 speech Avhich ever eludes him, '' and it is not 
 fair ; you ought to tell me ! is there anything 
 odd about them T 
 
 He tries to laugh in a stammering flounder- 
 in sr fashion. '' Odd ! oh dear no ! not that I
 
 JOAN. 31 
 
 know of! — upon my honour — please do not 
 look as if you did not believe me — I — I —   
 know nothino: to their disadvantao-e ; to tell 
 the truth, I — I — you know I have been a 
 great deal away from home — I — ^I — hardly 
 know them : it was only that it — it — took me 
 by surprise, don't you know ; it — it seemed 
 unlikely." 
 
 Her sincere and straightforward eyes 
 are looking directly at and through him ; 
 a small grain of half- amused pity steals 
 into them, as he writhes and stutters before 
 her. 
 
 ''You might be making a sjDeech at a 
 wedding breakfast," she says sarcastically ; 
 ^' I never heard anything so halting any- 
 where else," After a thoughtful pause : "You 
 said you ' wished I could see her,' why did 
 you wish that I should see her '? is she such 
 a very remarkable sight '?" 
 
 During the moment's breathing sjmce of 
 silence that she gave him, Wolferstan has 
 been making some faintly prosperous efforts
 
 9 
 
 32 JOAN. 
 
 to recover his countenance ; but, at this 
 question, he has a frightful relapse. Thus, 
 brought face to face with his own words, 
 unable, beneath the honesty of her eyes, to 
 eat them, as he w^ould otherwise be delighted 
 to do, he is too ehahi to attempt any answer 
 whatever. Joan looks away in pity from 
 his scarlet discomfiture. There is a pitch of 
 confusion which it makes one hot to witness, 
 and Wolferstan has reached it. 
 
 '' I will ask you no more questions," she 
 -says quietly. '' I see that there is some 
 mystery, which I shall soon have the oppor- 
 tunity of fathoming. I suppose that she is 
 very odd - looking — ungainly 1 eccentric ? 
 dowd}!^ ?" — stealing a covert glance at him 
 at each epithet, to see which epithet seems 
 to hit the right nail on the head. " Well, I 
 can forgive her for being any one of the three, 
 or even all three ^Dut together !" After a 
 pause : " Though you will not reveal an}-- 
 thing about the people, you Avill not mind 
 telling me what sort of a place it is. Is it
 
 JOAN. .-. 33 
 
 a o'ood house ? are there nice gardens ? — a 
 pretty park ?" 
 
 Wolferstan opens his eyes. " I do not 
 think that there is much park" he answers 
 slowly ; "it is not exactly the sort of place 
 where one expects a park ; it is not a large 
 house, you know ; in fact — well — a small one ! 
 — and it is not very far from — indeed, rather 
 close to — the road." 
 
 He makes these admissions as if they 
 were being dragged out of him by hot 
 pincers. 
 
 " About how small ?" asks Joan seriously, 
 as she mentally tries to cut and pare down 
 her ideas to the right size. He looks up at 
 the distant ceiling, and round at the wide 
 walls. 
 
 " I think the whole of it would pretty 
 nearly go into this room !" 
 
 Despite her heartiest efforts her face 
 lenofthens a little. 
 
 " It must be a hovel," she says in a low 
 voice ; then, resolutely pulling herself together 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 JOAN. 
 
 again : " It is no great matter," she says 
 steadily ; " there is something cosy about a 
 small house ; there is no harclshij) in being 
 shut up in a narrow space Avith nice people — 
 and they are nice" (looking resolutely at him, 
 and speaking with a determined emphasis) 
 — ''I hwir they are nice ; no one that was not- 
 nice could have written this — " (again 
 glancing at the ill-savoured missive sho 
 holds in her hand). "A letter of condolence 
 is a good test." 
 
 He says neither yea nor nay ; he has 
 already taken up his hat, and has been 
 in the ag^onies of sfoino- for the last five 
 minutes. Now he puts out his hand. " Good- 
 bye," he says, looking at her with a grave and 
 undissembled regret, and — which is not alto- 
 gether usual with him — neither saying nor 
 looking any more than he thoroughly means ; 
 " it is not quite so bad to say ' good-bye,' now 
 that I know for certain that we shall soon 
 shake hands again ; and meanwhile send me 
 a line, will not you ? — ' Guards' Club ' will
 
 JOAN.   35 
 
 always find me — if I can do anything for 
 you." 
 
 '' It is not a very likely ' if,' " she answers 
 gently. '' No — henceforth no one is to do 
 anything for me. The new regime has 
 begun : I am to do everything for myself 
 I am even learning to dress my own hair ; 
 see — it is not so bad ! — and Avhen you come 
 to see me at Portland Villa, you will find it 
 better still. Good-bye." 
 
 She is smiling, but her eyes are wet : the 
 tears indeed have over-brimmed, and are 
 dropping down her w^hite and fine - grained 
 cheeks. 
 
 And so he leaves her. As he walks back 
 the church bells are dumb, and he neither 
 whistles nor sings. He has lost two grand- 
 fathers himself in his day, Avith grandmothers 
 to match, and borne it like a Trojan. But 
 this is diff'erent. He feels as if his hour's 
 stay within those gray walls had made him 
 a soberer sadder man. But we are creatures 
 of habit ; and that very same evening sees 
 
 3—2
 
 36 JOAN. 
 
 him again squeezing liis old friend's fingers 
 under the candlestick ; indeed, as she is now 
 prepared for the manoeuvre, and not unwilling, 
 he finds himself in temporary possession of 
 her whole hand !
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ES ! the new regime has begun. 
 No one beyond childhood is fond 
 of a new order of things merely 
 because it is new. Everybody hates new 
 boots ; most people hate new situations. 
 
 On most ears the joy bells of New Year's 
 Eve, rashly and over-hastily mirthful, jar. 
 Why, in Heaven's name, should we pull bells 
 and get drunk because Ave are one twelve- 
 month nearer " the Conqueror Worm " '? If 
 it were the worm that rang the bells we could 
 understand his jollity. 
 
 Joan's new regime, over which she has
 
 38 JOAN. 
 
 about as much reason to exult as we over 
 our new year, may be said to begin as she 
 steams out of tlie station at Derinsf, with 
 the footman standi ag on the platform, and 
 touching his hat to her for the last time. 
 She tried to inaugurate the new epoch 
 last night, when she made a zealous eftort to 
 pack her own clothes ; and after hours of 
 patient but unskilled Avrestling rose from be- 
 fore the imjDerials, which indignantly dis- 
 gorged her too numerous gowns — rose fagged 
 and red, yet semi-triumphant under the idea 
 that at least she had succeeded in Qfettinsr 
 everything in — only to discover behind her a 
 forgotten and overlooked heap, hardly in- 
 ferior in size and incompressibility to that 
 with which she has been contendinof. There- 
 upon the old rdgime returns for the moment, 
 and her maid, who has been looking on in im- 
 patient pain at dresses folded in the wrong 
 places — at vacuums where no vacuums should 
 be — and a general inartistic inequality of level, 
 retakes her office and for the last time packs.
 
 JOAN. 39 
 
 When all her imperials — -great and many, 
 as if she were an American- -are at length 
 shut, locked, and strapped, Joan eyes them 
 with a new distrust. 
 
 " If the house is as small as he said, they 
 will never get into it !" 
 
 Joan has no good-bye kisses to give, at 
 least not to people. She kisses a chair, a 
 walking-stick, a pair of muffetees that she 
 herself had knitted only two ; months ago ; 
 but they do not kiss her back again, and one- 
 sided kissing is, as every one knows, a dis- 
 couraging employment. She cannot even 
 kiss the fresh spring grass that grows above 
 her grandfather's head, for no fresh green 
 grass does grow above it. He lies far down 
 in a great and peopled vault — the Dering 
 mausoleum, on the building of whose solid 
 gruesomeness some bygone Dering spent a 
 fortune. It would be small comfort to Joan 
 to go inside the high-spiked iron railings, and 
 give her forlorn good-bye kiss to the great 
 stone slabs that"cover the entrance. It would
 
 40 JOAN. 
 
 be given to twenty others as much as to 
 him. 
 
 The journey that is before her is long, so 
 she sets off early. For the last time she 
 opens her eyes on a lace-edged j)illow, and 
 looks round at her dainty v/alls, palely hung 
 in shimmering green, at her toilette table, at 
 the cheval glass in which she has so often 
 seen and so thoroughly enjoyed the sight of 
 the reflection of her own fioure and Worth's 
 
 "fc)' 
 
 gowns. 
 
 The thought just passes through her head: 
 " In what sort of a room shall I wake to- 
 morrow ?" but she dismisses it. " What does 
 it matter ?" 
 
 For the last time she drinks her coffee out 
 of a canary-coloured cup, Avith little ladies 
 and gentlemen making love upon it in the 
 easy, sunshiny, practical way in which china 
 love is always made — a cup so thin and trans- 
 parent that you hardly feel it between your 
 lips as you sip. For the last time she is 
 carried to the station on C. sjDrings, drawn
 
 JO AX. 41 
 
 through the first sharp freshness of a yonng- 
 April morning by a pair of satin-coated bays^ 
 tightly bearing-reined, and loftily stepping 
 over their own noses. 
 
 You will say that there is nothing affecting 
 in these " last times," that if she w^ere part- 
 ing for the last time with a sweetheart — ex- 
 changing Avith him split rings or crooked 
 sixpences — you could be sorry for her, but 
 not now. And yet he could be much more 
 easily and cheaply replaced than can satin 
 hangings or bay thoroughbreds. 
 
 For the last time the footman gets her her 
 ticket, for the first and last time (this is per- 
 haps the exact moment when the new life 
 opens and the old one closes) he tells her in 
 which van he has put her boxes — hitherto in 
 all her former travels this has been no con- 
 cern of hers. 
 
 With one ear-piercing yell, as of a lost 
 soul, the train is off, and Avith a parting view 
 of the footman and of all the porters looking 
 rather relieved at havins" one more of the
 
 42 JOAN. 
 
 morning trains off their minds, Joan is ofiP 
 too. Past quite familiar fields first — Ids 
 fields, where she seems to know every hedge- 
 row thorn, every pasturing cow as well as 
 she knows all the little dips and pleasant 
 rises in the jiark, where the very sun- 
 shine and the skittish winds seem to belong 
 specially to the Derings ; then past farms 
 and wheat-fields and rickyarcls less familiar ; 
 then quite strange. 
 
 Joan longs to cry. What do sore-hearted 
 dogs do — dogs who cannot cry- — into the 
 wistfulness of whose sorrowful eyes no tears 
 can steal, and yet Avho have quite as much 
 capacity for the sufferings that the affections 
 cause as any Niobe that ever wept herself to 
 stone ? But Joan can cry, and thanks God 
 for it. The tears are already dripping one 
 after another, quick and large, on her crape 
 lap, when all inclination to weep is suddenly 
 and effectually choked and killed by the dis- 
 covery that, on the seat ojiposite to her, a 
 child is deposited — a fat, crepe-haired, pros-
 
 JOAN. 43 
 
 perous child — who is staring at her with 
 unbhnking brazen pertinacity ; in solemn 
 astonishment that a grown-up person can 
 cry. Then her tears seem dried and burnt 
 up at their fountain; she puts her pocket- 
 handkerchief back into her pocket, feeling- 
 sure that she will no lono-er need it. 
 
 It is perhaps as well. One must stop cry- 
 ing some day, and this day, Monday, April 
 12th, is perhaps as good as any other. It is 
 as difficult to weep in a train with a person 
 opposite looking at you, as it is to eat sand- 
 wiches gracefully and comfortably under the 
 hke circumstances. By-and-by, finding that 
 Joan furnishes no further phenomena for 
 observation, the child slithers down from its 
 seat, and begins to run playfully up and down 
 the carriage upon the inmates' feet. Then it 
 climbs up again on the seat and thrusts most 
 of its body out of the open window, excluding 
 air and view ; being forcibly pulled down 
 and re-seated by a ^palpitating parent, it 
 screws up its nose and howls.
 
 44 JOAN. 
 
 Joan's is a long and weary journey, and 
 there are many changes. The ticket that 
 the footman o^ot her does not last her for the 
 whole length ; she has to get another for her- 
 self. It is market-day, and for some other 
 and unexplained reason there are more people 
 than usual travelling. She has to stand — ^ 
 one of a long string of people — before the 
 ticket-office, with a heated market-woman 
 before her, and a high-flavoured hurried man 
 treading on her gown, thrusting her on, and 
 roughly urging her to be quick in taking up 
 her change, behind her. 
 
 She foro^ets in which van her lua^ofao-e was 
 put. She is nearly knocked down by a 
 porter and truck trundling noisily down the 
 platform, inexorable as Destiny and as un- 
 alterable in their course. The other porters, 
 are over-worked and unkind, and have quite 
 laid aside their usual suavity. The attention 
 of most of them is occupied by a furious man- 
 j^assenger, Avho has lost his portmanteau and 
 is dealimx death and damnation round to the
 
 JOAN. 45 
 
 whole staiF in consequence. When at length, 
 by dint of painful perseverance, she has in- 
 duced one of them to give her his reluctant 
 attention, she finds that his whole soul 
 revolts ao'ainst the number and mao-nitude of 
 her boxes. 
 
 His sense of fitness is evidently jarred 
 by finding that a single woman travelling 
 ignobly alone, without maid or footman 
 or male protector, and who, by all the laws 
 •of analogy and probability, should have been 
 contented with one modest canvas-covered 
 box and a carpet-bag, is furnished with an 
 array of imperials that would not disgrace a 
 countess. 
 
 From a conscientious desire to economise, 
 she travels the last half of her journey second- 
 class. The carriage is at first full, gorged to 
 repletion with market-people who crowd in 
 in much greater number than the carriage 
 can hold, and jocosely sit upon each other's 
 knees. They gradually diminish, as each 
 station drains a few ofi^, and she is at length
 
 46 JOAN. 
 
 left tete-a-tete with one man, distinctly 
 drunk, who insists on shaking hands with 
 her when he too, at last, to her infinite 
 relief, g;ets out. When at length (to her it 
 seems a very long length) the train draws up 
 at Helmsley station, she is alone. 
 
 It is evening; well on towards night, 
 indeed, and the station lamps gleam all a- 
 row. Having got out, she stands looking 
 wistfully about to see whether she can notice 
 any one that looks as if they had come to 
 meet her. In vain. The station is rather 
 emj)ty ; there is no one that looks the least 
 expectant, or is eying with any air of pos- 
 sible proprietorship any of the men or women 
 that the train is disburdening itself of Work 
 being tolerably slack the porters are able to 
 attend to her. In process of time — it takes 
 time — all her great boxes stand on the plat- 
 form. 
 
 ^' Where to 1 please, ma'am." 
 
 " I suppose that they must have sent to 
 meet me," she answers Imcertainly. ''Do
 
 JOAN. 47 
 
 you know if there is a carriage here ^ Mrs. 
 Moberley's carriage T 
 
 "■ What name did you say, 'm 1" 
 
 " Moberley — Mrs. Moberley," speaking 
 with painstaking distinctness. 
 
 He shakes his head. 
 
 " Do not know any one of that name ; Jim, - 
 run and see whether there's a carriao^e a- 
 waiting." 
 
 In two minutes Jim is back. 
 
 " There ain't no carriage of any kind." 
 
 A disheartened chill creeps over Joan. 
 They have neither come nor sent. 
 
 "There is no cart for the luggage then, 
 either, of course T 
 
 " No, there ain't no cart neither." 
 
 *' I must hire a fly then, I suppose," she 
 says, swallowing a sigh. "^ Will one fly take 
 them all ? if not, I must have two flies." 
 
 " There ain't no flies here, 'm," re2:>lies the 
 porter suavely ; " unless you order them 
 aforehand." 
 
 '^ No flies !" repeats Joan, eyes and mouth
 
 48 JOAN. 
 
 both opening in utterest discomfiture ; '' then 
 how am I to get there ?" 
 
 '' They keep a fly at the Railway Inn, 'm," 
 says Jim, who is younger and tenderer hearted 
 than his comrade. " You can have that if it 
 is not out." 
 
 " And where is the Railway Inn ?" she 
 asks, catching at this straw, and with a faint 
 ofleam of comfort dawnino- on her soul. "Is 
 it near "?" 
 
 " Just over the way, 'm," he answers, 
 pointing across the line to the other side of 
 the station ; " not more nor a hundred yards 
 off." 
 
 "Will you go and order it for me then, 
 please V she cries eagerly ; " tell them to get 
 it ready at once — as soon as ever they can 1" 
 (lapsing unintentionally into the tones of 
 polite authority and command that have been 
 habitual to her all her life). 
 
 " If it is in, 'm ; but it is mostly out." 
 
 With this cold comfort he leaves her. She 
 sits down on the smallest of her boxes, with
 
 JOAN. 49 
 
 a weighty dressing-case, that makes her knees 
 ache, on her lap. She looks vacantly round : 
 first at an engine that is fussing and snorting 
 about by itself ; then at a man who is shutting 
 up the bookstall ; then through the doors of 
 the o-larinof refreshment-room at the giant- 
 headed young ladies and commercial travel- 
 lers exchanging gallantries. By-and-by her 
 -emissary comes back. 
 " Please, 'm, it is out !" 
 ^' Oat /" 
 
 She has not faced this possibility, though 
 he has warned her of its likelihood. It seemed 
 one of those things that are too bad to be 
 true. 
 
 " It took a party up to Brickliill this 
 afternoon, and it ain't back yet; they do 
 not expect it back for another couple of 
 hours !" 
 
 " Then what am I to do V says Joan, still 
 sitting on her box, and speaking with slow 
 desperation. 
 
 She does not mean it as a question put to 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 JOAN. 
 
 the porter, but more as an ejaculation, a 
 protest addressed to destiny — to nature — to 
 the dumb distant sky, where all the nightly 
 fires are beofinniuof to be lit. But he takes it 
 to himself. 
 
 " Perhaps, 'm, if you would step across and 
 speak to Mr. Smith yourself — it is he as keeps 
 the Railway Inn." 
 
 " I will," she says, catching at the sugges- 
 tion ; " thank you." 
 
 And so rises, and staggers across the line 
 as quickly as the weight of her dressing-case 
 will let her. 
 
 " Just oppo-siYe, m," says the porter, leaning^ 
 heavily and lengthily on the last syllable of 
 the word, accompanying her outside the 
 station and pointing. " You cannot miss 
 it !" 
 
 Then he goes and leaves her alone in the 
 Avorld. 
 
 Oh, why — oh, why did not he stay and 
 escort her ? But he spoke truth. She cannot 
 miss it. " Piailway Inn " in gilt letters across
 
 JOAN. 5t 
 
 the wall ; '' Kailway Inn" in gilt letters across 
 the blinds. It '' tells its name to all the hills,"" 
 as plainly as Wordsworth's cuckoo. About 
 the door stand a knot of men enjoying bad" 
 tobacco, starlight, and small beer, and before- 
 the door stands a butcher's cart, whose master- 
 has evidently just pulled up to refresh him- 
 self. 
 
 They all take their pipes out of their mouths,, 
 and stop talking as she approaches. Joan has' 
 entered a score of well-throno^ed drawino-- 
 rooms, has made her curtsy to her Sovereign^ 
 and danced with her Sovereign's sons, with a 
 good deal less nervousness than she now ex- 
 periences in introducing herself to this half- 
 dozen of convivial boors. 
 
 " I am sorry to hear that your fly is out,"* 
 she says abruptly, and looking from one to- 
 the other, as not knowing to which her ques- 
 tion belonofs. 
 
 " Yes, miss, it is ; it took a party to Brick- 
 hill this " 
 
 *' I know," she answers, interrupting ; " and' 
 
 4—2
 
 52 JOAN. 
 
 have you no other conveyance ? no wagonette ? 
 no dog-cart V 
 
 " I 'ave a dog-cart, miss, but you see my 
 son has took it to market to Onpfar this 
 morning, and he's oftenest not back afore ten 
 or eleven !" 
 
 What camel's back could stand such a last 
 straw as this ? Were it not for the audience 
 Joan would put down her dressing-case in the 
 dusty road, would sit upon it, and break into 
 forlorn weeping. As it is, she only looks 
 round rather pitifully ; for they are not drunk, 
 and seem quite ready to be civil and sorry, 
 and says, sighing patiently : 
 
 " Then I must walk ; do you think you 
 could help me to find a boy to carry this, it is 
 very heavy ; I do not think that I could carry 
 it for three miles, and I believe that that is 
 the distance." 
 
 " If you please, miss, which direction is it 
 you are going in ?" asks a man who has not 
 spoken hitherto ; a man with a purple nose, 
 a husky voice, and one of those blue blouses
 
 JOAN. 63 
 
 that all oxen, calves, and sheep must regard 
 with so lively a distrust and aversion. 
 
 *' I am afraid that I do not know even 
 that," she answers, turning to this new inter- 
 locutor, and speaking with a starved little 
 smile. " I only know the name of the house, 
 and the name of the lady to whom it belongs 
 — Portland Villa — Mrs. Moberley — Mrs. 
 Moberley — Portland Villa !" laboriously re- 
 peating and elaborating each syllable. 
 
 " Po-ortland Villa !" repeats he dubiously ; 
 ''you do not happen to know, miss, which 
 side of the town it is on ? they've been 
 building a many new villas lately. Bill, do 
 you know where Po-ortland Villa is ?" 
 
 Bill shakes his head. He does not know. 
 None of them know. Portland Villa is 
 apparently not much known to fame. 
 
 " I should not wonder," suggests the land- 
 lord presently, " if it were one of them 
 houses on the London Boad ; little houses 
 with a bit of garden at the back, about three 
 miles out of the town; just after you pass
 
 54 JOAN. 
 
 the Cancer 'Orspital and afore you come to 
 the Lunatic Asylum." 
 
 Joan shudders. Good Heavens ! What a 
 situation ! 
 
 " If that is your road, miss/' says the 
 husky butcher affably, " why it is mine too ; 
 I can give you a lift as far as the 'Orspital ; 
 it won't take me none out of my way." 
 
 " You are very good," answers Joan, not 
 yet quite taking in the situation ; "^ thank you 
 very much ; you are going to drive in that 
 •direction 1" 
 
 He nods towards the cart, and the stout 
 gray horse, who, with his nose in a bag, is 
 waiting with the good-humoured patience 
 engendered by long habit outside in the star- 
 light. 
 
 '' That is my cart, miss, and I don't mind 
 _giving you a ride in it." 
 
 She gives a little unintentional gasp, but 
 happily nobody notices it. It is not often, 
 perhaps, that it has happened to a lady to 
 drive in the morning to a station in a
 
 JOAN. 65 
 
 barouche, behind a pair of sleek thorough- 
 breds, and with a six-foot London footman to 
 oj^en the door for her : and to drive from a 
 station in the evening in a butcher's cart. 
 However, it is butcher's cart or nothing, so 
 she chooses the former. Not being used to 
 mounting into carts, and being tired and 
 rather faint, she shows no great agihty, and 
 a chair is brought out to aid her. By its 
 help she clambers in, and her dressing-case 
 is solemnly handed up after her. It is the 
 first time that it also has travelled in a 
 butcher's cart. Once seated, she looks 
 apprehensively round to see whether any 
 dismembered calf or murdered lamb is to be 
 her companion. The butcher apparently 
 divines her fears. 
 
 " Quite empty, miss," he says reassur- 
 ingly ; " there ain't no jints !" Then he 
 takes a stirrup cup from the fair hand of an 
 easy-mannered barmaid, strips off the nose- 
 bag, climbs in without a chair, shakes the 
 reins, crying '' Tel !" and they are off.
 
 5G JOAN. 
 
 For the first few minutes, Joan is entirely 
 occupied by the novelty of her sensations. 
 She wonders how soon she will turn a somer- 
 sault backwards over the backless bench. It 
 seems to her only a question of time. And 
 then how it shakes ! The treatment that a 
 physic bottle experiences appears to her 
 gentle in comparison of that to which she is 
 subjected. She feels as if all her vital organs 
 were getting hopelessly mixed and entangled 
 together, Joan has hitherto only seen life 
 from the boxes or stalls. She is now begin- 
 ninof to learn how enofaofinof it can look from 
 
 CD & O O .. 
 
 the upper galleries. It is a fair meek night, 
 not very light, for not all the million little 
 stars can make up for the absence of the one 
 great moon ; but yet a very gentle twilight, 
 by which lovers might kiss, and friends softly 
 talk. The station is a mile distant from 
 Helmsley town : by-and-by they are jolting 
 and clattering over the streets ; cabs and 
 carriages pass them : lamp-posts hold uj) 
 their yellow lights to out-twinkle the white
 
 JOAN. 
 
 stars : people are walking along tlie trottoir ;. 
 dirty girls, idle soldiers, staring into sucli 
 shops as are still open; policemen. Then 
 out of the town again, along a road that is 
 neither a road nor yet a street — a melancholy 
 hybrid — dreary as only the outskirts of a 
 town can be. Just begun houses — half- 
 finished houses, Avith the poles of their 
 scaffoldings gauntly cutting the sky ; heaps 
 of bricks. She shudders with a feeling of 
 disheartened repulsion, saying to herself in 
 heart sickness, ''Is it possible that it can be 
 here ?" But fate is not quite so unkind. 
 Farther still; till the country begins to be 
 almost country again ; till the fields grow 
 grass instead of bricks ; till the trees are trees. 
 with leafy crowns instead of naked scaffold- 
 ing poles. A large building in all the harsh- 
 ness of utter squareness is lifting itself before 
 their eyes ; sulkily out-lined against the 
 pensive night. Her companion pulls up. 
 
 " This is the 'Orspital, miss." 
 
 Again she shudders. What a ghastly and
 
 ^8 JOAN. 
 
 ominous finger-post to point her to her 
 destination. 
 
 '^ That is your road, miss" (pointing with 
 his whip). There is no chair to help her 
 this time ; so she scrambles down as best she 
 >can. 
 
 " No obligation at all, miss ! I wish you 
 good-night." 
 
 The old gray is in a hurry, apparently ; for 
 he is off before she can make up her mind as 
 to whether his master would be insulted by 
 being offered a tip or no. She is left stand- 
 ing alone in the middle of the road. It is 
 very still — very silent. There is not a 
 passer-by ; no smallest sound hits the ear. 
 There is no light save what the stars give, 
 And a dull red glimmer from two or three of 
 the windows of the great Lazar House beside 
 her. What if she have been misled by a 
 wrong information ? what if Portland Villa 
 do not lie in this direction at all ? What 
 will she do then ? She will have to beg for 
 •a night's lodging at the 'Orspital.
 
 JOAN. i'd 
 
 With a heart beating hard and quick from 
 fear, and sick and weary with inanition, she 
 hastens, as quickly as the weight that she 
 has to carry will let her, towards the indi- 
 cated goal. Four mean little detached 
 houses (even by this flattering star-light she 
 can see that they are mean) lie ahead of her ; 
 €ach seated in its garden plot ; each with its 
 own small carriage drive and stone posted 
 entrance gates. She reaches the first, and 
 ravenously reads the name that, painted in 
 black letters, adorns the gate-posts : " Sarda- 
 napalus Villa !" On to the next : " De Cressy 
 Villa !" The third : " Campidoglio Villa 1" 
 There is only one more. For a moment she 
 dares not look. Too much hangs on the 
 issue of that glance. For a moment she 
 looks in the other direction : then gathermg 
 up her courage, turns her eyes upon the 
 fateful posts : '' Portland Villa !"
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " The little dogs and all, 
 Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at me !" 
 
 T is not quite easy to make out the 
 name at a glance, from the fact 
 that, through lack of a renewal of 
 
 paint the P has nearly disappeared. Still, 
 
 enough of it remains to prove that it once 
 
 was there ; enough to make Joan's sunk 
 
 spirits rise again with a leap. 
 
 It is right, then ! It is Portland Villa, at 
 
 last. The landlord's instructions were correct. 
 
 She puts out her hand to unlatch the gate ; 
 
 only to discover that it is off its hinges, and
 
 JOAN. 01 
 
 — to remedy this defect— is tightly tied up 
 with strinof. She sets down her dressing;'- 
 case in the road ; while her fingers struggle 
 to untie the manifold hard knots which 
 guard the entrance to Mrs. Moberley's 
 bower. 
 
 While she is thus employed she hears a 
 scampering of many little feet on the gra- 
 velled drive, and from the house rushes forth 
 a volley of dogs, one over another. There 
 seem to be twenty at least ; but subsequent 
 counting reduces them to six : all smallish ; 
 all, apparently, deeply warmly hostile ; all 
 barking with a deafening volubility ; all 
 breathing wrath and indignation against the 
 profane intruder who is tampering with their 
 entrance gates at ten o'clock at night. Their 
 harmony accompanies her all the time that 
 she is struggling with the knots. They also 
 make it doubtful to her whether the bell 
 which she has pulled on reaching the door 
 has really rung. They bark themselves 
 nearly oif their own legs ; and if there were
 
 C2 ' JOAN. 
 
 any dead in the neighbourhood, would infal- 
 hbly wake them. 
 
 But their conversation has chano-ed in tone. 
 It no longer means enmity so much as excite- 
 ment, agitation, half-welcome. Having smelt 
 her clothes to be good and genteel, they have 
 convinced themselves that in such a gown 
 she cannot be come begging. Anyhow, theirs 
 is the only welcome she seems likely to get ; 
 for, whether the bell rang or no, it is certain 
 that nobody answers it. She rings again, and 
 again waits. Nothing happens. Can it be 
 the wrong day ? Is it possible that they are 
 all out % — even the servants ; and that this 
 army of little dogs is keeping house alone ? 
 
 She pulls out her aunt's letter from her 
 pocket, and tries to decipher it by the star- 
 light. "Monday, April 12th/' as plain as 
 Charles' "Wain above her head. If there be 
 a mistake it is not hers. Emboldened by 
 this fact she rinsi's a third time. After a 
 considerable interval — not of silence, for the 
 six dogs do not permit that, but of patient,
 
 JOAN. G3; 
 
 dispirited waiting — she hears a slow and 
 sohd foot coming along the passage inside. 
 A bolt is withdrawn ; the door opens ; a flood 
 of light flows out from a lit hall, and a person 
 — a female person — apj^ears in the aper- 
 ture. 
 
 " I suppose that Mrs. Mob — " begins Joan, 
 then stops, for some lightning-quick intuition 
 tells her that — wildly improbable as it seems 
 — this is Mrs. Moberley. 
 
 " Why, / am Mrs. Moberley, my dear,'^ 
 says that lady, putting out both hands and 
 drawino- the ofirl in with them. '' I did not 
 think it could be you because I did not hear 
 any Avheels : to tell you the truth, I think I 
 must have been having forty winks. Hold 
 your tongues, dogs ! get away, E-egy ! get 
 away, Algy ! get away, Charlie ! get away^ 
 Mr. Brown !" 
 
 During this speech Miss Dering is regard- 
 ing her aunt with an intensity of gaze, hardly 
 compatible with her usual good manners ; but,, 
 indeed, it is difficult to look at Mrs. Moberley
 
 -64 JOAN. 
 
 on a first introduction in any other way than 
 intensely, 
 j Mi's. Moberle}^ is certainly startlingly fat ; 
 but so you may say are many ladies, who, 
 having outlived the thinning excitements of 
 girlhood, take life easily ; relish their food, 
 and lapse without much difficulty into slum- 
 ber. But Mrs. Moberley's is not that tight, 
 compact, w^ell-busked fat which, to one class 
 of mind, is not without its attractiveness. 
 Hers is of the unsteady order that destroys 
 all land marks and laughs at boundary lines. 
 Mrs. Moberley is absohitely without any 
 shape at all. 
 
 ''I do not know what Sarah can be think- 
 ^no- of not to have answere(J the bell !" slie 
 goes on, as she recloses the door and refastens 
 the bolt ; '' but I suspect the fact is, that she 
 is at her supper ; and, as I always say to the 
 girls, it is my belief that if the last trump 
 were to sound while she was at her supper, 
 she would wait till she had finished before 
 she would attend to it — ha ! ha !" Her very
 
 JOAN. 65 
 
 laugh is fat. If your eyes were shut you 
 could swear that it had not proceeded from 
 a slight person, 
 
 Joan is speechless. She is thinking that 
 she no lono^er wonders at Wolferstan's wish 
 that she could see her aunt. Certainly she 
 is well worth seeino-. 
 
 '^ But where are your things, child ? what 
 have you done with your luggage V continues 
 Mrs. Moberley, recovering from her mirth, 
 and preparing to reopen the door ; ''are they 
 outside ?" 
 
 '' I had to leave them at the station ; I 
 could not get a fly — there was not one." 
 
 " No fly !" repeats her aunt in high and 
 staccato accents* of astonishment ; " why what 
 had become of the fly from the Railway Inn ? 
 they have a very good fly there — quite a smart 
 one : the girls always say that you could not 
 tell it from a private carriage at a little 
 distance." 
 
 "It was out," 
 
 " And — you — walked — aU — the — way ? 
 
 VOL, I. 5
 
 66 JOAN. 
 
 Three miles and a half if it is a step " 
 (opening her eyes as widely as the encroach- 
 ments of her cheeks will let her). 
 
 " No, I did not," rephes Joan, with a hys- 
 terical lano'h, for she has eaten but one bun 
 all day, is faint and most weary, and it is so 
 much worse than she had expected. " I 
 came in a butcher's cart as far as the Cancer 
 Hospital." 
 
 *'In a butcher's cart!" (lifting up hands 
 and eyes). " This will be a fine story for the 
 girls : I am afraid they will never let you 
 hear the last of it. I wonder" — in a tone of 
 quickened interest — " was it our butcher ? 
 You did not happen to notice the name on 
 the cart, did you 1" 
 
 " I never thought of looking," replies Joan, 
 .still struggling with a most painful inclination 
 to laugh violently and cry violently at the 
 same moment. 
 
 " I do not think that he could have been 
 yours though ; he did not seem to know you 
 when I mentioned your name."
 
 JOAN. 67 
 
 " Inabutcher's cart !" repeats Mrs. Moberley, 
 still chuckling with fat relish ; '' it was hicky 
 it was night, Avas not it ? people would have 
 stared to see a stylish girl like you perched 
 up in a butcher's cart, would not they ?" 
 
 All this time they have been in the passage ; 
 luit now Mrs. Moberley puts her arm round 
 liov niece ; first giving her several hearty 
 kisses, and begins to lead her towards the 
 interior of the bower. But the passage is 
 narrow ; and on peril of becoming wedged 
 between the walls, they have to part company 
 and enter the drawing-room in single file. 
 
 Joan had thought that her heart was already 
 so low down that it would be impossible to 
 abase it any farther, but the sight of the 
 drawinsr-room undeceives her. It is not that 
 it is shabby, though it is that too in a very 
 hio'h deoTee, but there are many worse things 
 in this world than shabbiness. It is the air 
 of slip-shod finery about it which so utterly 
 capsizes the poor remnant of Joan's spirits. 
 A white paper, freely starred with large (once 
 
 5—2
 
 68 JOAN. 
 
 gold) heavenly bodies ; many ornaments of a 
 shelly sparry nature, inexpensively florid : an 
 impression of much cheap pink ribbon and 
 gobble-stitch lace ; and- — though the month is 
 wealthy April — not a flower, with the excep- 
 tion of a giant bunch of artificial ones under a 
 olass shade. 
 
 " This is the drawing-room !" says Mrs. 
 Moberley, introducing it with an air of pleased 
 proprietorship ; " we have not laid out much 
 money upon it, for the excellent reason that 
 we have not had much to lay — ha ! ha ! but 
 the girls have managed to make it look pretty 
 smart too, have not they ?" 
 
 " They have indeed," replies Joan emphati- 
 cally, looking round with a rather moon-struck 
 air, and taking in many details of wool, of 
 beads, of red Bohemian glass, which at the 
 first coup cVceil had escaped her notice. 
 
 ''In a butcher's cart," repeatsMrs. Moberley, 
 again resuming her chuckle, and sinking down 
 into a chair in order the more luxuriously to 
 enjoy it ; " it really is the richest thing I
 
 JOAN. G9 
 
 ever heard ! The girls meant to have gone 
 and met you to-day — they had put their hats 
 on, on purpose — when — -who should come in 
 but Micky — Micky Brand, you know — ^or, 
 rather, of course, you do not know — and 
 whisked them off to tea at the Barracks !" 
 
 " Yes r 
 • Her eyes have strayed to the dogs, who, 
 now silent, and consenting to her adoption 
 into the family, are sitting all six in a row, 
 very close together before the low fire, and 
 occasionally overcome by sleep, falling against 
 each other. 
 
 " He — would — not — take ' no,' " continues 
 Mrs. Moberley slowly ; ^' he is so droll, is 
 Micky ; a vast deal of dry humour about him ! 
 I am sure that you and he will get on like a 
 house on fire : I can see that you are just the 
 sort of girl he will take to at once." 
 
 '' Am I ?" (with a sickly little smile). 
 
 Joan is angry w4th herself for being so 
 monosyllabic, but her tongue refuses to frame 
 any words longer than "yes" or ''no." There
 
 70 JOAN. 
 
 is one monosyllabic word, indeed, whicli her 
 whole soul is crying aloud, but her lips do 
 not venture to utter it, and that word is 
 " tea 1" 
 
 " He is in the 170th, you know," pursues 
 Mrs. Moberley, warming with her theme. 
 " I did not mention to you in my letter that 
 Helmsley w^as a garrison town ; I thought it 
 would be a little surprise for you I" She is 
 looking at her witli such an air of good- 
 natured expectancy as she makes this ex- 
 citing revelation that Joan is really and 
 honestly sorry that she cannot look more ex- 
 hilarated by it. " A regiment is the making 
 of a country place, is not it "?" continues her 
 aunt complacently ; '^ and these are a very 
 dashing set of fellows, they keep us all 
 alive !" 
 
 Joan is saved from the necessity of answer- 
 ing a question to which she feels so incapable 
 of making a satisfactory response, by the 
 behaviour of the dogs, who, in a moment, are 
 all awake, and on their legs ; barking again
 
 JOAN. 71 
 
 with hardly less violent unanimity than that 
 with which they greeted Miss Dering. 
 
 " Hold your tongues, dogs !" cries Mrs. 
 Moberley ; " hold your tongue, Mr. Brown ! 
 you are always the ringleader !" But small 
 heed pays Mr. Brow^n. With one flying leap 
 he is out of the window, followed by his five 
 brothers and sisters ; and all are barking their 
 hearts out at their ease in the starlight. " It 
 is the girls !" explains Mrs. Moberley ; " and," 
 with a look of pleased alertness, " I think I 
 hear a man's voice too, do not you ? I believe 
 it is Micky ; he said he should very likely 
 €ome to make his bow to you, but I took it 
 for a joke." 
 
 By this time the dogs' clamour is hushed. 
 They are evidently apologising for their mis- 
 take. 
 
 " Do not go yet !" cries a high young voice 
 outside ; " it is quite early ! come in and have 
 some brandy and soda-water !" 
 
 " Do not offer what you have not got," cries 
 Mrs. Moberley, raising her voice, and laugh-
 
 72 JOAN. 
 
 ingly calling through the window ; " there is 
 no soda-water in the house !" 
 
 " I modify my inA^tation then," replies 
 the yoimg voice ; " come in and have some 
 brandy without the soda-water !" (laughing 
 also). 
 
 But this Bacchanalian offer is apparently 
 declined ; for, after a few seconds of further 
 parley, carried on in too low a key to be over- 
 heard, the Miss Moberleys enter the house 
 and the room alone. 
 
 '•' What have you done with Micky T cries; 
 their mother eagerly. ''Why did not you 
 bring him in ?" 
 
 " He w^ould not come," replies one of the 
 girls ; "he said he had not time ; but we think 
 that it was because he had his mess-jacket on 
 — he knows that it is not becominsf I" 
 
 " Evidently anxious to make a good im- 
 pression at first sight !" says Mrs. Moberley ; 
 and they all laugh — all but Joan. 
 
 Mirth is indeed far from Miss Dering's 
 thoughts. At the present moment she is
 
 JOAN. 73 
 
 occupied in gazing at her two first cousins 
 with hardly less intensity than that which 
 marked her first view of their mother. And 
 yet they are of no uncommon type. Had 
 she seen them officiating in the Helmsley 
 refreshment-room, or behind the counter at 
 the fancy repository in the little town near 
 Dering, she would have passed them without 
 an observation. It is as jirst cousins — her 
 first cousins that they strike her as so as- 
 tounding. First cousins ! in such hats ! such 
 jackets ! such earrings ! such beads ! and with 
 such a trolloping length of uncurled curls 
 down their backs ! Had you told her that 
 Mr. Brown and Algy were her first cousins, it 
 would have seemed to her less surprising. 
 
 " I daresay you do not know which is 
 which I" says Mrs. Moberley, following the 
 direction of her niece's eyes, and regarding 
 her progeny with a contained pride. " I 
 daresay you are trying to make out Avhich is 
 Bell, and which is Di, without my telling you. 
 Do you see much" likeness between them ?"^
 
 74 JOAN. 
 
 she goes on a moment later, as Joan still 
 maintains a stupefied silence ; " some say they 
 might be twins, others do not see it. I sup- 
 pose," with a good-natured glance round the 
 room, comprehensively inclusive- — " I suppose 
 there is a family look among us all." 
 
 " We are not at all alike really," cries the 
 younger, least beaded, least vivid-looking 
 of the two girls, in an anxious voice ; "if w^e 
 seem so at first, it goes oflf after a while." 
 
 " I am sorry we were not back in time to 
 receive you," says the other, sitting down and 
 takino' off her hat. " Diana and I meant to 
 have gone to meet you ; we were just setting 
 off when — mother has told you ? — he came on 
 purpose — he gave us no peace !" 
 
 " I daresay you were very glad," says 
 Diana bluntly. " We should have crowded 
 you up ; I daresay that there w^as not more 
 than enough room for you and your boxes in 
 the fly r 
 
 " The fly indeed !" cries Mrs. Moberley, be- 
 ginning to laugh again ; "a fine fly. It is
 
 JOAK. 75 
 
 evident that they are not in the secret. Is 
 not it, Joan V 
 
 At the sound of her own Christian name 
 (and after all what else is her own aunt likely 
 to call her?) Joan gives a slight and in- 
 voluntary shudder, but it passes harmless and 
 unobserved amid the fire of question, answer, 
 ejaculation, and retort that now ensues. 
 
 " You must have passed us on the road," 
 says Bell, presently. '' Did you notice ? we 
 were walking two and two ; Diana and Micky 
 in front, and I and another officer behind : 
 we did not see you, but then" — laughing 
 affectedly — " you w^ere in the very last place 
 where we should ever have thought of looking 
 for you," 
 
 " Did it jolt very badly V asks Diana, fixing 
 upon her cousin's small wan face a pair of 
 honest and very well- opened eyes, filled with 
 compassionate inquiry ; " worse than a 'bus ? 
 were you much shaken % you look so tired !" 
 The genuine rough pity of her tone goes nigher 
 to upsetting Miss Dering than all her
 
 76 JOAN. 
 
 former discomfitures. The tears rush, to her 
 eyes. 
 
 " It has been a long day," she says, fal- 
 tering. " I set off early I" 
 
 " And have you had nothing to eat 1" cries 
 Diana, turning her quick eyes round the room 
 in search of those signs of conviviality which 
 are conspicuous by their absence ; ''no tea ? 
 nothing ?" Then, as Joan observes an em- 
 barrassed silence, she goes on — her healthy 
 cheeks flushing a little : " There is never 
 much to eat or drink in this house, and what 
 there is, is not at all appetising, but at least 
 we can give you some tea." 
 
 So saying, she hastily leaves the room. It 
 is some time— to Joan it seems a very long 
 time — before she returns. At length, how- 
 ever, she reappears, bearing in her hands a 
 tray, and with a face so very much heightened 
 and deepened in tint as sufficiently proves 
 that she herself has been the cook. 
 
 " The servants had gone to bed," she says 
 apologetically ; " the fire Avas nearly out, and
 
 JOA^. 77 
 
 the kettle would not boil. Come, Joan" — 
 eying rather ruefully the sorry fare — " I am 
 sorry that there is nothing more inviting, but 
 it is the best we have." 
 
 Joan obeys, nothing loth. The tea is very 
 weak and rather smoky, and it is clear that 
 one need go no farther than an English hedge 
 for its original home ; the bread is very stale 
 and the butter very salt ; but to a person who, 
 within the last twenty-four hours, has re- 
 freshed herself with but one cup of coffee 
 and one bun, few drinks do not seem to 
 be nectar, few viands do not taste succu- 
 lently. 
 
 It is a long, long while after Miss Dering 
 has come to the end of her meao-re refresh- 
 ment before the idea of going to bed presents 
 itself to the minds of Mrs. Moberley or her 
 daughters. At last, at last — a very long 
 last — and when Joan can no lonf^er hinder 
 her tired head from sinking forward on her 
 breast in uncomfortable jerky slumber, there 
 comes a lull — a talk of going to bed, a dawd-
 
 78 JOAN. 
 
 ling chattering preparation for carrying the 
 idea into execution, and lastly a lighting of 
 candles. 
 
 '' Good-night; Joan/' says her aunt, hold- 
 ing both her hands and looking at her with 
 good-natured eyes, which evidently once were 
 large, but which now, through the dis- 
 honest usurpation by her cheeks of territory 
 not belonging to them, are decidedly small. 
 " I hope we shall see some more red in these 
 cheeks to-morrow. Your mother used to 
 have such a fine colour, quite as high as 
 Bell's, if not higher ; often and often people 
 have asked me if she were not painted." A 
 moment later : " Do not trouble to get up to 
 breakfast to-morrow, child ; we often do not —   
 we never have any particular breakfast hour 
 - — only just as any of us feel inclined. This 
 is Liberty Hall, my dear — Liberty Hall." 
 So saying she looses her niece's little chill 
 hands, and, nodding her head several times, 
 disappears into her bower, while Joan, 
 escorted by her two cousins, drags her weary
 
 JOAN. 79 
 
 legs up the narrow deal staircase of '^ Liberty 
 Hall." 
 
 " This is your room," says Diana, throw- 
 ing open a door and waving her flat candle- 
 stick about, so as to exhibit its dimensions, 
 " the guest-chamber of Lihertij Ilallj" with 
 a little sarcastic mimickinof- of lier mother's 
 tone. " I will not say that I hope you will find 
 it comfortable, because I know you will not." 
 
 " There is a bed," answers Joan, with a 
 small smile of utter weariness ; '^ that seems 
 to me the only thing of the least importance 
 
 just now." 
 
 But if she imagfines that this broad hint 
 Avill rid her of the compan}^ of her relations 
 she is grreatly mistaken. Diana sets down 
 the candle, and Arabella seats herself upon a 
 cane-bottomed chair. To hide her disappoint- 
 ment Joan walks to the window. 
 
 '' You haye the best view in the house," 
 says Arabella complacently ; " you can see 
 everything that goes along the road better 
 even than from the drawing-rooiii."
 
 80 JOAN. 
 
 But it is air, not view, that Miss Dering 
 craves. The room feels close and confined. 
 She throws up the sash, which instantly and 
 clamorously falls down again. 
 
 " It always does that/' says Arabella com- 
 posedly ; '' there has been something odd 
 about it for months. It keeps open pretty 
 Avell with a bit of wood; there generally is a bit 
 of wood, but of course Sarah has lost it." 
 
 She sets the candlestick on the floor as she 
 speaks, and all three girls grovel on all-fours 
 on the carpet in search of the missing wedge. 
 By-and-by Diana finds it under the wash- 
 hand-stand, and with it the decrepit window 
 is propped open to admit the gentle April 
 winds. 
 
 " I know you are longing for us to go," 
 says Diana brusquely, when this feat is 
 accomplished. '^ Come along. Bell, come ! it 
 is cruelty to animals to keep her out of bed. 
 Of course we will send our maid to dress your 
 hair in the morning ; she has not at all a bad 
 idea of hair-dressing, though indeed we taught
 
 JOAN. 81 
 
 her everything she knows ; she always does 
 ours !" 
 
 Joan looks at the colossal heads before her 
 and shudders. ''Thank you," she answers, 
 rather hastily, " but indeed I have got quite 
 into the habit of doing my own : I like it ; it 
 makes one feel so independent : good-night !" 
 
 Are they really going now ? It seems so. 
 Arabella is already out of the room, and 
 Diana is at the door, when — oh, sorrow ! — she 
 returns. 
 
 " I hope you do not mind the light in your 
 eyes in the morning," she says, looking up 
 at the window ; '' unfortunately there is no 
 blind, and the curtains do not draAv very 
 well, I am afraid ; there is something the 
 matter with the rings ; but if you pin them 
 over it does nearly as well. Have you got 
 ^ome good big ' corking pins ' ? because, if not, 
 I will run and get you some." 
 
 Kegardless whether she is speaking truth 
 •or fiction, Joan asseverates that she has plenty 
 of corking pins. There is no commodity, 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 JOAN. 
 
 however improbable^ with which she would 
 not declare herself to be richly provided, in 
 order to obtain the one boon for which her 
 whole sad tired soul craves — solitude. 
 
 Gone at last — really gone ! And now she 
 may sigh as loudly as she likes, and look 
 round her with as undisguised disapprobation 
 on her surroundings as they naturally inspire. 
 When one is at a very low ebb physically, it 
 takes but a little to overset one. Joan,, 
 at her best and strongest — the real Joan — 
 would be ashamed to let any sordid entourage 
 make her cry ; but she is tired and below 
 par, and tears of forlorn discomfiture fill her 
 eyes, as she looks round on the threadbare 
 carpet — on the large and straggly ugliness 
 of the wall-paper ; and notices that a bit is 
 missing from the spout of the ewer. 
 
 She stands before the chest of drawers that 
 serves as dressing-table, and looks at herself 
 in the glass that is upon it. ^' I shall grow 
 like them in time," she says shuddering ; " in 
 time I shall learn to talk of men by their
 
 JOAN. 83 
 
 surnames, and to have a refreshment-room. 
 head of hair !" She pulls her hair down on 
 her forehead to simulate a fringe, sets her hat 
 at the back of her head, and tries to look like 
 them ; then, in a paroxysm of disgust, dashes 
 the locks away from her brows and tosses her j 
 hat down. " No ! I hope I may die first." 
 
 She says this aloud, and with such emphasis 
 that her voice drowns the sound of a small 
 knock that comes at the door. It has to be 
 repeated before she hears it ; then she hastily 
 pulls her countenance into shape again, and 
 cries, "Come in." (Here they are, back again.) 
 
 It is not "they," however. It is only Diana, 
 looking rather shy. You would have said, 
 half an hour ago, that a girl in such a hat 
 and with two such curls could not look shy, 
 but yet she does, 
 
 " I have not come for anything particular," 
 she says, speaking very fast and confusedly ; 
 " it was only that it struck me just now that 
 we had none of us said that we were glad to 
 see you ; we have, none of us, any manners. 
 
 6—2
 
 84 JOAN. 
 
 I daresay that you have found that out 
 already — but we are glad — that is all ! I 
 will not come back again." 
 
 Whilst making this speech she is redder 
 than any July field poppy, and redder still 
 when, having given Joan a quick and shame- 
 faced kiss, she flies out of the room again, 
 banging the creaky door after her, and 
 leaving Joan remorseful. And Joan's last 
 thought before she closes her fagged eyes in 
 her little hard lumj)y bed, which feels as if it 
 were stuffed with good-sized potatoes, is not 
 of her spoutless jug or propped window, of all 
 she has lost and all she is going to suffer — 
 but of the kind and rosy face of her little 
 underbred cousin. 
 
 Joan is not very old, but she has already 
 learnt this, that — whether ill-dressed or well- 
 dressed, whether well-bred or ill-bred — love is 
 the one thing very much worth having in this 
 world. If they will love her, she will forgive 
 them everything — even the size of their heads, 
 and their taste for soldiers.
 
 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HEN one is twenty years old — 
 when one's heart is as full of sad- 
 ness and tiredness as it can well 
 hold — when one has travelled many hours 
 at a stretch in a noisy train — then one is 
 pretty certain to sleep deeply and sweetly, 
 even though one's mattress be copiously 
 stuffed with coble stones, even though one's 
 head be too low and one's feet too high^ and 
 one's bed altogether so surprisingly narrow 
 as to require very judicious and quiet lying 
 in, to hinder one from bodily falling out. 
 Often, in her ocean of down in the green
 
 86 JOAN. 
 
 hung room at Dering, has she slept less com- 
 pletely. Pulses quickly beating to the tune 
 of some past excitement, or coming pleasure, 
 have often made her toss and turn and look 
 eagerly windowwards for the waving of morn- 
 ing's gray flag ; but now there is neither ex- 
 citement behind nor pleasure ahead, and the 
 slower morning comes the better ; and so she 
 sleeps. 
 
 God is good, and does not even send her 
 a dream. If it came it would surely be a 
 dream of better things and better days, and 
 so it is well away. Not even the unnatural 
 elevation of her feet by the capriciously-stuffed 
 mattress, nor the depression of her head by 
 the little meagre featherless pillow, succeed 
 in giving her a nightmare. She might have 
 been still asleep now had not it been for the 
 inefficiency of the curtain rings, of which 
 Diana overnight had warned her. The cork- 
 ing-pin had indeed drawn the skimped cur- 
 tains together somewhere about their middle ; 
 but up above there is a vacuum through
 
 JOAN. 87 
 
 which a wave of morning light rolls and 
 washes under her eyelids. She turns sleepily 
 over on the other side, but even then the 
 wave reaches her, and so does the vigorous 
 melody of a thrush-voice sweetly rebuking 
 her sloth. 
 
 " Good-morrow ! good-morrow ! the sun was awake 
 Long ago in the blue summer skies ; 
 Birds in the brake 
 Carol sweet for your sake. 
 O, lady fair, arise ! 
 That morn fresh grace may borrow 
 Fi'om your dear eyes." 
 
 He says all tliis so loudly that the sleepy 
 lady has to listen to him. She turns over 
 once or twice again, nearly tumbling out of 
 her strait couch as she does it. But it is use- 
 less ; both glorious light and happy bird com- 
 bine to forbid further rest. The bird, indeed, 
 sings another verse : 
 
 " Good-morrow ! good-morrow ! so whispers the breeze 
 O'er the lake as it flutters and sighs ; 
 So murmur the bees 
 From the scented lime-trees. 
 O, lady fair, arise — 
 Arise and give good-morrow ! 
 The dearest of replies."
 
 88 JOAN. 
 
 So in desj^air she sits up, rubs her blue eyes 
 hke a child with her knuckles, and looks 
 round. It is a well-known fact that rude 
 and out-spoken daylight tells many home- 
 truths about things that politer candlelight 
 either slurs over or is civilly silent upon. 
 If Joan's new room had looked unhandsome 
 over night by the light of one composite can- 
 dle, it certainly does not look more lovesome 
 now that day's strong lamp is held up to its 
 shortcoming's. It would take a (^reat effort 
 of memory on the part of its owners, a great 
 flight of imagination on the part of Joan, to- 
 reconstruct the pattern of the carpet ; so- 
 utterly has it disappeared under the tread of 
 the numberless feet that have evidently 
 walked upon it. Of paint on door and 
 wainscot there is so little as to be hardly 
 worth naming ; there is a zigzag crack across 
 the looking-glass interfering with one's view 
 of one's nose ; and the piece missing from the 
 water-jug spout is larger than it appeared 
 over night. It is now seen to amount to the
 
 JOAN.   8» 
 
 loss of almost the whole spout. But eight 
 hours of sleep have put new strength and 
 courage into Joan. Not even the squalor of 
 having a jug Avithout a spout can make her 
 cry ; she feels as strong and as bright as the 
 new day. She jumps out of bed, and runs 
 on bare lisfht feet to the Avindow. She un- 
 fastens the curtain, carefully laying aside the 
 friendly corking-pin with a thrifty instinct 
 born of her new circumstances. Most likely 
 there is not another in the household. There 
 is no blind, as you knoAv, to draw up ; so at 
 once she stands face to face with the morning. 
 It is not early dawn, as she sees at once ; it 
 is dawn's elder brother. The sun is already 
 pretty high ; she looks up at him fondly, 
 though he rewards her by making the water 
 pour doAvn her cheeks. He and the moon 
 are the only tAvo old friends that are left her. 
 Then she looks out curiously at the prospect. 
 There is the gate at Avhich her tired fingers 
 fumbled last night ; there is the little mean 
 SAveep up Avhich the execrations of the dogs
 
 so JOAN. 
 
 accompanied her. Three of them are stand- 
 ing at the present moment watchfully on the 
 look-out for some passer-by to pounce out on, 
 and insult. A shabby grass-plot, with a bed 
 of ill-to-do shrubs, long-legged laurels, and 
 cypress abortions in the middle ; then the 
 road. A cart full of manure is passing along 
 it. Bell was right ; there is an excellent 
 view of it. She puts her head farther out to 
 extend her view. On the rig'ht the three 
 little brother villas. People get ujd in them 
 earlier, apparently, than they do here. A 
 Avoman is standinof at the door of our next- 
 door neighbour shaking a hearth-rug ; beyond 
 again the great unsightly hospital ; larger, 
 unsightlier than ever by daylight. She shud- 
 ders. How could any one have built their 
 dwelling so near that temple of pain and un- 
 cleanness ? She looks away quickly, and turns 
 her eves towards the left. 
 
 What a contrast ! On one hand, disease, 
 anguish, ugly death. On the other, hfe that 
 seems unending ; beauty without peer ; joy
 
 JOAN. 91 
 
 and mirth unrivalled. A great plain of most 
 shining silver, laughing in the morning's eyes 
 — the sea ! The sea makes some people 
 bilious : to other people its immortal rest- 
 lessness gives the blues. But neither bile 
 nor blues interfere with Joan's utter love for 
 it. It is her own familiar friend. She 
 stretches her arms out towards it, and laughs 
 aloud in joyful greeting. 
 
 After all, there may be pleasant things 
 yet ahead in life. Whether or not any one 
 else in the house is up, she, at least, can no 
 longer waste time in bed. Instinct tells her 
 that in this establishment it will be useless 
 to make any efforts towards the obtaining of 
 hot water. Rather to her surprise, however, 
 and much to her relief, she finds a great jug 
 of cold ; a jug with a spout, but (to hinder it 
 from exalting itself too much above its 
 brother on this score) without a handle. 
 Having washed and dressed ; having brushed 
 her dusty gown with the awkwardness en- 
 gendered by utter want of practice ; having
 
 52 JOAN. 
 
 plaited lier smooth hair and instinctively 
 tried to make her head look even smaller 
 than usual — she puts on her hat, opens her 
 paintless door, and slips quickly and quietly 
 downstairs. Not a soul to be seen ! not a 
 sound to be heard ! 
 
 As she reaches the bottom of the stairs, a 
 great slow-speaking clock from the Hospital 
 strikes eight. Clearly they do not rise with 
 the lark at Portland Villa. She goes into- 
 the drawing-room — a tawdry desolation ! It 
 is exactly as it was left over night ; furniture 
 higgledy-piggledy; chair-covers rucked; anti- 
 macassars awry. 
 
 The sun-shafts are smiting, with bright 
 rebuke, the dead- white ashes in the dreary 
 fireplace. It is a disagreeable sight, and 
 Joan hastens away from it. She goes to the 
 hall-door and tries it : it is locked, and not 
 all her efforts can turn the key. There is,, 
 however, a door at the back, which is not 
 only unlocked, but ajar. It has clearly been 
 open all night.
 
 JOAN. 93 
 
 In the happy consciousness of having 
 nothing worth steahng, the Moberley family 
 is able to throw its portals hospitably wide 
 to any passing burglar. No doubt there was 
 neither lock nor bolt on DioQfenes' tub. She 
 walks out into the little garden ; a morsel of 
 flower-border first, then a strip of kitchen- 
 garden in all the amiability of unpruned 
 raspberry bushes, ragged apj)le trees, trium- 
 phant groundsel. 
 
 Our next-door neighbour has turned his 
 garden into a drying ground : in the morning 
 wind liis clothes are flapping and dancing. 
 By a careful survey of them, you may tell 
 approximately the age, sex, and number of 
 his belongings. From these a clean and 
 soapy smell is wafted over the hedge to 
 Joan's nostrils. It does not take her long to 
 make the circuit of the domain. In five 
 minutes she is back in the flower-garden 
 again. It is as if the drawing-room had 
 walked out of doors. There is the same 
 sordid meagre disorder ; weedy gravel walks,
 
 94 JOAN. 
 
 long unmown rank grass, an old laurel-tree, 
 into wliich, apparently (it having a forked 
 branch), every odd-come-short that the family 
 has not known where else to deposit through 
 a long series of years has been put — a scythe, 
 several broken pots, a wooden box, a broken- 
 backed book, a discoloured torn neckerchief, 
 an old pair of gloves. If Joan look long and 
 closely enough, no doubt she will discover 
 among the miscellaneous contents the miss- 
 ing spout of her jug. 
 
 The garden has evidently once formed part 
 of a better, larger one, belonging to an elder 
 house, which has no doubt been knocked 
 down to make way for this little smug band 
 of pretentious bald hovels, for an ancient sun- 
 dial stands neglected — in its air of out-at- 
 elbows gentility — on the grass j^lot. But 
 amid all the ugliness and squalidness, there 
 is beauty too. Spring is so generous — April 
 so open-handed — that they will not pass by 
 even Portland Villa, They have given it a 
 pear-tree, all in bridal white ; one load of
 
 JOAN. 95 
 
 thick blossom bunches, you could hardly put 
 a pin between them ; they have given it also 
 groups of vigorous daffodils, clumj^s of poly- 
 anthus, smelling of spring : milk-white arabis 
 haunted by the drowsy booming bees. Joan 
 smells all the flowers ; mounts on the base of 
 the sun-dial ; traces with her finger the trite 
 sad sentence on its discoloured face, " Tempus 
 fugit." Tiny lichens, disapproving of the 
 truism, are filling up the letters. 
 
 Then she returns to the laurel-tree, and 
 looks carefully and hopefully for the spout of 
 her jug, but it is not there. Still nothing 
 happens : no one is either seen or heard. 
 All the other houses are up and dressed. 
 The scions of Campidoglio Villa are playing 
 in the garden; the wife of Sardanapalus 
 Villa is feeding her chickens ; only Portland 
 Villa still slumbers and sleeps. In despair 
 she returns to the house ; opens all the doors 
 in succession as loudly as she can ; makes 
 her feet tread as noisily as they are able on 
 the oilcloth. It is no use : nobody wakes.
 
 96 JOAN. 
 
 She passes down the little sweep to the gate ; 
 says something polite and suitable to each of 
 the dogs, who all receive her with an extrava- 
 gant and over-done civility ; passes out into 
 the road with all six at her heels, and 
 saunters towards the sea. Towards, but 
 not to. 
 
 Her friend is farther off than she had 
 thou Of ht. From her window it had seemed 
 as if, by stretching out her hands, she might 
 with her finger tips have touched the great 
 fiflancing: silver shield. But the nearer she 
 approaches to it, the more its white glory 
 seems to recede. She feels its cool and 
 bracing breath upon her face, but itself she 
 does not reach. 
 
 Whether it is the sea air, or the skimped 
 supper over night, or only the healthy working 
 order in which her young organs are, but she 
 suddenly becomes aware of being inexpressibly 
 hungry, and after having walked half a mile 
 or so, turns back in the hope of at length 
 finding the household aroused.
 
 JOAN. 97 
 
 As she reaches the gate again the hospital 
 clock beats the light air with nine loud delibe- 
 rate strokes. They must be up by now. Yes, 
 it is clear that in the interval of her absence 
 some one has risen, though no one is visible, 
 for the hall-door is unlocked ; but on peeping 
 into the dining-room she is dispirited at seeing 
 no smallest sign of coming breakfast ; only a 
 depressingly dingy baize table-cloth, and a 
 general impression of crumbs. She goes out 
 again into the garden, and tries to recollect 
 when, at what distant epoch of her life, 
 she ever felt so hungry before. Oh, if the 
 daffodils and the polyanthuses were but 
 eatable ! 
 
 As she wanders disconsolately about she 
 hears, after a while, a window thrown up. 
 Diana, slightly dressed in night attire, looks 
 sleej^ily out. Can it be called Diana ? Diana 
 without any of her distinguishing features : 
 Diana without her sausage frisettes ; without 
 her piled false hair ; without the plumed and 
 flowered abomination of her hat. Diana, as 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 ^8 JOAN. 
 
 God made her : not as Helmsley fashions, as 
 troUoping curls, as cheap loud clothes — as, in 
 short, the desire to shine in the eyes of the 
 l70th have made her. 
 
 It would never have struck Joan as possible 
 over night that Diana could be a pretty girl. 
 It comes upon her now with the force of a 
 surprise that she is one. A little curly head ; 
 young dewy eyes full of colour and light; 
 pinky cheeks ; red lips made for kisses and 
 laughter. The beauty of a little dairy-maid 
 indeed, but still beauty. It is difficult to look 
 vulgar when one is very young, not inordi- 
 nately fat, and when one has done nothing 
 disfiguring to oneself In her night-gown, 
 with her blowzed hair tumbling into her sleepy 
 eyes, Diana is not vulgar. 
 
 " You out !" she cries in a drowsy voice, 
 wherein surprise struggles with departing 
 slumber. '* Why on earth did you get up so 
 early ? is not the day long enough in all con- 
 science { 
 
 " I never can sleep after eight o'clock,"
 
 JOAN. 99 
 
 answers Joan half apologetically ; '' and there 
 is no use in staying in bed when one is wide- 
 awake, is there ?" 
 
 ''I do not know " (indistinctly, with a 
 yawn). " I think it is better than being up, 
 when there is nothing to do." 
 
 A pause. Diana leans her arms on the sill, 
 and looks aimlessly out at the wakeful flowers 
 and the preoccupied bees. 
 
 " Is your sis — is Arabella up V asks Joan, 
 w4th a small vain hope that one of the house- 
 hold may be up and stirring. 
 
 Diana laughs ; showing many neat little 
 white teeth. 
 
 ^' Up ! she is not awake ! — Bell !" turning 
 towards the inside of the room, and raising 
 her voice, " Joan wants to know are you up 
 yet ? Joan is up and dressed, and out ; you 
 must get up ! it is your week for making tea ! 
 if you do not get up I shall come and shake 
 you !" 
 
 But not even this threat has any effect. 
 Diana turns again to the window, replaces 
 
 7—2
 
 100 JOAN. 
 
 her arms on the sill, and shakino; her 
 head : 
 
 " ' 'Tis the voice of the sluggard ; I heard her complain, 
 You have waked me too soon : let me slumber again,' " 
 
 she says, with a laugh ; " she will not be down 
 for a couple of hours." 
 
 '' Nor you either ?" says Joan, with a 
 sinking heart ; "do you mean to go to bed 
 again too V 
 
 " T did," answers Diana lazily, twisting one 
 lock of her rougfh hair round her fino-er ; '' but 
 I will not now, if you had rather that I did 
 not ; have you any idea what time it is ?" 
 
 " It must be a quarter past nine." 
 
 " Is that all?" extending her arms, throwing 
 back her head, and opening her mouth in a 
 gigantic stretch and yawn. " I hoped that it 
 was ten, at least ; I always think that there 
 are just twice too many hours in the day, do 
 not you '? unless the band plays, or something, 
 is going on up at the Barracks ; but " — with 
 a heavy sigh — " to-day there is nothing —
 
 JOAN. 101 
 
 positively nothing !" Joan is silent. To be 
 a whole day without soldiers is to her a new 
 form of suffering, and one for which in all her 
 pharmacy there is no remedy. '' But to be 
 sure your boxes will come to-day," continues 
 Diana with a livelier air, rousing herself from 
 the pensive strain of thought into ^vhich she 
 has fallen ; " that will give us something to 
 do ; it will take a long time, no doubt, to 
 examine all your things." 
 
 Joan swallows a sigh, and strangles a 
 shudder. 
 
 " I daresay it will !" 
 
 '^ Maybe they wdll be here quite early," 
 resumes the girl, now thoroughly awakened ; 
 ^' then I will dress at once : I do not take long- 
 when once I set about it ; Bell says twenty 
 minutes — I say a quarter of an hour ; and you 
 know it does not matter how untidy I am to- 
 day, as no one will see me." 
 
 Joan shudders outright this time, and does 
 not try to strangle it, as Miss Diana thus 
 makes herself the naive exponent of this
 
 102 JOAN. 
 
 doctrine of home slatternliness, and outdoor 
 finery. 
 
 ^' You did not see any sign of breakfast, I 
 supj^ose," says Diana presently ; happily un- 
 conscious of the effect her words have pro- 
 duced ; '' nothing laid ?" 
 
 " Nothing !" 
 
 " I thought not : there never is ; go into the 
 dining-room and ring for breakfast : go on 
 rinpinof till she comes !" 
 
 Joan obeys with alacrity. The hope of 
 food, however distant, gives wings to her feet. 
 The dining-room bell is broken. The rope is 
 lying curled like a shabby snake on the floor. 
 Not liking to take any further measures with- 
 out directions, she returns to the garden to 
 announce to her cousin her ill success. 
 
 She finds her still yawning at the 
 morning sun and the flowers in exceeding 
 dishabille. 
 
 -—*' Broken is it ? Oh, so it is ! Billy Jackson 
 did it on Wednesday, when two of them came 
 to luncheon here. Then o-o to the swinof-door
 
 JOAN. 103 
 
 and call ! go on calling till she answers ! she 
 very often pretends not to hear." 
 
 Joan does as she is bid, and repairs to the 
 indicated swing-door, where she stands and 
 calls '^ Sai:a|i !" several times without any ap-, 
 parent result. She hears indeed the sound 
 of voices in colloquy or altercation in some 
 not distant resfion, but answer comes there 
 none. 
 
 The Moberley parlour-maid has evidently 
 laid to heart Swift's " Directions to Servants," 
 and especially this one, " Never come till you 
 have been called three or four times, for none 
 but dogs will come at the first whistle, and 
 when the master calls ' Who's there V nobody 
 is bound to come, for 'Who's there?' is nobody's 
 name." 
 
 But at length, one last despairing cry, 
 hunger prompted, and uttered in a louder 
 key than Joan has ever expected to hear her- 
 self employ, evokes a spirit from the kitchen. 
 A pert-faced, black-handed young creature, 
 with a disordered coiffure nearly as big as her
 
 104 JOAN. 
 
 mistresses'^ answers the oft-repeated summons, 
 and having received with a sulky surprise 
 Joan's request for speedy breakfast, mildly 
 yet firmly preferred, retires a good deal more 
 quickly than she came.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HE family is assembled at length. 
 Di having successfully removed or 
 concealed nearly all traces of the 
 beauty that God has given her. She has, 
 indeed, been unable to do away with her 
 €yes, or make them look as underbred as 
 the rest of her. They still shine and laugh 
 out of her disfigured face. She has, however, 
 violet-powdered her fresh cheeks, piled her 
 hair to more than its pristine height and 
 bulk, and trailed her spurious curls to even 
 greater length than en the previous even- 
 ing. The dew has apparently taken every
 
 106 JOAN. 
 
 morsel of curl out of them ; and as she is 
 pretty sure to see no one to-day, Diana has 
 not thought it worth while to re-curl them. 
 
 They therefore wander in perfectly straight 
 and lustreless disorder down her back. Nor 
 has her sister had less prosperity in the task 
 of self-disfigurement. Her labour has indeed 
 been less, as she has had less original beauty 
 to spoil. 
 
 Daylight is no kinder to Mrs. Moberley 
 than it has already been to her furniture 
 and her daughters. She looks, if possible, 
 fatter and hotter than ever ; nor do the start- 
 ing seams of her morning gown, nor the easy 
 negligence with which her cap sits crookedly 
 upon her head, greatly enhance the attractive- 
 ness of her appearance. It is only a Life- 
 guardsman to whom it is becoming to have 
 his cap set on awry. 
 
 She has been holding Joan's most reluctant 
 hand for full live minutes, and staring intently 
 with a fat pathos into her face, as she tries 
 to dig out from amon^ her features a resem-
 
 JOAN. 107 
 
 blance to some member alive or dead of her 
 own family. She is interrupted in her 
 hopeless search by Diana, who strikes in 
 brusquely : 
 
 "By the by, did the bed fall down with 
 you last night ? I forgot to ask you : 
 it does sometimes ; it did once with me. 
 I think its legs are weak ; I was so 
 frightened ; I thought it was the Last Day ; 
 that Avas why we put it in the spare 
 room !" 
 
 " Nonsense, Di !" cries Mrs. Moberley 
 peevishly ; " do not frighten the girl ! — per- 
 haj)s" (turning to Joan) ''it might not bear 
 a very heavy j)erson — I daresay that it would 
 not ; but it will never break down with such 
 a light weight as you." 
 
 " I should not think that she was much 
 lighter than I am," says Diana contradic- 
 tiously, measuring Joan with an appraising 
 eye, " for though of course she is much 
 slighter, she is twice as tall, and it comes to 
 the same thino* — hurrah ! there is breakfast 
 
 CD
 
 108 JOAN. 
 
 at last ! I hear Sarah clattering the 
 j)lates." 
 
 Joan is very thankful for any diversion 
 which removes six eyes from her person, and 
 doubly thankful that the diversion should be 
 in the shaj^e of food. A move is made to- 
 wards the dining-room, which is just across 
 the narrow passage. As she steps over the 
 threshold Bell cries out in a warning voice : 
 
 " Take care, Joan ! the big hole in the 
 carpet is just there ; it very nearly tripped 
 up Micky last Christmas -day." 
 
 Joan starts, stumbles, and by catching at 
 the door-post recovers herself. 
 
 " If it is of such long standing," she says, 
 wdth an astonished laugh, "wdiy does not 
 some one mend it ?" 
 
 " Oh, I do not know," replies the girl in- 
 differently. " I suppose that Sarah has no 
 time ; and, after all, it does no great harm 
 when one remembers where it is, and the 
 ■dogs like it." 
 
 Such reasoninof is unanswerable, as Joan
 
 JOAN. 10» 
 
 feels ; and so she takes her seat in silence at 
 the social board. Before she had entered the 
 room, Joan had credited herself with an ap- 
 petite to which any food short of tripe or 
 hagfffis would be welcome. She had said to 
 herself reassuringly that they are not likely to 
 have tripe for breakfast. She had pictured 
 herself as pasturing with relish on all manner 
 of plain and homely food, thick bread and 
 scrape, porridge, perhaps treacle. Yes, she 
 would not despise even treacle. But the first 
 glance that she casts on the table arrange- 
 ments robs her at once of half her appetite — 
 a rumpled table-cloth, rich in yesterday's 
 stains ; a dull tea-pot ; dim spoons ; cups all 
 cracked more or less, mostly more ; and not 
 a flower ! Not one of all the thousand 
 primroses that are palely smiling from every 
 hedge-row ! Treacle ! porridge ! Who could 
 eat treacle or porridge on such a table-cloth ? 
 Her meditations are interrupted by the 
 sound of the two girls' voices, raised in re- 
 criminatory dialogue. They are wranghng
 
 110 JOAN. 
 
 as to who shall make the tea, or rather who 
 shall not make it, for it is clearly an unpopu- 
 lar office. 
 
 After a few moments of argument of "■ you- 
 are-another" nature, daring which no ap- 
 proach is apparently made to a decision, 
 Joan's soft voice strikes in, or rather steals 
 in, between the shrill sharpness of those of 
 the two combatants : 
 
 " If you like I will make tea ; I am con- 
 sidered " (with a faint smile) '^ rather a good 
 tea-maker ; I always used to make it at — 
 at — Dering." 
 
 As she speaks the breakfast-room at Dering 
 rises before her mind's eye : the breakfast- 
 table in all the loveliness of spotless cleanli- 
 ness, brilliantly polished old silver, and airy 
 china ; the side-board temptingly spread ; the 
 wealth of delicate flowers ; the kind and 
 courteous old man who always greeted her 
 so lovingly ; the pleasant well-bred guests. 
 
 Ah ! one must not think of these things ; 
 one must try to persuade oneself that one has
 
 JOAN. Ill 
 
 always flourished at Portland Villa, among 
 dirt, pewter, and cracks. Her offer is ac- 
 cepted with effusive gratitude, and she takes 
 her place at the head of the board. 
 
 " Take care of the lid of the tea-pot," says 
 Bell, as a parting injunction, "■ the hinge is 
 broken, so it is loose, and if you are not care- 
 ful to pour very slowly it tumbles into the 
 cups and upsets them." 
 
 " And is it never to be mended either '?" 
 asks Joan, with a laugh that tries to be playful 
 but only succeeds in being sad. " Do the 
 dogs like it too T 
 
 Joan's motive for her proposal has been 
 chiefly good-nature, but there has also been 
 in it a grain of self-interest. Behind the 
 urn she will be less observed — less compelled 
 to eat. But here she is mistaken. Diana, 
 whose eyes are apparently as sharp as they 
 are clear and shining, detects the emptiness 
 of her plate and the idleness of her jaws. 
 
 " Why, Joan, you are eating nothing !" she 
 cries in a high key of surprise, " positively
 
 ^12 JOAN. 
 
 nothing !— have some beef 1" mdicatinga dish 
 wherein appetisingly repose some thick 
 sHces of meat, lavishly daubed with all but 
 raw mustard, and which, apparently, is the 
 nearest approach to a grill that the Moberley 
 chef can effect. " No 1 Some broiled ham 
 then? No? I see—" a flood of colour 
 deepening the rose tints in her fresh face, 
 and a tone of mortification in her voice — 
 "hungry as you are, you cant stand our 
 food ;" in a lowered voice, " and I do not 
 wonder." 
 
 " Indeed you are mistaken," cries Joan^ 
 now thoroughly distressed, reddening till the 
 tears come into her blue eyes, with a vexed 
 scarlet that outflames even her cousin's, and 
 ready to volunteer to eat any abomination 
 that can be offered to her. " If you will let 
 me, I will change my mind. Yes, I will have 
 some — some — beef, please," looking anxiously 
 from one dish to the other to see whose 
 contents she will be most likely to be able to 
 swallow. '^Not very much — only a little."
 
 JOAN. 113 
 
 It is on her plate now and they are all 
 looking at her. But the effort is vain. The 
 too plenteous mustard makes her sneeze and 
 cry, the great wedges of coarse meat choke 
 her. 
 
 " You cannot manasfe it V asks Diana in 
 a disappointed key, after watching the ill- 
 success of her guest's endeavours with an 
 intent interest. " I was afraid that you 
 would not ; but " (looking at her with 
 round childish eyes, full of concern and 
 apprehension) '' what will you do all the time 
 that you are living with us ? It is " (glancing 
 ruefully at the untempting dainties) — " it is 
 never any better than this— you will starve." 
 
 *' There is not much fear of that !" replies 
 Joan, smiling faintly, though indeed the very 
 same idea has just been presenting itself be- 
 fore her own mind's eye. " But to tell the 
 truth, I do not think that I am quite so 
 hungry as I imagined ; at least more bread- 
 and-butter hungry than anything else." 
 
 '' Give it to the dogs," says Mrs. Moberley 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 JOAN. 
 
 placidly, not disquieting herself much as to 
 any freaks of appetite displayed by her niece. 
 " Here, Mr. Brown, you are the one who do 
 not mind mustard ! hi, alono- !" 
 
 Mr. Brown is on the other side of the 
 table, standing on his hind-legs, with his fore- 
 paws on the cloth, but, on hearing himself 
 addressed, drops doAvn on all fours again, and 
 rushes round the table in a stormy gallop. 
 Too well he knows the manners of hi& 
 brothers and sisters to give them any chance 
 of interposing between him and his inherit- 
 ance. Joan loves dogs. However noisy, 
 rude, and greedy they may be, she loves 
 them all, and at the present moment she is 
 also deeply grateful to Mr. Brown for reliev- 
 ing her of her beef. So she stoops down and 
 pats his smooth head. 
 
 " He is very like a dog belonging to a 
 friend of mine," she says: ''by the by, I 
 think he is an acquaintance of yours ; I mean 
 not the dog, but the man. J think — I am 
 almost sui-e that he said he knew vou."
 
 JOAN. 115 
 
 A light pink colours her cheeks as she says 
 these last words — a tint called up by the recol- 
 lection of the way in which Wolferstan had 
 alluded to his knowledo^e of her aunt. 
 
 " What regiment was he in ?" asks Bell, to 
 whom ''man" and ''soldier" are synonymous 
 terms. " When was he quartered here ? The 
 7th were here last, and before them the 35th, 
 and before them the 88th — " 
 
 " He never could have been quartered 
 here," replies Joan, "because he is in the 
 Guards, but I believe that he lives near here 
 —at least his people do ; his name is Wolfer- 
 stan ; do you know any such person T 
 
 She is looking from one to the other of the 
 three faces round her, and as she mentions 
 the name of Wolferstan a ray of intelligence 
 and recomiition illumines them all. 
 
 " He said he knew us 1" asks Diana in a 
 tone of surprise and semi-awe ; "he must 
 have meant by sight." 
 
 " Nonsense, Di !" cries her mother tartly ; 
 " he does know me quite well. He always 
 
 8—2
 
 116 JOAN. 
 
 takes off his hat to me whenever he meets me 
 in Helmsley !" 
 
 " Is not he styhsh-looking ?" cries Bell 
 enthusiastically ; " he looks so nice in church. 
 He looks about him a good deal during the 
 prayers, but he generally goes to sleep in the 
 sermon, and then one can see what a length 
 his eyelashes are !" 
 
 " His father was a very distanggy-\o6kmg 
 man, when first I came here," says Mrs. 
 Moberley pensively, " though no one would 
 beUeve it now to look at him ; he is quite 
 silly, poor old gentleman, and has to go about 
 in a wheeled- chair, with his valet to blow his 
 nose for him!" 
 
 " His mother is a made-up old Jezebel !" 
 cries Bell acrimoniously. " Every year her 
 hair is a different colour ; she drives past us 
 sometimes in the road, and looks at us as if 
 we were the dirt under her feet." 
 
 " And all because she is an Honourable, I 
 suppose," says Mrs. Moberley, shaking her 
 head ; " and, after all, it is the lowest thing
 
 JOAN. 117 
 
 that you can be in the Peerage, without being- 
 nothing at all." 
 
 " And so you know young Wolferstan T 
 says Diana, with an expression of envious in- 
 terest in her eyes. " Anthony Wolferstan — 
 is not it a lovely name % Do you mean that 
 you know him really — to talk to ?" 
 
 Joan lauofhs a little. " Is that so sur- 
 prising { Yes, I know him rather well ; he 
 used to stay at a house in our neighbourhood, 
 and I have oft^ met him in London, and 
 once he spent a week with us last winter, for 
 some theatricals." 
 
 " Spent a week with you I" echoes Bell in 
 a voice of astonishment and awe ; '' then I 
 suppose you must have been quite amongst 
 the county people." 
 
 Joan laughs, but most uncomfortably, and 
 involuntarily draws up her white throat. 
 
 " I never looked at it in that light before," 
 she says in rather a lower key ; " but now 
 I come to think of it — yes, I suppose we 
 were."
 
 118 JOAN. 
 
 " Well, we are not, you know," cries Diana, 
 with a fierce honesty, while a sea of ingenuous 
 scarlet washes her cheeks at the confession. 
 " I need not tell you that : we do not look 
 much like it, do we ? We know hardly any 
 one nice except the officers, and perhaps you 
 Avould not think them nice : I believe that 
 the county people do not take much notice of 
 them ; Micky dined at the Abbey — that is 
 the Wolferstans' — once, when first he came, 
 but they have never asked him again." 
 
 '' He would not go if they did," says Mrs. 
 Moberley, with dignity ; "he has said so 
 often and often ; he says he never was at such 
 a dull set-out in his life, and that they did not 
 give him half enough to drink." 
 
 Diana shakes her head in a manner that 
 expresses her doubts of Mr. Brand's fortitude 
 in rebutting the proffered civilities of the 
 Abbey ; but she is wisely silent. 
 
 '' I am not sorry that Joan is so intimate 
 Avith young Wolferstan," remarks Joan's aunt, 
 a moment later, " because she will be able to
 
 JOAN. 119 
 
 introduce him to you, girls, at one of the 
 balls, and, as likely as not, he will give you 
 each a dance ; they were all at the Dispensary 
 Ball last year, and I remember thinking 
 that he looked as if he would like to know 
 you." 
 
 " Then what hindered him ?" says Diana 
 •dryly. " I am sure that we were willing 
 enouo'h." 
 
 " He was too much taken up with that lady 
 in sulphur colour and sapphires, who came 
 with their party," says Bell regretfully. 
 
 " I never see him that he is not sfoine: 
 on at a great rate with some one or other, 
 and I always wish that T were the per- 
 son," says Diana, with a heartfelt sigh ; 
 *' had he a very bad name in your neighbour- 
 hood, Joan ?" 
 
 Joan's eyes are downdrooped towards her 
 plate. 
 
 " I believe that he was considered a flirt," 
 she says, slowly and rather unwillingly. 
 
 " What wicked eyes he has !" says Bell,
 
 1-20 JOAN. 
 
 with zest ; "he would be nothing without his 
 eyes." 
 
 "We are not badly off for balls in the 
 winter, Joan," strikes in Mrs. Moberley com- 
 placently at this point — " not for a country 
 place ; there is always the Dispensary, and 
 the Bachelors', and half a dozen private ones, 
 counting carpet and negus things ; and then 
 there is always something going on at the 
 Barracks — always ! — they, at least, are deter- 
 mined that Helmsley shall not go to sleep if 
 they can help it." 
 
 " What should we do without them '?" sighs 
 Bell affectionately ; " once, Joan, there was a 
 talk of building barracks at Churton, and 
 movino: them from here, I do not think that 
 I ever was so miserable in my life, and Diana 
 was nearly as bad ; but we should not have 
 stayed here ; we should have underlet the 
 house — mother was already talking about 
 it—" 
 
 " And foil oiued them'?" cries Joan, with 
 an irrepressible astonishment and disgust ;
 
 JOAN. 121 
 
 *' why, you might as . well be vivandieres at 
 once ! 
 
 " One might easily be a worse thing !" says. 
 Bell pettishly; "^^ but I never said anything 
 about following them ; I only said that we 
 should have left this place." 
 
 ''It is very difficult to do without military 
 society when you have been used to it all 
 your life," says Mrs. Moberley rather pom- 
 pously ; " these children have every right to 
 be fond of the army ; their father was a 
 military man !" 
 
 '^ He was an army doctor !" cries Diana, 
 with her apparently ungovernable honesty. 
 
 " I never denied that he was a medical 
 man," retorts Mrs. Moberley, Avith exaspera- 
 tion, "but he was in the army all the 
 same I" 
 
 " Nobody thinks anything of the doctors," 
 persists Diana resolutely ; " we never do ; 
 which of the girls cares to dance with Dr. 
 SlopJ" 
 
 " They rank the same as the other officers^
 
 122 JOAN. 
 
 which you know as well. as I do," rejoins Mrs. 
 Moberley with warmth ; " and their uniform 
 is much handsomer." 
 
 " They are not the same thing/' reiterates 
 Diana doggedly, " and whenever I hear you 
 telling people tliat papa was a military man, 
 I always explain, and I always shall explain, 
 that he was only the doctor !"
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HEPtE is no reason why an argu- 
 ment of this kind should ever end. 
 Neither disputant ever advances 
 an inch towards an agreement with the other. 
 Nothing win convince Mrs. Moberley that 
 her late husband was not a military man, nor 
 will Diana ever be persuaded that her father 
 was of equal value with his brother officers in 
 the eyes of the young ladies of his day. 
 There is something very heating — not only 
 figuratively, but literally — in an argument. 
 It makes not only the combatants but the 
 onlookers gasp.
 
 124 JOAN 
 
 Joan feels a physical oppression — a longing 
 for air — Avhen a lull (caused, not by argu- 
 ment, but by want of breath) having at length 
 come, the family re -adjourn to the drawing- 
 room. Two or three trifling improvements 
 have taken place in the aspect of this apart- 
 ment since they left it. Most of the dust 
 has been swept into corners or under chairs. 
 The dead ashes have left the grate, the pho- 
 tograph-books and woolly mats on the table 
 are set at right-angles again, the antimacas- 
 sars sit smoothly on the chair-backs, but the 
 spider's banner still waves in airy freedom 
 from the ceiling, undisturbed by mop or 
 pope's-head^ and the windows — on this love- 
 liest, sweetest, freshest of April mornings — 
 are shut. They are French windows, and look 
 out towards the front to the meagre grass- 
 plot and the road. Joan stands gazing long- 
 ingly out through the dim panes at the fairly- 
 coloured well-scented world outside, turning^ 
 over in her mind whether she yet knows her 
 cousins well enousfh to ask leave to admit
 
 JOAN. 125 
 
 a little air. Has not her aunt told her that 
 it is Liberty Hall ? Gaining courage from 
 this recollection, she raises her lingcers to the 
 handle only to discover that there is no handle. 
 Both of them have gone, apparently, to look 
 for the jug-spout, the gate-hinge, and the 
 other missing etceteras of Portland Villa. 
 
 " Do you want to open the window 1" says 
 Diana, joining her. " Stay, I will get a pair 
 of scissors ; we always have to open them with 
 scissors ; motlier's is the largest pair. The 
 handles have been gone a long while ; but 
 the fact is, we owe a long bill to the lock- 
 smith, and we do not like to have him again 
 till it is paid !" 
 
 They are open now, and the morning air, 
 the noise of the blissful bees, the clean smell 
 of the arabis float in all together. The dogs 
 — they are all pugs, more or less — are out on 
 the turf, employing themselves in different 
 ways. Mr. Brown is digging violently and 
 secretly in the corner of the flower-border, 
 making the brown earth fly up into his own
 
 126 JOAN. 
 
 eyes, and over all his eager face, and Hegy 
 and Algy are rolling over each other in 
 friendly battle on the sward. ^QgJ has both 
 paws round Algy's neck, and Algy has got a 
 large and baggy piece of Regy's black cheek 
 in his month. All the clear fine air is full of 
 thrush voices. I suppose that every April 
 the birds say the same thing, but yet it seems 
 as if each spring their music were bettered, 
 their little trills more deftly done. Joan 
 stands leaning against the door listening to 
 them, and tapping with one foot on the sill. 
 
 '' How close you are to the sea," she says 
 presently, turning her face in the direction of 
 the great flood, and opening mouth and nos- 
 trils to inhale the pungency of thesea wind. 
 ''I suppose that you are down there every 
 day '?" 
 
 Diana shakes her head. 
 
 " Not often ; sometimes we go down to 
 bathe if the tide suits, but not often, it is too 
 expensive ; what with machine and dresses, 
 it comes to a shilling every time !"
 
 JOAN. 127 
 
 " And you never walk on the shore ?" 
 " Never," answers Bell, joming in the con- 
 versation ; " no one does ; one never meets any 
 of them — I mean, any one there I If there 
 were a pier and the band played, it would be 
 different ; but as it is, there is nothing — abso- 
 lutely nothing — but sand and cockle-shells." 
 
 '' Micky sometimes takes his big New- 
 foundland down for a swim," says Diana, 
 23ulling a bit of wallflower and holding it to 
 Mr. Brown's nose, who, having dug his hole 
 as deep as he wished, and disinterred half a 
 dozen innocent bulbs, now makes one of the 
 party. '' He throws sticks in for him ; it is. 
 so pretty to see him riding up and down on 
 the waves, with his great black tail sweeping- 
 out behind him, like a feather. Dear old 
 dog I Micky is going to give him to me by- 
 and-by, when he goes away." She says the 
 last four words in a lower softer key, with 
 her head turned aside, and under her ill-fitting 
 pigeon-breasted gown her heart heaves in a 
 sigh.
 
 128 JOAN. 
 
 "Another clog'?" says Joan, lifting her eye- 
 brows. " Is lie to be indoors or out of doors V 
 
 " Indoors, of course," answers Diana in- 
 dignantly. '^ I should as soon think of turn- 
 ing mother into the yard as of cooping up a 
 dog there ; and, after all, one more does not 
 make much difference either way. If one 
 has six, one may just as well have seven." 
 
 " We have gone on that principle ever since 
 we had two," says Bell, with a laugh; ''we 
 shall get up to twenty in time." 
 
 " With all my heart," cries Diana blithely ; 
 ■''for though they do not perhaps improve 
 the furniture, they certainly are the light 
 of the house." 
 
 A.B she s]oeaks she jumps gaily down the 
 steps, and plumping down on the grass-plot, 
 is instantly covered by the six pugs. Three 
 get on her lap, one licks her nose, one mum- 
 bles her hand, and two worry the rosette on 
 her shoe. 
 
 Joan, laughing, steps out after her; and 
 only the consciousness of her new crape, and
 
 JOAN. 129 
 
 the unlikelihood of its ever being replaced, 
 prevent her from joining in the fray. 
 
 ''Would you like to come out for a walk, 
 Joan ?" says Diana presently, lifting her sun- 
 shiny eyes to her cousin's face. " I think 
 it would gratify the dogs ! — Algy, if 
 you do that once again, I shall pull your 
 tail! — but, perhaps, if you have always 
 been used to your carriage, you cannot 
 walk." 
 
 " But I can, indeed," cries Joan eagerly ; 
 " nobody better ; often and often I have 
 walked round the park at home." 
 
 '' It will not fatigue you to walk round the 
 park here," says Diana, a little sarcastically, 
 eying her shabby domain ; " but if you could 
 condescend to a high-road — " 
 
 " We had better take sunshades !" says 
 Bell with alacrity; "there is not much shade, 
 and there is a good deal of dust ; but when 
 once you get there the shops are really very 
 good ; and the morning is not a bad time 
 either ; many of the officers' wives cater for 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 JOAN. 
 
 themselves, and one is pretty sure to see 
 somebody !" 
 
 '' Are we sfoins: to the town ?" with an 
 accent of unconcealable disappointment, while 
 her thoughts revert to the unlovely tract 
 passed last night — the brick-fields, the scaf- 
 folding poles, the Hospital. '' Must we ?" 
 There is a little silence. 
 Diana has bent her head over the dogs. 
 Bell's jaw has lengthened. '' It is the only 
 road where one ever has a chance of seeing 
 any one," she says peevishly. 
 
 Diana looks up again. If there was any 
 cloud on her face it is certainly gone again : 
 the blue sky above is not clearer or merrier. 
 *' You would like to go to the sea ?" she says 
 good-temperedly; " well, we will ! — the dogs 
 love a game with the sea-gulls, and they always 
 think that they are going to catch them !" 
 
 Ten minutes later they set oft'. Their 
 party, however, is reduced by one. Bell 
 stays at home. It is one thing to brave the 
 sun shafts and the dust clouds for the cer-
 
 JOAN. 131 
 
 tainty of shops and the hope of officers ; 
 but quite another thing to expose oneself to 
 these disagreeables merely for the sake of 
 sand and cockle-shells. But, after all, the 
 sunbeams shine to stroke, not to smite, and 
 they come in for but little dust, as their way 
 lies for the most part across fields — fields 
 where the future harvest is laug-hino- in 
 green infancy ; where the riotous sap is 
 racino- alonof- the veins of the hedsfe-row 
 May-bushes ; fields where the meadow grass, 
 forgetting its wintry pallor, is beginning to 
 put on again its strength and sweetness. 
 
 Joan's soul has gone out of her body — 
 away from her own tame and meagre lot, 
 and is frolicking in the spring world, when it 
 is suddenly recalled by the voice of Diana, in 
 grave and earnest inquiry : 
 
 " Joan, do you like my hat ?" 
 
 Joan brings back her attention as quickly 
 as she can from nature to art, and recalls her 
 eyes from the live lark — the speck of loud 
 music quivering miles above her head — to 
 
 9—2
 
 132 JOAN. 
 
 the dead bird of paradise, from whose body 
 a mighty tail has been reft — a tail that rears 
 itself aloft and sweeps away behind — to 
 adorn her cousin's coiffure. 
 
 As she does not at once answer (at least 
 in words), Diana resumes in a rather disap- 
 pointed voice, but still with confidence : " It 
 must be all right, for it came from Paris — 
 Micky brought it me the other day ; people 
 in Helmsley laugh at it a good deal — so I 
 am told ; but Helmsley fashions are always a 
 year behind London, and London, they say, 
 is a year behind Paris ; and so, no doubt, it 
 will come here in time, and then j)eople will 
 ^ee that I have been rio^ht all alonsf I" 
 
 " I was in Paris not long ago," says Joan 
 slowly, while her eye roves with an expression 
 of deep distrust over her cousin's head, " but 
 I do not think that I saw anything very like 
 it. Are you sure that it came from Paris ?" 
 
 " He said so," replies Diana in a crest- 
 fallen voice ; *' and I do not think that he 
 would tell an untruth about it."
 
 JOAN. 133 
 
 <c 
 
 Of course not !" answers Joan, reflectinof 
 that in Paris, no less than in other cities, 
 you may no doubt find abominable head- 
 gears, if you only go to the right places for 
 them. 
 
 A little pause. 
 
 " You do not like it, then T asks Diana 
 diffidently, with a sound of not distant tears 
 in her voice. " I had rather that you would 
 tell the truth." 
 
 '' I think it is very — very — very — remark- 
 able," answers Joan, distressed and flounder- 
 ing about in search of an adjective which 
 shall be moderately truthful, and not too 
 damnatory. ''Has Bell one like it? Did 
 he give her one too V 
 
 " O dear, no !" rejoins the other, recover- 
 ing her alacrity of tone ; ''he has never given 
 her anything — he is not her friend. Bobby 
 Butler gave her a jacket last winter — a very 
 handsome one — ^black velvet and sable tails. 
 Bobby paid her a great deal of attention, he 
 always asked her to dance first, and sometimes
 
 134 JOAN. 
 
 took lier down to supper. Many people 
 thought that he would come out with a 
 proposal some fine day, but he never did ; he 
 went away instead !" 
 
 Miss Dering makes no audible comment 
 on this piece of news, but to her own heart 
 she says, '' Wise Bobby." 
 
 " He said very disagreeable things about 
 us after he went," pursues Diana gravely ; 
 " laughing at us, you know, and altogether 
 not kind ! When we heard it I wanted her 
 to send him the jacket back again. Would 
 not you have sent it back V 
 
 " I should never have taken it in the first 
 instance," answers Joan, drawing up her 
 little head, while her cheeks redden, and her 
 breath quickens. Diana opens her large 
 eyes. 
 
 " Would not you ?" she says in a surprised 
 tone ; '' but they were real sable-tails, you 
 know — not mock ! — well — it was no use ! she 
 would not send it back !" 
 
 Joan groans a little.
 
 JOAN. 135 
 
 " And what else have they given you V she 
 says in a tone out of wliich she in vain tries 
 to keep the indignant contempt ; " do they 
 dress you altogether V 
 
 "■ Do you mean that we ought not to take 
 presents T asks Diana, gazing with a little 
 consternation and a good deal of astonishment 
 at her cousin's lifted head and flushed cheeks ; 
 " but, you know, we do not ask for them; they 
 offer them to us, and" (rather faltering) "when 
 one is very badly off, and has very few clothes 
 of one's own, and is fond of being a little smart, 
 it is so hard to refuse !" 
 
 Joan is silent ; a silence of anything but 
 acquiescence, as Diana feels. 
 
 '' I do not want them to give me anything 
 expensive or valuable," she goes on, after a 
 moment or two, in a rather humiliated tone. 
 *' I am sure it is the last thing I wish, that 
 Micky should give me a jacket like Bell's, as 
 he sometimes talks of doing ; for I do not 
 think he is well off, and I am sure he could 
 not afford it ; but a hat ! — that could not ruin
 
 13G JOAN. 
 
 him, I thought, and it was a great matter to 
 me ! 
 
 There is such a wistfulness in her tone as 
 she makes this last appeal that Joan feels 
 compelled to smile, but it is the smile of a 
 young Spartan. 
 
 " I would sooner have gone without a hat !" 
 she says emphatically ; '' or, indeed, without a 
 head !" 
 
 They walk on in an uncomfortable silence ; 
 the one irritated and galled, the other crest- 
 fallen and humbled. But before long, the 
 warm shining of the sun, the lark's solo, and 
 the sound of the plash and plunge of the 
 morning waves that they are nearing smooth 
 the creases out of Miss Dering's temper ; and 
 she speaks again : changing, this time, the 
 obnoxious theme, though not getting as far 
 from it as she perhaps imagines. 
 
 " What odd names your dogs have ! Algy, 
 Regy, Charlie, Mr. Brown, Willy, They are 
 not like dogs' names !" 
 
 ''No, they are not !" replies Diana meekly ;
 
 JOAN. 137 
 
 *' and indeed they are not dogs' names ; we 
 christened them after — after — people !" 
 
 " After men you know ?" (hfting her eye- 
 brows again a httle). 
 
 " After men in different regiments that have 
 been here/' says Diana, turning her head half 
 away, and looking foolish ; '^ men that were- — 
 were — friends of ours ! Algy was in the 88th, 
 Eegy was in the 35th, Willy was in the 10th, 
 Charlie — I forget what Charlie was in ! — it is 
 so long ago ! he is the eldest of the whole 
 lot !" 
 
 '' And Mr. Brown ?" asks Joan, laughing 
 against her will. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Brown," rephes Diana, rather 
 confused ; '' well, he used to be Bobby, after 
 Bobby Butler ; but when he behaved so badly 
 to Bell, we thought we would not call him 
 Bobby any more, because it only reminded 
 us ; so we re -christened him after Mr. Brown 
 who was in the same regiment; he hardly 
 knows his name yet." 
 
 " But why Mr. Brown ?" inquires Joan,
 
 138 JOAN. 
 
 wondering ; '^ why are you so much 
 more respectful to him than to the- 
 others ?" 
 
 " We knew him less," explains Diana 
 gravely ; " Ave never were intimate with him, 
 and he never would tell us what his christian 
 name was — I do not know why — so we had 
 to call the dog Mr. Brown." 
 
 Joan lauo-hs with a sincere thouai'h dismal 
 mirth. 
 
 " Andjwheni^Micky goes, will you christen 
 another clog after him ?" she asks. 
 
 "I do not know," replies Diana rather 
 shortly, turning her head about with an un- 
 easy movement ; '' he is not gone yet : it will 
 be time enough to think about that when 
 he is !" 
 
 They have reached the sea ; have passed 
 the loose sand hills, where the dry grass 
 scantly Avaves, and the blue sea-thistles blow ; 
 have lightly sprung over half a dozen runlets 
 racing down to empty their little tea-cups of 
 fresh sweet Avater far into .the salt and greedy
 
 JOAN. ISi) 
 
 sea, that takes all presents and says no '' thank 
 you " for them. 
 
 Now they stand side by side on a stretch 
 of hard sand, on which the foot scarcely leaves 
 a print, and which — were the day sulky and 
 dull — would be called brown, but now are 
 glistening and dazzling with unquestioned 
 gold. Is it not a wealthy day ? a silver sea 
 breaking on golden sands, and both arched by 
 a sapphire sky. 
 
 The sea is in its civillest humour. With 
 the meekest air, the blandest, sleepiest, most 
 lulling sound, it comes creaming in ; deceit- 
 fully stealing round their feet as they stand, 
 and coolly fondling them. To-day it is too 
 gentle even to laugh; only it smiles up to 
 the sun, with unnumbered dimples. 
 
 " ' I see the deep's untrampled floor 
 
 Witli green and purple sea- weed strown,' " 
 
 says Joan, half under her breath, stooping to 
 pick up a length of sea-bloom that, drenched 
 and emerald coloured, has just drifted to her
 
 140 JOAN. 
 
 feet ; then turning with wondering lips and 
 kindhng eyes to Diana : 
 
 " And you never come here ? you do not 
 
 like it r 
 
 " I like it well enough," replies Diana 
 apologetically, shading her eyes with her 
 hand from the sun-and-sea dazzle. " Look 1" 
 (pointing to a little puff and a small tail of 
 smoke away on the horizon) ; " there is a 
 steamer ! is not it tantalising "? they never 
 come any nearer than that : it would be so 
 pleasant if they would come quite close, and 
 one could see who was on board. Yes " 
 (resuming the thread of her discourse), *' I 
 like it well enough, as I said ; but you see it 
 is not only I ; there are two of us, you know, 
 and Bell hates it ; she does not care to walk 
 anywhere much except on the Helmsley 
 road, and I must own that one does see six 
 carriages there of a day, for one that one sees 
 anywhere else." 
 
 Joan shrugs her shoulders, and flings back 
 her green weed, which, limply clinging round
 
 JOAN. 141 
 
 her fingers, has lost half its native beauty, 
 into a rippling wave that comes to fetch it, 
 and on which it floats home again with re- 
 covered loveliness. 
 
 " It is not quite all Bell's fault either," 
 resumes Diana presently, with an uncom- 
 fortable sense of having slightly misrej^re- 
 sented tilings, and laid a heavier burden on 
 her sister's shoulders than they quite deserve 
 to bear. " I like the Helmsley road too ; I 
 like going where one is most likely to see 
 people too ; but I do not dislike the sea " 
 (looking round with a tolerant air on the 
 august flood before her) ; '' if it were only I, 
 I should most likely come here a good deal 
 oftener ; and I am rather fond of sea-things. 
 Once I kept a sea anemone in my wash-hand- 
 basin for a fortnight, and fed it wdth raw 
 beef." 
 
 Joan laughs a little at this naive instance 
 of love for the wonders of the deep, and then 
 stoops down pensively to pull the ear of Mr. 
 Brown, who, either through having more
 
 142 JOAN. 
 
 common sense or being more encumbered 
 with fat than his brothers, has desisted 
 earher from the sea-gull chase, and now sits 
 on the hard sand, with his heart beating very- 
 fast, and slobbering a good deal as his eyes 
 follow his late quarry with an expression 
 which seems to say that the ways of sea- 
 gulls — luring on an honest dog only to 
 delude him — are not according^ to his ideas of 
 what the manners of a modest bird should 
 be. 
 
 " He is like young Wolferstan's dog, now 
 you mention it," says Diana, stooping too, 
 and stroking the fine velvet of his other ear ; 
 ^' and yet they say that he gave five-and- 
 twenty guineas for his, and we did not give 
 five-and-twenty pence for you, did we, Mr. 
 Brown ? By the by, Joan " (with quickened 
 tone and brightened eyes), " we may as well 
 go home by the Abbey, may not we ? as you 
 know him, you would like to see the place 
 Avhere he lives, and it is not at all out of our 
 way."
 
 JOAN. 143 
 
 " If you like," answers Joan in rather a 
 melancholy tone. " Yes, certainly ! I suppose 
 that there is no fear of meeting any of them ! 
 — that they are all safe away in London V 
 
 " Yes," says Diana, heaving a deep sigh, 
 ^' safe away in London I lucky people ! — as 
 regularly as the spring comes round, off they 
 go ! What would they say to me, who have 
 never been to London in my life ? Bell was 
 there once, but she did not like it ; she said 
 it made her feel so small. I do not think I 
 should mind that — I mean, I am used to it ; 
 even here in Helmsley, I never feel very 
 large !" 
 
 They lapse into silence. The sun has 
 mounted higher. Now that they have left 
 the breeze-beaten shore, and the cool fields, 
 and are tramping along a glaring dusty high- 
 road, he smites on their heads with less 
 kindness and more force. Physical discom- 
 fort deepens the gloom of Joan's reflections. 
 
 " Have we much farther to go T she says, 
 after a while, in a rather disconsolate voice,
 
 144 JOAN. 
 
 trailing one foot languidly after another in 
 the powdery dust. 
 
 " We are just there," answers Diana 
 cheerfully ; " there are the gates with their 
 wolf crest on them I — oh, how thirsty I am ! 
 I will ask the lodge woman for a glass of 
 water, and then we can have a chat with her, 
 and she will tell us all about them — when 
 they are coming down." 
 
 They have reached the gates ; the high 
 and solid stone posts, surmounted by great 
 stone balls, and on each of which a wolf's 
 head with fanged jaws is for ever grinning 
 in stone. The lodge-keeper is aj^parently 
 out. The lodge-door is shut. Evidently, in 
 the absence of the family, she is taking a 
 holiday from her duties. The hoped-for 
 information about the family is therefore not 
 forthcoming. 
 
 " One can get a capital view of the house 
 if one puts one's head far enough through," 
 says Diana, thrusting her hot cheeks between 
 the cool iron bars of the gate, and twisting
 
 JOAN. 145 
 
 her neck ; '' later on in the year, when the 
 scarlet geraniums are in flower, one can see 
 them quite plainly ; I fancy they have a 
 lovely garden !" 
 
 " Have you never been inside V asks Joan 
 in surprise. 
 
 " Never ; it is not a show place, and you 
 know we do not know them ; mother says " 
 (in a tone of contempt) " that Colonel 
 Wolfer stan knows her, but I do not call it 
 knowing a person to say ' Good-morning, Mrs. 
 Moberley ! fine day !' if he happens to meet 
 her ; it is my belief that he would not know 
 her even by sight, only that she is so remark- 
 able-looking that it is difficult to forget her 
 when once you have seen her." 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 T is an hour later. They are at home 
 again. 
 
 " At what time do you dine V*' 
 asks Joan languidly, as a horrible suspicion 
 that a lengthy steaming mid-day dinner is 
 henceforth to be her portion dawns on her 
 mind. 
 
 Not even the sight, the sound, the smell, 
 nor the taste of the sea have been able ta 
 raise Miss Dering's spirits. Whatever small 
 measure of cheerfulness and buoyancy they 
 inspired have been counteracted by her scanty 
 view through his harshly-closed gates of Wol-
 
 JOAN. 147 
 
 ferstan's home. It seems to her a grim augiuy 
 of the way in which, from this time onwards, 
 she will make acquaintance with all fair and 
 pleasant things. She will peep at them dis- 
 tantly through iron bars. 
 
 " At what hour do we dine ?" repeats Diana 
 reflectively. ''Well, to tell you the truth, that, 
 is a fact at which I have never yet arrived : 
 all I know is, that it is never the same two 
 days together ; sometimes the butcher does, 
 not brinir the meat, sometimes the oven will 
 not heat, sometimes the kitchen clock stops, 
 sometimes Sarah forgets to lay the cloth ; 
 however, it is generally somewhere between 
 one and three ; though I have known it half- 
 past twelve, and I have known it four. How- 
 ever, when there is nothing to do all day " 
 (yawning), *' it does not much matter, does- 
 it ? but if you are hungry, as indeed you have 
 every right to be, let me fetch you a bit of 
 bread ; I know that there is bread, for T saw 
 the baker's cart drive away five minutes 
 
 ago." 
 
 10—2
 
 148 JOAN. 
 
 But Joan is not hungry. Not even when, 
 by-and-by, seated at the dinner-table, she 
 watches Mrs. Moberley sawing asunder a 
 gigantic fowl, which has evidently spent a 
 long life in walking ; so preternaturally are 
 the muscles of his legs developed : a mammoth 
 bird, flanked by the biggest ham that ever 
 scratched itself in life against a post. 
 
 " You might ride to York on this knife !" 
 observes Mrs. Moberley, desisting, heated and 
 baffled, from her efforts, and eying her imple- 
 ment with an exasperated air. '^ I do not 
 know what has come to the knives of late ; 
 one cannot tell the backs from the blades." 
 
 " Micky has spoilt most of our knives 
 cutting soda-water wires with them," says 
 Bell gravely ; "he ought to give us a new 
 set when he goes away, and so I shall tell 
 him." 
 
 " Do not !" cries Diana hastily, and 
 reddening ; " for Heaven's sake do not let 
 us try to get anything more out of them !" 
 
 " Talking of soda-water," says Mrs. Mo-
 
 JOAN. 14i> 
 
 berley slowly, in the intervals of wrestling 
 wdth the mighty pinion before her, " reminds 
 me that whether you like it or not, girls, into 
 Helmsley you must go this afternoon ; as I 
 told you last night, we are quite out of soda- 
 water, and the man has not brought the 
 beer !" 
 
 " I must give my curl a turn with the 
 irons then," says Diana, pulling out her 
 long trolloping lock to its full length, and 
 pensively regarding it ; "it was bad enough 
 this mornino% but the sea air has taken out 
 what little remnant of curl was left in it." 
 
 " I have half a mind to go ^vith you 
 myself, girls/' says Mrs. Moberley friskily ; 
 " that is, if you will let me take my time and 
 not run me off my legs ; why should not we 
 make an afternoon of it — it is a poor heart 
 that never rejoices— and take Joan round by 
 the Barracks and the Club Room T 
 
 But against this plan for her entertain- 
 ment Joan rises in mild but resolute revolt. 
 Whether she will ever be able to brace her
 
 160 JOAN. 
 
 nerves enough to enable her to let herself be 
 hawked about among the 170th Regiment has 
 yet to be decided. At present she is at some 
 distance from that consummation. 
 
 " Very well, my dear, very well !" replies 
 her aunt, rather offended ; " say no more 
 about it — say no more — no one in this 
 house is ever obliged to do anything^hat is 
 disagreeable_jtQ_jJaemj_as I told you when 
 you came, it is Liberty Hall, Joan — Liberty 
 Hall !" 
 ~ So she sees them go without her. It is 
 
 some time before they are really off, as — apart 
 from the matter of the curling irons — an entire 
 change of costume is apparently necessary. 
 At length they are ready ; the girls with 
 their cuffs well pulled down over their 
 knuckles, their dresses freely opened at the 
 throat, their necks abundantly hung with 
 lockets, and their hair freshly frizzed — newly 
 towzled. 
 
 " I do not care how many people we meet 
 now," says Bell exultantly, drawing on a pair
 
 JOAN. 151 
 
 of tight gloves ; " the more the better ! Come 
 along, Di !" 
 
 But Diana is apparently not quite so fully 
 convinced of the unexceptionableness of her 
 appearance as is her sister. She has glanced 
 furtively at Joan to see what expression 
 her eyes wear ; and going over to her, 
 has said brusquely, with uncomfortably red 
 cheeks : 
 
 " I see that you think we have overdone 
 it — we always do ;" then, not waiting for the 
 unready answer, " do not be more bored than 
 you can help while we are away !" she goes 
 on, moving towards the door, and looking 
 back rather mstfully from it ; " there is a 
 novel lying about somewhere. I brought it 
 from the library the other day ; there is a bit 
 missing from the third volume, but one can 
 ^ive a good guess what it is about : where 
 has it gone to, I wonder V (glancing round 
 the room) ; ''I do not see it anywhere — do 
 you r 
 
 " Most likely the dogs have got hold of it,"
 
 J 
 
 152 JOAN. 
 
 says Mrs. Moberley placidly. " Mr. Brown 
 is fond of a book." 
 
 " I saw a book in the laurel-tree this morn- 
 ing," suggests Joan doubtfully ; " could that 
 have been it ? it looked rather battered." 
 
 '' Very likely," rejoins Diana comj)osedly ; 
 " most things in this house find their way 
 sooner or later to the laurel-tree ; well, you 
 will know where to look for it if you want 
 it !" 
 
 Now they are gone, not, however, before 
 Bell again puts her head inside the door, to 
 remark in a wheedling voice : 
 
 " Even if your boxes come you will not 
 unpack them while we are away, will you '?" 
 
 The house door has banged behind them 
 — they have passed down the drive, round 
 the corner, out of sight. Joan turns from the 
 window with a half-smile on her hps at a last 
 vision of Bell angrily fencing oif Mr. Brown 
 from her clean gown with her parasol. Then 
 she takes out her watch and, with her eyes 
 on its face, makes a calculation. At Mrs.
 
 JOAN. 153 
 
 Mobeiiey's rate of walking it will take them 
 quite three-quarters of an hour to reach 
 Helmsley ; three-quarters of an hour to 
 return. They will surely not spend less than 
 an hour and a half there : three hours in all. 
 She has therefore three good hours before 
 her. Three hours for what ? For reflection % 
 In her present situation three minutes would 
 be too much. 
 
 She Avalks slowly round the room, with her 
 hands loosely folded behind her. Unspar- 
 ingly she examines each of the details that 
 make up so sordid a whole. She discovers 
 half a dozen latent dust-heaps, a score of 
 greater and lesser spiders'-webs, a variety of 
 ink-stains on the table-cloth, and many rents 
 in the chair-covers. 
 
 Then she returns to the window, and draw- 
 ing up a chair to it, so as to feel all the 
 honeyed freshness of the air, sits down, and 
 leanino; her sleek head aoainst the faded 
 woolly antimacassar, thinks. In dreary pano- 
 rama all the incidents of her short stay, that
 
 154 JOAN. 
 
 yet seems so long, tread past before her 
 mind's eye. 
 
 " I had no idea that I was so greedy," she 
 says aloud, as her thoughts tarry involuntarily 
 long at the breakfast which had been so diffi- 
 cult to get through. " Hitherto I have always 
 thouo^ht that I had eaten to live : now I see 
 that I must have lived to eat 1" 
 
 She closes her eyes, and past, present, and 
 future walk solemnly by : the first all sun- 
 shiny gold, the second all drab, the third all 
 ink. Two tears steal out from under her 
 shut lids, but no sooner does she feel them 
 on her cheek than she raises herself, and in- 
 dignantly shakes them away. 
 
 " Is this my pluck V she says, still speak- 
 ing aloud, though in a Ioav key ; " the pluck 
 of which I boasted even to him ? Is this the 
 way in which I had braced myself to meet 
 my troubles ■? just because they are not of the 
 kind I expected, are they to find me limp 
 and puling like this ? Just because I ex- 
 pected a stab, and have found pin-pricks
 
 JOAN. 155 
 
 instead. Oli ! I had rather have been 
 stabbed — stabbed deep ! Any stab would 
 have been better — anything would have been 
 better !" she says, twisting her hands together 
 and writhing at the thought of the daily, 
 hourly, momently penance to which every 
 tone of voice, every movement, every mode 
 of thought of the Moberley family condemns 
 and will for ever condemn her. " Well," 
 rising again, and again beginning to walk 
 about the room, " well ! I suppose that no 
 one can pick and choose their afflictions. If 
 I had had my choice, I should have lived with 
 gentlefolks, and they should have bullied me, 
 they should have had next to no hair on their 
 heads, and should never have mentioned a 
 soldier." She laughs a little, and then, laps- 
 ing into deeper gravity, says presently, " God 
 give me pluck to keep up a good heart and 
 bear my pin-pricks." 
 
 It is a real prayer, though, perhaps, not 
 •conventionally w^orded. Occupation of some 
 kind she must have ; but what ? Her boxes
 
 156 JOAN. 
 
 not having yet arrived, none of her own re- 
 sources are within reach. She looks rather 
 hopelessly round the room — not to criticise 
 this time, but to search. The sight of a 
 work-basket disoforOTno- tano-led Berlin wools 
 
 o o o o 
 
 puts an idea into her head. Why not mend 
 the hole in the dining-room carpet '? 
 
 Joan has been taught stitching in all its 
 branches, and, what is more, she loves it. 
 She has never before, indeed, been set to 
 mend carpets, but she has mended rents in 
 other things, and, after all, it is only the ap- 
 plication to a new purjDose of old knowledge. 
 In three minutes, armed with a darning- 
 needle and a skein of wool, with her gown 
 turned inside out and pinned round her, she 
 is kneeling on the dusty carpet, her whole 
 soul absorbed in the endeavour to make the 
 ragged straggly edges of the great rent ap- 
 proach each other. 
 
 There is something very soothing in work, 
 especially handiwork. As Joan toils the 
 blood runs to her head it is true, but the
 
 JOAN. 157 
 
 bitterness sfoes out of her heart. A sense 
 of amusement takes its place. 
 
 What if that very fine lady, her late maid, 
 could see her now ? What if any of her for- 
 mer friends ? What if Wolferstan, arriving 
 unexpectedly from London and coming to 
 pay his promised visit, were to peep in 
 throuQfh the window and see her? She looks 
 up involuntarily, half expecting to meet his 
 eyes smiling in upon her. But no ! Through 
 the casement — the wind has risen a little — 
 she sees a blue and yellow tom-tit swinging 
 to and fro, in airy jollity, on the topmost twig 
 of the little sere cypress outside — that is all. 
 So she resumes her task. After a while she 
 straightens herself, and, sitting up again, 
 speaks out loud : 
 
 " There is nothinq; more revoltinof than in- 
 gratitude," she says emphatically ; "they were 
 ready to give me their very best — it is not 
 their fault that their best is so exceedingly 
 bad. They were willing even to go shares 
 with me in Micky." She laughs softly with
 
 158 JOAN. 
 
 a genuine mirth. " Well ! I have no Micky 
 to halve it is true, but I can make as great a 
 sacrifice ; I will let them copy all my best 
 gowns in red and yellow calico !" 
 
 Again she laughs ; and so falls to work 
 again. The yawning gap has already dis- 
 appeared, and is replaced by a lattice-work. 
 To and fro, along and across, quick and sure, 
 the darninof-needle o^oes. 
 
 There is still another hour's work before 
 her. As she so thinks, the cloor-bell, ringing, 
 clangs upon her ear. It cannot be that her 
 cousins are returned already. It must be 
 some one come to call. 
 
 " One of the7n perhaps !" she says a little 
 sarcastically ; " who knows ? — Micky him- 
 self ? What a bitter disappointment it will 
 be when they come back and learn what they 
 have lost !" 
 
 After a pause, and two more applications 
 to the bell on the part of the visitor, Sarah is 
 heard going to obey the summons. The door 
 opens ; there is a parley ; it closes again.
 
 JOAN. 159 
 
 Sarah returns along the passage. What a 
 heavy foot she has ! How ponderously she 
 treads. 
 
 Secure in the consciousness of not having 
 a single acquaintance in Helmsley ; sure of 
 having neither part nor lot in the visitor, and 
 confident, therefore, of remaining undisturbed, 
 Joan has not taken the trouble to change 
 her position, or lift her head. She is still 
 kneeling, still darning, when a loud and pal- 
 pably artificial " H'm !" uttered in an un- 
 mistakably masculine voice, makes her start 
 violently and look hastily up. Even if Sarah 
 could simulate a manly tread, it would be im- 
 possible for her or any other known parlour- 
 maid to counterfeit such a voice. 
 
 A perfectly unknown man stands before 
 her — a young man, and, judging by his ap- 
 pearance, an extremely healthy one : a young 
 man, holding a hat in one hand and a stick 
 in the other, and with a confident smile of 
 extreme friendliness both on his lips and in 
 his gay bold eyes.
 
 160 JOAN. 
 
 " Mrs. Moberley is out," says Joan, rising 
 quickly, but without hurry or discomfiture, 
 from her lowly posture, and bending her head 
 slightly in polite but grave salutation. 
 
 " And are the girls out too ?" asks the 
 young man in a voice that fitly matches in 
 depth and gruffness the sound of his intro- 
 ductory " H'm !" and preparing to deposit 
 his hat and stick in the hall, with an evident 
 intention of staying some time, 
 
 " My cousins are out !" answers Joan, with 
 a slight but intentional accent on the two first 
 words, and infusing a little more ice than be- 
 fore into her tone. " I suppose that Sarah 
 must have misled you by the idea that they 
 were at home '?" 
 
 " No, she did not," replies the young man 
 nonchalantly ; " she told me that they were 
 out — that no one but you was at home ; but 
 I thought that — " He is looking full at her 
 as he speaks — at the soft yet jDroud serious- 
 ness of her face — and something in it (he 
 himself could not have told you what)
 
 JOAN. 161 
 
 makes him chan«-e the end of his sentence. 
 He had meant to say, " I thought that I 
 Avould come in and have a chat with you." 
 He says instead, " I thought that I would 
 come in and wait tih their return I You 
 know " (with a half-awkward, half-familiar 
 laugh) " I am quite a tame cat here— in 
 and out whenever I like." 
 
 '' Yes V in a rather more frozen key than 
 before. 
 
 How tall she is ! He had no idea, as she 
 knelt, how tall she was. Both her cousins, 
 both the Moberleys and he, had agreed that 
 she would be a little woman — one can grow 
 much more quickly intimate with a little 
 woman. There is something rather confusing, 
 even to a person who does not know what 
 shyness is, in having a tall young vestal 
 standing opposite to him, looking calmly at 
 him with a grave and, as he feels, not ad- 
 miring composure, and evidently expecting 
 him to go. It is clear that she can have no 
 idea who he is. 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 1G2 JOAN. 
 
 " As there is no one here to introduce us 
 to each other," lie says, with a rather nervous 
 laugh, " I suppose we must introduce our- 
 selves. I have no doubt that we have heard 
 each other's name very often." 
 
 " I have not yet the pleasure of knowing^ 
 what your name is," answers Joan gravely. 
 
 She has unpinned her gown, and it now 
 hangs in heavy simple folds around her. She 
 is still lookinsf at him. 
 
 He wishes that she would look away. He 
 hiughs again more nervously, and also louder. 
 
 " If you have heard it half as often as I 
 have heard yours, you have every right to be 
 sick of it." 
 
 This remark does not seem to Miss Derinc: 
 io require an answer, so she makes none. 
 
 '^ My name is Brand," he goes on, speaking 
 fast and uneasily, while the naturally healthy 
 tint of his cheeks perceptibly deepens. " I 
 think you must have heard them mention it. 
 I am here most afternoons. I see a orreat 
 deal of them."
 
 JOAN. 163 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 A little silence. The tom-tit still swino^s 
 and sways on his cypress twig ; the rooks 
 are sailing home towards the Abbey, Wolfer- 
 stan's rooks sailino- homewards throusfh the 
 placid sea of air ; the shadows are beginning 
 to grow. 
 
 " Do you expect them back soon ?" says 
 Mr. Brand presently, shifting restlessly from 
 one foot to the other, and growing ever more 
 and more uneasy under the cold shining of 
 his companion's eyes. '' Did they say, when 
 they set off, how long they meant to be aAvay V 
 
 ''Most of the afternoon, I think." 
 
 " And left you here all alone 1" 
 
 " I preferred it." 
 
 " At all events they have lost no time in 
 setting you to work," he says, with a brusque 
 laugh, glancing at her late occupation, and 
 trying, by a great effort, to resume his gaiety 
 and assurance. 
 
 To this observation Miss Dering vouch- 
 safes no reply of any sort. 
 
 11—2
 
 1G4 JOAN. 
 
 Another pause. 
 
 A lamb in the meadow over the road- — a 
 lamb that has evidently mislaid its mother — 
 bleats in loud complaint. 
 
 " If you really think it worth while to 
 wait for their return," says Joan presently, 
 with a rather severe intonation, "perhaps 
 you will come into the drawing-room." As 
 she speaks she leads the way across the 
 narrow passage, and ushers in her unwel- 
 come visitor. " I fear that you will find it 
 tedious," she says formally, "as I do not 
 expect them back till six or seven. If 
 you will excuse me, I will return to my 
 work." 
 
 So saying, and again bowing slightly, she 
 walks out of the room and shuts the door 
 after her. Then repinning her gown, she 
 kneels down again, and re-settles to her toil. 
 An amused smile passes over her features 
 that have lately been set in so austere a 
 gravity. 
 
 " So this is Micky," she says to herself.
 
 JOAN. 165 
 
 " Well, like everything else, he is rather 
 worse than I expected." 
 
 For some time absolute silence reigns. No 
 sound whatever issues from the drawing- 
 room. After a while, however, there is a 
 noise as of some one walking about to and 
 fro, up and down, in the confined space. 
 Apparently time is beginning to hang on 
 Mr. Brand's hands. Then the piano is 
 opened, and sounds arise from it. It is very 
 much out of tune ; several of the upper notes 
 are quite dumb, and Micky is but a poor per- 
 former. Apparently he is trying to pick out 
 the " Dead March " in Saul Avith one finger 
 on it. Thence he slides rather suddenly into 
 "Take back the heart that thou gavest," 
 which he accompanies with his voice. Then 
 he leaves off" altoo-ether. A few moments 
 later he opens the door. 
 
 " Would you mind my leaving this open a 
 little'?" he asks in a voice a good deal less 
 confident and more respectful than that which 
 he had at first employed ; '' it need not dis-
 
 166 JOAN. 
 
 tiirb you, and we might liave a little con- 
 versation," 
 
 ''Certainly, if you wish." 
 
 Having gained the jDermission, he leans 
 against the doorpost, with his legs crossed, 
 and liis hands in his pockets, but at first the 
 little conversation does not seem forthcoming. 
 At length, " It is wonderfully warm weather 
 for the time of year," he says. He has 
 evidently been searching among his repertoire 
 of remarks for one warranted not to s'ive of- 
 fence, and has been unable to find anything 
 less obvious than this. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 ''It is too good to last, I fear ; we shall 
 have the east wind back to-morrow, probably." 
 
 "Probably." 
 
 " Was there a good deal of east wind at 
 your — where you came from f 
 
 "A good deal." 
 
 A pause. Joan is aware that Mr. Brand's 
 eyes are fastened immovably upon her ; but as 
 he can see nothing but her tightly-coiled hair
 
 JOAN. I(j7 
 
 a,ncl the nape of her neck, she is not much 
 concerned. 
 
 " If you will excuse my asking," in a 
 rathei- diffident voice, " are you really first 
 cousin to the Misses Moberley ? I think I 
 must have misunderstood, but I thought tliey 
 ssiidjirst." 
 
 ''Yes, first." 
 
 " First cousins are such near relations," 
 pursues the young man, " next thing to being- 
 sisters. " 
 
 " Not quite that," rejoins Joan quickly, 
 involuntarily raising herself, and looking 
 up. 
 
 " But next step to it," repeats the other 
 persistently. " I suppose that your mother 
 and Mrs, Moberley were sisters ?" 
 
 " I suppose so," echoes Joan dreamily, 
 still sitting up, forgetting her work and 
 Micky, and staring blankly before her, while 
 the monstrousness of this proposition strikes 
 her with fresh force and novelty ; '' I mean — - 
 yes — of course they were !"
 
 168 JOAN. 
 
 " You take after your father's family, I 
 suppose ?" 
 
 " I suppose so," rather shortly, with a 
 thought that the conversation is growings 
 undesirably personal, and resuming her 
 needle. 
 
 Another silence ; as far as Miss Dering is- 
 concerned, it may last for ever ; there is 
 nothing embarrassing in an occupied silence, 
 but to be totally idle, and as totally dumb, i.s 
 confusing. 
 
 So Micky feels apparently, for he begins 
 again : " Had you a long journey yesterday V* 
 
 " Kather long." 
 
 " Railway travelling is very fatiguing, is 
 not it V 
 
 '^Very." 
 
 " Not so bad as one of the old coaches,, 
 though, I daresay ?" 
 
 *' I daresay not." 
 
 "^ Particularly if you went inside ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Again the lamb, the rooks, and the torn-
 
 JOAN. ]ti9 
 
 tit have all the talk to themselves. But 
 Mr. Brand is not easily either baffled or 
 silenced. After a few moments he begins 
 again. 
 
 " The gi — I mean your cousins, are very 
 good walkers." 
 
 " Are they T 
 
 '' Are you a good walker V 
 
 ^' Pretty good." 
 
 " It is a — a — very healthy exercise." 
 
 ''Yes." 
 
 " Not so healthy as riding, though, doctors 
 tell you." 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Walkinof is fatio'ue without exercise, and 
 riding is exercise without fatigue, they say, 
 do not they '?" 
 
 " I believe so." 
 
 " Your boxes are come !" cries a voice, loud 
 and shrill with excitement, breaking in at this^ 
 point, as Bell's face, hot with running, and 
 reddened by ^pleasurable agitation, looks in 
 like a very full-blown rose at the window —
 
 170 JOAN. 
 
 '*' at least they will be in two minutes ; we 
 passed the carrier's cart. I ran on to tell 
 you ; they quite fill it. Diana says she counted 
 seven ; what can you have in seven boxes V' 
 She stops out of breath ; then, catching sight 
 of Mr. Brand, "Well, it never rains but it 
 pours ! you here !" 
 
 " I am here so very seldom that that is a 
 most astonishing fact, is not it ?" answers the 
 young man, coolly advancing, with a languid 
 air of completest easiest intimacy, to meet his 
 young friend. 
 
 Bell is in the house by now, and, having 
 pulled oft' her hat, is fanning her heated 
 «heeks with it. " Why, you told us that you 
 were to be on guard all to-day !" she says 
 reproachfully. 
 
 " But you see I am not !" 
 
 At the utter and almost contemptuous 
 familiarity of his tone, Joan looks up in angry 
 astonishment. Can this be the young man 
 who, for the last half-hour, has been labori- 
 'Ously dragging up respectable truisms from
 
 JOAN. 171 
 
 the depths of his being, and diffidently pre- 
 senting them to her ? 
 
 But there is no anger on Bell's face, only a 
 gratified mirth, " So you two have been 
 making friends, I suppose !" she goes on 
 gaily ; " it is rather late in the day to intro- 
 duce you to each other, is not it ? have you 
 been making friends 1" 
 
 As she speaks she looks, smiling inquisi- 
 tively, from one to the other. A little pause. 
 
 '' Query ? have we 1" says the young man at 
 length, with a laugh happily compounded of 
 swagger and embarrassment. 
 
 But Joan affects to be deaf to the question, 
 if it is one. She has walked to the window, 
 and is looking out. 
 
 " Seven boxes," resumes Bell, returning 
 to the subject which is uppermost in her 
 thoughts ; " what can you have in seven 
 boxes ? It will take us quite a whole day to 
 go through them, will not it ?" 
 
 " Quite!" replies Joan, sighing.
 
 172 JOAN. 
 
 It is evening now. Mr. Brand has at 
 length gone, and the candles are lit. " I 
 never was so sure as you were, mother, that 
 they would get on well," Bell is saying, 
 apropos of her cousin and Micky, as she 
 watches the latter's retreatino- fimire lessenincr 
 down the star-lit road, and shaking her head. 
 " Micky hates being on his P's and Q's ; he 
 likes girls with whom he can be quite at 
 home, at once — who do not mind what he 
 says to them ; that is why he likes us sa 
 much, often and often he has said so !" 
 
 " A left-handed compliment is not it ?" says. 
 Diana, with a rather bitter laugh. " It strikes 
 me that most of our compliments are left- 
 handed ones !"
 
 
 again. 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 HITS Joan has over-lived one day of 
 her new Hfe. She has even begun 
 upon another, for it is morning 
 If she has over-hved one, she can 
 over-Hve all. Probably one will be no better 
 or worse than another. It is possible indeed 
 that use may bring some slight alleviation to 
 her sufferings. Use may adapt her palate to 
 the Moberley dishes ; may harden her eye to 
 the Moberley stains and rents. Use may 
 accustom her ear to the staccato music of the 
 Moberley voices, and train her mind to find 
 food and occupation in the Helmsley Barracks.
 
 174 JOAN. 
 
 As long as eacli day comes singly, each 
 freighted only with its own load, people can 
 bear a great deal. 
 
 Thus Joan thinks, as she strolls after 
 breakfast among the lanky gooseberry bushes, 
 with all the doofs at her heels or trottinsr 
 companionably before her, and with the 
 children of Campidoglio Villa peeping at her 
 through the ragged quickset hedge. After 
 half an hour, spent in trying to cudgel her 
 spirits into content and cheerfulness, she 
 strolls back again to the house ; and a 
 quarter of an hour later is walking thought- 
 fully under an umbrella, and with her hands 
 full of wall-flowers, to the sea. To-day, no 
 one has off"ered to accompany her. Bell's 
 opinion of the ocean she already knows, nor 
 is Diana so much addicted to the wonders 
 of the deep as to wish to visit them twice 
 running. So she is alone — alone but for the 
 doo-s ; the dogs that can rub no one the wrong 
 way ; who have no preference for soldiers over 
 civilians, wear no false tails, and try to miti-
 
 JOAN. 175 
 
 gate the blackness of their faces by no pearl 
 powder or cream of roses. 
 
 Mr. Brown is carrying a long stick — so- 
 long that it nearly trips him up, as he gallops 
 bravely past, defiantly eying the other clogs 
 out of the corner of his eye. She stops to 
 look at three cart-horses drinkinp' at a muddv 
 pool, with collars down, slipped over their 
 necks. She wonders how they drink. They 
 do not seem to open their mouths at all ; 
 rather to inhale the water through their 
 nostrils. Already she feels soothed. Every 
 trouble is easier to bear out of doors than in- 
 doors ; and this is true, not only of a great 
 Sfrief but of a small vexation. The birds of 
 the air, the beasts of the field^ — yes, the gawky 
 lambs and solemn flapping rooks, the very 
 winds and flowers hel}) to carry one's load for 
 one. By the time she has reached the sea, 
 she can think with toleration .even of Bell 
 and her fur coat. 
 
 She is beside the great water now, and 
 with a Ions: sis^h of content, sits down on the
 
 17r. JOAN. 
 
 shingle. Having explained to the dogs 
 kindly but firmly that she does not wish for 
 sandy paws round her neck, or for hot red 
 tongues licking her cheeks ; having begged 
 Mr, Brown to cease goggling at her so affec- 
 tionately, and directed his attention to the 
 insolence of the sea-gulls, she remains at 
 peace, with her hands clasping her knees and 
 her looks directed to the loud glad flood. She 
 watches the large brown waves turn over, 
 lengthily curling, with a booming noise, in 
 the sun ; tossing high their foamy heads in 
 the wind, running up to lay their myriad 
 snow-w^hite foam bubbles at her feet, and 
 then drawino' back ao-ain with a suckino- 
 sound, carrying with them the wet 
 pebbles. 
 
 A sea bird of some kind — a diver of en- 
 gaging manners — is serenely riding up and 
 down, up and down on the wavering heaving 
 plain ; plunging every two minutes, with a 
 little splash, into the green depths, and coming 
 up again black-headed and complacent, a
 
 JOAN. 177 
 
 hundred yards from the spot where he dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 She does not know how long she sits 
 watching the sea's courtship of the land — the 
 obstacles that its patience overcomes. There 
 is a ridofe of sand between her and the rising; 
 tide ; it is with trouble, with many inter- 
 vening discouragements, with repeated efforts, 
 that it climbs the sandy rise, and then joyfully 
 and swiftly pours over its yeasty streams. 
 Why does not the wave break all at once ? 
 Instead of doing so, it curls over in one place ; 
 and then the curl runs along the line, until 
 the whole proud breaker is dissolved into 
 quick and hissing froth. Ah ! this one has 
 come farther than any of his predecessors — 
 he is suckinof in amonof-st the small stones at 
 her very feet. 
 
 " The lightning of the noontide ocean 
 Is flashing round me, and a tone 
 Arises from its measured motion, 
 
 How sweet did any heart now share in my emotion !" 
 
 She says this aloud, after a way that she 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 JOAN. 
 
 has ; but her voice is so soft and the sea is so 
 loud that no one, even if close to her, could 
 hear the words. No sooner are they out of 
 her mouth than she catches the sound of a 
 footstep on the shingle behind her— a quick 
 firm step. What if it be Micky ? What if 
 her poetic aspiration after companionship be 
 all too soon answered '? What if Micky be 
 come to 
 
 " Share in her emotion ?" 
 
 He is quite capable of it. She looks round 
 in hasty fear, her features already beginning- 
 to dress themselves in the austerity with 
 which yesterday she had chilled that brave 
 man's too easy greeting ; but there are other 
 men in the world beside Micky Brand, and 
 this is one of them. Not even in the most 
 ill-lighted room, the dimmest evening light, 
 could you mistake him for Mr. Brand, and, 
 indeed, he would be very much disgusted 
 with you if you did. It is Wolferstan. 
 In a moment the austerity has fled ;
 
 JOAN. 179 
 
 dispersed and routed by a surprised red 
 smile. 
 
 " ' 'Twas when the seas were roaring 
 With hollow blasts of wind, 
 A damsel lay deploring 
 All on a rock reclined !' " 
 
 tie says, with a low laugh, that mixes pleasantly 
 with the noise of the tumbling waves, as he 
 gently and gaily takes her ready hand. 
 
 " But I am not ' on a rock,' and I am 
 not ' deploring ' ;" answers the girl, laughing 
 too. 
 
 " She told me that you had gone to Helms- 
 ley," he goes on presently, still prisoning in 
 his her small cool fingers, and looking at her 
 with an intentness of scrutiny by no means 
 inferior to Mr. Brand's yesterday one (but 
 which yet does not provoke in her at all the 
 same chastely irate emotion) in his happy 
 handsome eyes ; " but I took the liberty of 
 disbelieving her ; I knew you had not !" 
 
 " Who told you that I had 1" 
 
 " The servant at your — at Mrs. Moberley's. 
 I have been to pay you a visit." 
 
 12—2
 
 180 JOAN. 
 
 " And did you see any of them ? My 
 aunt — my cousins, I mean T asks Joan 
 quickly and nervously, while the red hurries 
 up to her cheeks. 
 
 The smile on his face broadens, and his 
 eyes light up mirthfully. 
 
 " I saw them, and I did not see them ; I 
 think they saw me ; I think they were recon- 
 noitring me from behind the blinds." A mo- 
 ment later, still speaking j)layfully, but with 
 a caressing tone in his low voice : '' I knew 
 you had not ; I knew that I should find you 
 here. After all, you see, though they are 
 your relations and I am not, I know your 
 ways better than they do." 
 
 A little pause, filled up by the wash of the 
 morning waves, while the two young people 
 are looking eagerly, and, as it were, half 
 wonderingly, at each other. Though the 
 space of time since they last met is so short, 
 each seems altered in the other's eyes. 
 
 Joan is wondering that it had never before 
 struck her what a sweet-toned voice he has ;
 
 JOAN. 181 
 
 what a line and polished enunciation ; what . 
 race-horse nostrils ! Can it be possible that 
 in her former life all the men had sweet full 
 voices, polished enunciations, fine-cut nos- 
 trils ? and is it the contrast to her present 
 surroundings — to the Moberley voices, ac- 
 cents, noses — that makes Wolferstan's ex- 
 cellences start out with such new saliency'? 
 Perhaps it is the lovely setting of the picture : 
 the sea, the sky, the tawny sands that make 
 it seem so goodly. One cannot gaze dumbly 
 for more than five minutes at a time at the 
 handsomest live picture without growing em- 
 barrassed, and so Joan finds. 
 
 " And you T she says presently, breaking 
 shyly and hastily the happy silence ; " what 
 has brought you here V 
 
 '' Do you mean to say that you do not 
 knowl" (in a voice of low reproach). His 
 eyes are still meeting hers ; it seems as if 
 they would not let them go. 
 
 She shakes her head. 
 
 " You cannot even o^uess ?"
 
 182 JOAN. 
 
 " No." 
 
 ** You can lay your hand upon your heart 
 and tell me so 1" 
 
 It is a good opportunity for loosing her 
 hand from its long bondage, so she does as he 
 suggests, and laying her hand on that spot in 
 her black dress, under which she feels the 
 regular healthy pulsing of her young heart, 
 says : 
 
 " I cannot guess." 
 
 " On your word V 
 
 '' On my word." 
 
 " On your honour 1" 
 
 " Do you wish," says Joan, smiling gravely, 
 " to make me say that I think it was to see 
 me that you have come down ? Is that what 
 you are trying to drive me to V 
 
 " That is what I am trying to drive you to." 
 
 It is now her turn to look reproachful, and 
 with her the emotion is perhaps more genuine 
 than it was with him. 
 
 " How much the better would you be," she 
 says, looking up at him with the limpid sin-
 
 JOAN. 183 
 
 cerity of her eyes, " if you did succeed in 
 making me say what you know as well as I 
 do not to be true 1 I think I have forgotten 
 how to bandy pretty speeches ; life has grown 
 so matter-of-fact that I take everything cm 
 pied de la lettre." 
 
 *' Is it a pretty speech ?" he says, with an 
 air of injured innocence which, if counter- 
 feit, is certainly very ably done. " Unless you 
 had suggested the idea, it would never have 
 occurred to me that it was one; and, after 
 all, why should not a pretty speech be occa- 
 sionally as true as an ugly one "? Far be it 
 from me to say that they are all true, or even" 
 — laughing — " that all mine are, God forbid ! 
 but this one — " He stops expressively. 
 
 She shakes her head disbelievingly, and 
 turning from him, sits gravely down again on 
 the shingle. 
 
 "What other motive could have brought 
 me 1" he asks eagerly, stretching himself on 
 the sand beside her. " Do you think that it 
 can be very amusing sitting down to dinner
 
 184 JOAN. 
 
 in a totally einjoty house, with no society but 
 brown-holland-swaddled chairs and bagged 
 chandeliers ? with an elementary kitchen- 
 maid to cook your dinner^ and a charwoman 
 to bring it you, do you V waiting resolutely 
 for an answer, but he gets none. 
 
 Joan's eyes are fixed on the broad l^and of 
 wondrous purple that stretches in royal 
 beauty across the mid-ocean, at the ineffable 
 greens and blues, like the colours of a pea- 
 cock's neck, with which the waves are shot 
 throus^h and throuoh, 
 
 '** If you would be so good as to look at 
 me," he goes on presently, with a tone of 
 slight irritation, noting the direction of her 
 eyes, which is not such as he either wishes or 
 intends ; " you would see that for once in my 
 life I am speaking truth ; well !" (after wait- 
 ing a moment in vain) " well ! as you will 
 not, I must trust to the veracity of my voice ; 
 as sure as — " (looking vaguely round for 
 something to adjure) " I do not think that I 
 see anything particularly sure anywhere about.
 
 JOAN. 185 
 
 SO I will use no asseveration — I came down ; 
 I made a disagreeable journey at an incon- 
 venient time ; I ran the risk of damp beds, 
 and the certainty of bad dinners, wholly and 
 solely to see whether you were yet alive !" 
 (a moment after, in a softened voice) " you 
 know that transplantation kills some 
 plants ; how could I tell that you Avere not 
 one { 
 
 Joan laughs a little. *' It would take a 
 good deal more than that to kill me," she 
 says ; " I am sure that I should be as hard 
 to kill as an eel. I believe that if I were 
 cut in two, each half of me would walk away 
 unhurt, as they say is the case with some 
 insects." 
 
 " And you have over-lived it T he says 
 slowly, with a genuine wonder in voice and 
 eyes, as his thoughts revert to the peep he 
 has lately taken at the Moberley establish- 
 ment, over the grimy parlour-maid's shoulder^ 
 and behind the Moberley blinds. 
 
 " It seems so."
 
 186 JOAN. 
 
 " And you are — are — are getting on pretty 
 
 well r 
 
 The question sounds inanely bald, and so it 
 seems to himself ; but from the nature of the 
 subject it is difficult to make it more precise. 
 
 " Getting on !" repeats Joan reflectively, 
 with her blue eyes pensively fixed on a far 
 red sail ; " I am alive, as you say, and I am 
 in very good health, and I am not beaten or 
 starved ; on the contrary, I am very kindly 
 used ; if that is to be ' getting on ' — yes — I 
 am getting on nicely !" 
 
 " And— and there is no change 1" pursues 
 the young man, embarrassed, but eager ; 
 '''nothing — nothing pleasant has happened 
 since we last talked ?" 
 
 She moves her eyes slowly from the distant 
 brig, and fixes them with a half ironical smile 
 on his face. 
 
 '' Do you mean have I yet woke to find 
 myself wealthy 1 has any one left me a 
 fortune ? well, no ! not yet ! I am still 
 luxuriating on my godfiither's thousand
 
 JOAN. 187 
 
 pounds." A moment after, the smile on hei* 
 face spreading, and growing into a soft laugh 
 of genuine amusement : "I now know why 
 you were so anxious that I should see Mrs. 
 Moberley — no — do not look miserable ! I 
 will promise not to tell her ; and even if I 
 did, she would not bear malice ; she is far too 
 ^ood-natured ! I have also ascertained the 
 extent of the park ; the number of whose 
 iicres I was so determined to learn from 
 you." 
 
 " Do not !" cries the young man hastily ; 
 looking thoroughly foolish ; growing ex- 
 tremely red ; and galloping off ventre a terre 
 into a different subject. " No other will has 
 been found then 1" 
 
 " None, except the old one, made before I 
 was born : I knew that there would not be : 
 he meant to have added a codicil to it ; the 
 lawyer was to have come down on the very 
 day 1 — twenty-four hours made a good deal 
 of difference to my future, did not they ?" 
 
 She sighs profoundly, and again turning to
 
 188 JOAN. 
 
 the sea, fixes her eyes dejected and patient 
 on the broad flood. 
 
 " How could he leave such a thing till the 
 last moment 1" cries the young man, with 
 wondering anger; ''what culpable — what 
 inexcusable negligence 1" 
 
 She brings her eyes quickly back again to 
 his face, but they are meek no longer ; 
 instead, flaming and flashing. " Do you 
 think it can make things much easier or 
 pleasanter for me to bear," she says indig- 
 nantly, "to hear him abused? when you say 
 such things you make me regret that I have- 
 ever broached the subject to you ; how could 
 he tell that it was the last moment ? he was 
 only seventy-two ! people oftener than not 
 live till eighty or ninety nowadays : he 
 seemed no more likely to die than you do ; 
 does any one ever think that he himself will 
 die ? he knows that every one else will, but he 
 does not believe that he will !" After a 
 moment, in a softer gentler voice of deepest 
 emotion : " My one prayer and trust is," she
 
 JOAN. 189 
 
 says, " that he does not know — that he 
 oannot see ! oh ! God could not let him see ! 
 it would be too cruel ! it would break his 
 heart ! he that never thought anything could 
 be good enough for me !" 
 
 Her voice wavers and breaks. The tears 
 crowd up into her eyes. A rather prolonged 
 silence. Joan's wet eyes go back to the sea, 
 and absently watch the breakers, idly puzzled 
 to see that a big wave with an imposing 
 volume of brown water and noise of foamy 
 froth sometimes does not reach as far as a 
 lesser humbler one that follows. It is she 
 that at length resumes the conversation. 
 Wolferstan, in fact, is feeling snubbed; and 
 though not exactly bearing malice, has no 
 intention of laying himself open to a second 
 rebuke. 
 
 "Apart from any question of will,'' she 
 says thoughtfully, " I wonder how I manage 
 to be left so destitute ; at the time I was too 
 miserable to think or reason about it, but 
 since then it has often puzzled me : my father
 
 190 JOAN. 
 
 must surely have had a younger son's portion, 
 and as I was his only child, it would naturally 
 come to me, would not it ? I know nothing- 
 of law, but it seems to me that it must be 
 
 so. 
 
 She looks appealingly at him for confir- 
 mation or contradiction ; but where are Wol- 
 ferstan's manners 1 Is he sulky or only in- 
 attentive ? He has turned quite away from 
 her, and makes no answer good or bad to 
 her appeal. She is too pre-occupied much 
 to heed his lapse from civility, and goes 
 on : 
 
 '' Of course I can quite understand, now, 
 why he never mentioned my mother's family 
 to me, I suppose there never was any one 
 who knew less about their parents than I do : 
 I do not even know when and Avhere they 
 first met — when they were married — how 
 long they lived together — " 
 
 She stops abruptly, becoming suddenly 
 aware of her auditor's want of attention. 
 His face is still quite turned away, and
 
 JOAN. 191 
 
 he has uttered no sound, good or 
 bad, 
 
 '' You are bored by these details V she says 
 a moment later, after a rather hurt silence ; 
 " and no wonder indeed ! I beg your pardon, 
 but " (with a rather desolate smile) " here I 
 am so poor in friends that, like the Ancient 
 Mariner, I button-hole any stranger I chance 
 to meet." 
 
 She rises to her feet as she speaks, and 
 prepares to set off homewards. He must 
 look round now — must utter. And he does. 
 He also rises, and turns towards her the face 
 that for the last five minutes he has been so 
 carefully averting. It is redder than its 
 wont. His countenance is troubled, and in 
 his eyes is an expression she does not under- 
 stand. But even now he makes no reference 
 to the subject of her remarks. He only says 
 in a constrained voice : 
 
 "If you think I am bored you are mis- 
 taken." Then, a moment after : " Are you 
 going home already? Must you ?"
 
 192 JOAN. 
 
 " Unless I wish to lose my dinner," she 
 
 answers, with a smile : 
 
 *' Yom^ luncheon, I suppose you mean ?" 
 " I. mean my dinner ; we dine at two — 
 
 at least we oscillate between that and 
 
 four." 
 
 ^' Good heavens ! — and is that all ? Have 
 you nothing else — nothing more to look for- 
 ward to the whole of the livelong day 1" 
 
 "We have tea and muffins at eight — at 
 least between that and ten." 
 
 " Good heavens !" (throwing back his hand- 
 some head and looking up in shocked appeal 
 to the turquoise sky). 
 
 ** And brandy and soda-water all day long, 
 if we like it." 
 
 " Good heavens !" 
 
 *' I have hit the right chord now", have not 
 I ?" says Joan, with a smile of soft malice ; 
 '^ this is the one of my misfortunes that really 
 touches you. You were bored before " (with 
 gentle persistence), " though you will not own 
 it; but now you are all interest and alert
 
 JOAN. 193 
 
 <;ompassion, I have found the right way to 
 your heart — to every man's heart !" 
 
 They are walking slowly homewards, side 
 by side, over the thin and bitter grass of the 
 sand-hills, and back into the pleasant meads 
 by which Joan had come. 
 
 " You know you must not proportion your 
 pity for me to what your own sufferings would 
 be under a two o'clock dinner," says Joan 
 presently, with a humorous smile. 
 
 " They would be severe, I own," he answers 
 gravely. " I know no one, the pleasure of 
 whose society would outweigh them ; you, 
 somehow, have a knack of making |me speak 
 the truth against my will, and I will own to 
 you that I do not think I should enjoy dining 
 ^t two o'clock, even with you." 
 
 She laughs a little ; and again they walk 
 on over half a field in silence. 
 
 " I hope," says Joan by-and-by, " that you 
 will not go away with the impression that I 
 am a great object of compassion. I feel as 
 if I had been giving you that idea, and in- 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 JOAN. 
 
 deed it is not the true one. No one can 
 expect to go througli all their lives quite 
 smoothly; and perhaps those are best off who 
 have their troubles while they are young- 
 one is so strong when one is young ; probably 
 I shall have a prosperous middle age, or a 
 serene old age, or a very easy death to make 
 up to me — depend upon it, it will be made up 
 to me in some way." 
 
 " By a serene old age," cries Wolferstan 
 contemptuously. " God forbid ! No ! — take 
 my word for it " (looking down Avith a more 
 unveiled admiration than he has yet allowed 
 himself in the eyes, whose wickedness Bell 
 Moberley commends, at the profile beside 
 him — the little sensitive fine nose — the sweet 
 white cheek, clear and clean as privet flowers 
 — the curled cherry lips), " there is some- 
 thing better than that ahead of you. There 
 is plenty of fun in life for such as you, be- 
 tween now and your serene old age " (with a 
 mocking accent). 
 
 '' Is there ?" says Joan a little doubtfully.
 
 JOAN. 195 
 
 " I should not be sorry to think that there 
 were ; but if not I can do without it — I can 
 do without it," After a pause: " It is impos- 
 sible," she says in a more cheerful tone, '' to 
 be quite unhappy as long as one is thoroughly 
 healthy, as long as one is honestly trying to 
 do one's best, and as long as one has a keen 
 sense of the ridiculous. This world's beauty," 
 looking fondly at all the brave show of young 
 greenery round her — "this world's beauty is a 
 great boon, but I think that its little ridicu- 
 lousnesses are a still greater ! There are very 
 few things or situations in which I do not 
 find something" to make me lausfh." 
 
 They have come to the end of the fields,, 
 have crossed the stile that leads back into the 
 road. To arrive at Portland Villa you must 
 turn to the right, to reach Wolferstan's home 
 to the left. 
 
 "We will say good-bye here," says Joan 
 gently but resolutely, holding out her 
 hand. "If you escorted me to the house 
 Mrs. Moberley would invite you to luncheon, 
 
 13—2
 
 196 JOAN. 
 
 and you would find it difficult to evade her 
 importunities." 
 
 " Why should I evade them T asks Wolfer- 
 stan, to whom the problem of how he is to 
 pass the afternoon has been, for the last half- 
 hour, growing ever more and more insoluble, 
 and who has now grasped the desperate 
 resolution of braving the Moberley food (in- 
 dubitably very awful, if it all tallies with 
 the appearance of the parlour-maid), yet 
 sweetened by Joan's smiles, and lit by the 
 warm blue fire of Joan's eyes. 
 
 She shakes her head. 
 
 " It would not amuse you, or, perhaps," 
 with a blush, " it would amuse you too much ; 
 and it would annoy me extremely. You will 
 say good-bye now, I am sure," again making 
 a confident proffer of her hand. This time 
 he takes it, 
 
 "You have left me no other word to say," 
 he answers rather ruefully. 
 
 She has lifted to his, in friendly farewell, 
 the two chaste lamps of her clear serious eyes
 
 JOAN. 197 
 
 — eyes well versed in tears, laughter, and 
 tenderness, but unpractised in eye-manoeuvre, 
 or finesse ; eyes ignorant of— or, if not, dis- 
 daining — the unused weapons in their ar- 
 moury. Wolferstan looks back into them, 
 down, down into their modest depths, to see 
 whether no little devil lurks even at the very 
 bottom of them. 
 
 But no ! With an awe, slightly dashed 
 by irritation, he has to own to himself, as he 
 had to own at their last meeting at Dering, 
 that he might be her grandfather. It is 
 not often Avomen look at him with such 
 vestal eyes. Mostly he has found that the 
 fire of his own, if not caught from women's 
 eyes, has at least proved catching to them 
 but the flame in Joan's might fitly burn on 
 Dian's altar. Would it be a worthy, as it 
 would undoubtedly be an agreeable task, to 
 put out this vestal fire and light another, 
 warmer, if not so clear ? The idea is passing 
 through his head, when she speaks and makes 
 him ashamed of it.
 
 198 JOAN. 
 
 " If you really came down from London, 
 and subjected yourself to all the privations 
 you told me of, only to see me — I wonder 
 did you really T in a parenthesis of girlish 
 curiosity — " thank you very much for it. If 
 not — if, as I believe, that is only a fagon cle 
 parler, and you came down on some errand of 
 your own — yet, still, thank you. I have 
 thoroughly enjoyed seeing you." 
 
 He is very glad to hear it, but would have 
 preferred that she should have been less able 
 to tell him so, 
 
 "Do not say it in that solemn valedictory 
 tone 1" he answers, laughing lightly ; " if you 
 think that you are to be so easily quit of me 
 3^ou are mistaken. I have something of the 
 gnat about me, I warn you I You always go 
 to the shore in the morning, do not you ?" 
 
 She smiles and raises her eyebrows a little. 
 
 " Always ! wdiy I have been here only two 
 days." 
 
 " But you went there yesterday morn- 
 mg {
 
 JOAN. 19» 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " About eleven o'clock ?" 
 
 " Yes r 
 
 " And you went to-day ?" 
 
 -Yes." 
 
 " And you will go to-morrow V in a tone 
 more affirmatory than interrogative. 
 
 " By all the laws of analogy !" she answers, 
 breaking into a gay laugh, and so merrily 
 takes leave.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 hfHE dogs, cantering on ahead of 
 her, have a2Dparently given Miss 
 Dering's family notice of her 
 a23proach, for, by the time she has reached 
 the gate, she sees that they have all come 
 out to meet her. 
 
 Mrs. Moberley, indeed, has advanced nO' 
 farther than the door-step ; but the girls are 
 at the gate. One is holding it ojoen : the 
 other is peeping round the gate-post down 
 the road. By the animation of their features 
 and the unwonted sparkling of their eyes, it 
 is clear that .some more powerful motive than
 
 JOAN. 201 
 
 affection for their returning kinswoman has 
 brouD'ht them out to meet her. 
 
 " We have such a piece of news for you !" 
 cry they both in a breath ; " we are not going 
 to tell it you — ^you are to guess it — -not that 
 you ever will guess it !" 
 
 ''^And I have something for you — some- 
 thing belonging to you !" cries Bell, who is 
 now discovered to be holdinsf both hands 
 behind her back. " Ah ! if you knew what 
 it was, you would not look so cool over it ! 
 say which hand — right or left f 
 
 " Right," answers Joan laconically, and 
 " right " it apparently is, for Miss Bell's 
 plump hand unfolds itself to disclose a man's 
 visiting card, upon which, on a closer survey, 
 the name of " Colonel Wolferstan" is found 
 to be legibly inscribed. 
 
 " Not a quarter of an hour after you were 
 gone, he came," goes on Bell volubly ; " I 
 thought that of course it must be Micky — 
 that no one else would call so early, and I 
 Avas just on the point of running to open the 
 door myself — just fancy if I had !"
 
 .202 JOAN. 
 
 " He had to ring four times before Sarah 
 answered the bell," says Diana, taking up the 
 wondrous tale ; " I was so much in hopes that 
 he would have asked for mother, when he 
 found that you were out ; but he did not : he 
 asked, instead, where you had gone to ; and 
 I heard Sarah telling him to Helmsley — what 
 possessed her I cannot think ! it was just on 
 the tip of my tongue to call out and say, ' No, 
 she has not !' but I just stopped myself in time." 
 
 " We had a splendid view of him from 
 behind the drawing-room blinds," says Bell 
 in antistrophe ; " I could not have wished for 
 a better !" 
 
 '' Bell would put her head so far out of the 
 window," cries Diana complainingly ; "say 
 what I would to her ! he must have seen her 
 — he could not have helped !" 
 
 " I know he did," rejoins Bell, colouring, 
 but complacent ; " our eyes met : I felt that 
 I went so red all in a minute 1" After a 
 pause : "If he is very anxious to see you, I 
 should not wonder if he dropped in again
 
 JOAN. 203 
 
 later on ; do you think there is any hkehhood 
 of it \ do you think it is hkely, Joan ? we may 
 as well stay indoors all the afternoon on the 
 chance." 
 
 " I would not if I were you," says 
 Joan dryly ; "it would be labour lost ; 
 if he had any anxiety to see me, it has 
 been gratified, for he overtook me on the 
 shore." 
 
 " And you have been sitting on the beach 
 with him ?" cry both together, breatliless and 
 awe-struck. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 '' All this time T 
 
 " All this time." 
 
 " How I wish now that I had gone with 
 you this morning !" cries Bell remorsefully ; 
 " but who would have thought it 'I all these 
 years I have never met a creature on the 
 shore — never !" 
 
 " You know I always said that I did not 
 dislike the sea as much as you did ! did not I, 
 Joan V says Diana in a tone of triumph, at
 
 204 JOAN. 
 
 having her toleration for the deep so signally 
 justified. 
 
 "Is he there still, should you think 1" says. 
 Bell in a rather languishing voice, and with 
 her head slightly but sentimentally on one 
 side ; " did you leave him there ? or did 
 he come with you part of the way 
 
 back r 
 
 " Our road home was the same, you 
 know^ !" answers Joan, blushing faintly ; " so, 
 of course, we came as far as the last stile 
 together." 
 
 " Why did not you bring him into- 
 luncheon ?" asks Mrs. Moberley hospitably ; 
 having, by this time, descended from the 
 door-step and slowly advanced to join her 
 famity ; " poor fellow ! it would have been a 
 charity — all alone in that big house ! I think 
 we might have kept his spirits up amongst 
 us, eh, girls ?" 
 
 " Thank God you did not !" says Diana in 
 a devout aside ; then in a louder key, " pro- 
 bably, mother, Joan bore in mind what
 
 JOAN. 205 
 
 you announced to us this morning, that 
 there is nothing but a sheep's head for 
 dinner !" 
 
 " No more there is !" says Mrs. Moberley 
 contentedly; ''the butcher is late with the 
 .meat as usual, so we have to make it out mth 
 odds and ends !" 
 
 " Fancy asking Anthony Wolferstan to sit 
 down to a sheep's head !" cries Bell, laughing 
 affectedly. " I should have expired !" 
 
 " I daresay that he has often sat down to 
 a worse thing !" answers Mrs. Moberley 
 sturdily. " Dear me ! how a sheep's head 
 does take me back to former times ! how 
 your poor father did love a sheep's head ! 
 never a week passed that we did not have 
 one !" 
 
 " From all the anecdotes that you tell us 
 of him, I think that father must have had 
 rather gross tastes !" says Diana calmly. 
 
 " To think that a quarter of an hour 
 should have made such a difference !" says 
 Bell, still unable to tear herself from the
 
 206 JOAN. 
 
 original theme—" all the difFerence — if he 
 had been a quarter of an hour earlier, or you 
 had been a quarter of an hour later, he would 
 have come in, and you would have been 
 obliged to introduce him to us ; I must say 
 that I should dearly like to know him, if it 
 were only enough to be able to bow to him 
 when Ave meet him in the road." 
 
 ***** 
 
 It is not often in April, and in the first 
 half of April too, that one sees five consecu- 
 tive days of honeyed warmth, and strong 
 summer shining ; but it is so this year. The 
 mighty young light next morning pouring 
 into Joan's eyes, and waking her at an 
 unearthly hour, when even the birds speak 
 sleepily, shows her that not yet is there any 
 lessening of the kingly beauty of the weather. 
 Her first taste of the morning wind at her 
 wide-flung window, tells her that there is no 
 touch of shrewish east in it. She looks out 
 yawningly towards her friend, the sea ; and
 
 JOAN. 207 
 
 SO looking, ceases to yawn and smiles 
 instead, at some recollection apparently. 
 
 " He is in the last link tliat connects me 
 with civilisation," she says; "that is what 
 0-ives him a factitious value ; it would have 
 been just as pleasant sitting there with any 
 other of my old friends " (running over in 
 her head a rather long list) — " yes — ^just as 
 pleasant !" So saying she goes back to bed, 
 and, still smiling, falls asleep again. 
 
 Later on, after breakfast, she is again 
 wistfully eying the ocean; leaning against 
 the gate-posts, surrounded by the dogs, who 
 are asking as plainly as short excited barks 
 and pathetically goggling eyes can ask, 
 whether she is going out to walk, and if so^ 
 why she has not put her hat on. She is 
 asking herself the same question. Shall she 
 go to the sea- shore after all ? Were Wolfer- 
 stan still in London she undoubtedly would. 
 Why then should she let his goings or 
 cominofs influence or constrain hers ? How 
 winning: the fresh fields would look ! How
 
 208 JOAN. 
 
 interesting it would be to see how much the 
 young wheat blades have sprung since this 
 time yesterday ! and how many more marsh 
 marigolds have lit their brave gold fire by 
 the little swampy pool in the meadow ! 
 And the sea ! There is less wind to-day. 
 To-day there would be no white horses 
 tossing their snow-crests ; no noisy breakers 
 riotously tumbling ; only an unbounded 
 stretch of burnished silver, panting as in 
 some great love ecstasy. 
 
 She half closes her eyes, and with inward 
 vision longingly sees the unnumbered curves, 
 losing themselves in one another ; the dreamy 
 ripple creeping to her feet; the green mer- 
 maid's hair afloat on the tide ; the warm 
 sands, and across them Wolferstan, stepping 
 to meet her, with his low laugh, and his 
 welcoming eyes. At the thought of his, her 
 own re-open rather quickly. 
 
 " And you will go there to-morrow T 
 The confidence of tone, the almost certainty 
 with which he spoke these words, re-echoes
 
 JOAN. 209 
 
 in her ears. Why was he so sure that she 
 would go ? After all, what could Bell or Di 
 do worse than hurry off at the first beck to 
 meet their Bob or Micky at a given ren- 
 dezvous ? 
 
 *' Now that I am poor, and of no reputa- 
 tion, I must hold my head a great deal 
 higher, and more stiffly than I did in my 
 palmy days ! I will not go !" So saying, 
 she turns resolutely away, and re-enters the 
 house. 
 
 The dogs see that hope is extinct ; and 
 •dropping their tails and voices, seek other 
 avocations. Mr, Brown retires to the flower- 
 bed, and begins to dig up a bone that he had 
 wisely buried there yesterday, as a precaution 
 against moments of ennui. Begy strolls 
 down the road in search of one he loves ; and 
 of the other four, it is only needful to say 
 that they have caught sight of the end of the 
 tail of the Campidoglio cat. Indoors Joan 
 finds all haste, bustle, and millinery. Early 
 this morning arrived an unexpected summons 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 JOAN. 
 
 to bliss and barracks for the bappy Misses 
 Moberley ; at least, the next best thing to 
 barracks — a garden-party and dance after- 
 wards, given by the Colonel's wife. By 
 superhuman exertions, by pressing into their 
 service every living thing on the premises, 
 the Misses Moberley hope that by four o'clock 
 in the afternoon their new al]Dacas will have 
 been fashioned into something so like a re- 
 semblance to one of Joan's gowns, as tO' 
 enable them, without too flagrant a violation 
 of truth, to tell their friends that they are 
 made on a Paris pattern. The establishment 
 being wholly female, every member of it, 
 without exception, is stitching. Even the 
 cook has been commanded to lay aside all 
 thoughts of pots and pans, and exchange her 
 professional skewer for a needle. For a few 
 moments Joan stands by in rueful silence 
 eying her martyred gown, which is being 
 pulled about, measured, pried into, unpicked 
 a little here and there. Then she conquers 
 herself and offers to help.
 
 JOAN. 211 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you can sew X* 
 asks Bell, with a little shrill laugh ; "I 
 should have thought that you were the sort 
 of girl that would have been waited upon, 
 hand and foot, and would never have set a 
 stitch for yourself I" 
 
 '* Appearances are deceitful then !" answers 
 Joan quietly, sitting down, and settling reso- 
 lutely to a long morning of feminine toil. 
 And a very long morning it is. With no 
 break of intervening dinner, it stretches 
 away indeed into the afternoon. The room 
 grows hot and the air confined, for Mrs. 
 Moberley, having mislaid her big pair of 
 scissors, no one is able to open the French 
 window. By long stooping over her work, 
 the blood not only seems to rush to her head, 
 but to stay there. She drops her stitching 
 at last, and lifts both hands to her hot fore- 
 head. 
 
 " I must say that it is rather hard upon 
 Joan having all the work and none of the 
 fun !" says Mrs. Moberley compassionately ; 
 
 14—2
 
 212 JOAN. 
 
 having herself come to a temporary pause in 
 her labours, and being in the act of fanning 
 herself with a sheet of the Young Ladies 
 Journal ; " though, for my part, why yon 
 should not make one of us to-day, Joan, I 
 cannot see; of course a grandfather would stand 
 in the way of a public ball, or any such great 
 formal do-ment — I am the last to say that 
 he would not ; but a little friendly frolic 
 like this — no sit-down supper nor anything — 
 nothing but ices and claret-cup, you may 
 depend — and all got up in a moment too." 
 
 Joan shakes her head wearily. 
 
 " I had rather not, if you do not mind." 
 
 *' Oh, please yourself, and you will please 
 me !" rejoins Mrs, Moberley, waving the 
 Young Ladies^ Journal with a rather irritated 
 air, " but I will say this, that who it is you 
 take after I do not know. It certainly is not 
 your poor mamma ; she would have gone 
 barefoot thirty miles any day for the chance 
 of a valse /" 
 
 It is half-past four o'clock before the
 
 JOAN. 213 
 
 Moberley family, having snatched 'a hasty 
 cold refreshment from a tray — having trium- 
 phantly endued the just finished alpacas — 
 stand ready to depart. Diana's head is sur- 
 mounted by Micky's hat, from which the bird 
 of paradise's ample tail floats bold and 
 challenging as ever. It is too hot for Bobby's 
 jacket ; so in this respect— having nothing to 
 correspond to the hat — Arabella labours 
 under an inferiority to her sister. 
 
 " I have seen worse-looking girls once or 
 twice, have not you, Joan T says Mrs. 
 Moberley, regarding her offspring with a 
 playful complacency. " Quite the thing, I 
 declare ! As soon as you are out of mourn- 
 ing — three months, or six, will it be '\ very 
 likely six, as you have got such a good stock 
 of black by you — but as soon as you are out, 
 I do not see why you should not all dress 
 alike. There is nothing that looks better 
 than three stylish girls pin for pin alike ; they 
 set each other off." 
 
 They are gone now. With unfurled parasols
 
 214 JOAN. 
 
 and flying ribbons, they are sailing gloriously 
 down the road. Joan strolls into the garden, 
 and standing on the broken ^^edestal of the 
 old sun-dial, lays her hot cheek against the 
 welcome coolness of its stained and ancient 
 face. Then she lifts her head and reads 
 again the short and half-efiaced inscription, 
 *' Tempus fugit !" 
 
 " That must be my comfort," she says sigh- 
 ingly; "everything passes, nothing stays! 
 Let us do right, and whether happiness come 
 or unhappiness, it is no very mighty matter. 
 If it come, life will be sweet ; if it do not 
 come, life will be bitter — bitter, not sweet, 
 and yet to be borne." 
 
 These brave words are not Joan's own. 
 y Still the very uttering of them makes her 
 feel stronger. She puts on her hat and sets 
 off for a long walk— not to the sea, however 
 — she turns her back stoically upon it ; to- 
 morrow she will return thither. To-morrow 
 the yellow sands will be again untrodden 
 wastes, disturbed by no quick young foot.
 
 JOAN. 215 
 
 probably, but her own. But to-day she will 
 abstain. 
 
 She rambles aimlessly away with no other 
 guiding impulse than the desire to avoid 
 Helmsley, and the determination to keep 
 iiway from the ocean. She follows the dogs' 
 noses more than any other leader. Where 
 the rabbit scent is strongest thither they take 
 her. After a while she finds herself in a 
 little still wood, alone. Only the sound of 
 rustled leaves and a small squeaking bark of 
 utter excitement now and then, tell her that 
 her companions are still Avithin hail, and are 
 in zealous pursuit of the ground game o{ 
 somebody unknown. 
 
 It would be a useless waste of voice to call 
 them, for they certainly would not obey. So 
 with a sio'h of content she sits down on the 
 warm dry leafy bed, and leans her still aching 
 head against the smooth stem of a young 
 beech-tree. She has taken off her hat and 
 bared her forehead to the light handling of 
 the baby winds. With a sense of deep
 
 210 JOAN. 
 
 thorough peace and enjoyment, she looks, 
 about her ; at the sticky horse-chestnut buds 
 beginning to break into crumpled leaf; at the 
 wood anemones, pure as snowdrops but not 
 half so cold, lifting their fine white heads and 
 delicate green collars ; at the primroses blos- 
 soming out in pale life from among the dead 
 oak-leaves, brown and curled. 
 
 Apparently, however, solitary peace is not 
 to be her portion for long. Not more than 
 five or ten minutes has she been resting in 
 dreamy tranquillity, when a step, heavier 
 than the dogs' light scampering patter, 
 troubles the quiet of the wood. Some game- 
 keeper, probably, justly irate at the invasion 
 of his covers and the disturbance of his 
 pheasants' eggs. Well, if she is to be scolded, 
 she may as well be scolded sitting as stand- 
 insf. So she neither rises nor chansfes her 
 position. With cheek leant against the 
 beech-bark, she awaits the oncomer's advent. 
 Nearer, nearer, the quick foot-falls come ; he 
 means to pass close beside her — he does not
 
 JOAN. 217 
 
 mean to pass by her at all — he has stopped. 
 With a half-frightened start she looks up. 
 After all, she might as well have gone to the 
 sea. 
 
 " No man can be more wise than destiny." 
 It is Wolferstan I
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OW about the laws of analogy ?" 
 he asks, taking off his hat, and 
 looking rather angry ; " Avhat has 
 become of them since yesterday V 
 She looks up, smiling subtly. 
 " They are temporarily suspended." 
 The sweet carnation colour that surprise 
 and half fright have sent flying up into her 
 cheeks is kept prisoner there by pleasure. 
 
 After a moment : " Did you really expect 
 to meet me there '?" she asks. 
 
 Her smile is catching. A reflection of it 
 brightens the young man's aggrieved features.
 
 JOAN. 219 
 
 '' If I had any self-respect I should answer 
 ^ no ' ; but as I have not, I will confess to you 
 that ' yes, I did !' " 
 
 " And you went there yourself^" 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " And waited some time V 
 
 " About two hours I should think," replies 
 the young man gravely ; " I built three large 
 sand castles, and saAv two of them washed 
 ^way ; and I collected more cockle-shells 
 than I ever saw together in my whole life 
 before." 
 
 " Et puis r 
 
 " Puis — I gave it up as a bad job— par- 
 ticularly as I was becoming an object of 
 ridicule to three little boys and a nursery- 
 maid. Then I took my stand at that stile that 
 commands the Helmsley road and your house. 
 I thought, from the little I knew of you, that, 
 not even to avoid me, could you stay mewed 
 up indoors all such a day as this. Then I saAV 
 the Misses Moberley and their mamma set 
 forth, arrayed hke Solomon in all his glory.
 
 220 JOAN. 
 
 Then I ventured a little nearer, and watched 
 you collect your dogs and set off ; by-the-by, 
 may I sit down near you ? at least a great 
 way off — ^just within ear-shot 1 or, if I do, 
 Avill you at once get up and walk away ?" 
 
 She lau^-hs a little. 
 
 " Do not be afraid ! I am far too com- 
 fortable to stir." 
 
 " I stalked you stealthily," pursues Wol- 
 fe rstan, resuming his narrative ; " I knew that 
 if I ventured to overtake you, you would turn 
 back, re-enter the house, and give me my 
 conge with as cold-blooded and inexorable a 
 gentleness as you did yesterday." 
 
 " You are very j^ersistent !" she says, 
 looking at him with a slow serious smile ; 
 " such perseverance, directed to worthier ob- 
 jects, might make you do great things," 
 
 " When one has come one hundred and 
 twenty miles to see one pair of— I mean to- 
 attain one object," answers the young man, 
 emphasising his words by the steady fire of his. 
 look, " one is hardly content to go away
 
 JOAN. 221 
 
 without having succeeded, at least in some 
 measure, in it." 
 
 The flush on Joan's face has hitherto 
 amounted only to a fair cool pink ; now it 
 strengthens to a hot red glow of indignation, 
 quite as beautiful to look at, but not nearly 
 so comfortable to the wearer. 
 
 " May I beg of you not to make me any 
 pretty speeches 1" she says hurriedly ; "I 
 cannot tell you how they humiliate me ! I 
 never was fond of them in my good days- — 
 never ; but now — now I dislike them far more 
 than ever I did !" (giving one blue flash out 
 of her eyes at him, and then hastily looking 
 away). " If I were an unsophisticated country 
 girl of seventeen, I could understand your 
 thinking that they would please me ; but I 
 am surprised at your imagining that a woman 
 who has been three — nearly four years in the 
 world — your own world should be so credu- 
 lous !" 
 
 " I stand reproved !" answers Wolferstan 
 quietly ; '' I am aware that in society it is
 
 222 JOAN. 
 
 nearly as rude to tell a person that you like 
 them as that you dislike them. I withdraw 
 the obnoxious statement ; I came down to 
 see that the rooms were kept j^roperly 
 aired." 
 
 She smiles a little ao-ainst her will. 
 
 " If you really mean to be a friend to me,"" 
 she continues presently, in a rather appeased 
 tone, and looking at him with the direct and 
 open honesty of her eyes; ''and, indeed, I 
 am very willing that you should be so — I am 
 not so rich in them that I can afford to throw 
 away one — but if you do, will you promise to 
 treat me exactly as you would a man-friend ? 
 You would not — " (blushing again a little, 
 but quite slightly and pleasantly) — " you 
 would not compliment a man-friend on the 
 colour of his eyes, would you T 
 
 He laughs. 
 
 " Probably not." 
 
 " Then exercise the same forbearance 
 towards me !" she says gaily yet earnestly ; 
 *' if you do, it will put me into much better
 
 JOAN. 223 
 
 humour both with myself and you ; will you 
 promise me — will you T 
 
 '■' Promise to look upon you as a man T 
 says Wolferstan, leaning his back against a 
 stalwart oak, that, as yet, holds forth no sign 
 of summer clothing, and answering her with 
 a gravity equal to her own ; " no, I do not 
 think I can ; if you knew what men are, you 
 would not wish me to do so ! — promise to 
 refrain from pretty speeches to you ? — 
 willingly !" 
 
 '' It is a bargain then !" she cries merrily, 
 stretching out her hand frankly to him ; "let 
 us shake hands upon it ! but mind — at the 
 first complimentary allusion to the shape of 
 my nose, or the colour of my hair, our friend- 
 ship dissolves ; smashed, splintered into a 
 thousand fragments." 
 
 "And now," says Wolferstan, laughing 
 gaily, and diminishing by a couple of yards 
 the space that he had at first ostentatiously 
 put between them ; " now that you have pre- 
 scribed your conditions, I am going to pre-
 
 224 JOAN. 
 
 scribe — no ! that is much too courageous a 
 word — going meekly to suggest mine !" 
 
 She smiles a little suspiciously. 
 
 " It is a thousand pounds to one penny that 
 I do not accept them !" 
 
 " Let us suppose that you are the man- 
 friend that you are so anxious to be, and 
 that I am not at all anxious that you should 
 be, and that I had made an appointment to 
 meet you in Pall Mall, to which you had 
 agreed, would you at once set off for Seven 
 Dials r 
 
 She laughs mischievously. 
 
 " I think it is more than probable." 
 
 " You are forgetting that you are man," 
 says Wolferstan gravely, "and that the 
 privilege of snapping your fingers at com- 
 mon sense and producing effects without 
 causes is wholly feminine." 
 
 " Then I will not be a man !" she cries a 
 little petulantly ; " away with my toga virilis. 
 I resume my distaff." 
 
 " If I am to be a friend," continues Wol-
 
 JOAN. , 225 
 
 ferstan more earnestly, and beating out his 
 proposition with the forefinger of one hand 
 on the pahn of the other, "^ I will not be 
 treated as an enemy — there is no logic in it ; I 
 will not be suspected and shunned ! What 
 harm " (speaking more quickly and eagerly, 
 and looking into her attentive face) — " what 
 harm do you think I am planning you \ As I 
 live, I have no thought or wish but for your 
 good and pleasure — and my own !" (in a low- 
 ered voice, with an afterthought of candour). 
 "Placed as we are— as chance has placed us, we 
 may considerably sweeten each other's lives ; 
 w^hy, in Heaven's name, should not we T 
 
 Her eyes are fixed in grave inquiry, asking 
 for explanation, on his, but she says nothing. 
 
 " Do not think," he continues, " that I 
 over-rate my own worth in your eyes, or that 
 I think that you see charms in me, which you 
 have never given me reason to supjDOse that 
 you do ; if the old state of things still con- 
 tinued, I am aware that I should have no 
 value at all — I should be one of a mob, as I 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 22G JOAA\ 
 
 always used to be ; but now, as you said yes- 
 terday, I am the last fragment left of the 
 go^d old life — your last connecting link with 
 civilisation — is it not so 1" 
 
 Her eyelids droop over her sad eyes. 
 
 " Yes," she sajs sighingly. 
 
 " Any society procurable there,'' he goes 
 on, indicating by a gesture the direction where 
 Helmsley smoke, turned gold by the sun, 
 hangs against the sky, " I warn you before- 
 hand, you will not be able for one moment 
 to tolerate." 
 
 " You are mistaken," she answers reso- 
 lutely ; " henceforth I do not mean to allow 
 myself any fine lady squeamishness. I 
 wince now, because these are early days ; 
 by-and-by I shall not Avince." 
 
 He shakes his head. 
 
 " You haye_ been transplanted too late ; 
 you will never take kindly to the soil." 
 
 An expression of pain crosses her face. 
 
 " If it is so, what is the use of telling me 1" 
 she cries reproachfully. " I am in the soil,
 
 JOAN. '221 
 
 and whether I flourish or whether I wither, 
 here I must stay, at least for the present." 
 After a moment's pause : "I had rather not 
 talk about it ; things talked about and dis- 
 cussed gain a substance and importance that 
 they never have when they are not put into 
 words. Things that must be, must ; if you " 
 (looking at him with a slightly satirical 
 smile) " were to fall down from your high 
 estate you would find that it would not kill 
 you ; you would find yourself alive at the 
 bottom of the hill. I have found myself 
 
 ive. 
 
 A silence — at least as much silence as there 
 ever can be in a spring wood. 
 
 Some of the dogs have come back, and 
 now lie on the leafy primrosy bed, with their 
 fawn-sides heaving and their tongues hanging 
 out sidew^ays surprisingly far. Mr. Brown, 
 whose increasing embonpoint has told upon 
 his wind, lays his puckered face on Joan's 
 black lap, and falls sweetly, if snoringly, asleep. 
 
 Joan's eyes are fixed on a spot where, 
 
 15—2
 
 228 JOAN. 
 
 through, the still bare oak-boughs, she can 
 see a nation of Lent lilies spreading over a 
 neighbouring field : fair Lent lilies — April 
 fine ladies with their pale yellow gowns and 
 their deeper yellow petticoats. Her heart is 
 echoing Wolferstan's words: "You will never 
 take kindly to the soil." No, never. She 
 will always be a blanched sickly plants like a 
 geranium in a town cellar. What is it that 
 gives her this sense of well-being, of smooth 
 comfort and pleasure, in Wolferstan's society ? 
 As far as wisdom is concerned, any or all 
 of his remarks might have been uttered by 
 Micky Brand; nor has he needed rej^rimanding 
 for over-civility less than did that other hero. 
 And yet how soothed — how much at home 
 she feels with him. The certainty of immu- 
 nity from underbred jests, of having her 
 allusions understood, and of beincr on the 
 same plane of thought make her feel that, 
 though an inscrutable destiny has poured 
 blood of the same quality into her veins and 
 those of the Moberleys, yet that by every
 
 JOAN. 229 
 
 law of affinity she is much more nearly akin 
 to the young man lying in the gold sunshine 
 at her feet. Advantages in him, which before 
 had passed unnoticed — taken for granted — 
 now start out in delightful prominence. The 
 quality of his voice — the purity of his pr<»- 
 nunciation — these it is which contrast so 
 blessedly with the loud and twangy pro- 
 vincialisms of her relatives — her relatives — \ 
 whose every laugh, yawn, sneeze sets her 
 teeth on edge. 
 
 The object of her thoughts breaks in upon 
 them by saying : 
 
 " My people will be down here by the end 
 of July ; they generally stay here most of 
 the autumn. I do not at all promise that 
 you will like them. My father, poor old 
 man, is not in a condition to be either liked 
 or disliked, as perhaps you have heard ; and 
 my mother— -no " (with a little reflective 
 smile) — " I cannot even promise that you will 
 be very much delighted with her, but tliey 
 mostly have the house full of pleasant people ;
 
 230 JOAN. 
 
 and if a^ou will let us hold out the rioiit hand 
 of fellowship to you, I think we may make 
 your life a shade more endurable. Of course" 
 (with a slight shrug) '■'■ if you resolutely 
 set up your quills against us, we can do 
 nothino-." 
 
 She shakes her head. 
 
 '' If you are a hsli," she says a little dog- 
 gedly, " it is best to stay in the water ; if a 
 bird, in the air. If you have sunk to a lower 
 level, it is wiser to keep to it, and not to be 
 standing on tiptoe straining up to the heights 
 you have left." 
 
 He looks a little disappointed. 
 
 " You refuse the right hand of fellowship, 
 then r 
 
 '■'■ No, I do not," she says sorrowfully. '* If 
 I were wise I should ; but I suppose that 
 one is greedy of pleasure. Most likely if 
 your mother holds it out, I shall snatch at 
 it; but" (in a lighter tone) "she has not 
 done so yet. It will be time enough to talk 
 about it when she does."
 
 JOAN. 231 
 
 Another silence ; a silence gently dreamily 
 sad on the part of the girl ; pleasantly and 
 rather affectionately reflective on the part 
 of the man ; serenely somnolent on the part 
 of the dogs. As usnal, the dogs have the 
 best of it. It is broken at last by Joan, not 
 because she wishes to speak or has anything 
 special to say, but because she feels that, 
 however great niay be the strides that her 
 intimacy with Wolferstan has lately taken, 
 she does not yet know him well enough to 
 sit beside him in that total silence which is 
 the privilege only of perfect friendsliij) or 
 assured love. 
 
 " Are you down here — I mean, at the 
 Abbey — much ?" she asks presently. 
 
 He shakes his head and stretches out a 
 lazy hand to pat Mr. Brown's fat flank. 
 
 " Not much ; not nearly so much as I 
 should be, only tliat whenever I do come 
 down mother and I always manage to fall 
 out about one and the same subject. The 
 fact is " (laughing slightly^ and looking with
 
 232 JOAN. 
 
 a faintlj^-heigiitened colour at the girl's serene 
 face) — ^''tlie fact is, that she is always 
 worrying nie to marry; why, I cannot un- 
 derstand, as in any case she has my brother 
 to fall back upon : a range gray-headed boy, 
 Avho, unlike me, never follows wandering 
 fires," 
 
 "And you do not feel able to oblige herl" 
 asks Joan, with an expression of friendly in- 
 terest, looking back at him with a perfectly 
 unembarrassed smile, wdiich, unknow^n and 
 certainly unconfessed to himself, rather an- 
 noys him. 
 
 Again he shakes his head, and laughs. 
 
 " To my thinking the laws of marriage 
 require a good deal of modification before 
 they are adapted to the needs of so advanced 
 a civilisation as ours." A moment later, 
 speaking with an almost irritated quickness 
 and eagerness : '' What, in Heaven's name, 
 is it about you that makes me, against my 
 Avill, admit to you truths that I know will 
 lower me in your estimation ? Perhaps "
 
 JOAN. 233 
 
 (laughing a little restlessly) — "perhaps if 
 you sat with your back to me I might lapse 
 into my usual gently inventive vein. I think 
 
 it is your eyes that no " (seeing her 
 
 hold up her finger in warning) — '' it is no in- 
 frino-ement of our barQ'ain — it is nothinef com- 
 plimentary — -rather the reverse — to tell you 
 that your eyes are rigidly truthful and truth- 
 compelling." 
 
 " Perhaps it will be safer to abstain from 
 any remarks at all about them," answers 
 Joan, with a rather cold smile. *' Let us 
 ^suppose that I have no eyes." 
 
 " With all my heart," rejoins he, laughing. 
 ■" Five minutes ao^o we acrreed that vou were 
 a man, now you are a blind man. I shudder 
 to think of what you may become in the 
 course of the next five minutes." Another 
 pause ; then Wolferstan resumes with some 
 heat his original theme. " Imagine swearing 
 to love any woman, or, in a woman's case, any 
 man, half a century hence, as warmly as you 
 <lo now ; when I look back ten years and see
 
 234 JOAN. 
 
 liow in that short space every idea, feeHiigv 
 opinion is changed or modified, how can I 
 expect that at the end of fifty or sixty years 
 one remnant of the original / will be left ? 
 Half a century ! always opposite the same 
 face, always fond, always faithful, it is " 
 (throwing his eyes upward to the brown tree 
 roof above him) — " it is a monstrous thing to 
 ask of any human being." 
 
 He looks at Joan in half-lauu-hingf, half-seri- 
 ous appeal, but neither eyes nor mouth give 
 him any hint of her agreement or disagree- 
 ment. The one is shut, the others are down- 
 dropped to the primroses in her lap, and with 
 her fingers she is lovingly stroking their 
 downy stalks. 
 
 " One might as well," pursues the young 
 man, beginning to curl Mr. Brown's tail 
 (relaxed in slumber) round his finger, and 
 thereby waking and vexing him — "one might 
 as Avell swear to have all one's teeth in one's 
 jaws or all one's hair on one's head at the 
 end of the same period ; the one seems to me
 
 JO AX. 235 
 
 quite as much within one's own power as the 
 other." 
 
 Still no word or sign of assent or dissent. 
 
 " When I say a thing," continues the 
 young man, speaking more gravely, while 
 the faithless light of his gray eyes steadies- 
 to a more serious shining — " I mean, w^hen 
 I say it soberly and solemnly, I like to be 
 able to persuade at least myself that I mean 
 it, and am going to stick to it. If " (redden- 
 ing a little) — " if I, as I now am, were to 
 swear to love any one woman wholly and 
 exclusively foi- the rest of my natural life, I 
 should feel that I was the most consummate 
 ruffian in existence ; for I should know that 
 I was swearing a lie ! do you now see why I 
 cannot oblige my mother V 
 
 She nods slightly. 
 
 " Yes, I see !" 
 
 She has risen to her feet, and so stands, 
 tall and willowy. The flame-eyed west sun 
 is boldly kissing her swart clothes and her 
 milky throat and her red lips ; and the
 
 236 JOAN. ^ 
 
 sruffed anemones are crowding about her 
 feet. 
 
 " And you think that I am right V cries 
 the young man, eagerly snatching, as if in- 
 vohmtarily, at the hand that, loosely drooping 
 by her side, hangs nearest to him, and locking 
 it, with all its crushed primroses, in his firm 
 young clasp. 
 
 " I think," she says, with a slow soft smile, 
 while her blue eyes rest gently, coolly, sweetly, 
 on the restless fire of his — " I think that a 
 day will come when you will change your 
 tune ; when you will blame the fifty years for 
 being too short, not too long ; at least, for 
 your sake, I lioj^e that it will !"
 
 /g\t^ - (^^^ 
 
 CHAPTEK XII. 
 
 T seems to be always good-bye !"" 
 Wolferstan is saying a little 
 ruefully. 
 
 Together they have strolled slowly home 
 through the dew-crisped meadows. Together 
 they have w^atehed the sun's nightly swoon ; 
 what so quickly rises again into life, cannot 
 be called death ; and praised his parting bene- 
 diction to the courtier clouds. 
 
 Together they now stand in the dusty road 
 at the gate of Portland Villa. Joan smiles 
 soberly. 
 
 " ' How do you do ?' would lose all his charm
 
 238 JOAN. 
 
 — specially in men's eyes — if they did not 
 know that his brother ' Good-bye ' treads sq 
 hard upon his heels." 
 
 "■ They are not come back yet," says Wol- 
 ferstan, surveying with his eyes the front of 
 the house — silent windows, and closed door ; 
 '' if they were " (smiling), " I feel sure that 
 I should see some indication of them, as I 
 ■did yesterday morning." 
 
 " I did not expect them," answers Joan ; 
 *' they have gone to a dance; they will not 
 be back till two or three o'clock." 
 
 " And you will be alone all evening- ?" 
 
 ^'Yes." 
 
 *' And " (in a rather lowered voice) — " and 
 I shall be alone all evening !" 
 
 '' Yes." 
 
 If he had contemplated proposing any plan 
 that should entail their not beino; alone all 
 evening, something, either in her face or in 
 her " yes," makes him change his mind. 
 
 " "Which is your window V he asks, lifting 
 his eyes to the upper story. " I should be
 
 JOAN. 239 
 
 sorry to mistake Mrs. Mobeiiey's for it; I 
 shall be passing by to-morrow morning on 
 my way to the station before you are awake ; 
 and though I shall see only your blinds — " 
 
 " You will certainly not see them," answers 
 Joan, laughing ; " for I have none ; the^^ fell 
 to pieces ten years ago, and have never since 
 been replaced." 
 
 A moment's silence. The wind is making 
 a soft sio-hino' bustle in the hedo'e, and the 
 distant Helmsley churches chime eight. 
 
 " You will not send me a line now and 
 then, I suppose *?" suggests Wolferstan diffi- 
 dently, leaning on the gate. 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 " Not even if you are in any trouble V 
 
 " I cannot imagine any trouble in which 
 you would be able to help me," she answers 
 gravely ; '' if I were sick, I could not ask 3^ou 
 to nurse me ; if I were starving, I could not 
 ask you for bread." 
 
 " Tlien why call me friend ?" cries the 
 young man hotly ; " what is the use of an
 
 240 JOAN. 
 
 empty name in wliicli there is no mean- 
 
 mof 
 
 She smiles a Httle teasingly. 
 
 " As you say, what use I — let us drop it 1" 
 
 " If," continues the young man eagerly — 
 *' if, by-and-by — not very soon — I run down 
 again to — to — see whether the rooms are kept 
 aired" (laughing a little) — "will there be 
 any chance — -is it likely that — that the laws 
 of analogy will have resumed their sway 1" 
 
 " Do you mean," she answers, smiling, yet 
 gravely, while her look meets his, full-eyed 
 and collected — "do you mean shall I be likely 
 to make appointments to meet you on the 
 shore ? — most assuredly not !— I know nothing 
 more unlikely; if we meet accidentally — really 
 accidentally — not accidentally on purpose " 
 (laughing) — " I shall be delighted ; I like to 
 see you : it gives me pleasure ; as I have told 
 you till you must be tired of hearing it, you 
 are the last connecting link between me and 
 my good old life !" 
 
 He makes an impatient gesture with his
 
 JOAN. 241 
 
 foot, which, had he been a child, would have 
 been called a stamp. 
 
 " I am tired of being a link," he says 
 petulantly ; " I will not be a link any longer I 
 it sounds as if I were a high-class ape ! when 
 — in how much time — shall I stand upon my 
 own merits ? in how many months — years — 
 will you be glad to see me because I am /, 
 .•and for no tedious second reasons T 
 
 "Ah, when T she echoes playfully ; and so, 
 with no further good-bye, quietly eludes him, 
 and slipping through the gate and into the 
 house, disappears. 
 
 ***** 
 
 It is next morning, Wolferstan is gone, 
 and has taken the summer weather with liim. 
 It is not the sun that wakes her to-day ; but 
 the sound of Wolferstan's wheels, rolling 
 sharply through her dreams. Cautiously 
 hidden behind her curtains, so that not a tip 
 of nose or end of eyelash may be seen, she 
 watches him bowl past ; while the chill rain 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 JOAN. 
 
 drives into his eyes, tries to put out his cigar, 
 and blurs his last view of Mrs. Moberley's 
 window, at which he is mistakenly gazing. 
 
 By the time she is dressed and do^vnstairs 
 the day has made up its mind to be regularly 
 Avet ; no shilly-shallying half-measures ! The 
 panes are already streaming, the wind whistles 
 instead of sighing ; the young flowers shiver 
 and shrink, and the doo-s, havino- been lured 
 to the front gate by the insulting noises 
 made in passing by a butcher's boy, trot back 
 wiht lowered tails, shakinof' their coats and 
 sneezino-. 
 
 Tlie house appears quite empty, though 
 certainly neither " swept " nor " garnished." 
 Not a soul above nor below stairs shows signs 
 of life. For the early part of the day she 
 will probably be companionless, as the 
 Moberley family are repairing by sleep the 
 ravages of yesternight's dissipation. 
 
 To be equally without occupation ; to have 
 no other employment than to sit with idle 
 hands, wondering to what station on his
 
 JOAN. 243 
 
 London route Wolferstan has yet attained, is 
 out of the question, 
 
 " I never used to wonder how far he was 
 on his journey," she says to herself with a 
 sort of surprise, standing at the window look- 
 ing out at the sickly cypresses bowing in the 
 2fale, listeninof to the moaningr- of the rain- 
 laden sea wind. " When he was gone, he 
 was gone — and there was an end of him ! 
 there must be an end of him now." 
 
 Hesolutely so saying, she turns away at 
 once from the window, and, stepping lightly 
 and softly past the Moberleys' doors, mounts 
 to the lumber room at the top of the house, 
 Avhither most of her bis^ boxes have been 
 relegated. From one of them she extracts 
 an armful of books, and carrying them down- 
 stairs with her, buries herself in them. 
 
 It is past mid-day before the Misses. 
 Moberley and their parent, yawning, pale,. 
 desoeuvrees, with sketchy toilet details, and 
 heavy eyelids, make their appearance. Evi- 
 dently incapable of any other occupation than 
 
 16—2
 
 244 JOAN. 
 
 reminiscence, they throw themselves into the 
 three soundest and easiest chairs that the 
 tlimsily furnished room affords, 
 
 " It was heavenly,'' says Bell, with a pro- 
 digious emphasis, in answer to an inquiry 
 from her cousin as to how they had enjoyed 
 themselves. " How I wish it could all come 
 over aofain ! All of them were there, and 
 nearly half another regiment from Kingsford 
 besides. I am sure that I might have danced 
 every dance three times over ; so might Di !" 
 
 " That was only because there were so few 
 girls," says Diana bluntly; "they had had a 
 great many disappointments ; that was why 
 they sent oif post haste for us at the last 
 moment." 
 
 " I cannot think, Di," cries Mrs. Moberley 
 fretfully, " why you always seem to have such 
 a pleasure in taking the gilt off our ginger- 
 bread. Do you know, Bell," with a sudden 
 change in the current of her ideas — "do you 
 know. Bell, it strikes me that they must have 
 had the whole supper, just as it stood, from
 
 JOAN. 245 
 
 Tucker in the High Street — only the soups to 
 be heated up, you know. A pretty penny it 
 must have cost them. I never saw anything 
 better done in my hfe — no stint anywhere, 
 and the champagne corks flying the whole of 
 the night." 
 
 " I daresay," answers Bell indifferently ; 
 " of course the supper is everything to you, 
 but I do not care about it myself; I am 
 always far too excited to eat." After a 
 moment : *' You really must come next time, 
 Joan ! You need not be afraid of any lack of 
 partners; it will be pick and choose with you, 
 and, indeed, they are all on the alert to see 
 you already. We have given such a glowing- 
 description of you — you may trust us for 
 that !" 
 
 " Indeed, Joan, there is no reason why you 
 should mew yourself up," says Mrs. Moberley, 
 joining in assentingly, "a line showy girl like 
 you ! Better make hay while the sun shines," 
 lauofhino- "in a white or'own with a black 
 sash, and black shoes and black ornaments ;
 
 246 JOAN. 
 
 if you do not happen to have any, Di has 
 got a pair of gutta-percha bracelets that she 
 could lend you. No one would think of ex- 
 pecting more of you than that, particularly," 
 dropping her voice to a very low key, " par- ' 
 ticularly under the circumstances !" 
 
 Joan makes no reply beyond a very small 
 shake of the head, and a still smaller smile. 
 When the battle has to be fought really, she 
 has no doubt of having strength enough and 
 to spare for it, but now it would be waste of 
 fibre — there being no Avarlike dissipation, and 
 therefore no need for evading it this after- 
 noon. 
 
 " And you T says Bell, stretching out both 
 arms, and laying her limp head back on the 
 chair-cushion ; " how did you manage to get 
 through the evening — you slept, I daresay 1 
 No more adventures on the beach, I suppose T 
 " I did not go there." 
 
 *' Then you saw nothing more of Anthony 
 Wolferstan, I suppose "? Anthony! — -dear 
 me, what a lovely name it is ! How I wish
 
 JOAN. 247 
 
 . J . 
 
 that I knew him well enough to call him 
 Anthony !" 
 
 To Joan's wonder and immeasurable dis- 
 gust and sorrow, she feels herself blushing ; 
 feels the slow red burning grow and strengthen 
 in her cheeks. For once in her life she would 
 give one or both her ears to be able to tell a 
 lie ; but now, as ever, it is impossible to her. 
 
 '' I walked in the other direction," she 
 answers, with a collected, if crimson, gravity, 
 *' to a wood — I do not know its name — but 
 he happened to overtake me." 
 
 ^'' Happened r echoes Mrs. Moberley in a 
 raised key, and with a roguishly rallying 
 smile, while Diana stops in mid-yawn, and 
 Bell lifts her languid lolling head with sud- 
 denly revived animation; "we all know what 
 kind of ' happened' that is — do not we, girls ? 
 So, after all, Miss Joan, it seems that you 
 are as much up to a little bit of mischief as 
 the others !" 
 
 Unused to this kind of banter, hating it 
 past the power of any words to express,
 
 9iS 
 
 iS JOAN. 
 
 feeling the tears rising in her throat, and 
 trying to swallow them back, Joan sits in 
 red misery, as complete a picture of discom- 
 fiture in a small way as the Avorld can afford. 
 Taking jDerhaps her dumbness for the silence 
 of enjoyment, or else too much j)re-occupied 
 with her own merriment to g-ive a thousfht 
 to the subject of Joan's feelings, Mrs. Mo- 
 berley is already preparing for more badinage, 
 when Di gallantly rushes to the rescue. 
 
 " What a pile of books you have there, 
 Joan !" she cries, with abrupt compassion 
 changing the subject, taking u]) a volume 
 and looking at its title-page ; *' no wonder 
 that the carrier complained of the weight of 
 your boxes." 
 
 " ' When land is gone, and money spent, 
 Then learning is most excellent !' " 
 
 answers Joan, recovering her countenance 
 and her self-command, and looking gratefully 
 back at her cousin ; " as " (smiling a little 
 sadly) — " as my whole fortune lies in my 
 brains, I like to know how large it is ; if, as
 
 JOAN. 24i> 
 
 is most probable, I shall have to be a gover- 
 ness, it is as Avell to know what I can teach !" 
 
 " Governess !" echoes Mrs. Moberley, with 
 a brusque heartiness ; " fiddlesticks' ends, 
 and fried eo'g-s ! You have no more need to 
 be governess than Bell or Di have ; the only 
 difference is that now I have three daug-hters 
 instead of two ; three little pigs to drive to 
 market" (with a comfortable chuckle). " If 
 your own flesh and blood (and w^hat can 
 be well nearer than an aunt?) cannot board 
 and lodge you at a pinch, things are come to 
 a pretty pass." 
 
 " I would not be a governess," cries Bell, 
 throwing up her eyes to the well-smoked 
 ceiling, and shrugging her shoulders, " no — 
 not for anything you could give me ! If wo 
 w^ere reduced in circumstances that is the very 
 last thino- that I should ever think of turning 
 my hand to." 
 
 " How servants do despise governesses," 
 pursues Mrs. Moberley, sliding into placid 
 reminiscence ; " I remember what trouble we
 
 ^50 JOAN. 
 
 used to have with ours when we were girls ; 
 the button-boy never would answer her bell 
 when she rang ; and the cook always forgot 
 to send up her supper. I declare, Bell," 
 (with a sudden change of tone from calm 
 recollection of the past to warm excitement 
 in the present) — " I declare. Bell, if those 
 pigs are not in the garden again — there never 
 was anything like the cleverness of a pig 
 about opening gates." 
 
 So saying, as quickly as the peculiarities of 
 her form will allow, and followed by her 
 eldest daughter, she hurries out of the room. 
 
 Diana and Joan remain behind, in silence 
 at first ; then Di speaks : 
 
 " Were you joking, or are you going to be 
 a governess, really T 
 
 " Eeally." 
 
 " You will not like it." 
 
 " No, I know that I shall not," replies 
 Joan ; her eyes absently fixed on the figure 
 of her aunt, as seen through the window, in 
 waterproof and clogs, with arms extended
 
 JOAN. 251 
 
 like a windmill, splashing through the puddles 
 in pursuit of the alien swine. " But you 
 think " {with a short uneasy laugh and 
 painful blush) — " that tliat — that anything, 
 in fact — would be better than — than — us /" 
 
 Joan looks uncomfortable. 
 
 " I think," she says gently, " that no 
 young, able-bodied person, who can earn 
 their own bread, has any business to be 
 eating other people's all their days." 
 
 " Taine's ' Nouveaux Essais de Critique et 
 d'Histoire,' " says Diana, slowly spelling out 
 one of the titles. " You are not reading 
 them for pleasure then T (in a relieved voice). 
 *' I thought you could not be." 
 
 Joan laughs. 
 
 " They expect so much from governesses 
 nowadays," resumes Diana presently. " Do 
 you mean to say" (in a rather awed tone) 
 " that you think you are up to the mark T 
 
 " That is what I want to find out." 
 
 " We are grossly ignorant," resumes the 
 other candidly ; "grossly. The other day —
 
 252 JOAN. 
 
 in the winter, Bobby — Bell's Bobby, you 
 know — offered to lend us a French novel. 
 We took it, because we did not like to own 
 that we could not read it ; but we could not " 
 (shaking her head) — " we could not make 
 head or tail of it." 
 
 " Shall I teach you V cries Joan eagerly. 
 " Will you be my first pupil 1 the first vic- 
 tim of my inexpertness 1 Do — I am quite 
 serious ; it would be a boon to me, and — " 
 
 " Go back into the school-room aofain," 
 cries Diana, opening her eyes widely in sur- 
 prise at this proposition ; '' why, Bell and I 
 were finished two years ago ; I was nineteen 
 last February ; many people are married at 
 nineteen : several of our schoolfellows were — 
 one had a baby." 
 
 '' But you are not married !" replies Joan,, 
 again laughing ; " and until that blest epoch 
 arrives — " 
 
 " It never will," replies Diana solemnly 
 and sorrowfully, shaking her head ; " who 
 would marry usf she says, with a sincere
 
 JOAN. 253 
 
 self-scorn. " Do we look like the sort of 
 girls that men marry ? — it never struck me 
 in that light till you came, but now I see that 
 we are fit to be nothing but camp-followers ! \ 
 I believe that I must have been born in a' 
 baggage-wagon !" 
 
 " Must you T with a rather embarrassed 
 smile. 
 
 *' Even if I shaved my fringe," continues 
 Diana gravely, pulling it out over her eyes, 
 ^nd squinting awfully in the endeavour to 
 see it ; " even if I daily dipped my head into 
 €L bucket of cold water to flatten it, it would 
 never look like yours — would it now ? Speak 
 truth— gospel truth." 
 
 But Joan is happily saved from the necessity 
 of replying to this difficult and delicate query. 
 
 " They were the Sardanapalus pigs !" cries 
 Mrs. Moberley in a raised key, re-entering 
 the room, flushed with victory, and cast- 
 ing off" her waterproof like a tight husk; 
 ** luckily it is easy to know them — they are 
 the only Berkshire ones in the row."
 
 -J- '(iiS'=^- 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 MONTH has crawled away since 
 Joan rang her first timid peal at 
 the bell at Portland Villa. Months 
 have as many different paces as any other 
 time-measures. Some gallop wildly; some 
 trot smartly ; some creep on all-fours. This 
 one has been among the slowest paced. Now 
 it is gone; and — insipidly unpleasant as it 
 has been — there is no reason for rejoicing at 
 its being over ; for, as far as human eye can 
 see, as far as human reason can judge, the 
 brothers that, indefinitely numerous, tread 
 upon its heels are not at all likely to be
 
 JOAN. 255 
 
 more agreeable ; except inasmuch as use 
 hardens people to the uncongenial and the 
 unlovely. And the power of use, in this 
 respect, has, Joan is beginning to think, been 
 overrated. Use — twenty-eight, nay thirty 
 days' use — has failed at all to reduce her 
 shrinking from rumpled stain-freaked table- 
 cloths ; at all to decrease her desire furtively 
 to wipe her dull tea-spoon before putting it 
 between her lips ; in the least degree to 
 lessen the wonder of the problem how Mrs. 
 Moberley came to be her aunt; or in any 
 measure to increase her fondness for amative 
 military jokes — -jokes, not hy the soldiers — 
 let us do them that justice — but about them. 
 It is raid-May now, but mid-May not as 
 poets sing it, but with its lovely face puckered 
 and pinched by the spiteful nipping of the 
 east winds. They have been nipping, pinch- 
 ing, withering for a full week past, and they 
 are nipping, pinching, withering still. Joan, 
 standing by the propped-open window of her 
 little room, and leaning her head against the
 
 256 JOAN. 
 
 paintless frame, is looking musingly out, and 
 running over in her mind the little bald 
 incidents of the last four weeks. Thrice the 
 butcher has forgotten, or at least omitted to 
 bring the meat. Twice Sarah has let fall the 
 tray and smashed four of the soundest cups 
 and saucers and six of the healthiest plates. 
 Three times the ingenious pigs have lifted 
 the latch and re-entered the orarden. Five 
 times there have been warlike o-aieties to be 
 staved off; each time successfully, but also 
 each time after a harder battle and giving 
 more offence. Twenty — nay, it is impossible 
 to count how many times — Micky Brand has 
 been here, and Wolferstan has been here not 
 at all ! At thought of the first of these two 
 names, she, being alone, makes a gesture of 
 impatience and distaste : at thought of the 
 last, she turns away from the window, and 
 taking up a little almanac from the table 
 examines it. Twenty-eight days — exactly 
 four weeks — since they shook hands by that 
 gate, between the waning sun and waxing
 
 JOAN. 257 
 
 moon, and he humbly asked permission to 
 
 €ome soon ao-am. 
 
 She laughs a little derisively. Thank God 
 she did not give it — did not give that un- 
 necessary leave. To grant a favour of which 
 the recipient does not think it worth his 
 while to avail himself is one of the most 
 considerable among the minor humiliations 
 to which flesh is liable. When one is severed 
 from any state of existence it is useless to try 
 and hano^ on to it bv a sinofle thread. And 
 yet, probably, she herself would hardly have 
 had the courage to cut the thread ; Wolfer- 
 stan has kindly done it for her. 
 
 " As I am now henceforth and for ever 
 one of the bourgeoisie — one of the minor 
 bourgeoisie," she says, relentlessly putting 
 her fate into words, " it certainly is as well 
 that I should receive as few as possible of a 
 fine gentleman's idle attentions ; particularly" 
 (smiling bitterly) " as he took such pains to 
 explain to me that they were only idle." 
 
 So saying, she takes up a book and buries 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258. JOA]S\ 
 
 herself in it until the hour devoted to Diana's 
 instruction shall strike. For Diana has 
 proved herself superior to the force of public 
 opinion — the public opinion of her own circle 
 and family — and triumphing over, not only her 
 own sense of the unseemliness of voluntarily 
 resuming those leading-strings which two 
 years ago she so joyfully cast away, but over 
 Bell's persistent persiflage, and proving her- 
 self invulnerable even by the darts of Micky's 
 wit, now daily sits at the feet of her new 
 Gamaliel, and looks forward hopefully to the 
 time when the next French novel shall be 
 offered for her acceptance, and she will be 
 able proudly to take it, and ostentatiously to 
 enjoy its noAv occult beauties. 
 
 To Joan the two hours devoted to this task 
 are the most bearable in the day. Each 
 exercise of patience, called forth by Diana's 
 dulness ; each small slow victory over igno- 
 rance and misapprehension, seems to her a 
 step towards the desired goal of independence 
 and self-maintenance.
 
 JOAN. 259 
 
 If she can teach Diana, she can teach 
 others, though seldom, probably, will she 
 meet with a pupil who, to so deep a con- 
 sciousness of her own shortcomings, unites 
 so honest a determination to be ultimately 
 very learned. The course of study has this 
 mornins^ been in full swing; for about half an 
 hour, when Joan perceives, by the wandering 
 of Diana's eyes, the wavering of her colour, 
 and the additional stumbling with which she 
 begins to jog through Racine's classic page, 
 that some outside object is distracting her 
 attention. 
 
 '* What is it T she cries a little impatiently; 
 " how you are murdering it !" 
 
 *' It is Micky," replies Diana rosily. 
 
 *' Is that all '?" says Joan carelessly ; " I 
 thouo^ht that at least it must be the rao- and 
 bone man ! Well, 
 
 " ' Que vois-je ? est-ce Hermione ? et que viens je d'en- 
 tendre ? 
 Pour qui coule le sang que je viens de repandre ?' " 
 
 Diana complies : 
 
 17—2
 
 260 JOAN. 
 
 " ' Que vois-je ? est-ce Hermione ? et que viens je d'en- 
 tendre ? 
 
 Pour qui coule le sang que je viens de repandre ?' " 
 
 But havino' rendered Orestes' horror-struck 
 question with as httle surprise and as much 
 tameness as it is well possible, she again stops. 
 "You do not think that we need go down, 
 
 then 1" 
 
 " Certainly not !" replies Joan shortly ; 
 " how many people does he need to entertain 
 him 1 he has two already — your mother and 
 
 Bell." 
 
 " That is true," says Diana, with an air of 
 reluctant conviction, again limpingly resuming 
 the heroic frenzy of the son of Agamemnon : 
 
 " ' Je suis, si je Ten crois, un traitre, un assassin ! 
 
 Est-ce Pyrrhus qui meurt ? et suis-je Oreste enfin ?' " 
 
 The house-door has been opened. Micky's 
 weighty foot has been heard along the pas- 
 sage : a louder buzz of talk below tells of 
 the fillip he is giving to the conversation. 
 
 " You do not think that he will take it 
 unkind V suggests Diana, again breaking off.
 
 JOAN. 261 
 
 ''It is not of the least consequence if he 
 does." 
 
 " No, of course not " (with a sigh). 
 
 " ' Quoi j'etouffe en mon coeur la raison qui m'eclaire. 
 J'assassine ;i regret un roi que je revere ; 
 Je viola en un jour le droit des souverains, 
 Ceux des ambassadeurs.' " 
 
 " You are to come downstairs at once, both 
 of you," cries Bell, who, during the previous 
 lines, having been heard noisily scampering up 
 the carpetless stairs, now bursts into the room, 
 and — both chairs being occupied — falls out of 
 breath on the bed. 
 
 " Who says so T asks Joan quickly, grow- 
 ing angrily pink. 
 
 " Mother," replies Bell, panting and affect- 
 edly holding her hand to her heart ; " she 
 has been telling Micky about your singing, 
 Joan, and how your ' Barbara Allen ' made 
 her cry last night. He says" (laughing) 
 "that he wants to see whether you can make 
 him cry too !" 
 
 For the twentieth time Joan regrets the
 
 262 . JOAN. 
 
 visit of a passing tuner, who, by exercising 
 liis skill on the cracked old spinet, and re- 
 storinof their voices to its half a dozen dumb 
 notes, has taken away her best excuse for 
 not trotting forth her accomplishment for 
 the benefit of Mrs. Moberley's warlike 
 friends. 
 
 Diana has already jumped up, and letting 
 Orestes and his frenzy roll on the floor, is 
 standing before the glass, smoothing and 
 beautifying her wild hair with one of Joan's 
 brushes. 
 
 The drawing-room door, when opened, dis- 
 closes Micky stretched at easy length upon 
 the sofa, not off'ering to hel}) Mrs. Moberley, 
 who is already opening the dusty piano, and 
 trying to infuse a little steadiness into the 
 uncertain music-stool. He is indeed occupied 
 in trying to teach Mr. Brown the well-known 
 accomplishment of "Trust and paid for;" 
 whereof Mr. Brown fully understands and 
 appreciates the last half, but can see neither 
 humour nor jDoint in the first. Joan's en-
 
 JOAN. 26:5 
 
 trance frees him from the strain of education, 
 for in a moment his teacher is off the sofa, 
 and advancing with some demonstrativeness 
 to meet her. He is indeed so much occupied 
 by his sahitation to his new friend as to omit 
 taking any notice of his old one, which he 
 afterwards gracefully explains and apologises 
 for by saying that he had quite forgotten that 
 he had not seen her before. 
 
 " You did not know that I was here, I 
 suppose," he says, confidently glancing from 
 one girl to the other ; " did not expect me so 
 early T 
 
 Diana looks foolish ; but Joan answers 
 coldly and serenely : 
 
 " We saw you coming up the drive." 
 
 " They were at lessons," cries Bell, giggling; 
 '' two good little girls with their primers and 
 copy-books." 
 
 '' Have you got to pothooks and hangers 
 yet ?" asks Micky jocosely ; but liis wit is 
 thrown away upon the object at which it is 
 wholly aimed, as she has joined her aunt at
 
 2G4 JOAN. 
 
 the piano, and is listening to her cautions 
 with regard to the music-stool. 
 
 " If you do not lean your whole weight 
 upon it, and if you do not screw it up too 
 high, I think it will hold," she says, gravely 
 testinof it Avith one hand. In obedience to 
 this advice Joan sits gingerly down, and forth- 
 w^ith strikes up the dear old ditty : 
 
 " In Scarlet town, where I was born, 
 There was a fair maid dwelling, 
 Made ev'ry youth cry well-a-away; 
 Her name was Barbara Allen. 
 
 '' All in the merry month of May, 
 
 "When green buds they were swelling. 
 Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay, 
 For love of Barbara Allen. 
 
 '' Then slowly, slowly she came up. 
 And slowly she came nigh him. 
 And all she said when there she came, 
 'Young man, I think you're dying.' " 
 
 Mr. Brand has stationed himself close he- 
 hind the performer, with his thumb and fore- 
 finger on the score, in the full intention of 
 whipping the leaf smartly over as soon as her 
 voice arriving at ing shall warn him that it 
 is time. In this well-meant but ill-executed
 
 JOAN. 265 
 
 endeavour he only succeeds in felling the 
 nuisic-book to earth. As they both stoop to 
 pick it up he says to her in a loud clumsy 
 whisper from among the legs of the piano : 
 
 " ' Young man, I think you're dying ;' 
 
 that is just what I can fancy you saying." 
 For all answer, she hastily resumes her lay : 
 
 " When he was dead and laid in grave, 
 Her heart was struck with sorrow." 
 
 *' That is the hall-door bell I" cries Diana, 
 interrupting, and pricking up her ears ; 
 " surely !" 
 
 '' Only the area !" answers Bell, shaking 
 her head; "they are so like — three times 
 this morning it has taken me in !" 
 
 " Oh mother, mother, pity me ! 
 For I shall die to-morrow." 
 
 Mrs. Moberley has taken out her pocket- 
 handkercliief, being sure that she will soon 
 feel inclined to cry. Regy has half lifted 
 his nose : not quite sure whether the suffering 
 inflicted on him by Miss Dering's melody is 
 acute enough to justify a howl ; and Micky
 
 266 JOAN. 
 
 has replaced liis no-longer-needed thumb and 
 forefinger in his pocket. 
 
 But Barbara Allen is fated not to die to- 
 day. Her death agonies are interrupted by 
 the appearance of Sarah, Avho now noisily 
 enters ; her face capriciously freaked with 
 smuts ; and in her hand a bouquet of choice 
 hot-house flowers, which, with a forethought 
 and self-consciousness of dirt not to be too 
 much commended, she is shielding from con- 
 tact with her dusky fingers, by the interposi- 
 tion of a portion of the tail of her hardly less 
 dusky gown. Flowers such as used to be 
 Joan's daily bread : flowers such as she never 
 sees now save in envious dreams. In a 
 moment she is off the music-stool. In a 
 moment they are all uj) and out of their 
 chairs, and crowding round Sarah. 
 
 " Where are they from ?" 
 
 "For whom are they T 
 
 " Who brought them "?" 
 
 " As sure as fate it is Jackson !" cries Bell, 
 with a rapturous simper ; " the idea of his
 
 JOAN. 267 
 
 daring — and I told him as plainly as I could 
 speak that he was not to do anything of the 
 kind — the youngest subaltern in the regiment!" 
 
 Di's big blue eyes are fixed rather wistfully 
 with a faint hope upon Micky's face ; but, 
 alas ! there is no consciousness on that large 
 and bovine expanse. 
 
 " If you please, m," says Sarah, as soon as 
 they will allow her to speak — conscientiously 
 holding the nosegay at arm's length, in order 
 to be able to resist the almost irresistible 
 temptation to sniflf its perfume ; "if you 
 please, 'm, I was to say that they are for 
 Miss Joan, from the iJabbey !" 
 
 " From the Abbey !" cries Bell in a dis- 
 gusted tone, falling back into her chair, and 
 turning as many colours as a dead mackerel ; 
 ^' then it is not Jackson after all !" 
 
 " Is the Colonel down ? did he bring them 
 himself ? when did he come T cries Mrs. 
 Moberley, volleying question after question ; 
 while the fatness of her cheeks is unable 
 wholly to veil the triumphant lire of her eyes.
 
 268 JOAN. 
 
 " It was not the Colonel, 'm ; it was one of 
 the grooms !" answers Sarah, delivering up 
 the flowers into their owner's most ready 
 hands, and retreating to the door. 
 
 "Did you give him a glass of beer? I 
 hope you gave him a glass of beer !" cries- 
 Mrs. Moberley at the top of her voice ; pur- 
 suing her now departed handmaid wdth a 
 hospitable scream. 
 
 " I hope not, for his sake, poor devil !" says 
 Micky, with a noisy laugh ; " you must 
 excuse my laughing, but you people really 
 have the worst small beer in Europe ! where 
 on earth do you get it from T 
 
 Absorbed as Joan is in the joy of her posy, 
 she cannot resist lifting her eyes to give liini 
 one glance of silent indignation ; but Mrs. 
 Moberley begins a weak and long-winded ex- 
 planation of how it used to come from the 
 Blue Posts ; and though it is mostly sour 
 now, yet that the old man is as honest an old 
 man as you would see in a summer day, etc., 
 etc.
 
 JOAN. 269 
 
 Joan has turned away to the window to 
 gloat over her treasures, ashamed that any 
 one should see the joy painted on all her 
 face. 
 
 ''If it came from Covent Garden," says 
 Di, joining her, " it could not have cost him 
 a penny less than a guinea I Bobby Butler's 
 that he gave Bell for the Fryars' New Year's 
 Ball came to fifteen shillings ! he told me so 
 himself; and it was not half so big or so 
 •choice as this." 
 
 " A guinea ! fifteen shillings T cries Micky 
 contemptuously ; " you may depend upon it 
 it did not cost him a penny ! of course it came 
 out of their own houses ; the only wonder is 
 that he did not think of so obvious an atten- 
 tion before." 
 
 " I wonder," says Bell, advancing with in- 
 quisitive haste to join her sister and cousin 
 — " I wonder if there is not a note amonsfst 
 them ? in novels there always is a billet 
 doux under the leaves — do look, Joan — nay " 
 (giggling, as Joan turns away with reddened
 
 270 JOAN. 
 
 cheeks and an angry " pooh !") " now I am 
 sure that there is, and that she is trying to 
 find it without our seeing !" 
 
 " Examine it for yourself, then !" cries Joan 
 tragically, holding out her nosegay, yielding 
 it to Bell's ravaging desecrating hands ; and 
 lookino- on with an inward writhing as her 
 cousin lifts each airy petal, parts each slender 
 stem, to peep and dig and ferret between. 
 In vain. 
 
 " I never can see the object of cramming 
 bouquets full of this stuff !" says Micky in a 
 hold-cheap voice ; spitefully touching with his 
 soHd forefinger a fragile spray of maidenhair ; 
 ''it dies before you can say 'knife' and shrivels 
 up to an unsightly little black wisp !" 
 
 '' I suppose that we have seen the last of 
 them now," says Bell, with envious tone, 
 reluctantly restoring her scented load. " I 
 suppose, Joan, that you will take them up to 
 your room now, and keep them there !" 
 
 " Put them into your jug," says Di 
 kindly; ''I should — and cut their stalks
 
 J OAF. 271 
 
 every day ; your room will smell like a 
 greenhouse !" 
 
 *' Why should I be so greedy T says Joan^ 
 with reluctant magnanimity ; " why should 
 not we all have the benefit of them 1 — -that 
 is" (retreating a little, and holding up her 
 hand as a shield against Micky, who is ad- 
 vancinof his blunt nose, with the evident in- 
 tention of burying it among the orchids and 
 gardenias), '' that is — all we inmates of the 
 house." 
 
 " I msh," says Bell, recovering her com- 
 plexion and her interest in the subject — " I 
 wish that some one would induce Sarah to 
 be dressed a little earlier than usual to-day ; 
 he is pretty sure to look in, in the course of 
 the afternoon, to be thanked !" 
 
 " If you want her to be spoken to, my 
 dear," replies Mrs. Moberley in a whining 
 tone, with her eyes aimlessly fixed on the 
 blind, which is pulled up awry, and on which 
 ancient rain stains make a yellow zig-zag ; 
 *' you must do it yourself, for I tell you
 
 272 JOAF. 
 
 plainly I dare not ! it is as much as my place 
 is worth, as they say ; she would make no 
 more of giving me warning than I should of 
 blowing my nose ! I am sure I do not know 
 what the girls are coming to ! as Mrs. Green 
 said the other day, there are no girls any- 
 where !"
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HE next day is* Sunday— a day to 
 whicli Joan has been looking for- 
 ward with some dread, as it is to 
 witness her dehut at the Hehnsley garrison 
 church, which her cousins weekly frequent 
 with pious regularity, winter and summer, 
 come rain, come shine. For the first four 
 Sundays of her stay with them she has suc- 
 ceeded in avoiding this ordeal : firstly, by a 
 headache ; secondly, by an ostentatiously 
 displayed cold ; thirdly, by a wet day, and 
 the plea of easily spoiled crape ; and fourthly, 
 by feigned over fatigue from a long walk on 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 JOAN. 
 
 the previous day. But this morning all these 
 pretexts fail her. She has plainly no cold, 
 nor would it be possible for any one with 
 such clearly bright eyes and such delicately 
 healthy cheeks to lay claim to a headache. 
 It is not raining, and she took no walk yes- 
 terday ; to worshijD God with the soldiers must 
 she therefore unavoidably go. Three miles 
 there and three miles back, and for all that 
 distance no more shade than you could cover 
 with a penny-piece. A hot May sun brazenly 
 .staring, and a graceless wind catching up the 
 dust in its spiteful hands and thrusting it 
 down your reluctant throat and into your 
 Avinking eyes. A day like a handsome shrew, 
 goodly to look at, fresh and finely tinted, 
 hateful to feel. 
 
 Mrs. Moberley, whose fondness for the 
 military is hardly inferior to that of her 
 daughters, has set off half an hour earlier to 
 " take her time," as she says. By-and-by 
 they overtake her, " larding," like Falstaff, 
 "the lean earth/' the wind faithfully out-
 
 JOAN. 275 
 
 lining her bounteous form as she struggles 
 against it, and her shawl forming a playful 
 balloon at her back — " Faint yet pursuing." 
 
 As they pass a quiet little church with 
 bells invitingly ringing, Joan makes a despair- 
 ing stand, weary of the unending struggle 
 with her heavy crape tail, which will decline 
 from her arm into the dust, most weary of 
 the sun, the blast, the audacious fat flies. 
 
 " Why should not we go in here 1" she 
 asks, looking longingly at the gray walls and 
 the arched door. 
 
 ''Nobody does," replies Bell, trenchantly 
 quickening her pace ; '' none of them do. 
 Sometimes they go to St. Chad's in the after- 
 noon because the music is good, but never 
 here" (nodding contemptuously at the de- 
 spised place of w^orship). " One sees nothing 
 but a few fusty tradespeople." 
 
 They have reached the haven at length, 
 and are deposited in a pew, three in a row — 
 Joan, more in accordance with their wishes 
 than her own, between her two cousins — a 
 
 18—2
 
 276 JOAN. 
 
 pew witli a first-rate prospect. From it one 
 can see soldiers in profile, soldiers in rear, 
 soldiers in three-quarter. The Misses Mo- 
 berley, having hurried through their pre- 
 liminary prayer and smoothed their refractory 
 locks and feathers, are now prepared for de- 
 votion and enjoyment; nor are they selfishly 
 anxious to keep either their pleasure or their 
 information to themselves. In whatever 
 igfnorance of the domestic details of the 
 I70th Joan has entered the church, they are 
 determined that she shall leave it in no such 
 case. 
 
 From the moment of their establishment 
 in the pew she is subject to an alternate 
 nudging and loud whispering into her re- 
 luctant ears. "Do you see that woman 
 coming up the chancel in the prune silk '? 
 That is Mrs. Simpson ; her husband is adju- 
 tant. She gave a garden-party the other 
 day, and asked ever^^body but us. It poured 
 rain; we were so glad." From the other 
 side : " That is Mrs. Allen in the fifth pew
 
 JOAN. 277 
 
 on the left in the side aisle ; she never re- 
 turned our call. She gives herself great airs 
 because the General once sent his carriage 
 for her," This hist piece of information is 
 conveyed in so raised a key that Joan looks 
 apprehensively round and cries, " Sh !" 
 
 The entrance of clergy and choir causes a 
 slight lull in the conversation. Everybody 
 stands up : in this position many new dis- 
 coveries as to who is in church and who is 
 not are made. The organ plays, the ex- 
 hortation is read. By-and-by they reach 
 the Litany. With face down sunk on her 
 slender black-clad hands, Joan is joining with 
 more heartfelt earnestness than ever in her \ 
 life before in the congregational cry of " Good , 
 Lord, deliver us I" She has a vague feeling 
 that it is from Portland Villa, from Bell, 
 from squalor, from little sordid trials and 
 mean afflictions that she is begging to be I 
 delivered. As she so pitifully and yearningly 
 prays, she lifts her face, and her sad look 
 wanders idly round the strange unfriendly
 
 278 JOAJS'. 
 
 church, and over the many strange unfriendly 
 faces — they are so many, and not one friend 
 amongst them all. Her eyes move indif- 
 ferently, inattentively, from one to the other 
 in lack-lustre survey, when suddenly they 
 stop, and a little flash of clear bright joy 
 darts into their dolorous blue depths. 
 
 Is not that a friend who, so far away, so 
 almost out of sight, so nearly hidden by the 
 intervening red bodies of Micky Jackson and 
 half a dozen other light infantry, is leaning 
 his sunshiny head against a stone pillar in 
 abstract meditation or in sleep ? One can 
 see nothing of him but his back — a good 
 vigorous flat back — and the satiny sweep of 
 his straio-ht brown locks. Has he come to 
 Helmsley church to be thanked for his nose- 
 gay ? for it is Wolferstan ! No sooner has 
 she recognised him than she stoops her head 
 again, and hides the cheeks that she feels 
 have grown suddenly warmly pink on her 
 open prayer-book, while above the drone of 
 the clergyman and the monotonous chorister
 
 JOAN. 279 
 
 voices she hears the beating of her own loud 
 lieart. 
 
 " I am too glad !" she says to herself, 
 ^hrinkino- friohtened from the unused sensa- 
 tion of joy, "much too glad. Why should I 
 be ? there is no reason — none !" 
 
 Anon she steals another look. He has 
 turned his profile towards her and his roving 
 eye is wanderino- over the bent heads of 
 the kneeling worshippers in evident search . 
 There is no doubt that it is he : that broad 
 gray eye, bold and mirthful, the clear window 
 to such a goodly prosjDerous house, the de- 
 coupc nostril, the dehonnair lips, the shorn 
 square chin. 
 
 " There is no doubt that I am dreadfully 
 glad," she says to herself remorsefully, "' and 
 why, in Heaven's name, should I be T 
 
 So she resolutely and ruthlessly keeps her 
 eyes hidden and averted from that pleasant 
 sight, nor takes one other glance. That is, 
 not till the very end ; not till — at the wel- 
 come signal of the benediction — all, both
 
 280 JOAN. 
 
 wakeful and sleepful, have sprung alertly to 
 their feet. Then she lets her looks stray 
 hastily once again to the distant pillar. Has 
 he seen her % Probably not. His part of 
 the church is drained by a distant door. He 
 Avill probably depart without ever having been 
 aware of her neighbourhood. 
 
 " So much the better," she says inwardly ; 
 but, even while so thinking, her fingers 
 fidget uneasily Avith her prayer-book. Tall 
 as she is, she raises herself furtively a little 
 on her toes — her one chance of beino- dis- 
 covered lies in her heioht and her black 
 weeds. 
 
 " You need not be in a hurry, Joan," says 
 Bell in a final whisper, noting her cousin's 
 restlessness. '' We ahvays let them go out 
 first — they pass by this pew — here they come, 
 how their swords clatter !" 
 
 At length — at length— in the Avake of 
 many red tunics, they leave the church and 
 reach the porch, only to find it filled Avith 
 a discomfited croAvd. For the face of the
 
 JOAN. 281 
 
 day is changed ; the brazen sun, the sickly 
 glare are gone — effaced by one giant rain- 
 cloud which has swept over the sky and is 
 angrily hurling its watery load to earth ; the 
 wind, lowered, but not yet sunk, and still 
 spiteful as ever, is driving the heavy drops 
 into the faces and against the Sunday clothes 
 of the shrinking townsfolk in the porch. 
 
 Those who, prophetically wise, have 
 brought mackintoshes or waterproofs Avith 
 them are complacently enduing them. Those 
 who have not are enviously eying them. 
 Among the latter class is the Moberley 
 family. No protection whatever against the 
 weather have they, but flimsiest gaudiest 
 parasols ; and on poor Diana's head flourishes 
 the beloved plume of paradise, which every 
 Sunday moves from her hat to her bonnet, 
 and every Monday moves back again from 
 her bonnet to her hat. 
 
 " It is good weather for young ducks, and 
 that is all that one can say !" says Mrs. 
 Moberley, with her usual slipshod happy-go-
 
 282 JOAN. 
 
 lucky philosophy, gazing at the mad little 
 muddy river which is racing down the church 
 path. 
 
 Joan's eyes are directed, not towards the 
 hostile weather, but towards the people still 
 issuing from the church. Alas ! they have 
 all come forth now ; even the galleries and 
 organ-loft are emptied and he is not amongst 
 them. Her jDrognostic is fulfilled — he has 
 •dejDarted without ever suspecting her near- 
 ness. As she so thinks, with a private low 
 sigh, her attention and her eyes are both 
 recalled by a hasty breathless voice at her 
 €ar. It is Micky, who, with raindrops racing 
 <lown his nose, with deeper red stains on his 
 wet red tunic, panting yet triumphant, stands 
 before her, with a large umbrella in his hand. 
 
 " Miss Bering — you have no umbrella ! — I 
 saw that you had not — I have been to fetch 
 one for you — sexton's house — sexton's wife — 
 hold it over you — no chance of its clearing — 
 set off at once 1" 
 
 " My aunt has no umbrella either," answers
 
 JOAN. 283 
 
 Joan coldly, shrinking back farther into the 
 shelter of the porch. 
 
 " What does he care for that ?" says Mrs. 
 Moberley, Avith a good-luimoured chuckle. 
 ^' Never mind, my dear. I am not sugar or 
 salt either." 
 
 " But Bell— Di — the alpacas !" cries Joan, 
 looking round with hasty wistfulness, and 
 greedily snatching at the nearest excuse. 
 
 "■ I am sorry that I cannot divide myself 
 and my umbrella by three !" says Micky 
 jocosely, having recovered his breath and his 
 coherence ; *' but, as I cannot, I must repeat 
 my offer." 
 
 " Never mind us !" says Diana stoically, 
 winking away a very small tear, which had 
 been called into being by the callous indif- 
 ference to her fate displayed by her old friend. 
 " He is quite right — you are of much more 
 consequence." 
 
 " Get along with you !" says Mrs. Mober- 
 ley heartily, giving her a little friendly push, 
 never doubting that a compunctious delicacy
 
 284 JOAN. 
 
 is the only motive for her niece's hanofins: 
 back ; '"'■ we must take our chance ; and as tO' 
 the alpacas, why, your craj^e would buy them 
 over and over a^ain !" 
 
 Thus urged and encouraged by her relatives 
 Avhat remains for Joan to do but to step out 
 into the large resolute rain under the segis of 
 the sexton's wife's roomy umbrella ? She 
 does it as loathly as a cat would. Up the 
 swimming church path, through the church 
 gate, out into the swimming road. At least 
 the choking dust which rose to one's eyes is 
 changed to mud, which can assault one no 
 higher than one's ankles, *•■ 
 
 In wrathful — if ungratefully irrationally 
 wrathful — silence, Joan stalks along, and 
 though his legs are longer than hers, he has. 
 some ado to keep up with her without de- 
 generating into a run. At last : 
 
 "■ Do not you think," says Micky in 
 mild remonstrance (for, in a tete-d-tete, the 
 swagger which the knowledge of the in- 
 variable Moberley support and applause
 
 JOAN. 285 
 
 alone maintains wholly disappears) — "do 
 not you think that if you walk so very fast 
 you will be out of breath before you reach 
 Portland Villa T 
 
 ''Thank you, no." 
 
 " Do you call it quite three miles to 
 Helmsley V pursues Mr. Brand, trying to 
 be conversationally agreeable on indifferent 
 subjects. " I should think that it could not 
 be more than two and three-quarters." 
 
 " Quite three — more than three 1" replies 
 Joan, with a despondent glance at the long 
 stretch of wet straight road before her. 
 
 " I thinl^ (diffidently) " that if you would 
 -allow me to come a little nearer to you I 
 could protect you better ; the points of the 
 umbrella are dripping on to your shoulder." 
 
 " Thank you !" (very hastily). " It is of 
 no consequence." 
 
 " You " (with a good deal of hesitation) — 
 " you would not like to take my arm, I sup- 
 pose { 
 
 " Thank you, no !"
 
 286 JOAN. 
 
 A silence. Still miglitily striding through 
 the storm. 
 
 ''I wonder what has become of the others 1"^ 
 begins Micky again presently, with an air of 
 complacency. " I hope they are not getting 
 a drenchino'." 
 
 '' I do not see how they can well help it," 
 replies Joan dryly ; '' and Diana had a cold 
 already." 
 
 " Poor girl !" (in a tone of ostentatious in- 
 difference) ; " how very unlucky !" 
 
 Through the bleak suburbs between the 
 scaffolding poles and the forlorn brick heaps 
 they are passing, when another noise mixes 
 with that of the rain and the wind in their 
 ears. A noise of wheels coming up behind 
 them. Some happy person who has a carriage, 
 and presumably has not a Micky, bowling'^ 
 safely and dryly home from church. As the 
 wheels come up with them their noise ceases. 
 The happy person is apparently stopping be- 
 side them. In quick wonder, just flavoured 
 with an unlikely hope, Joan looks round, in
 
 JOAN. 287 
 
 time to see Wolferstan throwing the reins to 
 his groom, and jumping down out of his 
 phaeton into the mud : on his figure is a w^et 
 great-coat, and on his face a rather displeased 
 expression of pleasure. 
 
 " Miss Dering, will you allow me to take 
 you home ? at least, you will be able to keep 
 yourself drier — may I help you in at once ? — 
 that is, of course, unless" (with a slight 
 and sulky glance at Micky) "you prefer 
 walkino-." 
 
 " Is it likely ?" she answers, with a smile 
 all sunshine — not mixed sunshine and rain 
 like his ; " am I quite a fish, to be so fond of 
 the water V and so gives him her hand ; and 
 setting her light foot on the step springs 
 gaily in, leaving Micky, unthanked, alone, 
 with his giant umbrella, in the mire. 
 
 How one's point of view changes ! Five 
 minutes ago Joan was ready to maintain that 
 there w^ere nearer four than three miles be- 
 tween Helmsley and Portland Villa ; now 
 she is prepared to swear that there are not
 
 288 JOAN. 
 
 more than two, and of those two, one, through 
 her ill-advised hasty striding, is already over- 
 past. 
 
 " You never walked with me under an 
 umhrella !" is Wolferstan's first I'eproachful 
 observation, as through the storm they mer- 
 rily fly. 
 
 " It was always fine weather when I was 
 with you," replies Joan ; nor, until she has 
 uttered it, does she see the double meaning 
 of the answer. 
 
 " Under an umbrella," repeats Wolferstan, 
 frow^ning a little ; the idea evidently rankling 
 in his mind ; '' there is such intimacy in an 
 umbrella." 
 
 " Yes, there is," answers Joan, shuddering 
 a little at the recollection of Micky's ej^es 
 amorously glowering at her from beneath the 
 great cotton mushroom. 
 
 " What a pace you must have w^alked at !" 
 continues the young man, still chafing; 
 *' whose fault was that — yours or his ?" 
 
 '' Mine."
 
 JOAN. 289 
 
 " You must have run." 
 
 " I did nearly." 
 
 " I should have overtaken you long ago," 
 ■says Anthony, with an air of irritation ; 
 " only that I was fool enough to wait at 
 the church — I forgot all about that other 
 •door." 
 
 " You saw me in church, then V 
 
 " Yes, but not till the sermon" (in an 
 aggrieved voice). 
 
 " Ah ! I saw you in the Litany" (with a 
 ■soft tone of superiority). 
 
 How quickly the horse is trotting. At 
 this rate in five minutes they will be at 
 Portland gate. How smartly they pass 
 through the slackening rain, while the bois- 
 terous wind sings with uncouth jollity in 
 their ears. 
 
 " What a long time it seems since I was 
 here last," says Wolferstan presently, looking 
 affectionately at the wet May garlands in the 
 hedges — at the roadside trees — at the flat 
 green fields. 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 290 JOAN. 
 
 " Exactly a month — four weeks yester- 
 day," answers Joan. Then, seeing on his 
 face more complacency at the accuracy of 
 her memory than she thinks either wholesome 
 or desirable, she hastens to add : " I have a 
 wonderful memory for small incidents : it is^ 
 a month since you were here ; three weeks 
 since the piano-tuner ; ten days since the 
 sweeps," 
 
 The complacency disappears, as she had 
 meant it. The greatest coxcomb cannot be 
 too much exalted by being bracketed with a 
 j^iano-tuner and sweej)s. 
 
 " Four weeks, instead of the one that I 
 meant," he says reflectively. " Do you know 
 why it has been four weeks instead of one T' 
 
 " Yes," she answers sedately, " I know." 
 
 "Whyr 
 
 " Because you were better amused where 
 you were." 
 
 He shakes his head. 
 
 " Wrong. Not but what I was very much 
 amused too," he adds conscientiously ; " for
 
 JO AX. 291 
 
 the matter of that I mostly am. For my 
 part" — with a Hght laugh — *' I should like to 
 live for ever ; the longer my innings are the 
 better I shall be pleased ; but that was not 
 the reason." 
 She is silent. 
 
 ''Why do not you ask me what it was," 
 he asks in a sort of pet, " when you see that 
 I am longing to be questioned ? You might 
 have the civilitv to oblio-e me," 
 
 " Suppose that I do not care to hear ?" she 
 says, with a small fine smile. 
 
 " Then you ought to care," he answers 
 gaily. " Whether you care or not you must 
 hear. Are you listening T 
 "Yes." 
 
 " You know," he goes on, becoming grave 
 and speaking seriously, " I am sure I told 
 you, that I have no great belief in myself I 
 have never had much reason for any ; and 
 you disbelieved in me so thoroughly too 
 that I thought perhaps, after all, you might 
 be riofht." 
 
 19—2
 
 292 JOAN. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Do you know," he continues, reddening 
 slightly and speaking quickly, " I wish you 
 would not make me tell you these sort of 
 humiliating things, but you do. Do you 
 know that more than once I have been ready 
 to cut my throat about a woman on Monday, 
 and by Saturday have forgotten what shape 
 her nose was ?" 
 
 '* I quite believe it," very dryly. 
 
 *' I thought — no, I did not think — I had a 
 faint hope that, this — this attack might be 
 something of the same kind ; at least, thought 
 I, I would give myself the chance — " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well, at the end of the first week — " 
 
 " At the end of the first week," she says, 
 speaking with a red smile and a pretty curly 
 lip — " at the end of the first week my nose 
 was growing an indistinct memory ; at the 
 end of the second week you were not quite 
 sure that I had a nose ; at the end of the 
 third week — "
 
 JOAN. 293 
 
 " At the end of the third week," interrupts 
 Anthony, taking the words out of her mouth 
 and looking down on her boldly and fondly 
 with his happy gray eyes, " I began to blame 
 all eyes that were not blue ; and yet it would 
 be monotonous if they were all blue, would 
 not it ? At the end of the fourth week I 
 got into the train, voila tout.'' 
 
 '•' Voila tout, indeed !" says Joan, with half 
 a laugh and half a sigh, ** for here we are." 
 
 It is true. They have reached the gate, 
 throucrh the bars of which six black retrousse 
 faces are gravely regarding them. The rain 
 has ceased, the great sun is blithely shoulder- 
 ing aside the sulky clouds, the gutters run 
 less madly down the road, the stooped flowers 
 and the lashed grasses begin to think of 
 raisinof themselves ao^ain. 
 
 '' See how fine it is," says Wolferstan, 
 directing her attention to the young laugh 
 which is beginning to break gently out over 
 earth's face. '' Why may not we lengthen a 
 little our drive 1"
 
 294 JOAN. 
 
 " On the other hand, why should we ^" she 
 answers. 
 
 There is that in her voice which makes 
 him feel that further pressing would be use- 
 less ; her tone is so low that it is almost 
 drowned by the voices of the dogs, who by 
 this time have issued from the gate, and 
 thankful for anything which is likely to dis- 
 perse the ennui attendant on Sunday, are 
 pivinof a hideous outdoor concert round the 
 ill-starred veliicle. Two are jumping teasingly 
 up at the horse's nose ; three are making play- 
 ful snaps at his heels; while Mr. Brown, stand- 
 ing on his hind legs — in which biped attitude 
 he looks like a very plain man — with one 
 forepaw on the axle of the wheel, is peering 
 upwards with his near-sighted eyes to see 
 who the inmates of the carriage are. In 
 silence Wolferstan lifts his young com- 
 panion down to earth. She had meant to 
 jump from the high wheel, but he has baffled 
 her by taking her in his arms. He is fol- 
 lowing her now into the house. Becoming
 
 JOAN. 295 
 
 aware of his intention, she turns and faces 
 him. 
 
 " You are coming in V she says doubtfully, 
 standing in the gateway as if to hinder his 
 ■entrance. 
 
 " I think so," he answers modestly ; '* am 
 I not?" 
 
 For an instant she stands irresolute : the 
 bluff wind making her heavy gown and her 
 lithe body sway a little, like a tall pale flower, 
 and the blood sending crimson messages up 
 into her cheeks. Then she speaks : 
 
 " If you like, and on one condition." 
 
 " What condition ?" (laughing) ; " that it is 
 the last offence of the kind ?" 
 
 " No, not that." 
 
 " What then r 
 
 " You may come," she says, turning her 
 very-much-in-earnest eyes and her face swept 
 by a great carnation flush to his ; "on 
 <jondition that you promise not to stay to 
 luncheon." 
 
 He looks surprised.
 
 29G JOAN. 
 
 " I promise." 
 
 " However much they may press you V 
 " Yes." 
 
 '' Not pie-crust promise — mind — a real 
 solemn binding: oath '?" 
 
 " A real solemn binding: oath !" 
 
 She draws a long breath of relief. 
 
 " Then you may come and Avelcome !" 
 
 He laughs dryly. 
 
 " You are very hospitable !" 
 
 '■'■ It is the truest hospitality !" she answers.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CCOMPANIED by a vanguard, 
 rear-guard, and body-guard of little 
 dogs, all fantastically dancing round 
 and squeaking with ecstasy over their reco- 
 vered Joan (for though they sometimes show 
 their affection injudiciously, yet, indeed, they 
 love her very dearly), Wolferstan makes his 
 first entry into Portland Villa. Miss Dering^ 
 could have wished that the smell of roast mut- 
 ton had been less mightily and universally 
 pervasive. The whole house appears to have 
 turned, in honour of Wolferstan, into hot mut- 
 ton fat. She steals a covert look at him to see 
 how he is bearing it. Manners forbid him to
 
 298 JOAN. 
 
 hold his nose, and so good an actor is he that 
 he seems to be inhahng the warm tallow with 
 no apparent inconvenience or diprelish. 
 
 The drawing-room is undoubtedly vm- 
 changed since before she went to church, but 
 yet it seems to her a far tawdrier little desert 
 than it did then ; the woolly antimacassar 
 more faded, the spar and Bohemian glass 
 more flimsily gim-crack, the dust on the carpet 
 ^ fathom deeper. She sits dejectedly down 
 on the music-stool. After all, though the 
 music-stool gives one some frights, it is really 
 more dependable than most of the other 
 chairs. He stands on the hearth-rug racking 
 his brains for something complimentary, and 
 -at the same time not too flagrantly untruthful 
 to say about the apartment. As his look 
 wanders round in the vain search for some- 
 thing to commend, it falls on his own flowers, 
 standing in a gaudy jug, and already begin- 
 ning to yellow and shrivel in this atmosphere 
 of gas and mutton. 
 
 " Why do you keep them here ?" he asks
 
 JOAN. 299 
 
 in a discontented voice ; "to be a house of 
 entertainment for every nose in the family. 
 I meant them for you." 
 
 *' Would you like me to keep them in my 
 boudoir "?" she asks, with gentle irony. " Do 
 not you know that poor people must have 
 their luxuries in common ? In poverty there 
 can be no privacy." 
 
 He looks dissatisfied. 
 
 *' This is your only sitting-room, then ?" in 
 a voice out of which he tries to keep the dis- 
 gusted surprise. 
 
 '^ The only one." 
 
 " You all sit in it always ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Mrs. Moberley, the two Misses Moberley, 
 and you V 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " If I came I should find you all here ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 A little pause, Wolferstan's eyes uncom- 
 fortably taking in the full meanness, thread- 
 bareness, vulgarity of the httle room. Then
 
 300 JOAN. 
 
 lie speaks in a low and almost awe-struck 
 key : 
 
 " Every day and all day for the last months 
 and every day and all day for the next 
 month, and the month after that, and the 
 month after that again—" 
 
 "Not all day," she interrupts gently; 
 "sometimes — often ^ I sit in my bed- 
 
 room." 
 
 " By way of an improvement V in quick 
 and ironical interrosfation, 
 
 " I am rubbing up my old learning, such 
 as it is," she answers, smiling a little, " and 
 one must be alone to do that." 
 
 Another little silence, 
 
 " Is this to go on for ever ?" breaks out 
 the young man suddenly, breathing short 
 and quick as if oppressed by some weight 
 (perhaps it is the tallow that is beginning at 
 last to tell upon him). 
 
 " Nothing goes on for * ever," she an- 
 swers gravely. " It is this thought that 
 I think would keep me from being ever too
 
 JOAN. 301 
 
 glad, and that now saves me from being too 
 dismal." 
 
 He has thrown himself on the little sofa, 
 und, with head down bent and hands thrust 
 disconsolately through his hair, is staring 
 blankly at the carpet. He looks so tho- 
 roughly miserable that Mr. Brown, who has 
 a kind heart, goes up and begins to lick the 
 end of his nose to comfort him. 
 
 " Sometimes," continues Joan in her soft 
 sad voice, while her eyes wander idly out 
 through the window to the grass-plot, and 
 the hedge ablaze in new green in the stormy 
 sunshine, " sometimes I Avish that I had 
 come here long ago, when I was a child. 
 Sometimes one seems old at twenty; to 
 change all one's likes and dislikes ; all one's 
 points of view and habits of thought ; but 
 then, again," shaking her head slowly, " I 
 think that — no, it is best as it is ; I have 
 those years always to the good ; they are 
 my honey that I live upon now in this my 
 winter."
 
 302 JOAN. 
 
 He has lifted his head, and as she so- 
 soberly and sweetly speaks, an idiotic and 
 unheard-of lonQ^ing: comes over him to snatch 
 her just as she is, sitting poised on her 
 rickety music-stool in all her forlorn black 
 — to snatch, I say, Mrs. Moberley's niece 
 to his heart, and, piling upon her a hun- 
 dred unseemly fond names, ask her to let 
 him try to make life summer agfain to 
 her. In order to saye himself from jdeld- 
 ing to so absurd an impulse, he gets up 
 hastily and walks to the window. Through 
 his heart is blowing as stormy a wind 
 as that w^hich outside is fiercely show- 
 ino- the underside of all the leaves, and 
 making the tree-tops bow and creak. By- 
 and-by he turns towards her, and speaks 
 abruptly : 
 
 "Which is your chair? which do you 
 usually sit in V 
 
 " That one," she answers, pointing. 
 
 He mistakes the direction of her finger,. 
 and is about to sit down on an apparently
 
 JOAK. 3o;j. 
 
 whole and healthy chair, when the girl's 
 warning cry stops him. 
 
 " Not that one, not that one ! It is not 
 safe, it has only three legs," 
 
 '•' Then why, in Heaven's name, do they 
 keep it T asks Anthony in genuine astonish- 
 ment, eying the decrepit piece of furniture 
 which has so nearly wrought his woe. 
 
 " There are so few without it," replies Joan 
 humbly, looking ruefully round on the poor 
 and scanty household stuff. 
 
 Whether his experience of the one chair 
 has inspired him with a rooted distrust of 
 them all, or Avhether he fears a recurrence of 
 his former undesirable impulse is unknown, 
 but he walks again to the window and watches 
 the Campidoglio cat, who, having made her- 
 self into an arch, and stiffened her tail to the 
 likeness of a poker, is boxing the angry dog's 
 ears. In a moment, however, he utters an 
 exclamation of astonishment. 
 
 " Is it possible T he cries, turning to hur 
 with a vexed expression. " They are back
 
 504 JOAN. 
 
 1 
 
 already — liow quickly they must have walked. 
 They must have 7'un /" 
 
 He says it in all innocence, not in any way 
 connecting their speed wdth himself; but one 
 glance at Joan's confused face, shame- 
 reddened cheeks, and drooped eyes lets light 
 in upon him. It is to make his acquaintance 
 that the dauntless Moberleys have raced 
 through the mire. 
 
 In two minutes they are all in the room 
 — all three — yes, even Mrs. Moberley. If 
 she had taken such violent exercise every 
 da-y for the last ten years, she would not 
 now be the sized Mrs. Moberley that 
 she is. 
 
 " How do you do. Colonel Wolferstan '?" 
 she cries, advancing with right-hand far out- 
 stretched, and as much warmth of oreetinp- 
 as if he Avere a long-lost prodigal son. " Very 
 glad to see you in my house ; though it is the 
 first time, I hope it will not be the last b}^ 
 many ! You do not know^ my girls, I think 1 
 No ? Never happened to meet ? My eldest,"
 
 JOAN. 305 
 
 proudly producing Bell ; " my youngest !" 
 affably indicating Di. 
 
 " We have often felt as if we knew you !" 
 says Bell in a languishing tone, hazarding a 
 glance of sugared bashfulness, "meeting you 
 so often in society." 
 
 '' Speak for yourself, Bell !" says Diana 
 gruffly ; "I never thought that I knew 
 Colonel Wolfe rstan — I always knew that I 
 did not." 
 
 " I hope you will always know me for the 
 future," says Anthony, rather embarrassed 
 between an intense inclination to laugh and 
 as intense a comjDassion for Joan. " For- 
 tunately down here I have not a double as I 
 have in London, where, in consequence, I am 
 mostly cut by the people I know, and greeted 
 by the people I do not know." 
 
 " How awkward !" sis^hs Bell. Her head 
 is still on one side, and her voice like that 
 with which the wedded turtle-dove in the 
 w^ood apostrophises her mate. 
 
 " Micky was in a fine fanteague when we 
 
 VOL. I. 20
 
 306 ' JOAN. 
 
 met him," says Mrs. Moberley in a loud and 
 perfectly audible aside to Joan, " at being left 
 in the lurch. Do not think that I blame you, 
 child," noting the crimson distress of her 
 niece's face, and mistaking the cause ; "do 
 not think that I blame you ! Who would 
 not keep a dry skin if they could ? For my 
 part," turning again to Wolferstan, " I cannot 
 think how you could tear yourself away from 
 Town just at this gay time ; I can assure you 
 that you will find us all as dull as ditch-water." 
 
 " We have not been up at all this year/' 
 says Bell affectedly, as if a season were with 
 her an annual occurrence. 
 
 " We never do !" cries Diana, flushing. 
 "Do you know," lifting a large pair of shy 
 eyes to their guest's face — " do you know that 
 I have never been in London in my life ?" 
 
 " This year, at least, you have no loss," he 
 answers civilly. " The heat has been some- 
 thing unheard of — ninety in the shade the 
 day I came down." 
 
 " You do not say so !" says Mrs. Moberley
 
 JOAN. 307 
 
 in a high staccato key of astonishment. ''We 
 have been regretting that we had put up our 
 furs. We should have had them out again 
 only that it seemed a pity to take them out 
 of the camphor." A moment later : "■ You 
 will stay to din — luncheon, I mean — of course. 
 I must tell Sarah to lay another place ; yuu 
 will hardly believe it, but she would never do 
 it out of her own head." 
 
 She is on her way to the door when, mind- 
 ful of his oath, he arrests her progress. 
 
 " Thank you very much — nothing I should 
 like better ! but I am afraid it is impossible. 
 I — I — have an engagement at home." 
 
 " Now what engagement can you have on 
 a Sunday T asks Mrs. Moberley, with aifec- 
 tionate incredulity. " I will not take ' No !' 
 We can ofter you only a plain roast leg of 
 mutton " — this information at least is need- 
 less — " but I daresay you do not dislike a 
 plain joint for a change !" 
 
 " I love it !" he answers, laughing, thank- 
 ful for even this flimsy excuse to indulge his 
 
 20—2
 
 308 JOAN. 
 
 mirth, which otherwise he feels that he would 
 be constrained to indulge without a pretext. 
 One more glance at the fat pathos of Bell's 
 lackadaisical peony face will, he is aware, be 
 the death of him. But, in mid-mirth, he 
 suddenly stops : he has caught one look of 
 Joan's face — her face of abject entreaty and 
 agonised appeal, and his laughter dies. 
 
 Kebutting with civil persistence the impor- 
 tunities of Mrs, Moberley and of her eldest 
 daughter, he is at leng-th allowed to depart. 
 
 " Well, we do really know him at last !" 
 cries Bell, with a long-drawn breath of 
 triumph, before he is well out of the room ; 
 '' what a mercy the rain was !" 
 
 " He was laughing so that he could hardly 
 speak," says Diana in a mortified tone. '' I 
 watched him down the drive — he was shak- 
 inof all over !" 
 
 As for Joan, she has rushed up to her 
 room, and, flinging herself on the bed, has 
 buried her miserable burnino- face on the 
 little hard pillow.
 
 JOAK. 309 
 
 " It will kill me 1" she says, with strangled 
 sobs — strano'led for fear of beinof heard 
 through the thin floor. " It will kill me ! as 
 long as they did not know him it w^as bear- 
 able — henceforth it will be unbearable !" 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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