CHAPTER VI
JOAN REBELLIOUS
Joan, more or less recovered from her indisposition, still looked upon the world as a place from which all happiness had for ever fled. She mooned about the house doing nothing, and only felt that youth had not altogether departed from her when she was with her mother, who, in her calm stability, was a refuge from the buffetings of life, but seemed to be holding aloof from the troubles she must have known her girl to be undergoing.
Dick had gone up to Yorkshire to shoot with John Spence, and taken Virginia and Nancy with him. The invitation had been extended to Joan; but the Squire had said, with what she felt to be treacherous affection, "Surely, you're not both going to desert your old father!" and she had refused; partly because she had dreaded lest acceptance should bring down upon her a direct prohibition, and the obliquity of a parent, whom she still wished to respect if she could, would stand revealed in all its nakedness; partly because Nancy had given her no encouragement, and as things were between them, it would be a relief to be apart for a time. Her mother had said nothing to influence her either way.
Walter had taken his wife and children back to London, leaving Bobby Trench in the care of the local surgeon. Frank had gone back to Greenwich, where he was taking a course. Humphrey and Susan were paying a flying visit to Hampshire, to arrange about the work to be done at Denny Croft. But there would be a mild recrudescence of Christmas gaieties in a week's time, when there was to be another ball, for which most of the party would reassemble.
Joan was sitting in the schoolroom, feeling very low and miserable, and wondering what was coming of it all, when she was surprised by the entrance of her father, who visited this quarter of the house at intervals so rare as to have permitted it to assume the character of a retreat.
"Well, my girl," he said paternally. "The house seems so empty that I thought I'd come up for a little chat."
It was the hour when Mrs. Clinton visited her recumbent guest, leaving the nurse free for an airing. Joan had occasionally accompanied her in her walks, but found them too apt to be filled with talk about her patient, couched in such laudatory language that Joan suspected the patient of having taken her into his confidence. In justice to him it must be said that the suspicion was unfounded, and in justice to the nurse that she had eyesight not less acute than the rest of her sex.
There were times when Joan felt drawn to put her head on her father's broad shoulder, and receive the protective petting which in his milder moods he was as capable of administering as the most consistently doting of parents. This would have been one of those times if it had been possible to regard him as the solace as well as the occasion of her trouble. But enough of the impulse remained to cause her to welcome him with a sense of forgiveness, and to make room for him by her side on the broad sofa.
He would have done well to respond to the movement, but, instead, he took up his attitude of harangue in front of her, with his back to the fire, and cleared his throat. She saw what was coming, and stiffened.
"Well, we shall have our invalid downstairs to-morrow," he made his clumsy opening. "Wonderful recovery! 'Pon my word I'm beginning to think that we shall see Walter a medical knight and I don't know what all, before we're much older."
"I dare say it wasn't so bad, after all, as it was thought to be," said Joan. "Men make such a fuss about a little pain. Women bear it much better."
This speech caused the Squire to bend his brows upon her, traversing as it did all the traditions in which she had been brought up as to the relative values of the sexes, and challenging that prompt verbal chastisement with which precocious rebellion must be dealt with, if those values were to be preserved in his own household. But Joan's eyes were downcast, and he took warning, without perceiving its source, from a certain angle between the lines of her neck and her back, not to pursue a by-path which would draw him—might indeed have been opened up to draw him—from the road he had sought her out to pursue.
"Well, that's as may be," he said, dismissing the offence; "but the pain has been borne well enough by this particular man; and if a charge of shot at such close quarters that it lays bare the bone and splinters it isn't pretty serious, I don't know what is. Walter told me that he would never be able to raise that arm above his shoulder again, however well it might heal."
Joan shuddered at the staring picture, and felt herself convicted of brutal callousness.
"However," proceeded her father, who might advantageously have left an interval for his words to make their effect, "the worst is over now, and we ought to do what we can to cheer him up and help him to forget it. It's been pretty dull for him, lying there, mostly alone. Your mother has seen fit to object for some reason or other to your paying him a visit in his room, though I think those ideas can be carried too far, and there couldn't be any harm in it, especially as he's now on the sofa."
Then her mother was on her side, although she had said nothing to her. Joan perceived quite plainly that her father had asked that she might be taken to see Bobby Trench, and her mother had refused, as she sometimes did refuse the requests of her lord and master, but only if she considered them quite beyond reason. Joan was drawn to one parent, and all the more set against the other.
"I don't like Mr. Trench," she said. "I shouldn't have gone to see him, even if mother had said I might; unless she had said that I must."
"Well, she wouldn't be likely to say that, if you didn't want to," said the Squire, determined to keep the interview on a note of mild reasonableness, in spite of provocation. "But now, I should like to know why you have taken a dislike to young Trench. I saw nothing of it when he was here before."
"You told me, after he had come here in the summer, that I had been making too free with him, and that you didn't want me to have anything to do with young cubs like that; and that if I wasn't careful how I behaved I should find myself back in the schoolroom with Miss Phipp."
The Squire had an uneasy feeling that he had given his younger daughters too much rope, and should have to bring them up with a round turn one of these days. But this was not the occasion.
"Well, I remember I did say something of the sort," he said. "I was upset by that Amberley business, and I've never gone back from the view I took then that if you had behaved sensibly you need never have been brought into it at all."
"How could I have helped it, father?"
"How could you have helped it? Why—— But I don't want to go into all that again. It's over and done with, thank God, and we can put it out of our minds."
"I'm sure I don't want to talk about it. But it's rather hard to know what to do, when you scold me for having anything to do with Mr. Trench one day, and want to know why I won't have anything to do with him the next."
It was probably at this moment that the Squire realised that his daughter was grown up. She spoke to him as his sons were accustomed to speak, with an offhand air of equality, to which, in them, he did not object. It was not, however, fitting in his eyes that he should be thus addressed by Joan, and he turned aside from his purpose to say, "I'm sure you don't mean to be impertinent, but that's not the way to speak to your father. Besides—one day and the next day! That's nonsense, you know. It must be over six months since I said whatever it was I did say, and you were a good deal younger then."
"I was six months younger—that's all."
"Well, six months is six months; and a good deal can happen in six months. I've nothing to regret in what I said six months ago, except that I may have said it rather more strongly than I need have done, annoyed as I was."
"Then you don't think that Mr. Trench was really a young cub, after all?"
"I wish you wouldn't keep on repeating those words. They are not words for you to say, whatever I may say. But if you ask me a plain question, and put it properly, I don't mind telling you that I was to a certain extent mistaken in young Trench. He has a way with him, on the surface, that I didn't care about, though I don't know that it means anything more than that he has naturally high spirits, which are not a bad thing to have when you are young."
"But he isn't so very young. He must be at least thirty-five. I think his way is a very silly way, and he is quite old enough to know better."
It was a choice of repeating her words, "You think!" and going on to explain with strong irritability that it didn't matter what she thought; or swallowing the offence. For he could not very well follow his inclination to upbraid, without seriously impairing his efficacy for reasoning with her. He chose the latter course.
"A man of thirty-five is a young man in these days, especially if he has led an active, temperate, open-air life, as young fellows in good circumstances do lead now-a-days."
"But I thought one of your objections to him was that he lived too much in London."
He waved the interruption aside. "Even people who live for the most part in London—work there, perhaps—well, like Walter does—have a taste for country life, and go in for sport and so forth whenever they have the opportunity. In the old days it wasn't so. There was a story of some big political wig—I forget who it was—Fox or Walpole or Pitt, or one of those fellows—who had the front of his country house paved with cobble stones, and made them drive carriages about half the night whenever he had to be there, so as to make him think he was in St. James's, with the hackney-coaches. Said he couldn't sleep otherwise. Ha, ha!"
"What a good idea!" said Joan, brightening to an opportunity of diverting the conversation. "I think stories about people in the eighteenth century are awfully interesting. Father, you have books of reminiscences about them in the library, haven't you?"
"Oh yes. Your great grandfather used to read them. He knew Fox; saw him come into the Cocoa-Tree one night and call for a bumper of—— However, that's not what we were talking about. But it's got this much to do with it, that men like Fox were looked upon as middle-aged men at five and thirty, and old men, by George, at fifty; but a man of thirty-five now is a young man, and it's all owing to the revival of country life and country sport, which, as I say, everybody who is anybody takes part in now-a-days, whether he's a Londoner or not."
"Yes, I see. But I like the people who live regularly in the country, like you, and Dick, and Jim. I think it's much the best life for a man, and a girl too. I should like to live it always, myself."
"Yes, well, I hope you will—for a good part of the year, at any rate. Of course, you can't expect to live at home—here at Kencote, I mean—all your life. You're grown up, now, and when young fledglings feel their wings, you know, the parent birds must make up their minds to lose them out of the nest."
"But they would like to keep them if they could. You don't want to lose me, father, do you?"
She looked up at him for the first time, and he was checked in the march of his desires. A doubt came to him whether he did want her to leave the nest just yet awhile. It was so very short a time since he had looked upon her and Nancy as still children, hardly longer, indeed, as it seemed, since they had made their somewhat disconcerting arrival, and from being a laughable addition to his family, of which he had been the least little bit ashamed, had found their way to his heart, and sensibly heightened the already strong attraction of his home. If Nancy was about to leave him, as to his great surprise he had recently heard was likely to happen, and to take just the kind of husband whom he had always desired for his daughters, could he not make up his mind to forego for a few years the advantages held out to Joan, who had always been a little closer to the centre of his heart? Was it so very important that she should marry a man of rank, if he took the form of Bobby Trench, when there were men like John Spence—good, honest, well-born, wealthy country gentlemen, men after his own heart—who were ready to come forward in due time?
These questions presented themselves to him in the form of an uneasy feeling that he might find himself obliged to change his course, if he should consider them carefully. He therefore shut his mind to them as quickly as possible; for there is nothing a hasty obstinate character dislikes more than to be compelled to prove himself in the wrong. When others try to prove him in the wrong, he can stand up to them.
"My dear child," he said, "of course I don't want to lose you. But when one is getting on in years, you know—not that I'm an old man—hope to have many years in front of me yet, please God—one doesn't live only in the present. You look forward into the future, and you like to see your children married and settled down before the time comes when you must get ready to go. And now we've got on to the subject of marrying and settling down, I just want to say a word to you which you mustn't misunderstand, or think I'm trying in any way to influence you, which is the very last thing I should wish to do—but as a father one is bound to put these matters in a light—not the most important light perhaps, but still one that a young girl can hardly be expected to take much into consideration herself—it wouldn't be advisable that she should. In short—well, now we are on the subject—this very young man—young Trench, whom we've been discussing, as it turns out—er—— This is what I want to say to you—that I've reason to believe that—er—there's a certain young lady—ha! ha! that he'd like to marry and settle down with, and—er——"
"But wasn't that exactly what you came upstairs to say to me, father?" asked Joan, with innocent open eyes, inwardly girding herself to contempt against this transparent duplicity, and hardening herself to make it as uncomfortable as possible for him to say what he had to say, even to the point of exhibiting herself as almost immodestly experienced.
He stared at her. "What!" he exclaimed. "You have had it in your mind all along?"
"You put it there, father," she retorted. "I'm grown up now. I've got eyes in my head. I knew there must be some reason for your making mother ask him here, when she dislikes him just as much as I do, and after you had always said that you disliked him just as much, or more."
He gulped down oceans of displeasure and inclination to rebuke. "Now look here," he said. "Let's have no more harping on that string, and no more silly and undutiful speeches. You say you are grown-up. Very well, then, you can listen to sense; and you can talk sense if you wish it. I've already said that young Trench displeased me when he stayed here before; and, as you keep on reminding me, I said so at the time pretty plainly. It's my custom to speak plainly, and I've nothing to regret in that. If he acted in the same way now, I should object just as strongly. But the whole point is that he would not act in the same way now. It is not I that have changed; it is he. Perhaps you're right, to a certain extent, in saying that he was old enough to know better. But a young fellow in his position is apt to keep on sowing his wild oats when others who have to begin to take a serious view of life more early have left off doing it. Anyhow, he has left off doing it now. He told me himself, and I was gratified to hear it, that seeing how life went in a house like this turned him round to see that he had been playing the fool. There's nothing wrong with him at bottom, any more than there is anything wrong with Humphrey, who played the fool in much the same way for years after he ought to have done, but has come to see you can't go on playing the fool all your life, and is now quite ready to settle down in a sensible way. You'll find when you come to talk to young Trench—when he comes down to-morrow—that——"
"I'm not going to talk to him," Joan interrupted. "I don't like him."
Well, really! Was it possible to talk sensibly to women at all? Would the clearest logic and reason weigh a grain against their obstinate likes and dislikes? Was it worth while going on?
"Are you going to listen to what I have to say, or not?" he asked impatiently. "Or do you want to be——"
"Sent to bed?" Joan took him up. "Yes, father, I think you had better send me to bed. I know I'm being a very naughty girl, but you won't make me like Mr. Trench, however long you talk."
"You are naughty. You are laying yourself out to annoy me. There is no question of my making you like Mr. Trench, and you know that as well as I do. I am simply asking you to behave with ordinary courtesy to a visitor in my house, who has been seriously hurt in coming to the rescue of my own men—and in the pluckiest way too, and might very well have been killed. Is that too much to expect my own daughter to do, I should like to know, or——?"
"Oh no, father. Of course I shall be polite. I didn't know that was all you wanted."
"Yes, it is all I want. You are taking up a most extraordinary and unwarrantable position. Anyone would think, to hear you talk, that I had come up here to order you to marry young Trench out of hand. You see how outrageous it sounds when you put it plainly."
"Yes, I know it does; but I thought it was what you meant."
"Well, then, it is not what I meant, or anything like it. I'm the last man in the world who would put any pressure on his daughters to marry anybody; and when no word of marriage has been mentioned it seems to me indelicate in the highest degree for a girl as young as you to be turning it over and discussing it in the open way you do. It's what comes of letting you gad about here and there and everywhere, amongst all sorts of people; and I tell you I won't have it."
Joan was enchanted. His leg was over the back of his favourite horse now, and she only had to give it a flick in the flank to set it galloping off with him.
"But, father dear, I haven't been gadding about. It is six months and more since I went to Brummels; and I'm sure I never want to go there again, after all you said about it, and the people I met there."
He reined in. The course was too difficult. "You're in a very tiresome and obstinate mood," he said, "and I don't like it. I come up here to spend a quiet half-hour with you, and you do nothing but set yourself to annoy me. But there's one thing I insist upon; I won't have you making yourself disagreeable to a guest in my house. When young Trench comes downstairs to-morrow, it's our common duty to cheer him up and try to make up to him for all he has gone through on our account. And you have got to do your share of it, and Nancy too, when she comes home. Now do you quite understand that?"
"Oh yes, father," said Joan. "I quite understand that."
"Very well, then. Mind you do it."
With which words the Squire left the room with an air of victory.