“I’d give my right hand to help you, my dear, if it would be any good,” said Marian brokenly.
“Do you really care about me still?” asked Joan, with a momentary touch of curiosity. “I wonder you did not keep me, then, instead of giving me away. Of course I know that you had no money; but poor people don’t always give their children away in that fashion, directly they are in difficulties. It seems such an extraordinary thing to have done. I can’t understand it at all, and other people can’t either. Everybody says how wrong you were.”
Marian moved her head in mute, sorrowful assent.
“That is all over now, and can’t be helped,” pursued Joan. “I only want you just to see that it is not anybody’s doing except yours—that of course life is quite altered both for you and me by it. I want to speak to you now about my father. Since he heard all this from Mr. Brooke—my grandfather—he has been very unhappy and worried. It is making him ill again. He seems to think that you have a first right to me. He seems to think I am wrong not to be willing to leave him, and to live with you. As if I could!” Joan cried passionately. “He is everything to me—dearer than all the world. And you are only a stranger. You turned me off when I was a little helpless child, and gave up your right, and now you cannot take it back; anybody must see that. The very idea is absurd. But father’s head is weak since his accident, and he cannot grasp things as he used to do. If a fancy takes hold of him, he has no power to shake it off. And he has got this thought into his head, and nothing that I can say makes him feel differently. It is his illness, the doctor says, and the worry and unhappiness are wearing him out, and I have come to you for help. I think you ought to be willing to do this one thing for me, when you remember hew very much I owe to dear, dear father. It is only just that you should.”
“He would give you up to me!” Marian spoke faintly. Tears ceased, and she sat down in one of the stiff-backed chairs, looking straight before her. “He would give you up! That’s more than I dared to reckon on.”
“It is illness only,” repeated Joan, not quite catching the words spoken. “He would not have such an idea in his mind if he were strong and well. For, of course, I am his now—not yours—only his! I belong to him and to nobody else. But he is weak and ill, and he has this worry in his mind, that perhaps he ought to give me back to you, and he cannot shake it off.”
Joan stopped, struck with her mother’s look. Those gray eyes were gazing hungrily at her. In truth a sharp temptation had all at once assailed Marian, in the hour of her fancied strength. What if she took George Rutherford at his word? What if she accepted his offer, and demanded her Joan?
“Of course the idea is ridiculous,” Joan said coldly, with a change of manner. “I am of age now—not a child to be given away. Father knows that, and he will not force me to leave him. If he did, I would not live with you. I would earn my living elsewhere. But I have come to you to-day, because mother and I are so anxious about dear father, and I thought you would help me. I thought you might be willing to put matters straight—to tell father that he has every right to keep me, and that of course you could never think of asking me back. That is all I want. It is little enough—after the past! And I fancied you might perhaps care enough about my happiness to do it; I felt almost sure you would.”
Did she not care enough for Joan? Marian could only make a faint, wordless sound, and Joan went on: “Father has this constantly in his mind, and it weighs him down. It is making him worse, and the doctor says something must be done. I thought you would tell him—or write a letter to him—just saying that you do not want me, do not expect ever to have me back. That would put his mind at rest, and nothing else would in the same way.”
Marian was silent.