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.