Joan Haste

by H. Rider Haggard

“Her name is Joan Haste.”

“Joan Haste? What! the girl at the inn? The bastard! My son, my only remaining son, denies his dying father, and brings his mother and his name to disgrace and ruin, because he is bound in honour to a village bastard!” he screamed. “Oh, my God! that I should have lived to hear this! Oh, my God! my God!”

And suddenly the old man flung his arms wide and fell back. Lady Graves and Ellen ran to him. Presently the former came away from the bed.

“Your father is dead, Henry,” she said. “Perhaps, after what has passed, you will feel that this is no fit place for you. I will ring for some one to take you to your room.”

But the last bitterness of these words, so awful from a mother’s lips, was spared to Henry, for he had swooned. As he sank into unconsciousness a solemn voice seemed to speak within his tortured brain, and it said, “Behold the firstfruits of iniquity.”

Henry did not attend his father’s funeral, for the good reason that he was ill in bed. In the first place, though he made light of it at the time, that slip of his on the stone steps had so severely affected his broken limb as to necessitate his lying by for at least another month; and in the second he had received a shock to his nerves, healthy as they were, from which he could not hope to recover for many a month. He was kept informed of all that went on by Thomson, the old butler, for neither his mother nor Ellen came near him during those dark days. He heard the footsteps of the carpenter who measured his father’s body, he heard the coffin being brought upstairs; and the day afterwards he heard the shuffling tramp of the tenants, who, according to ancient custom, bore down the corpse of the dead owner of Rosham to lie in state in the great hall. He heard the workmen nailing the hatchment of the departed baronet beneath his window; and then at last a day came when he heard a noise of the rolling wheels of carriages, and the sound of a church bell tolling, as his father was laid to rest among the bones of his ancestors.

So bitter was the resentment against him, that none had asked Henry to look his last upon his father’s face. For a while he thought it better that he should not do so, but on the second night after the death nature grew too strong for him, and he determined to do that alone which, under happier circumstances, it should have been his duty to do with his widowed mother and his sister at his side. Painfully he dragged himself from the bed, and, placing a candle and a box of matches in the pocket of his dressing-gown, he limped upon his crutches across the silent corridor and into the death-chamber, where the atmosphere was so heavy with the scent of flowers that for a moment it brought back his faintness. Recovering himself, he closed the door and made shift to light his candle. Then by its solitary light he approached the bed on which his father’s corpse was lying, half hidden by wreaths and covered with a sheet. With a trembling hand he drew down the wrapping and exposed the dead man’s face. It was calm enough now: there was no trace there of the tormenting grief that had been upon it in the moment of dissolution; it bore the seal of perfect peace, and, notwithstanding the snowy hair, a more youthful aspect than Henry could remember it to have worn, even in the days of his childhood.

In sad and solemn silence Henry gazed upon the clay that had given him life, and great bitterness and sorrow took hold of him. He covered his eyes with his hand, and prayed that God might forgive him for the pain which he had caused his father in his last hour, and that his father might forgive him too in the land where all things are understood, for there he would learn that he could not have spoken otherwise. Well, he was reaping as he had sown, and there remained nothing to him except to make amendment as best he could. Then with a great effort he dragged himself up upon the bed, and kissed his father’s forehead.

Having replaced the sheet, he extinguished the candle and turned to leave the room. As he opened the door he saw a figure draped in black, who stood in the passage listening. It was his mother. She advanced towards him with a cold, sad mien, and opened her lips as though to speak. Then the light fell upon his face, and she saw that it was torn by grief and stained with tears, and her look softened, for now she understood something of what her son’s sufferings must be. Still she did not speak, and in silence, except for the tapping of his crutches on the polished floor, Henry passed her with bowed head, and reached his room again.

In due course the family returned from the funeral, and, outwardly at any rate, a break occurred in the conspiracy of silence and neglect of which Henry was the object, for it was necessary that he should be present at the reading of the will. This ceremony took place in the bedroom of the new baronet, and gathered there were a representative from the London firm of lawyers that had managed, or mismanaged, the Graves’s affairs for several generations, the widow, Ellen, and Edward Milward. Bowing gravely to Sir Henry, the lawyer broke the seals of the document and began the farce for a farce it was, seeing that the will had been signed nearly five-and-twenty years before, when the position of the family was very different. After reciting the provisions of the entail that, by the way, had long been cut under which his deceased brother Reginald should have entered into the enjoyment of all the land and hereditaments and the real property generally, with remainder to his children, or, in the event of his death without issue, to Henry, the testator went on to deal with the jointure of the widow, which was fixed at eight hundred a year in addition to the income arising from her own fortune, that, alas! had long since been lost or muddled away. Then it made provision for the younger children,—ten thousand to Henry and eight thousand to Ellen,—to be paid out of the personalty, or, should this prove insufficient, to be raised by way of rent-charge on the estate, as provided for under the marriage settlement of Sir Reginald and his wife; and, after various legacies and directions as to the disposal of heirlooms, ended by constituting Reginald, or, in the event of his death without issue, Henry, residuary legatee.