‘“My name? Oh! my name!” gasped Joan.’
Joan listened to this long address in amazement mingled with scorn. It would be hard to say which of its qualities disgusted her the most—its coarseness, its cunning, or its avarice. Above all these, however, it revolted her to learn that her aunt thought her capable of conceiving and carrying out so disgraceful a plot. What must the woman’s mind be like, that she could imagine such evil in others? And what had she, Joan, ever done, that she should be so misunderstood?
“I don’t understand you, aunt: I don’t wish to marry Captain Graves,” she said simply.
“Do you mean to tell me that you ain’t blind gone on him, and that he’s not gone on you, Joan?”
“I said that I did not wish to marry him,” she answered, evading the question. “To marry a girl like me would be the ruin of him.”
Mrs. Gillingwater stared at her niece as she lay on the bed before her; then she burst into a loud laugh.
“Oho! you’re a simple one, you are,” she said, pointing her finger at her. “You’re downright innocent, if ever a girl was, with your hands folded and your hair hanging about your face, like a half-blown angel, more fit for a marble monument than for this wicked world. You couldn’t give anybody a kiss on the quiet, could you? Your lips would blush themselves off first, wouldn’t they? And as for marrying him if his ma didn’t like it, that you’d never, never do. I’ll tell you what it is, Joan: I’m getting a better opinion of you every day; you ain’t half the fool I thought you, after all. You remember what I said to you about Samuel, and you think that I’ve got his money in my pocket and other people’s too perhaps, and that I’m just setting a trap for you and going to give you away. Well, as a matter of fact I wasn’t this time, so you might just as well have been open with me. But there you are, girl: go about your own business in your own fashion. I see that you can be trusted to look after yourself, and I won’t spoil sport. I’ve been blind and deaf and dumb before now—yes, blinder than you think, perhaps, for all your psalm-singing air—and I can be again. And now I’m off; only I tell you fair I won’t work for nothing, so don’t you begin to whine about poor relations when once you’re married, else I may find a way to make it hot for you yet, seeing that there’s things you mightn’t like spoken of when you’re ‘my lady’ and respectable.” And with this jocular threat on her lips Mrs. Gillingwater vanished.
When her aunt had gone, Joan drew the sheet over her face as though she sought to hide herself, and wept in the bitterness of her shame. She was what she was; but did she deserve to be spoken to like this? She would rather a hundred times have borne her aunt’s worst violence than be made the object of her loathly compliments. How much did this woman know? Surely everything, or she would not dare to address her as she had done. She had no longer any respect for her, and that must be the reason of her odious assumption that there was nothing to choose between them, that they were equal in evil. She would not believe her when she said that she had no wish to marry Henry—she thought that the speech was dictated by a low cunning like her own. Well, perhaps it was fortunate that she did not believe her; for, if she had, what would have happened?
Very soon it became clear to Joan that on this point it would be best not to undeceive her aunt, since to do so might provoke some terrible catastrophe of which she could not foresee the consequences. After further reflection, another thing became clear to her: that she must vanish from Bradmouth. What was truth and what was falsehood in Mrs. Gillingwater’s story, she could not say, but obviously it contained an alloy of fact. There had been some quarrel between Henry and his dying father, and in that quarrel her name had been mentioned. Strange as it seemed, it might even be that he had declared an intention of marrying her. Now that she thought of it, she remembered that he had spoken of such a thing several times. The idea opened new possibilities to her—possibilities of a happiness of which she had not dared to dream; but, to her honour be it said, she never allowed them to take root in her mind—no, not for a single hour. She knew well what such a marriage would mean for Henry, and that was enough. She must disappear; but whither? She had no means and no occupation. Where, then, could she go?
For two or three days she stayed in her room, keeping her aunt as much at a distance as possible, and pondering on these matters, but without attaining to any feasible solution of them.