“No, Emma, you can’t. I will not be kept halting between two opinions any longer. I want to know what line to take at once.”
“Well, then, on the whole I think that perhaps you had better not ‘wind up the business.’ I very much doubt if anything will come of this. I am by no means certain that I wish anything to come of it, but we will let it remain open.”
“In making that answer, Emma, I suppose that you are bearing in mind that, though I believe it to be all nonsense, the fact is not to be concealed that there is some talk about Graves and Joan Haste.”
“I am bearing it in mind, father. The talk has nothing to do with me. I do not wish to know even whether it is false or true, at any rate at present. True or false, there will be an end of it now, as the girl is going away. I hope that I have made myself clear. I understand that, for reasons of your own, you are very anxious that I should marry Sir Henry Graves, should it come in my way to do so; and I know that his family desire this also, because it would be a road out of their money difficulties. What Sir Henry wishes himself I do not know, nor can I say what I wish. But I think that if I stood alone, and had only myself to consider, I should never see him again. Still I say, let it remain open, although I decline to bind myself to anything definite. And now I must really go and dress.”
“I do not know that I am much ‘for’arder,’ after all, as Samuel Rock says,” thought Mr. Levinger, looking after her. “Oh, Joan Haste! you have a deal to answer for.” Then he also went to dress.
The two interviews in which Emma had taken part this afternoon—that with Joan and that with her father—had, as it were, unsealed her eyes and opened her ears. Now she saw the significance of many a hint of Ellen’s and her father’s which hitherto had conveyed no meaning to her, and now she understood what it was that occasioned the forced manner which had struck her as curious in Henry’s bearing towards herself, even when he had seemed most at his ease and pleased with her. Doubtless the knowledge that he was expected to marry a particular girl, in order that by so doing he might release debts to the amount of fifty thousand pounds, was calculated to cause the manner of any man towards that girl to become harsh and suspicious, and even to lead him to regard her with dislike. This was why he had been forced to leave the Service, for this reason “his family had desired his presence,” and the opening in life, the only one that remained to him, to which he had alluded so bitterly, but significantly enough avoided specifying, was to marry a girl with fortune, to marry her—Emma Levinger.
It was a humiliating revelation, and though perhaps Emma had less pride than most women, she felt it sorely. She was deeply attached to this man; her heart had gone out to him when she first saw him, after the unaccountable fashion that hearts sometimes affect. Still, having learned the truth, she was quite in earnest when she told her father that, were she alone concerned, she would meet him no more. But she was not alone in the matter, and it was this knowledge that made her pause. To begin with, there was Henry himself to be considered, for it seemed that if he did not marry her he would be ruined or something very like it; and, regarding him as she did, it became a question whether she ought not to outrage her pride in order to save him if he would be saved. Also she knew that her father wished for this marriage above all things—that it was, indeed, one of the chief objects of his life; though it was true that in an inexplicable fit of irritation with everything and everybody, he had but now offered to bring the affair to nothing. Why he should be so set upon it she could not understand, any more than she could understand why he should have been so vexed when she illustrated her sense of the hardship of Joan’s position by supposing herself to be similarly placed. These were some of the mysteries by which their life was surrounded, mysteries that seemed to thicken daily. After what she had seen and heard this afternoon she began to believe that Joan Haste herself was another of them. Joan had told her that her father had always been kind to her. Taken by itself there was nothing strange about this, for Emma knew him to be charitable to many people, but it was strange that he should have practically denied all knowledge of the girl some few weeks before. Perhaps he knew more about her than he chose to say—even who she was and where she came from.
Now it appeared that her presentiment was coming true, and that Joan herself was playing some obscure and undefined part in the romance or intrigue in which she, Emma, was the principal though innocent actor. In effect, Joan had given her to understand that she was in love with Henry, and yet she had implored her to marry Henry. Why, if Joan was in love with him, should she desire another woman to marry him? It was positively bewildering, also it was painful, and, like everything else connected with this business, humbling to her pride. She felt herself being involved in a network of passions, motives and interests of which she could only guess the causes, and the issues whereof were dark; and she longed, ah, how she longed to escape from it back into the freedom of clear purpose and honest love! But would she ever escape? Could she ever hope to be the cherished wife of the man whom too soon she had learned to love? Alas! she doubted it. And yet, whatever was the reason, she could not make up her mind to have done with him, either for his sake or her own.
CHAPTER XXI.
A LUNCHEON PARTY.
Two days after her visit to Mr. Levinger Joan began her simple preparations for departure, for it was her intention to leave Bradmouth by the ten o’clock train on the following morning. First, however, after much thought, she wrote this note to Henry: