“I do not suppose that I shall ever marry him, but I don’t care now: whatever comes I have had my hour, and after this and the rest I can never quite lose him—no, not through all eternity.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Joan,” said Mrs. Bird, who did not understand what she meant. “Not marry him, indeed!— why shouldn’t you?”
“Because something is sure to prevent it. Besides, it would be wrong of me to do so. Letting other things alone, he must marry a rich woman, not a penniless girl like me.”
“Oh! stuff and nonsense with your ‘rich woman’: the man who’ll go for money when he can get love isn’t worth a row of pins, say I; and this one isn’t of that sort, or he would never have written such a letter.”
“He can get both love and money,” answered Joan; “and it isn’t for himself that he wants the money—it is to save his family. He had an elder brother who brought them to ruin, and now he’s got to set them up again by taking the girl who holds the mortgages, and who is in love with him, as his wife—at least, I believe that’s the story, though he never told it me himself.”
“A pretty kettle of fish, I am sure. Now look here, Joan, don’t you talk silly, but listen to me, who am older than you are and have seen more. It isn’t for me to blame you, but, whatever was the truth of it, you’ve done what isn’t right, and you know it. Well, it has pleased God to be kind to you and to show you a way out of a mess that most girls never get clear of. Yes, you can become an honest woman again, and have the man you love as a husband, which is more than you deserve perhaps. What I have to say is this: don’t you be a fool and cut your own throat. These money matters are all very well, but you have got nothing to do with them. You get married, Joan, and leave the rest to luck; it will come right in the end. If there’s one thing that’s more of a vanity than any other in this wide world, it is scheming and plotting about fortunes and estates and suchlike, and in nine cases out of ten the woman who goes sacrificing herself to put cash into her lover’s pocket or her own either for that matter does him no good in the long run, but just breaks her heart for nothing, and his too very likely. There, that’s my advice to you, Joan; and I tell you that if I thought that you would go on as you have begun and make this man a bad wife, I shouldn’t be the one to give it. But I don’t think that, dear. No; I believe that you would be as good as gold to him, and that he’d never regret marrying you, even though he is a baronet and you are what you are.”
“Oh! indeed I would,” said Joan.
“Don’t say ‘indeed I would,’ dear; say ‘indeed I shall,’ and mind you stick to it. And now I hear the nurse coming back, and it is time for me to go and see about your dinner. Don’t you fuss and make yourself ill again, or she won’t be able to go away to-morrow, you know. I shall just write to this gentleman and say that he can come and see you about next Friday; so mind, you’ve got to be well by then. Good-bye.”
Weak as she was still from illness, when her first wild joy had passed a great bewilderment took possession of Joan.
As her body had been brought back to the fulness of life from the very pit of death, so the magic of Henry’s letter changed the blackness of her despair to a dawn of hope, by contrast so bright that it dazzled her mind. She had no recollection of writing the letter to which Henry alluded; indeed, had she been herself she would never have written it, and even now she did not know what she had told him or what she had left untold. What she was pleased to consider his goodness and generosity in offering to make her his wife touched her most deeply, and she blessed him for them, but neither the secret pleading of her love nor Mrs. Bird’s arguments convinced her that it would be right to take advantage of them. The gate of what seemed to be an earthly paradise was of a sudden thrown open to her feet: behind her lay solitude, sorrow, sin and agonising shame, before her were peace, comfort, security, and that good report which every civilised woman must desire; but ought she to enter by that gate? A warning instinct answered “No,” and yet she had not strength to shut it. Why should she, indeed? If she might judge the future from the past, Fate would do her that disservice; such happiness could not be for one so wicked. Yet till the blow fell she might please her fancy by standing upon the threshold of her heaven, and peopling the beyond with unreal glories which her imagination furnished without stay or stint. She was still too weak to struggle against the glamour of these visions, for that they could become realities Joan did not believe, rather did she submit herself to them, and satisfy her soul with a false but penetrating delight, such as men grasp in dreams. Of only one thing was she sure that Henry loved her and in that knowledge, so deep was her folly, she found reward for all she had undergone, or that could by any possibility be left for her to undergo; for had he not loved her, as she believed, he would never have offered to marry her. He loved her, and she would see him; then things must take their chance, meanwhile she would rest and be content.