Joan Haste

by H. Rider Haggard

From the father his thoughts travelled to the daughter. It was strange that she should have produced so slight an impression upon him when he had met her nearly two years before. Either she was much altered, or his appreciative powers had developed. Certainly she impressed him now. There was something very striking about this frail, flaxen-haired girl, whose appearance reminded him of a Christmas rose. It seemed odd that such a person could have been born of a mother of common blood, as he understood the late Mrs. Levinger to have been, for Emma Levinger looked “aristocratic” if ever woman did. Moreover, it was clear that she lacked neither intellect nor dignity—her conversation, and the way in which she had met the impertinences of the insufferable Milward, proved it.

This was the lady whom Ellen had declared to be “half in love with him.” The idea was absurd, and the financial complications which surrounded her repelled him, causing him to dismiss it impatiently. Yet, as Henry followed Mr. Levinger’s example and went to bed, a voice in his heart told him that a worse fate might befall a man.

CHAPTER VII.
A PROPOSAL AND A DIFFERENCE.

The morrow was a Sunday, when, according to immemorial custom, everybody belonging to Rosham Hall was expected to go to church once in the day—a rule, however, from which visitors were excused. Henry made up his mind that Mr. Levinger and his daughter would avail themselves of this liberty of choice and stay at home. There was something so uncommon about both of them that he jumped to the conclusion that they were certainly agnostics, and in all probability atheists. Therefore he was somewhat surprised when at breakfast he heard Mr. Levinger making arrangements to be driven to the church—for, short as was the distance, it was farther than he could walk—and Emma announced her intention of accompanying him.

Henry walked down to church by himself, for Sir Reginald had driven with his guests and his mother and sister were not going until the afternoon. Finding the three seated in the front pew of the nave, he placed himself in that immediately behind, where he thought that he would be more comfortable, and the service began. It was an ordinary country service in an ordinary country church celebrated by an ordinary rather long-winded parson: conditions that are apt to cause the thoughts to wander, even in the best regulated mind. Although he did his utmost to keep his attention fixed, for it was characteristic of him that even in such a matter as the listening to ill-sung psalms his notions of duty influenced him, Henry soon found himself lost in reflections. We need not follow them all, since, wherever they began, they ended in the consideration of the father and daughter before him, and of all the circumstances connected with them. Even now, while the choir wheezed and the clergyman droned, the respective attitudes of these two struck him as exceedingly interesting. The father followed every verse and every prayer with an almost passionate devotion, that afforded a strange insight into an unsuspected side of his character. Clearly, whatever might have been the sins of his youth, he was now a religious devotee, or something very like it, for Henry felt certain that his manner was not assumed.

With Emma it was different. Her demeanour was one of earnest and respectful piety—a piety which with her was obviously a daily habit, since he noticed that she knew all the canticles and most of the psalms by heart. As it chanced, the one redeeming point in the service was the reading of the lessons. These were read by Sir Reginald Graves, whose fine voice and impressive manner were in striking contrast to the halting utterance of the clergyman. The second lesson was taken from perhaps the most beautiful of the passages in the Bible, the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, wherein the Apostle sets out his inspired vision of the resurrection of the dead and of the glorious state of them who shall be found alive in it. Henry, watching Emma’s face, saw it change and glow as she followed those immortal words, till at the fifty-third verse and thence to the end of the chapter it became alight as though with the effulgence of a living faith within her. Indeed, at the words “for this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality,” it chanced that a vivid sunbeam breaking from the grey sky fell full upon the girl’s pale countenance and spiritual eyes, adding a physical glory to them, and for one brief moment making her appear, at least in his gaze, as though some such ineffable change had already overtaken her, and the last victory of the spirit was proclaimed in her person.

‘A vivid sunbeam ... fell upon the girl’s pale countenance.’

Henry looked at her astonished; and since in his own way he lacked neither sympathy nor perception, in that instant he came to understand that this woman was something apart from all the women whom he had known—a being purer and sweeter, partaking very little of the nature of the earth. And yet his sister had said that she was half in love with him! Weighing his own unworthiness, he smiled to himself even then, but with the smile came a thought that he was by no means certain whether he was not “half in love” with her himself.