Harry Joscelyn; vol. 1 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

This was a question which Joan could not answer to herself. She thought over a great many things during the unaccustomed vigil. Never before had her mother’s anxieties and “fuss” appeared as they now did to Joan with a certain amount of reason in them. Certainly father was getting beyond bearing, she said to herself. He was worse the older he grew. She had told him that she was the best servant he had in the house, though she got no wages, and it was true. If she liked “to take a situation” she could earn excellent wages, and get praise instead of abuse for what she did. She was not a person to be put upon in any way, and yet there were times when he “put upon” even her. The contemplation of all this did not move her to any impulses of furious indignation, as Harry was moved, but she thought, lying there in the grey dawn, that it would have to be put a stop to somehow. As for taking a situation, that was out of the question. Joan was a very homely woman, not much better educated than the dairy-maid, and accustomed to none of the softnesses of life, but yet she was Miss Joscelyn of the White House, and nothing could have obliterated from her mind the consciousness of this dignity which gave her nothing, and yet was everything to her. Possessing this rank, it was impossible for her to “take a situation.” She did not mind what she did in her father’s house, but to earn money would have been a degradation. She regretted it even, for she knew very well that she was a capable person, able to “put her hand” to many things; but it was as indisputable as if she had been Princess Royal of an ancient kingdom. Could she have done this, and taken her mother away, and supported her by the work of her own hands, she would have been now wound up to do it; but, as it was impossible, she cast about in her mind what else she could do to mend matters. Father was too bad, there was no denying that; he had gone a great deal too far, and it would not be possible to put up with him much longer. She concocted several speeches to be made to him, but none of them seemed to her sufficient. To be sure, on the other hand, mother would make a fuss. She would not take anything easily. To see her excitement and anxiety over the smallest matters was enough to provoke even a patient temper. She could not take things as they came; that was a kind of excuse, perhaps, for father’s violence. Joan turned over all these things in her mind, as if her parents stood before the bar and it was her business to judge them. A woman of thirty cannot go on with those childish fictions of reverence which make criticism a sin. Indeed, even a child, the youngest, unconsciously criticises as soon as it is able to think, and we are all standing before the most awful of tribunals unawares when we live our lives and show forth our motives before our babies; and Joan had long ceased to be a baby. She saw her father and mother all round, and estimated them calmly. He had not many qualities which were good, perhaps not any at all; she had a great many amiable and tender graces of character of which her daughter was vaguely aware, but she was of a nature which is very provoking to a calm and judicious spirit. Thus Joan saw them as they were, with the clearest impartial vision. What a pity that two such people had married to make each other unhappy! Joan had a sort of impatient feeling that, if she had only been in the world then, she certainly would have done something to prevent the union which had brought her into the world. This was the amusing side of her judicial impartiality. It went the length sometimes of a comical impatience that she had not been there to keep matters straight between them.

All this glanced through her mind as she lay staring at the ceiling, or at the blue square of the window gradually growing more visible. There was no sleep for her that night. The first part of it she had found uncomfortable enough, but sleep had been strong upon her. Now she was comfortable, but had thoroughly shaken off sleep. She thought over all the turmoil of the family, and its agitations. He had never done anything so bad as this before. There had been storms in the house without number, but he had always let the mother smooth things down. He had never shut out any of “the boys,” which was what she called even her brothers who were married and had boys of their own. And Harry was the one most like his mother; most likely to make a fuss and take such an accident in the worst way. Where had Harry gone? What was he doing? Where could he go in the middle of the night?

When she had come back to this subject, Joan felt almost too restless to stay in bed. If she had but thought of it at the time she would have gone after him; she would have prevented him from going away. To think she should have been so overcome by sleep as not to know when Harry had disappeared, or to be aware that he was gone! She turned and twisted about in the self-annoyance caused by this, and could not rest. If she had not been so sleepy, she might have stopped Harry and averted the catastrophe, for she felt vaguely that a catastrophe it was. And what would become of his mother if anything had happened to him? “Tut,” said Joan, to herself, “I am getting as bad as mother herself. There is a bit of mother in me, though I did not think it. What should have happened to him? He’s sound asleep now while I’m moidering myself about him. To be sure he must have knocked somebody up and got a bed somewhere; but in the morning he’ll go over to Will’s, or Tom’s, or even Uncle Henry’s. Things are bad enough as they are. Father’s getting that bad that even me, I can’t put up with him; and mother’s life’s a trouble to her:—and to other folks too,” she added involuntarily, with a quaint, comic twist of her upper lip. But notwithstanding this strong sense in her mind that her mother’s example was not one to follow, and that there was in its pathos a faint touch of the ridiculous, she yet could not succeed in divesting her own mind of uneasiness. As soon as there was light enough to see by she got up, and roused the maids, who were tolerably early risers, but yet were now and then subjected to the ignominy of being called by Miss Joan. “You would sleep if it was the day of judgment,” she cried, standing at the door of the room in which two of them were hastily jumping up, rubbing their eyes. “Why didn’t you get up and let me in last night?”

“Get oop and let ye in?” the women cried aghast.

“I pulled the door upon me when I thought I had left it on the jar,” said Joan, with prompt and unblushing falsehood, “and then I knocked till I thought I should have brought down the house; but not a soul of you stirred—till my poor mother, that is so delicate, got out of her warm bed and opened to me. I would have died of cold but for the copper you lighted last night; and here you are at five o’clock in the morning snoring like all the seven sleepers, and a big washing in hand. Do you mean me to do it myself?”

“But Lord, Miss Joan, what were ye doin’ oot o’ t’ house at night?” said the eldest of the maids.

“That’s none of your business,” said Joan, “and unless you want to see me at the washingtub you had better hurry. What you want with all that sleep, and all that meat, is more than I can tell. I’ll do a better day’s work than the best of you upon half of it. Get up to your washing, ye lazy hussies.” Joan clapped the door with a little noise behind her, so as to obliterate this word, which her grandmother would have used with the greatest openness, but which the progress of civilisation has made less possible even in the free-speaking north; but it relieved her mind to say it, though she took pains that it should not be heard. As for the two women, they laughed with little sound, but much demonstration, when the door was closed; one of them throwing herself upon a chair in convulsions of suppressed mirth. “Auld Joan, t’auld toad, has gotten a lad at last,” they said. The idea that she had been shut out in the cold in this very unusual courtship was such a joke to them as no wit could have equalled. “T’auld Joan!” who was always so much wiser than everybody else, and repressed “lads” with the strong hand. But notwithstanding the excellency of the joke, they made haste to their washing, as Joan was not a person to be trifled with, and soon the scene of her disturbed slumber was full of noise, and bustle, and steam, and all the commotion of a big washing, which always carries with it some features of a Saturnalia. As the big pairs of red arms played in and out of the steam and froth, a continued tempest of talk accompanied the operations; but there were lulls now and then, especially when any new-comer appeared, when the event of the night was communicated in loud whispers, with peals of accompanying laughter. “T’auld Joan’s gotten a lad at last.” “What’s the joke?” she said, on one occasion, coming in abruptly; but this merely threw the company, which was in full enjoyment of the witticism, into wilder convulsions of laughter. Perhaps Joan guessed what it was. “You can have your fun for me, as long as you do your work,” she said. She was not troubled by uneasy suggestions of amour-propre. The maid who did the indoor work did not get off so easily. She made a kind of confession. “I heard t’ master aboot. I durstn’t get oop, and him there; and, Miss Joan, I dunno if you ken—Master Harry’s been oot aw night. His bed’s just as t’was.”

“Mr. Harry’s gone over to his brother’s. He made up his mind only last night,” said Joan, without a wince. When there are domestic strifes going on, the women of the family, always the most anxious to keep scandal silent, have to lie with a composure invincible. Joan was a woman who was true as steel, and would not have told a falsehood on any other occasion for a kingdom; but this kind of lie did not touch her conscience at all. She did not think of it as a falsehood. She was willing even to deliver over her own reputation to the discussion of her servants sooner than let in the light upon the family quarrel. Whether Betty believed her or not was a different matter; at all events here was an explanation. All the little bustle of getting the work of the household set a-going, through which she swept like a whirlwind, amused her mind for the moment, but did not lessen the anxiety, which came back like a flood after this was accomplished, and her own individual part of the morning’s work done. When she got through her dairy occupations the uneasiness overflowed. She took old Simon the cowman into a corner. He was a very old servant of the house and had seen all the children born, and was interested in every one of them and their concerns, and all that had happened to them—of which events he was a walking chronicle. “The year Master Will wan t’ race up at be’castle.” “The year Master Tom broke’s bones in t’ shindy election-time.” These were his dates. He was an old bachelor, and it was believed that he had not another thought but the house and what went on within it. Joan took him aside into a corner of the wealthy but not very tidy yard, which was his domain. “I want you to do a message for me, Simon, something I wouldn’t ask another man about the place to do.”

Simon gave her an acute, but slightly wondering, glance out of the old blue eyes, which kept their youthful hue, though they had lost their clearness, and which looked out of an old face, brightly tinted with fine hues of crimson and orange. The old man was, an æsthetic person would have said, a glorious bit of colour. The orange and the crimson were almost pure tints in his old weather-beaten countenance, and his eyes, though they were old, were of a kind of china-blue. He had a quantity of somewhat ragged, yet venerable white hair, and stooped a little, but trudged along with his stick as quickly as any younger man about, and was perfectly hale and vigorous. He had all his wits about him, though he was old. He looked at Joan keenly, yet with a dubious gleam in his eyes. He had heard already—who had not?—that Joan, Joan herself, the judge of everybody, had been out at the door courtin’, and had been shut out. His glance meant a question; was it possible that she meant to employ him as her messenger to the lover who was so mysterious and incredible a personage, and about whom already “aw t’ house” had been exercised to know who he could possibly be?

“I’ll do my best,” he said, taking off his hat with a rustic impulse to scratch his head, a process which seems to have been considered good for the brains since the world began.