MR. PUNCH'S PRIZE NOVELS.
No. III.—JOANNA OF THE CROSS WAYS.
(By GEORGE VERIMYTH, Author of "Richard's Several Editions," "The Aphorist," "Shampoo's Shaving-Pot.")
[With this story came a long, explanatory letter. The story, however, is itself so clear and easy to understand (as is all the work of this master), that the accompanying commentary is unnecessary.]
CHAPTER I.
In the earlier portion of the lives of all of us there is a time, heaven-given without doubt, for all things, as we know, draw their origin thence, if only in our blundering, ill-conditioned way we trace them back far enough with the finger of fate pointing to us as in mockery of all striving of ours on this rough bosom of our mother earth, a time there comes when the senses rebel, first faintly, and then with ever-increasing vehemence, panting, beating, buffeting and breasting the torrent of necessity, against the parental decree that would drench our inmost being in the remedial powder of a Gregorian doctor, famous, I doubt not, in his day, and much bepraised by them that walked delicately in the light of pure reason and the healthful flow of an untainted soul, but now cast out and abhorred of childhood soaring on uplifted wing through the vast blue of the modern pharmacopoeia. Yet to them is there not comfort too in the symbolic outpourings of a primæval wisdom which, embodied for all time in imperishable verse, are chanted in the haunts of the very young like the soft lappings of the incoming tide on a beach where rounded pebble disputes with shining sand the mastery of the foreshore?
So, too, while the infant chariot with its slow motion of treble wheels advances obedient to the hand of the wimpled maid who from the rear directs its ambiguous progress, the dozing occupant may not always understand, but, hearing, cannot fail to be moved to tears by the simple tale of JOANNA crossed in all her depth and scope of free vigorous life by him that should have stood her friend. For the man had wedded her. Of that there can be no doubt, since the chronicles have handed down the date of it. Wedded her with the fatal "yes" that binds a trusting soul in the world's chains. A man, too. A reckless, mutton-munching, beer-swilling animal! And yet a man. A dear, brave, human heart, as it should have been; capable, it may be, of unselfishness and devotion; but, alas! how sadly twisted to the devil's purposes on earth, an image of perpetual chatter, like the putty-faced street-pictures of morning soapsuds. His names stand in full in the verse. JOHN, shortened familiarly, but not without a hint of contempt, to JACK, stares at you in all the bravery of a Christian name. And SPRATT follows with a breath of musty antiquity. SPRATT that is indeed a SPRATT, sunk in the oil of a slothful imagination and bearing no impress of the sirname that should raise its owner to cloudy peaks of despotic magnificence.
But of the lady's names no hint is given. We may conjecture SPRATT to have been hers too, poor young soul that should have been dancing instead of fastened to a table in front of an eternal platter. And of all names to precede it the fittest surely is JOANNA. For what is that but the glorification with many feminine thrills of the unromantic chawbacon JOHN masticating at home in semi-privacy the husks of contentment, the lean scrapings of the divine dish which is offered once in every life to all. So JOANNA she shall be and is, and as JOANNA shall her story be told.