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Chapter XXVI.
Joan's Chivalry.

Joan, from her attic window, saw David depart. She had been fighting many hours for serenity. She had said good-bye to the flowers and happiness of life; had, she believed, executed self. To feel was nothing, she had asserted; to act was all. She knew what she must do. She was worn with the conflict, her young face harsh, her brilliant, grey eyes menacing. Then when it was over, as she supposed—this battle with opposing forces—she caught a glimpse of the man she loved, his back turned to her and hers. He moved with implacable and pitiless determination; strength and resolution spoke in his very step; and yet how solitary he seemed, going out under the lowering and mournful sky. She watched him till he turned into the byre, then stretched out her hands with a passionate cry. He was taking adicu now of the animals that came at his call. She gazed out past the byre to the snow-peaks, that had lost their brilliance page 345 in the heavy air, trembling in every suffering nerve. Her self-assurance had departed; the torrent of dammed-up feeling broke loose, and swept before it all her analytic inwardness, all the obstinacy of will that had given her command. She saw herself, as in a vision, when youth and a lover's wooing would be past, old, hard, forsaken, cynical of love, doubtful of trust; she saw her garnered sheaves of labour—perhaps fame—rusting, rotting, unappreciated in the dreary barn of life, of loveless life! Saw herself bereft of a woman's sweet crown of mingled thorns and roses—roses and thorns of true wifehood and motherhood; saw herself, like Gertrude and the Professor, lifeless, loveless, uncontent. She hurried from the western window to the one looking east. He would pass that way, over those plains that had ever divided her from her desire; go with a restlessness of spirit she could have satisfied; go unselfishly, detach himself from all that would have meant charm and prosperity to him. She had been his search, his desire and his hope, and she was letting him sacrifice all, and go alone. There had been no question of compromise; the demands had been all hers; she had bargained, profaned, and destroyed. Was not his lot by right hers also?

She knelt at the window and looked out, with gaze page 346 strained for his re-appearance. Everything was born afresh within her, by the hint that her banishment was due with his; that renunciation would be her true progression; that plenitude of life lay within his arms. Diminution of soul and mind and body, sweet sophistry clamoured, was in their separation. Her senses reeled under the magic stress of passion; duty put on a false appearance; what might not be became not only feasible, but right; right wore the mask of wrong.

Her powers, her liberty would go with him; she would accept her destiny and go where he went. She could not let him pass alone beyond the boundary gate.

With shaking hand she penned a few lines to her father, and laid the note upon her pillow, then threw her travelling cloak upon her shoulders, and, drawing the hood about her head, went swiftly out. She stopped at the orchard gate, and looked behind her. The old house seemed eyeing her with reproach; the wind had risen and moaned mournfully through the branches, that shook down a shower of yellow leaves upon her. There was a consciousness in her unconsciousness of fatality and death; she dimly perceived that the crisis of her life had come; that this hour was one it would not be possible ever to for- page 347 get; on it rested the issue of all her future, far as her soul could sense. She knew that she should look back one time, here or elsewhere, and judge her action critically, abide by the sober verdict of retrospection, and take up her cross or crown with strength and patience. Cross or crown! Ah, God! she didn't know! She didn't know what was her right or wrong. Not the first soul swept onward with the tide of feeling, she felt herself caught up and carried onward helplessly.

She and the gloom and the risen wind seemed one. The stir of tumult was in her blood; she defended herself against the elements as against a foe; she would conquer, or be conquered; the final was not yet. She felt no terror or bewilderment now; the grandeur of the rising storm found an echo in the grandeur of her choice. Destroy? perhaps. There was no victory without destruction. She had been an instrument, a chorus of Fate hitherto; for this one hour she was the creator of her part. She lifted up her hooded head and smiled at the frowning sky.

“‘And let come, what come may,
I shall have had my day!’”

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David had said good-bye to the cattle, as a mother says good-bye to her little children. He blasphemed his luck, but patted the calves. He gave instructions brusquely; loitered to extract a thorn from the foot of a pup, and to bind up the wound.

“Lie down!” he said; “howling won't heal you, you little duffer.”

Then came his own turn.

“Are you ready?” he asked himself, when he turned his back on his last friend.

He put his hands in his pockets, and whistled a martial air, while every memory of the past two years revibrated in his brain. Look back? Fatal! To be dependent upon the past was weak. The present was hell; but there was the future; what would it bring? He left to Fate the unravelling of the skein. One thing only was necessary—occupation. He whistled and ducked his head to the wind. One moment here at the stile—a moment of recollection, gratitude for life's loan of love to him; and then to be a man!

He raised his eyes—and there at the field gate stood Joan.

“Dear,” she said, “I belong to you. Where you go, I go also.”

He looked at her, at first surprised, then trans-figured page 349 by the exultation of triumphant passion. Hot words followed; he would shield and protect her always; his tenderness should be her compensation; she should never regret. All his ideas should be subservient to hers. The sudden encounter had bewildered him; he was tender, humble, grateful, and drew her arm through his caressingly as they faced the open plains and the coming gale.

“I never dreamt of this,” he went on hoarsely, closing her hand in his.

Joan trembled, but made no answer. They both stepped out quickly. The afternoon was nearly gone; their train would pass a few hours later. They rehearsed no plans, no methods, but pushed on on their stormy path, indifferent to the future. In their glow of joy, the presence of each other was all sufficing.

“You see,” she said at last, in a quiet whisper, “we have loved each other from the first.”

“Love has brought us together,” he answered bravely, “here from all the world, in spite of all the world.”

They tramped on over the tussocks silently. At every fresh gust of wind he held her slight form securely to him. Once she laid her head upon his arm.

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“I have no life now,” she faltered, “except yours.” He drew her closer to him.

“My queen,” he said; “my dear queen!”

Queen! was she queen or craven? If only she were sure! If she were vouchsafed a vision, a revelation, now in this hour, she would judge her own act—abide faithful to the trust. There was something in the man's face that awed her, humiliated and made her ashamed. With all his tenderness, in spite of his gentle consideration, she was conscious of a cheapening—a subtle something that jarred, terrified, and bewildered. The storm of feeling that had swept her into this man's arms might pass, and leave them stranded where there was no sacredness! She could hardly breathe while struggling with the wind and this new terror. She turned to David, pressing his arm with her trembling hand.

“Dave,” she pleaded, “my life is in your hand; this hour proves my subjugation, my sorrow for your sorrow, my willingness to be nothing for your sake. Tell me, is my daring foolhardiness or courage? Man,” she proceeded passionately, “save me from being weak and small. Listen to me. If what I do is right, strong, unselfish, let me do it; but, if it is below the highest, I charge you tell me to go home.”

“Give me a little time,” he said.

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He did not need time really, only to adjust himself to his new thought. From all the world she had come to him; come to him, at last, subdued, emptied of scorn, tamed. All her pride had been swept away by passion—everything had subordinated itself to love. And, in the moment of her yielding, she cried out to him to save her from himself! An hour or so ago he had overcome temptation; was he to deal with a new position beyond the strength of man?

“It means,” he went on, almost harshly, slackening his pace, “that, in an hour or so, there will be nothing in all the world for you—except me!”

Silence followed on his words; then he burst out impetuously:

“Why deceive ourselves? You will be a castaway. There is the brutal truth. You may trample on your pride, scourge yourself, kill self, be pure as snow, purer by far than the world that judges you; but the world will judge; there is a judicial imperativeness one cannot escape,” he added, almost savagely. “God made law, and God Himself can't escape the consequences. Right cannot be defied; whatever comes in its way is broken. The devil of irresponsibility is gracious—till the tide comes in.”

“I understand,” she answered quietly.

“If one could gather all the consequences of de- page 352 fiance into one's own life,” he added, “I should say ‘defy.’ It would be brave could one suffer solely for one's own act. But the decree has gone forth that no man liveth, neither dieth, to himself.”

“Then,” she answered, “there is no freedom for man?”

“Except in bondage,” he replied.

They gazed into each other's eyes with pitiful conviction. Joan no longer shirked the truth. David was again a hero in her eyes; he would not take her under any pretext. The struggle of the past hours was over. She knew the truth. The pitch of intensity that made this hour possible could not be kept up. She and David must face later those cold, pitiless, searching hours of conviction that, like the dawn, found human flesh at its lowest ebb—life at its unloveliest. Their pact without the vitality of right would lose its force. If law was God's ordinance, they must follow it. Intellectual oppression was resuming its sway, the old habit of analysis revitalising. It was not religious dread, not womanly shame that held her back; but she could not wrestle with truth. Fact was fact, as love was love. She recoiled from the thought of sorrow for those she loved. A cry of a human voice brought her back from thought, the voice of David calling to her.

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“My love! O God! You must go back!”

She leaned against his shoulder while he struggled sternly with himself. Her whole future was concerned, and he loved her. It would be a crime to permit this impulse to allow the step to become irrevocable. He had wished with all his heart to see her sweet abandonment; but—she was clinging to him for support! In his most desperate strait he could not betray her. The thought of shame for this proud creature wrung his heart. It would be torture to leave her, but double torture to watch her awakening, her inevitable scorn. When knowledge came, she must reproach him for the betrayal of her ignorance; for the betrayal of all her high ambitions. She had given herself to him with unguarded weakening. He drew her to him, then turned his pale, set face to the way that they had come.

“I am going, dear,” she murmured patiently, white as he. “If I hurry, I shall be back before it is dark.”

All the light and youth had left their faces. He strained her closer to him.

“Good-bye, dear, good-bye,” she said again.

He stooped towards her, his lips trembling. There was a look in his eyes she could scarcely bear.

“Dave, go now, dear.”

He roused himself and kissed her.

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“Can't I go back also? I might be able to help you—I might.”

She put him from her with gentle force.

“Can't you let me share?” she heard him plead again; and then she found that she had turned one way and he the other.

The man drew himself up to his full height, and stepped out bravely; the woman drooped, looked back, as women do, rallied, and felt for the path with stumbling feet.

“No more, dear,” she murmured vaguely; “never any more.”

Instinctively she drew her cloak about her, the flesh being conscious of chill and discomfort, while her soul yearned, and shrank from the loneliness that encompassed it. She had fought her way dumbly, she knew not how far, when she awoke to the fact that a gale of wind was raging, and that black darkness was upon her.

… … …

When Tom Jefferies returned in the evening, he was under the impression that he was an ill-used man. He did not take kindly to being thwarted. It was an uncommon experience to him, and we are apt to take exemption from disappointment as our right. He had found his ride in the teeth of the wind any- page 355 thing but pleasant, and his appearance with blown hair and straggled beard was unusually fierce; anger and disappointment flashed from his keen eyes. It had pleased him to make a student of his daughter; but it had also pleased him to plan for the safe transmission of his farm. After Joan, it was his delight, and the best man he knew, barring himself, capable of managing the old place, had thrown his intentions back into his face, and had gone off in an unreasonable hurry.

The light of lamps and fire gleamed ruddily through the trees, as the old man passed up the orchard path. Old? yes, he was growing old. “An’ it must pass into the hands of strangers,” he murmured, with a gulp.

Janet met him at the door. He stooped and kissed her with trembling lips, then drew her in from the chilly air, and banged the door behind him. He became aware that something was the matter with Janet. She was trembling in every limb as though with ague; the face beneath the snowy cap looked white as its frills, and her soft, dark eyes burned with restless fire. Tom sprang towards her with a half-inarticulate cry of fear.

“It's the child,” she moaned. Not Joan—not Johnnie; she had bridged the intervening years, and page 356 gone back to the word that had meant everything.

For a horrible moment Tom feared that she had lost her reason; he stood with his back to the door, her cold fingers clutching his arm, his eyes fascinated by the awful expression of her face. Then a spasm convulsed his rugged features, his eyelids and lips twitched; he dragged his coat collar away from his neck, as though he choked.

“Not dead?” he whispered hoarsely, “not dead?”

“No,” she answered, scarce breathing; “lost!”

Tom took both the trembling hands and held them in a grip. His first fear returned, Janet had gone mad, quite mad; back to the time when their little maid had run away. David's going had been too much for her. He tried to laugh to reassure her, and gently led her to the old rocker on the hearth. It was his fault; if he hadn't given way to temper and had stayed at home to comfort Janet, she'd have been quite well. Still, where was Joan?

“You sit you there, Mother, an' keep quiet, my dear; I'll fetch the truant in a jiffy. Trapesing about in a sou'-wester like this; never saw such a girl for out-o'-doors.”

He spoke cheerfully. The next moment he was in the lobby taking down his riding-cap and whip.

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Mercy opened the kitchen door noiselessly, and thrust Joan's note in his hand.

“Left it on her piller; keep it out o' the missus' sight,” she muttered.

Her eyes never left the man's face, but saw it turn rigid while he read; saw all the honest pride and hope forsake it; the cheerful smile freeze; the sparkling eyes grow dim; and every line deepen, harden, and fix. He leaned feebly against the wall, every burden of his past years, set at nought so long, weighted his broad shoulders and bowed them. He lifted his shaking hand and pushed back his thick grey hair, looking at the faithful servant in dazed piteousness.

Mercy asked no questions; she knew.

“There's time to catch her up,” she gasped; “the train doesn't pass yet.”

“The express has gone!”

He might have said heaven's doors were shut for ever.

“They couldn't have meant to catch the express; they walked. It'll be some later train.”

“What's that about a train?” Mother stood in the doorway. Father tried to lift his bended back. His hand crunched over the little white note, but Mother had seen. Then he forced a smile to his page 358 stiff lips, and, not daring to meet the eyes that his had never flinched from for five-and-forty years, he fumbled with the sheet, and read, in a loud, hoarse voice, that quivered and cracked at the end of every sentence:

“‘I'm fancyin’ the Professor ‘ull be over to-night. I'll just take a little run to meet the train—part way, leastways. If the wind gets worse I'll turn back.’

“Mad! that's what she is—mad!” supplemented the reader, hastily tearing the note into tiny bits, then turning defiant eyes upon his wife.

“Father,” she said sternly, “it's not fitting of you to lie!”

“I swear!” he thundered, with solemn affirmation, “that she's walkin' on the plains! I swear to you I'll bring her safely home, so help me God.”

The women made way for him to pass. He was alive again, upright, eager, quick. The door slammed behind him, and a moment later they heard the thud of horse hoofs beating the turf.

“For the love o' God, old friend!” the man breathed, patting his horse as they tore wildly on through the shrieking wind.

The night was pitch dark, but horse and rider knew every inch of the way. Between the pauses in the gale, the thunder of swollen streams filled the page 359 air; but wind and water bore the burden of the words that had been burnt into his brain:—” I have tried, but I can't let David go away alone. Forgive me if you can, Father, and tell Mother.”

Tell Mother! He tell Mother? O God! O God! spare him that; only spare him that.

“For my pride an' pomp forgive me,” he prayed, while yet he strained his gaze ahead and on each side of the track. “I've been ambitious over much. I've shut my eyes to all the world but my own desire; but Lord! Lord! I'm broken now! I can't do it, God Almighty; I can't go home an' tell the Mother of Joan John Jefferies, that she's brought our grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”

The cruelty of it; the bitter cruelty of it! But the fault was his. She had cried out to him that night of her engagement, and asked him whether love was not the chiefest thing. He had put aside Janet's fears, laughed her to scorn; he who had married her for love's own sake so many happy years ago. God forgive him, God forgive him! He couldn't go home alone; that he could not do. An hour ago he'd been fretting like a child over a pricked finger. He'd had the good of his possessions in one life, and that hadn't sufficed him; he couldn't leave them in peace to go to another world. People's page 360 hearts had been breaking, his own little maid's heart, and he had been blind to everything but the sight of his own name made great; and yet he had said, “Tush! the Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.” He had deserved it all; but he couldn't go and tell Mother.

Rain! It came down suddenly in a thick, smarting sheet, and with a shriek of wind like the cries of the lost. The mare stood dead still. They had come no distance; yet all the journey had to be done. With trembling hands Tom urged the horse, but it would not move; then there was a rumbling audible above the storm, a revibration of the earth, the red fiery eyes of the train flashed past over the distant plains, the engine yelled a diabolical defiance at the desperate man. Too late! All was over now. He sat quite still in the pelting rain, stunned. Then, after a time, he slowly and awkwardly dismounted, conscious of the trembling of the animal beneath him. His shaking hands fumbled for the beast's neck, and through his trembling lips came broken words of gratitude and encouragement.

“Poor beast … did your best. No fault of yours—not often scared; there! come, steady!”

His foot came into contact with something while he spoke. He dropped on one knee, felt with his page 361 hand, let go the bridal hurriedly, felt with both hands, and then he heard the word that God hears when the prodigal is coming home.

“Father!”

“My girl, my maid! O, my Lord!”

He strained the drenched figure to his breast. It was thus he had found her long before, that other time when she had run away. He peered down into the white face of Joan with anxious scrutiny; then lifting her in his strong arms as though she were a child, placed her before him on the horse.

The rain beat upon them both, but neither felt it. She closed her eyes in weary faintness. How long she had been lying there in the dark and storm she did not know; body and brain alike felt numbed. The warmth of Father's body, the strength of his love, brought her back to full remembrance. She was conscious that her Father was singing. It made a pleasant accompaniment to the wind and beating rain, and the rushing sound of water.

“‘Come home, come home!
You are weary at heart,
For the way has been dark,
And so lonely and wild,
O prodigal child!’”

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There was a note in the voice that she could hardly bear.

“If it will be of any comfort to you to know it, I was coming home,” she said. “David was not to blame; I followed him; he went away to save this. At the last I could not go on. I was obliged to turn back.”

He gave a smothered cry of gratitude and joy.

“It was like my girl's chivalry,” he said. “You can't see now, the highway is so dark; but be sure that honour is the certain road. So sure as God's the God of right, He'll send you comfort if you go straight on. I know the love of lad an' lass, an' I'm not sayin' partin' is easy done; but dishonour leads into the wilderness. Disgrace an' pleasure, dear, are never one. ‘Come home,’” he sang again, in quavering accents. “‘For we watch an' we wait, and we stand at the gate, while the shadows are piled.’ Ah, there's the light. Hallo, there, Mercy, my woman,” he called out loudly. “Well, Janet, good-wife, here's your young gallivant.” He felt Joan start. “Be quiet,” he whispered. “She thinks the storm overtook you in a little walk; must always think so, please God.” Then out loud again: “Bless me! you women folk page 363 takes queer times an' seasons for your outin's. In you go.”

He kissed her under cover of the darkness. “I thank the dear Lord,” he murmured, then turned to pat the horse. When he had stabled it with his own hands, he bolted the door, and, putting both arms round the beast's neck, “You wouldn't tread on her, as the world would a done,” he said, then wept aloud like a boy.

He gathered himself together presently, and dragged himself into the kitchen. Mercy was busy with grill. She turned her face, and looked at him sideways.

“I met her comin' home,” he said.

Beside the glowing hearth, in a white wrap, Joan was sitting staring listlessly into the blaze, while Mother knelt beside her, gently chafing the weary feet, her eyes trying to read the averted face. But she asked no questions. The terror had passed from her countenance, though she looked quite feeble and old. She got up when Father entered the room, and turned gently to him.

“You're wet through; come, Father, and change your clothes.”

“Dampish,” answered Father, following her humbly.

“A bit damp; but I don't complain of that.”

She waited on him with wifely solicitude; but

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after leaving him for a time, and finding that he did not come, she went back for him. He was on his knees by the bedside, his head bowed upon his hands.

“It's discipline, dearie,” she heard him say; “discipline!

He got up when he felt Mother near him.

“Tom, my dear,” she said, with loving emphasis, “Tom, you are a good man.”

Then they sat down on the side of the bed, hand in hand, and wept together. But they were the last tears they ever wept for Joan.

“That boy of ours would have been a plucky lad,” Father remarked reflectively, as the old sweethearts went down to supper arm in arm.