Joan, The Curate/Chapter 16
Finding escape impossible, Ann turned and put a bold face on the matter. Or rather, she turned indeed, and faced him, but with the same air of modest womanliness which he had before remarked in her when she wore her sex's clothes—a manner which altered so completely as soon as she assumed the costume of "Jem Bax."
"And what are you pleased to want with me, sir?" she asked respectfully, after the short silence which had followed Tregenna's exclamation.
"Well, I want to know, in the first place, what you are doing here?"
"Sure, sir, there's no harm in my taking a place as housemaid, now I'm turned out of my mother's home by your pryings of last night."
"'Tis rather a bad thing for the squire and his lady," said Tregenna, dryly, "to be harboring any of your kin, Ann, more especially after my discovery in the coach-house this morning!"
"I am not here, sir, as a smuggler, but as a homeless farmer's daughter," returned Ann, in the same modest, even tone. "I believe I am reckoned worth my salt with a broom in my hand, as well as in the dairy."
"Nay, nay, 'tis not for your services with mop and churn they take you in, Ann, I know that," said Tregenna. "You would have done best to keep out of my way a few days, after your doings of last night. 'Tis not your fault your rascally crew did not make an end to me, when you sent them in pursuit of me, as you did!"
"Nay, sir, if I did," answered Ann, with a sudden change to a soft voice and a pleading manner which had in it something strangely attractive, by reason of its unexpectedness, "'twas done in the heat of unreasoning passion, and without a thought of what grave consequences it might bring upon you. If they had really harmed you, by my troth I would never have spoke to one of them again."
"A very fair explanation, to be sure!" said Tregenna, dryly. "But 'twas well I had the luck to meet with a woman more womanly, to counteract the effects of your solicitude on my account."
"You mean Miss Joan," said Ann, in a very quiet tone, as she played with the corner of her apron, keeping her eyes fixed upon it all the time.
"Whom should I mean but that most sweet woman?" cried Tregenna, with the more enthusiasm that Ann was evidently displeased by his praise of the lady. "Had it not been for her goodness, I should most surely have been murdered last night, either by you or some one of your villainous confederates."
"Nay, nay, sir, you would not," returned Ann, earnestly. "They would not have dared, I say, not one of them, to do a hurt to one in whom—in whom"—her voice faltered a little, and she looked down, bending her head, so that he could not see her face—"in whom I had an interest!"
"An interest! Ay, truly, an interest so strong that, at first sight of me, you did show it at once by presenting a pistol at my head!"
Ann suddenly raised her head, and looked into his face with a steadfast earnestness which could not but arrest his attention. In her gray eyes there was a strange light, in her whole manner a softness, both new and surprising. Even her voice seemed to have lost every trace of robust peasant harshness, and to have become tender and melting.
"Sir, sir, you don't understand! How can I make you understand?" cried she passionately.
Then, as he looked into her face with astonishment and curiosity, she suddenly turned, walked a few steps towards a door in the darkest part of the hall, and beckoned him to follow her.
"Come hither, sir, out into the air!" said she, in a low voice. "I am stifling here; I want to feel the fresh wind on my face while I speak."
Her voice was full of strong emotion. Tregenna paused an instant, suspecting treachery in the strange woman; but she divined the cause of his hesitation, and with a sudden change to fire and pride, she said—
"You need not fear me. See, there is no ambush prepared for you!" And as she spoke, she threw open the door, and showed the way into the beautiful old garden behind the house.
Tregenna followed her in silence as she went out, and took, without looking behind her, the path that led, through winding walks, and between quaint, stiff yew hedges, to the Italian garden. There a broad terrace, with a stone balustrade, led down to bright beds of late autumn flowers, still pretty and fragrant, though they were growing tall and straggling at this late season, and were, in places, nipped with the early frosts of the coming winter.
Ann stopped on the terrace, and waited for Tregenna to come up to her. When he did so, she turned abruptly, and he was surprised to see that she was in tears.
The discovery, in a woman of her fierce attributes, was startling, amazing; and Tregenna was disconcerted by it.
"You are astonished, I see, sir," she began, in the same gentle voice that he had last heard from her, "to see a creature you have always looked upon as masculine and hard, with aught so feminine as a tear upon her face!"
"Well, Miss Ann, I confess it, I am surprised. I thought you were made of stuff too stern for such weakness!"
"Did you but know more of me," said she, sadly, "you would not think so. We are all, as you know, sir, made by our surroundings; and see what mine have been! Brought up from my earliest childhood among rough folk, hearing of scenes that 'twould make your blood run cold to relate, what chance had I to grow into your soft and tender woman, that sits and smiles, and screams at sight of a spider?"
"But surely there's a wide difference between screaming at a spider, on the one hand, and using the weapons, ay, and the oaths of a man, on the other?"
At this reproach, Ann became suddenly red, and hung her head as if in shame.
"Nay, sir, 'tis true," said she, almost below her breath, "and I am shocked myself, when I have leisure to reflect on't, at the work I do, and the words I utter, when my kinsmen have stirred me up to fight their battles and to do the deeds they demand of me!"
"Nay, 'tis, I think, rather they that do the deeds you command. Jem Bax has the name of being a leader on these occasions, and indeed your own words have confirmed this!"
"'Tis true I have thrown in my lot with them, hating myself the while; but 'tis not true, sir, to say I have had aught but misery and wretchedness in the doing of these deeds. Does not your fine lady friend Miss Joan speak well of me? Come, now, has she spoke never a good word for me, in the discussions I doubt not you have had on these matters?"
"Yes, she says you can be kind and womanly, when you please; that you are good to the poor and the sick; and that she has a kind of liking for you, besides that she feels for you as the daughter of one whom she remembers tender to her in her childhood."
Ann's mobile face had grown, as she listened to this speech, as happy and soft as a child's.
"Ay, sir," said she, "and 'tis the real Ann of whom she speaks, the natural woman that I would fain always be!"
"Give up your dealings with these folk, then," said Tregenna, eagerly, as he sat on the balustrade, and looked at her with earnest eyes. "Listen to the promptings of your better nature, and in yielding to your own good instincts you will be helping not only yourself, but your kinsfolk out of harm! Remember, you cannot fight forever such forces as will be brought against you and your lawless traffic. Yield then while there is a grace in yielding, and wait not for the strong hand of the law to get hold of you, and to mow you down!"
While he spoke with fire and excitement, moved by her emotion and deeply interested in the wayward woman, Ann had drawn gradually nearer to him, until her strong hand touched his as it lay on the balustrade. Her eyes, still soft and dewy with tears, sought his for an instant from time to time, as if in shyness, all the more attractive from her reputed character for fierce disdain.
When he ceased speaking, she sighed deeply, and then seemed to become suddenly possessed by a spirit of daring and desperation.
Drawing herself up, and peering closely into his handsome face, she said quickly—
"Sir, sir, you know not how you move me! I have never felt before as I feel in listening to you. You make me hate my own folk, with their villainies and their rough ways, kinswoman and confederate of theirs though I have been! Oh, sir, I feel, I know, that you are better than we, that we are but the nest of robbers and pirates you say, that we deserve no mercy at your hands!"
Passionate, earnest as she was, Tregenna kept his head sufficiently to be skeptical about this sudden appearance of conversion.
He drew back, almost imperceptibly, a little way, and said, in a cooler tone—
"And I fear 'tis little mercy some of you will get, when a stronger force is sent down to ferret your leaders out!"
"But you would make distinctions, sir, would you not?" said she, with tremulous eagerness. "You would not, for sure, deal with the lad Tom, poor Tom that you have lamed for life, as hardly as with some others?"
"Those that have done the worst will be the most harshly dealt with, certainly," said Tregenna.
"Ay, and none too harshly either, for some of them! villains, thieves, plunderers that they be! See here, sir"—and her tone dropped again to a whisper, as she came quite close to him, and laid one hand almost caressingly on his sleeve—"there's no sympathy in my heart for them that would have done you harm, no, nor for the man that murdered that poor coastguardsman when first you came hither! I love not such folks, sir, whatever you may think of me! And see, sir, to prove to you how earnestly I do grieve for the ill they have done, I am ready to give you up the murderer of the coastguardsman into your hand, ay, for I know who 'twas that did it, and I can put you in the way of evidence to prove it too!"
Tregenna started and flushed. He had not the least doubt that this woman could indeed do as she offered to do, that she could deliver the murderer into the hands of justice. But he shrank from accepting her suggestion, not only with instinctive mistrust of a woman who was ready to deliver up her own lover, but with not unnatural suspicion that she might be a traitress to both sides.
So he got off the balustrade, and said coldly—
"I thank you, Mistress, for your offer: but I believe the hands of justice will need no more aid than they have got!"
Then Ann, without any appearance of ill-feeling, laughed softly.
"Maybe the hands of justice are less powerful than you think, sir," said she. "But, at any rate, I hope you will think kindly of the woman who, for your sake, was ready to risk her safety, nay, her life maybe, to help you!"
As she spoke, in a tone of inexpressible tenderness, she came very near to the young lieutenant, and gazed into his face with a look so melting, so passionate, that he was stirred, fascinated, in a very high degree. It was impossible to be cold to her, however great his innermost disapproval of her might be. He had bent his head to reply, when a footstep on the gravel behind the yew-hedge, followed by a loud outburst of laughter, caused him to start, and to look round.
Peering at the pair through a gap in the hedge he saw the face of young Bertram Waldron, flushed with wine, twisted into malevolent contortions of coarse amusement.
"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the young cub, "here's sport, egad! I'll wager she gives you a smack o' the face before she's done, like to the one she gave me but this morning."
Tregenna made but one step in his direction when Bertram prudently retired; and they heard his cracked laugh as he went rapidly back to the house.
It was some moments before Tregenna and Ann could resume their interrupted conversation. Indeed, Tregenna was anxious to break it off altogether, but Ann persisted, following him as he turned to move away, and detaining him with a gesture which was half peremptory, half imploring.
"Nay, nay, sir, you'll give me a hearing, at least," said she, earnestly, "if 'twere but for the safety of your friends. And I could tell you of a plot that's been formed whereby your crew would be the sufferers, to an extent would rend your heart. Ay, 'tis true!" she added, as he turned incredulously towards her.
"There's little need of a special plot," said he, "since we all know the whole neighborhood's in league against us!"
"And for that reason you should be all the more willing to lend your ear, when you have at last found a friend ready to afford you assistance!" persisted Ann. "And better assistance than your Miss Joan could give, I'll warrant me!"
Just as she spoke these words, in a tone which betrayed some pique, Tregenna raised his head on hearing the sound of a rustling silken gown on the walk above: and there, between the hedges, with the malicious face of Bertram Waldron appearing behind her, he saw Joan Langney herself, with a look of proud astonishment on her beautiful face.
The mischievous young man had brought her out into the garden on some pretext, evidently; for it was plain she had not expected to see either Tregenna or Ann.
The moment he caught sight of her, Tregenna made a hasty excuse to Ann, and mounting the stone steps from the terrace in a couple of strides, addressed Joan just as she was in the act of turning away.
"Miss Joan, a moment, I beg!" said he.
Bertram giggled; but on Tregenna's turning sharply to him with a gesture of angry dismissal, the cub retreated, and, with a clumsy air of being at his ease, retired quickly to the house. Ann also, with a short, hard laugh, disappeared among the yew-hedges.
Thus left alone with the girl he loved, the young lieutenant was not slow in seizing the opportunity he had so long wished for; and although she tried to leave him and to return to the house, he gave her a look so full of entreaty, as he mutely placed himself in her way, and gazed at her with an expression there was no mistaking, that she faltered, paused, and asked, in a low voice—
"What have you, sir, to say to me? I had no notion of meeting you here."
"Surely, Miss Joan, if you could give ten minutes of your conversation to that booby young Waldron, you might bestow the same favor on me!"
"'Twas from no liking for Mr. Waldron I came out," said Joan, hastily. "He lured me hither by saying I should see something very interesting in the Italian garden; and I thought he had some rare flower or bird to show me. I should scarce have come, as you may guess, to see you in such interesting converse with Ann Price!"
In her voice, Tregenna was delighted to notice a tone of pique which seemed to be of good augury.
"There was naught of great import in my talk with her," said he, quickly. He was trembling so much that his sword rattled at his side, and his voice was as hoarse as a raven's. "But 'tis true I have something of great import to me on my mind, and I cannot but think, Miss Joan, you must know what it is!"
"Indeed, sir, I cannot guess your thoughts!" said Joan, though the heightened color in her cheeks belied her words.
"Can you not imagine what I feel—what I could not—dared not, say last night? Oh, you do, you must, I think! Sure a man cannot feel what I feel for you without its getting from his heart into his eyes! Don't you know I love you, Joan?"
The change came about in the space of a second. When the last hurried words, husky, tremulous, half whispered, came bursting from his lips, Joan shivered, gave him one glance, and had betrayed herself before she was aware.
"You—you care for Ann!" she faltered between two long-drawn breaths.
"Pshaw! Not I! I care for Joan. I care for Joan, only Joan!"
And at the last word, as she hardly resisted him, he kissed her.
It was growing cold even in the sheltered garden, now that the late autumn sun was descending in the sky, and the wind was rising and sending the red leaves fluttering from the boughs of the trees to the earth. But they never heeded it: they would have gone on sitting on that terrace, and walking round and round those flower-beds, for an hour and more, had not Parson Langney's voice presently startled them by calling—
"Joan, Joan, my lass, where art thou?"
The girl gave one frightened glance at her lover, forbade him to follow her and speak to her father till she had prepared the way, and fled away like an arrow from a bow.
Happy and excited with the joy of successful love, Tregenna was sauntering round the house towards a side-gate out of the park, when Ann's voice startled him.
He knew not whence she had sprung; but she was looking at him from out a clump of bushes with a strange smile on her pallid face.
As he started, she burst into a low, mocking laugh.
"Ay, sir, kiss while you can; speak low when there's a fair maid to listen. But the game's not played out yet!"
Upon those words, with a flashing look from her great somber gray eyes, she disappeared abruptly.