Girlhood and Womanhood Part 3

Joanna was walking along, feeling cheerful, although she was in that neighbourhood, and vaunting to herself that their moor was infinitely superior to a park, when a grey object caught her eye, lying beyond some whin bushes--a thing raised above the ground, but stretched still and motionless. Joanna stopped with a strange thrill. No! it was not on that piece of earth; but so must he have lain on that disastrous morning, far removed from the abundance, and garnered goods, and heartiness of harvest.

Joanna stood a moment, then reproaching herself with cowardice, egotism, inhumanity, she advanced, her heart fluttering wildly. Yes, it was a man in tweed-coat, trousers, and cap; and stay! was that a gun by his side?

Joanna could not go a step further; she closed her eyes to hide the blood which she felt must be oozing and stealing along the ground, or else congealed among the heather and it was only after she had told herself how far she was from home, and how long it would be ere she could run back for a.s.sistance, that she opened them and approached the figure. There was no blood that she could see; the man might not be dead, but stupefied or insensible. Oh, dear! it was Harry Jardine of Whitethorn; the hail-drops among his black curls, the sprigs of the heather dinted into his brown cheek.

It darted into Joanna's mind like inspiration how the chance had occurred. She remembered Susan had said, yesterday, that she had met Mr.

Jardine going in shooting garb across the moor in the afternoon, and he had stopped her and asked if she had seen a dog. He had taken out a new dog and lost it, and was vexed at wasting half the morning in the pursuit. She recalled, with a peculiar vividness of perception, that somebody had observed, one day lately, that Mr. Jardine was not so strong as he looked; that he had fever while abroad, just before he came home, and that his mother was annoyed because he would not take care of himself, and complained that he was constantly over-taxing his unrecovered powers, and subjecting himself to fresh attacks of illness.

Joanna remembered, with a pang, that she had laughed at the remark, mentally conjuring up Harry Jardine's athletic, sunburnt comeliness.

Joanna freed herself more quickly from this phantom than from the last, and, while she did so, called out his name, and stepped to his side, stooping down and even touching him. He was breathing, though he was very cold and stiff, and she did not rouse him. Oh, Joanna was very thankful! But what should she do next? Life must be very faint, and frozen in the muscular, active young man. He had loitered at his sport till the dusk; he had been bewildered on the moor--strange to him as to a foreigner; he had wandered here and there impatient and weary; but still more angry with himself than alarmed. He had sat down in the intense chill and dim darkness to recover himself; no way forewarned, "simply because he was on Cornc.o.c.kle Moor, so near home," on a September night. He had sunk down further and further, until the stealthy foe sprang upon him and held him fast--the sleep from which there is so tardy an awakening.

Joanna dared not leave the faint, vital spark to smoulder down or leap out. The moor was very unfrequented at this hour; at certain periods of the day, portions of it, intersected by meandering tracks, were crossed by men labouring in the adjacent fields or quarry; but till then it was only the circ.u.mstance of alarm being excited on Harry's account, or her protracted absence giving rise to surmise and search, that could bring them companions.

As a forlorn hope Joanna raised her voice and cried for a.s.sistance; fear and distress choked the sound, and the freezing air caused it to fall on the silence with a ringing quaver. She persevered, however, every now and then varying the appeal, "Papa, Lilias, Sandy, do some of you come to me; I want you here, for G.o.d's sake! here."

She took his big hands and chafed them between her own little ones; she lifted his head on her lap, her fingers getting entangled in his curly hair, she prayed for him that he might be restored to them.

He continued to breathe dully and heavily; his eyes never unclosed; she felt tempted to raise the lashes, as she would lift up and peep under the lids of a child. Ah! but she feared to see the b.a.l.l.s sightless and glazing over fast. The marked, lively face was placid as if it were set in death, and the slight contraction between the brows, which she had remarked the first night she saw him, was almost effaced. How dreadful it would be if he died on her knees there, in the solitude of the moor!

The son at the daughter's feet, as his father at her father's. How would his mother bear it? Her father would never survive this mournful re-writing of the old letters traced in blood. It should be she rather who should die; and Joanna in her piety, her goodness, her great love for her father, her exquisite kindness for Harry Jardine, did ask G.o.d if He sought a life, in His justice and mercy, to allow hers to pay for Harry's, to subst.i.tute her in some way for Harry; and Joanna well remembered that prayer afterwards.

Joanna was beginning to cower and fail in her trial. Suddenly she shook herself up, when she was lapsing into a heap nearly as pa.s.sive as that beside her; a suggestion darted across her brain; she detected in the little pocket of her dress a bottle of a strong essence and perfume, which Polly Musgrave had forced upon her the day she left.

Joanna was quick and clear in following out a notion. With trembling fingers she poured the hot, stimulating, subtle liquid into her hollow hands, and bathed his forehead. She unloosed his cravat, and sent the warm stream over his throat and chest, rubbing them with her free hand, while she supported his head on the other arm; and inspired with fresh courage and trust she called anew this time a shrill, echoing call, and Harry Jardine shivered, sobbed, and stretched himself, and slowly opened his sealed eyes, looking her first vaguely and then wonderingly in the face, and her father's and Lilias's voices rose from opposite sides of the heath, near and far in reply. "What is it, Joanna? What has kept you? What has happened? We missed you; we were getting anxious; we are coming, coming!"

IV.--MERCY AND NOT SACRIFICE.

Harry Jardine was taken to the Ewes some hours before his mother, who had happily been deceived as to his return on the previous night, was even apprised of his narrow escape. He received the greatest kindness from the Crawfurds, and his mother herself found it inc.u.mbent on her to write a little note to the Ewes, thanking the family for their humanity and benevolence towards her son. It is possible, had Mrs. Jardine been awakened to her son's danger a little sooner, and before its traces were entirely blotted out, the expressions in the note might have been a few shades less general and cold.

Mr. Crawfurd excused her fully. He would not have expected Harry to come back to the Ewes, though he rejoiced, from the bottom of his heart, that Joanna had served the young fellow. How much his poor father would have been delighted in him? Mr. Crawfurd rejoiced, although he was too righteous and humble-minded to say to himself that G.o.d was appeased, or that He had permitted this atonement as a sign in answer to his life-long penance.

Harry Jardine represented a different theory; he would be a dolt, a brute, unpardonably vindictive, if he did not cherish all friendly feelings to the Crawfurds; if he did not visit them openly and frankly.

He did visit at the Ewes, but he found the plainest opportunities ready made for him during one fortnight at Hurlton, to come in contact with Joanna Crawfurd. She had gone there to look after Conny, suborned by Mrs. Maxwell, and laid up with a sore throat, and forlorn and wretched if one of her sisters was not looking after her.

This intercourse could scarcely fail to have one grand climax. Joanna, the thoughtful, imaginative, true, tender woman--a fair woman besides, with that one little blot which singularly appealed to him with a harsh sweet voice--a sufficiently rare woman, to stand quite distinct from her sisters and companions in the light of the practical, active, ardent, honest heart--became the one mistress in the world for Harry Jardine, coveted and craved by him as the best gift of G.o.d, without which the others were comparatively worthless, and for which he could have been willing to sacrifice them one and all. Harry himself, in after years, confessed that since the moment he awakened from that leaden drowsiness on the moor, the image of Joanna Crawfurd, tending him as a mother her sick child, was constantly before him.

Joanna had not precisely the same experience. From the moment that, with the prescience of a woman where feelings are concerned, she saw the end, she avoided Harry Jardine with all her power. Harry's generous determination and daring, his fearlessness, confidence, and steadfastness overpowered her.

Mr. Crawfurd was dreadfully upset by Harry Jardine's application to him, his claim for forbearance, his entreaty for grace, and his candid confession that his mother was violently opposed to his suit. It was a case which could neither be considered nor rejected without remorse. Oh, bitterness, which spread like an infection through so many years, and into such different relations, and spoilt even the young man's fairness, good faith, free forgiveness, and the purity and earnestness of his pa.s.sion, the pearl of his manhood, which, if lost to him, would be a loss indeed! How Harry implored Mr. Crawfurd to spare it to him, to reflect that it was the greatest benefit which he asked at his hands, to pause before he denied it to him solely because he had been the unfortunate means of depriving him of his father!

Harry had agitating scenes with his mother besides; these two had never been placed against each other before, and the contest between them was neither gracious nor good for either heart.

"Harry, I am horrified at you; it is a dishonour to your poor father's memory; it is shocking to think of it; and if you have been so lost to duty as to fall into so unnatural an entanglement, it is surely the least you owe to both parents to give it up."

"Mother! I cannot see it as you do; my father fully exonerated Mr.

Crawfurd--you have told me so a hundred times. No one, not you, his widow, mourned my father as Mr. Crawfurd mourned--nay, mourns him to this day."

"Harry, do you wish to see a b.l.o.o.d.y guest present at your wedding?"

"Mother, that is a baseless, cruel horror. You would not wish me to maintain a hereditary feud on the principle of my forefathers. I cannot tell what the Christian religion teaches if it does not enjoin forgiveness of injuries."

"I hope I am a Christian, Harry, and I have tried to forgive my enemies, but it is one thing to make every allowance for them and entertain charitable feelings towards them, and another to ally myself with them, and const.i.tute them my closest friends. Harry, the whole neighbourhood would shrink from the idea of what you contemplate."

"If my principles and my heart said Yes, not the neighbourhood, but the whole world might cry No, and I would not feel bound to listen to the clamour."

"A young man's improper boast, Harry, and since you force me to it, not the world alone--I tell you nature objects to that girl--that girl of them all; how can you look her in the face and think of love?"

"Would you have me think of hate? Since you make the allusion, I declare to you, mother, that mark appeals to you and me in another fashion.

Cain's brand! do they call it? And who set the brand, and when, on Cain's brow? Sovereign clemency, after the wanderer's punishment was more than he could bear, if the reflection of my father's blood was transmitted to so innocent and n.o.ble a proxy, it must have been designed to teach such as you and me New Testament lessons of perfect charity."

"Harry, I have never been able to look that girl in the face."

"Mother, I pray never to forget that face, although it remain like an angel's face to me, because it is the fairest example of the human face divine that I ever hope to behold."

"Harry Jardine, you are mad, or worse; these are some of the sickening French and German sentimentalities against which I have been warned.

There is such a thing as a wholesome sense of repulsion, an honest manly recoil, a pure instinct of loathing, a thousand times to be preferred to this morbid mixture of good and evil, friend and foe, life and death, this defiance of decency and general opinion."

"Very true, mother; but there are a thousand exceptional cases, and a million points of ruthless prejudice. 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' sounded very righteous and respectable in the ears of the Jews, yet I believe the sentence had its condemnation, and the amendment was neither French nor German."

"Harry, you are profane, and you forget what is due to yourself and me."

The last saying was a hard one; his mother could be no judge of his profanity, but he had been a good son, and it had not been without a curb upon him that the strong man had accustomed himself to leave so much of the power and authority of Whitethorn in the wilful woman's hands.

In the library at the Ewes Mr. Crawfurd was addressing Joanna very gently.

"My dear, I am very sorry it cannot be; of course Mrs. Jardine will never consent, but it goes to my heart to grieve you."

"Papa, I cannot help it."

"And to grieve Harry Jardine."

"Papa, that is worse; but do not think that anybody--that he blames you."

"We shall trust, my dear, that he will soon recover the disappointment."

"Of course--it is not a great loss."

"My dear, pray don't smile when it hurts you, for I cannot bear it; it is natural that this should be a heavy cross to you; but setting it aside as unavoidable, is there no respect in which I can lighten it to you? No indulgence which you could fancy that I could procure for you?

No old wish of his Joan's that papa could by an effort gratify? Surely I cannot be so miserable, child."

"Oh, no, papa! I mean you can please in a great many things; you always could, and you always will. Women are not like men, their natures are not so concentrated. They have so many tastes and whims, you know; I possess them by the score, and I will never cease to relish their fulfilment so long as you and I keep labouring together, papa. I am not going to be a hypocrite, papa. This strange story has vexed me a good deal, but I was aware from the first of its unsubstantial character. I still want money to be charitable on my own account, like Lilias. I've a notion to revive our old greenhouse; I've a longing to see a little of the world with you, sir, in spring and summer; I've never been indifferent to silks and muslins, though I think my chief weakness in dress is the very finest of fine chintz prints, ever so dear a yard, papa, which an artist might paint, and more of a d.u.c.h.ess's wear than velvet. All these matters are acceptable to me, papa."

"You are sure that you are my pet and darling."

"Yes, papa; you have spoilt me."

Joanna was gone to her own room; there she laid her head on her arm, and asked her heart bitterly, "Have I succeeded in deceiving papa? Can he believe for a moment that any poor precious treasure in the wide world will make up to me for the want of Harry Jardine; that there is anything left me but Heaven instead of Harry Jardine? But then there is papa, dear papa, and I used to be papa's. What will not women do for their children? I always thought I could attain as much for papa. I was proud to prove my love to him, and I will drive out Harry's image for papa's sake, though I should die in the struggle."

Harry did not altogether admire this resolution. He was a good fellow, an excellent fellow, and he had the true, ineffable devotion to Joanna Crawfurd; but he was not free from jealousy and irritation, as well as sorrow and fear, when he was compelled to part from her for a time, and content himself with swearing fidelity on his own account, and seeing her occasionally as an ordinary acquaintance, until their relative positions should be changed, or his truth fail.