Chapter XXIV: Joan’s Confession

TWO days later, towards the close of the afternoon, Joan passed swiftly from her father’s room downstairs, on her way to the drawing-room. She did not wish to allow herself time for thought.

George Rutherford had something of a relapse, and Joan had scarcely left him all that day or the day before. Now he was sleeping, and she could venture away for half an hour.

Dulcibel and Nessie must be told what she knew. The sense of this “must” had grown upon Joan, till she felt that there could be no further delay. Joan dreaded the telling unspeakably, and doubted much her own courage when it should come to the point; but perhaps she dreaded putting off even more. For Leo was expected home late that same evening, and Joan knew that after his return speech would be tenfold harder.

So when she found her father quietly resting, and knew that Dulcibel and Nessie would be alone in the drawing-room, Joan rose under one of her sudden impulses, and hastened with rapid steps downstairs.

The drawing-room door stood ajar. Joan pushed it open, shut it behind her, crossed the wide room, and took her position on the thick rug, with clasped hands and downcast eyes, a deep flush on either cheek.

“Mother,” she began, “there is something I want to say to you, please—to you and Nessie.”

“Is it something that Leo may not hear?” asked Dulcibel. For Leo actually stood there, in the large bow-window, making one step forward to meet Joan, and pausing as he noticed the girl’s utter absorption.

“Leo! Oh yes, Leo may hear, of course, when he comes home,” said Joan hurriedly. “We have no secrets from Leo. And I suppose all the world must hear. But I don’t care about that—only about you and father and Nessie.”

“And Leo,” suggested Nessie.

“Yes, of course. Mother, I don’t know what you will say,” pursued Joan, raising sad, soft eyes to Dulcibel’s face, but seeing nothing beyond. The flush in her cheeks faded, and Dulcibel, who had already risen, drew nearer anxiously. “I went yesterday—no, not yesterday, but a day or two before—to see old Mr. Brooke. And he—Oh, I don’t know how to tell you,” Joan said bitterly.

Dulcibel was becoming alarmed.

“Is anything really the matter, Joan?” she asked. “I wish you would say quickly what it is. You flutter me so. Mr. Brooke! Isn’t he that unpleasant old man who called himself your grandfather?”

“Yes, and he says the same still,” said Joan sorrowfully. “He does not want to have anything to do with me, and I don’t suppose I shall ever see him again. It is not that, but something worse—much worse. Mother, he says—”

“Joan, please make haste, and don’t startle mother,” said Nessie, foreseeing hysterics. “Leo, make her speak out.”

Joan turned with a slight start towards Leo, and he came forward.

“Leo!” she uttered.

“Yes; I came home by an earlier train. Perhaps you would rather not have me for a listener,” he said, taking Joan’s cold hand into his own. “Shall I go away, or may I hear what you have to tell?”

“Oh, I suppose you may as well stay. It doesn’t matter,” said Joan hoarsely, drawing her fingers from his grasp. “You will have to know. It will not be a secret. If I don’t say it, father must, and that is so bad for him! It is only—I know who my grandfathers are now. Mr. Brooke is one, and the other is old Mr. Cairns the farmer. And his daughter Marian is my mother—the one who nursed mother so nicely last autumn. I don’t think I believe it all, but he says it is true.”

Joan spoke in quick, broken sentences as if breath were failing her.

Dulcibel’s first “My dear Joan!” was expressive only of bewilderment. She evidently thought Joan to be rambling. Nessie and Leo said nothing.

“It is true, I suppose,” said Joan, sighing. “He seemed quite sure. And he said she—Marian—could tell me all about it. He calls her ‘Marian Brooke.’ She is the widow of his son, Hubert Brooke, and I am their child. Perhaps that is why Marian was so strange to me—if she knew it then. I suppose I ought not to speak of her as ‘Marian’ at all,” added Joan dreamily; “but I don’t know what else to say. It all seems so strange—like a story, and not at all to do with me.”

“What does she mean? Joan, are you ill?” asked Dulcibel. “Such an extraordinary tale! One can’t really suppose—”

“The docketing of the lock of hair is explained,” said Leo slowly. He spoke as if lost in his own thoughts.

Joan looked up at him for a moment in sad protest, and then turned to Dulcibel.

“What am I to do?” she asked. “I am yours and father’s still, not hers. I have nothing to do with Marian Brooke. Must I leave off calling you ‘mother’?”

“Joan, how can you!” Nessie exclaimed, quite indignantly, while Dulcibel sat down and burst into tears.

“Of course I am ‘mother’ to you,” she said sobbing. “I should be very much hurt if you did leave off after all these years. Of course you are our child, and always will be. Do you mean to say it was Marian who left you at the bridge?—that horrid, heartless creature!—poor dear little mite that you were! I always say she ought to have died of remorse for her cruelty. How did she know she hadn’t killed you by exposure? How could she tell that George would adopt you? Oh, I have no patience with her, and I never had! The very thought of that woman always gave me a feeling of horror. I do feel so upset! But Nurse Marian! You actually mean to say she is the same person? Well, she must be very much changed, or else she isn’t half so nice as she seems. Joan, don’t stand there apart from us all. Come here.”

Joan drew nearer, saying—“But I am old Mr. Cairns’ grandchild. You won’t like that by-and-by, mother.”

“I don’t like the thought of it now, but it can’t be helped, and you belong to us all the same,” Dulcibel answered, folding Joan in an unwontedly loving embrace. “There—you poor child! It’s a most horrid thing to happen to you. But of course it doesn’t make a grain of difference, really. Marian gave you up in a shameful way, and she must take the consequences. She hasn’t a shadow of claim on you now. I can’t think what your father will say to it all.”

“Mother, he knows. It was bearing this that made him so much worse.”

“That dreadful old Mr. Brooke! Yes, of course, it was all his doing. I hope we shall never see anything of him again. If he comes to call, I shall say I am engaged. You needn’t worry yourself, Joan. It doesn’t matter what any of them say or do. Marian has no sort of right over you now.”

Joan murmured some grateful words, as her adopted mother continued to inveigh against Mr. Brooke, Marian and the Cairns in general. Dulcibel’s reception of the news was a great comfort to Joan, but she was keenly conscious of Leo’s silence. “I think I ought to go back to father,” she said presently, and she did not look towards Leo as she rose. Outside the drawing-room door, however, she found him by her side.

“Joan, this does not make any real difference,” he said, with some effort. “You are one of us still.”

“And Mr. Cairns’ grandchild, Leo!”

“It makes no difference,” he repeated. “That has to be put aside. Marian Brooke alone is to blame; and she has acted in such a manner as to forfeit every claim upon you. She must be well aware of this herself, and you see she has not come forward.”

“Please let me go,” was Joan’s response.

“But you and I are still—still—” Leo made a marked pause, a hesitating gasp—“still—brother and sister.”

“Certainly,” Joan replied rather coldly. “I am only afraid that in a little while things will look more disagreeable to you all than now. But we will be brother and sister as long as you wish.”

Joan walked upstairs, a curious half-smile on her face, which had grown paler the last two minutes. “Leo did not like me to call myself his ‘sister’ two months ago,” she thought. “Now—yes, of course I know what he means. Well, perhaps it will save trouble. I could never leave dear father for anybody. And this will make just a little difference with Leo, if with nobody else. He is so like father in some things—but not in that. Leo is proud, and father never had any pride.”

She found George Rutherford sleeping still, and sat down by his side to think over what had passed, only putting studiously aside any further recollections of Leo’s chilled manner. On the whole she was conscious of much relief and thankfulness. When her father awoke, asking the not unusual question, “What is my Joan thinking about?” she answered involuntarily, out of a full heart—

“Only those words, father—‘A present help in trouble!’”

“Have you began to learn their meaning, my dear?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said.

“That is well. Sometimes he sends the help in readiness for coming trouble,” George murmured.

“But I think the worst of my trouble is over now,” said Joan, speaking cheerfully. “Mother knows about the Cairns family, and about Marian—what ought I to call her?—and she says it doesn’t matter at all. She says I belong only to you and her, and not at all to Marian. I did feel afraid of what mother might say.”

“Marian Brooke is your mother, my child,” said George seriously.

“Must I call her so?” asked Joan, with reluctance. “It seems so unnatural: ‘My mother, Mrs. Brooke,’ or ‘Mrs. Brooke, my other mother!’ That is all I could say. Shall I ever have to see her, father? I should not like that.”

“Yes; I have been thinking. She ought to come here.”

“Oh no: it would be a worry for you. I’ll go to Cairns farm some day soon, and have an interview. It will be rather dreadful, but I shall get through somehow, I dare say. Of course I can’t pretend to be fond of her, and she could not expect it. She gave me up, and she has no right over me now.”

George’s look was hardly of assent. He said gently—“She is your own mother, Joan—nothing can undo that. Wrongly as she acted, the tie remains. I cannot think much yet, I can only feel. We shall see in time what is right. God is a very present help, darling, always, at all times. But he does not always help us just as we would choose. He brings us often by ways that we cannot understand.”