Chapter XXVII: The Interview

AS Jervis had opened the door to his sister, one wintry evening, months earlier, so now he opened it to his niece. But he no more knew Joan to be his niece than he had known Marian at first sight to be his sister. He thought of her only as Mr. Rutherford’s adopted daughter—Miss Rutherford. Joan was so commonly spoken of in the neighborhood by this name, that very many, including Jervis, quite believed her to be Mr. Rutherford’s niece.

“Is Mrs. Brooke at home?” asked Joan. Rapid walking and suppressed agitation had brought a flush to her cheeks, and her dark eyes wore their look of mingled trouble and defiance. The black brows above were drawn into one straight line of rich pencilling, and she held herself upright with a resolute dignity which scarcely sufficed to conceal her inward trembling.

“My sister Marian?” Jervis was surprised to find Marian’s surname known. He was aware what pains she had taken to suppress it, both during her stay at the Hall, and during her stay at home.

“Yes—Marian Brooke. I wish to speak to her, if you please.”

Jervis privately thought that the young lady need not have assumed quite so haughty an air. He began to wonder whether perhaps “Polly” were to be called upon again to act the “nurse” to somebody at the Hall. That seemed on the whole more likely than a request for renewed supplies of milk or butter. Joan, meanwhile, never doubting that all the Cairns family must be fully aware of the relationship between herself and them, wondered a little at the unconsciousness of his manner. Marian, his sister! That meant that he was her uncle—Joan’s uncle! Joan was quite prepared to repel any advances made on the score of this relationship, but as yet there were no advances to repel.

“My sister Marian is just inside,” said Jervis. “If you would like to come in—”

“Yes, I want to speak to Mrs. Brooke,” repeated Joan, with a touch of impatience. Jervis was struck by the distressed alternations of flush and paleness, and by the nervous excitement which underlay her haughtiness.

“Certainly!” he said in his pleasantest manner. “Will you please step inside, and I will call Marian.”

“What’s it all about, Jervis?” demanded Hannah, from the kitchen-door.

“Miss Rutherford wishes to see Polly,” Jervis answered.

“Oh!” Hannah said, making her appearance. “Well—she’ll have to come in here then. The parlor’s all in a mess. I haven’t had time to get anything straight.”

“It does not matter where,” observed Joan. Beforehand, she had pictured an interview alone with Marian; but now a despairing indifference to spectators seized upon her. These people of course all knew the facts of the case. And what did it matter? What did anything matter? What was aught in the world to Joan, except one aim—to bring rest and ease to her father’s troubled heart?

Marian Brooke forgot her own sensations as Joan came in. She rose again, and came forward, walking slowly, with her eyes fixed on the young girl’s face—the face of her long-lost child. Jervis looked on wonderingly. Hannah stood and stared with bare, floury arms, and pulled-up skirts. Only Marian and Joan moved, drawing nearer together.

Mother and daughter! And both knew it. Each knew also that the other knew it. But no brightness was in either face; for never till this moment had Joan felt the reality of the relationship, the tremendous force of that tie of nature which nothing could ever undo. She felt it, but only with a sense of bitter pain and shrinking. There had been a time when those dark eyes of Joan’s had looked lovingly into Marian’s with lisped words of tenderness to “Muvver, muvver!” Nothing of that kind now. The very memory of such days, ever fresh in Marian’s heart, had died out of Joan’s mind; and the sudden dread which showed itself in the girl’s whitening face, was reflected in the silent anguish of the mother’s passionate yearning.

Then Joan stood still, gazing down upon the red-brick floor. What was she to do or say next? What was she here for? And Marian broke the silence, speaking in the muffled tone of one half-choked.

“I think, perhaps, you’d like to see me in another room, wouldn’t you, Miss Rutherford, my dear?”

Joan laid one hand on the table for support, conscious of pallor and sickness.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said huskily. “Yes, I think I should like that best. But it doesn’t really matter. You all know, of course. I am not Miss Rutherford really. It is kind of you to be willing to call me so; but of course you know! I am Joan Brooke, your daughter; but much, much more Mr. Rutherford’s child!” added Joan, with a sob.

One moment’s dead pause, and then, “Well, I never!” broke from Hannah.

“Polly, my dear, is this your secret?” Jervis asked sorrowfully.

“Yes,” Marian said, coming closer to Joan. “It has been my secret, and I wish it was still. She shouldn’t have told. There wasn’t need. Why did you, my dear?” Marian asked of Joan, almost reproachfully.

Joan’s downcast eyes gave one startled look up.

“Didn’t they all know?” she gasped, rather than said.

“No, my dear, only me—nobody but me,” said Marian, taking one of Joan’s gloved hands, and fondling it between her own. “You won’t mind me doing that, will you, my dear? I’ve craved so for a touch! It seems to put new life into me. But I wouldn’t have told them yet, if you hadn’t. I didn’t mean to.”

Tears were slowly dropping from Marian’s eyes, as she went on caressing the little cold limp hand. Joan submitted only, making no response. Jervis said nothing after his first involuntary question. Hannah came to the other side of the table, rested her floury hands upon it, and scanned Joan all over.

“Well, I never!” she repeated. “You don’t mean to say it’s true? I never! And you not to say a word about it all these months! I never! What’s to be done next, I wonder?”

“Hannah, you’d better come away,” Jervis said in an undertone.

“Come away! What for?” demanded Hannah. “If this young woman is Polly’s daughter, she’s my niece, and I s’pose I’ve a right to speak to my own niece.”

“Not now. It’s not the time,” urged Jervis. “Not now, Hannah. Come away, and leave them quiet. Polly will tell us all by-and-by. Hannah—Hannah, come away.”

His whispered importunities prevailed. Very reluctantly Hannah permitted herself to be drawn aside, and the kitchen-door was shut. Mother and child stood alone, each facing the other.

For a minute neither spoke. The tall clock ticked on with loud, slow distinctness; and the afternoon sun streamed in through the lattice window, casting slender, diamond-shaped shadows on the red-brick floor. The purring even of the old cat lying beside the fender came to Joan’s ears, and the shrill chirp of a cricket in the hearth.

“You’ll sit down, my dear—won’t you?” Marian pleaded at length in a trembling voice. “You won’t mind sitting down here, just for a little?”

Joan allowed herself to be led to the big arm-chair of old-fashioned shape, commonly occupied by the old farmer—her grandfather. She sat in it, upright and pale, like one in a dream. Marian stood in front, gazing and gazing as if her eyes could not have their fill.

“I want to know if this is really true?” Joan said at length, speaking with a resolute composure. “It was old Mr. Brooke who told me.”

Marian was surprised at the question. Joan’s manner hitherto had implied no sort of doubt; and Joan, looking up, read her expression. “I know—I know,” she said bitterly. “Of course it is true—really. I haven’t any hope—really—of finding it a mistake. But he said you could tell me all about it. And I have come to ask.”

“Mr. Brooke’s son, Hubert, was my husband,” Marian said.

“Yes, so he told me. And you are my—”

Then a pause. Marian’s face worked.

“What made you give me up?” asked Joan suddenly. “If you had loved me, and kept me with you, I should have been your child now. I should have learnt to care for you. Now I am Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford’s child. I love them dearly, dearly, and I should be miserable away from them. Father is everything in the world to me. And it was your doing. You gave me up of your own free will; gave me over to them. It was a wrong, unjust thing to do. You did not deserve that they should keep me; but they did, and they were strangers—and you were my mother. And now I owe everything to them—not to you—nothing at all to you.”

Marian’s tears were streaming, and voice failed her for self-defence, if indeed she had any to offer.

“Father is ill, and he has a fancy that you will expect to be able to claim me as your own child,” Joan went on feverishly. “That is what I have come to speak about to-day. I want your help.”

“I’d give my right hand to help you, my dear, if it would be any good,” said Marian brokenly.

“Do you really care about me still?” asked Joan, with a momentary touch of curiosity. “I wonder you did not keep me, then, instead of giving me away. Of course I know that you had no money; but poor people don’t always give their children away in that fashion, directly they are in difficulties. It seems such an extraordinary thing to have done. I can’t understand it at all, and other people can’t either. Everybody says how wrong you were.”

Marian moved her head in mute, sorrowful assent.

“That is all over now, and can’t be helped,” pursued Joan. “I only want you just to see that it is not anybody’s doing except yours—that of course life is quite altered both for you and me by it. I want to speak to you now about my father. Since he heard all this from Mr. Brooke—my grandfather—he has been very unhappy and worried. It is making him ill again. He seems to think that you have a first right to me. He seems to think I am wrong not to be willing to leave him, and to live with you. As if I could!” Joan cried passionately. “He is everything to me—dearer than all the world. And you are only a stranger. You turned me off when I was a little helpless child, and gave up your right, and now you cannot take it back; anybody must see that. The very idea is absurd. But father’s head is weak since his accident, and he cannot grasp things as he used to do. If a fancy takes hold of him, he has no power to shake it off. And he has got this thought into his head, and nothing that I can say makes him feel differently. It is his illness, the doctor says, and the worry and unhappiness are wearing him out, and I have come to you for help. I think you ought to be willing to do this one thing for me, when you remember hew very much I owe to dear, dear father. It is only just that you should.”

“He would give you up to me!” Marian spoke faintly. Tears ceased, and she sat down in one of the stiff-backed chairs, looking straight before her. “He would give you up! That’s more than I dared to reckon on.”

“It is illness only,” repeated Joan, not quite catching the words spoken. “He would not have such an idea in his mind if he were strong and well. For, of course, I am his now—not yours—only his! I belong to him and to nobody else. But he is weak and ill, and he has this worry in his mind, that perhaps he ought to give me back to you, and he cannot shake it off.”

Joan stopped, struck with her mother’s look. Those gray eyes were gazing hungrily at her. In truth a sharp temptation had all at once assailed Marian, in the hour of her fancied strength. What if she took George Rutherford at his word? What if she accepted his offer, and demanded her Joan?

“Of course the idea is ridiculous,” Joan said coldly, with a change of manner. “I am of age now—not a child to be given away. Father knows that, and he will not force me to leave him. If he did, I would not live with you. I would earn my living elsewhere. But I have come to you to-day, because mother and I are so anxious about dear father, and I thought you would help me. I thought you might be willing to put matters straight—to tell father that he has every right to keep me, and that of course you could never think of asking me back. That is all I want. It is little enough—after the past! And I fancied you might perhaps care enough about my happiness to do it; I felt almost sure you would.”

Did she not care enough for Joan? Marian could only make a faint, wordless sound, and Joan went on: “Father has this constantly in his mind, and it weighs him down. It is making him worse, and the doctor says something must be done. I thought you would tell him—or write a letter to him—just saying that you do not want me, do not expect ever to have me back. That would put his mind at rest, and nothing else would in the same way.”

Marian was silent.

“It would kill him to lose me—and if I ever had to leave him it would break my heart.”

“To leave him—and come to me!” The words seemed dragged from Marian.

“Yes,” Joan answered, with darkening, resentful eyes; “nothing could make me more wretched.”

No reply came. The clock ticked on slowly, and Marian sat with bent head. How long this silence lasted, neither could have told. Marian felt at length a touch on the arm. Joan was standing by her side.

“Will you do it?” Joan asked hoarsely. “Will you give me up—altogether?”

“It is a hard thing to ask of a mother,” moaned Marian, still in the grasp of that dire temptation.

“Hard! Why, you have done it once, when you had no need!” The girl’s voice of scorn went through Marian like a knife-blade. “How did you know that I might not have been starved to death! You don’t suppose I can believe, after that, in your having ever cared for me!” Then with a sudden change to softness—“But if you will do this—if you will do what I ask—I promise to try and learn to love you.”

Again silence. Marian’s head had sunk on her chest.

“Then I shall take the matter into my own hands,” Joan said, flaming up into a proud and wrathful decisiveness. “I will tell father that I shall not leave him—that nothing can make me go away. And if it does him harm—if he is worse—then I will never, never speak to you again.”

When Marian again looked up, Joan was gone.