Chapter XXIII…

Chapter XXIII

As it turned out, they all went to the school feast.

Mrs. Hayward was not quite sure, as the Colonel had said, which side she was on. The Canon had a great influence over her, as he had over most of the ladies in the parish; but the Canon had a way of making jokes about India and her husband’s youth, which were apt to turn Mrs. Hayward sharply round to the other side. When the Colonel reported to her all that happened, and the meeting in the road, and Canon Jenkinson’s questions, Elizabeth’s suspicions were at once aroused. ‘What did you tell him?’ she said.

‘I said exactly what you told me, my dear. I don’t quite approve of it--but I wouldn’t run the risk of contradicting you----’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Well, my dear,’ said Colonel Hayward, a little flushed by this rapid questioning, ‘he said something about “your first poor wife"--which was quite natural--for he knows that we have no----’

‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs. Hayward cried indignantly. ‘I knew he was just the man to make references of that sort.’ And after a few minutes she added, ‘I think we’ll go to the school feast. It will please the Sitwells, who have a great many difficulties, and who do the very best they can for their people; and it will show the Canon----’

‘But I assure you, my dear----’

‘You have no occasion to assure me of anything, Henry--I hope I know him well enough. He is just the sort of man,’ Mrs. Hayward said. And on the next afternoon she dressed very well indeed, as for one of the best of her afternoon parties, and went to the school feast. To see her going in at the swinging-gate, with Joyce and the Colonel following in her train, was a very fine sight. But the group was not so conspicuous as it might have been, from the fact that a great many people equally fine had already gathered in Wombwell’s field, where the Sitwells, though they were poor, had gone to the expense of having a tent put up,--an extravagance which the people who shared their humble hospitalities did not forget for many a long day. It was not a school feast only, but a demonstration of the faction of St. Augustine’s as against the parish. Mrs. Sitwell had worked for this great end with an energy worthy of the best of causes. She had not neglected any inducements. ‘The Haywards are coming,’ she said, ‘with their daughter, you know,--the young lady whom no one ever heard of before. I am sure there is some mystery about that daughter.’ This was how it was that she had been so anxious and importunate with Joyce.

It was the very first occasion on which Joyce had found herself among a company of ladies and gentlemen as one of themselves, and she had not at all expected it. She had gone expecting to find children, among whom she was always at home,--poor children who, though they would be English, and talk with that accent which, to Joyce’s unaccustomed ears, meant refinement almost as extraordinary as the strange acquirement of speaking French, which continues to astonish unaccustomed travellers on the other side of the Channel--would still be not so much unlike Scotch children that one used to them should not find means of making friends. She had made sure that there would be some young woman in charge of them with whom, perhaps, she might be allowed to make acquaintance, who would tell her how she managed, and what were her difficulties, and which was the way approved in England. In short, Joyce had looked forward wistfully to a momentary half-clandestine return to what had heretofore been her life. It was disappointing to go in company with her father and his wife, who would be on the outlook to see that she did not commit herself. But then, on the other hand, she was unexpectedly reinforced by the arrival of Captain Bellendean, in whom she found a curious support and consolation. He knew--that she was Joyce the schoolmistress, not a fine young lady. That of itself felt like a backing up--just as it had been a backing up in the old times that the lady at Bellendean knew that perhaps she was not altogether Joyce the schoolmistress, but Joyce the princess, Lady Joyce, if all were known.

But when Joyce found herself in the midst of this well-dressed company, and understood that she was, so to speak, quite accidentally plunged into the world, a great tremor came over her. The scene was very animated and pretty, though not exactly what it professed to be. Wombwell’s field was a large grassy space, very green and open, surrounded on three sides by overhanging foliage, and with a few trees at the upper end, where the ground sloped a little. In the flat ground at the bottom the travelling menageries which visited Richmond were in the habit of establishing themselves from time to time, whence its name. The round spot created by innumerable circuses showed upon the grass; but beyond the turf was of unbroken greenness, and there stood the little tent within which tea was dispensed to the company. The children were at the other end of the field occupied with divers games, with a few of the faithful of the district superintending and inspiring. But Joyce found herself not in that division of the entertainment, where she might have been at her ease, but in the midst of all the well-dressed people--the people who knew each other, and exchanged greetings and smiles and polite conversation.

‘Dear Mrs. Hayward, how kind of you to come to our little treat! Dear Miss Hayward, how sweet of you to remember! Colonel, you are always so kind; I am sure you have been working for me,’ cried Mrs. Sitwell, meeting them with extended hands. She was beaming with smiles and delight. ‘I asked a few friends to look in, and people are so kind, everybody has come. It is quite an ovation! Dear Austin is quite overcome. It is such an encouragement in the face of opposition to find his friends rallying round him like this.’

‘Why are his friends rallying round him?’ said Captain Bellendean. ‘I thought it was a school feast.’

‘And so did I,’ said Joyce, looking somewhat piteously round her, and wistfully at the children in the distance. The Colonel and Mrs. Hayward had both been swallowed up by the crowd. They were shaking hands with all their acquaintances, exchanging smiles and remarks. Joyce said to herself, with a thrill of mingled alarm and self-congratulation, What should I have done had not the Captain been here?

Norman looked round upon the company, though with different feelings from those of Joyce. ‘I don’t know a soul,’ he said, with a little amusement--the consciousness, so soon acquired by a man who has been for however short a time ‘in society’--not only that it is a very extraordinary thing to know nobody, but also that the people among whom he cannot find a single acquaintance cannot be of much account.

‘And neither do I,’ said Joyce, with a wistful look. Her feeling was very different. She was a little fluttered by the sight of so many people, and looked at them with a longing to see a face she knew, a face which would smile upon her. She met many looks, and could even see that there were little scraps of conversation about her, and that she was pointed out to one and another; but there was no greeting or recognition for her among the pleasant crowd. She turned round again, very grateful, to the Captain, whose society sustained her--but, alas! the Captain had been spied and seized upon by Lady St. Clair, and Joyce felt herself left alone. She looked wistfully at the collection of daughters who surrounded Lady St. Clair, ready to claim acquaintance with a smile if the Miss St. Clair who had called should be among the array. But either the Miss St. Clair who had called was not there, or else she had forgotten Joyce. She stood for a moment shy yet desolate, not knowing where to turn; then, with a little sense of taking flight, moved quickly away to where the children were.

‘Miss Hayward, Miss Hayward!’ cried a voice behind. She paused, glad that some one cared enough to stop her, and saw Mr. Sitwell hastening after her, with a young man following closely,--a very young man in the long coat and close waistcoat which were quite unusual things to Joyce. ‘You are so kind as really to wish to help with the children? Let me introduce my young friend and curate, Mr. Bright; he will take you to them,’ the clergyman said.

The other little clergyman made his bow, and said how fortunate they were in having such a fine day, and what a pretty party it was. ‘I always think this is such a nice place for outdoor parties: not so nice as one’s own lawn, of course--but if one has no lawn, what can one do? In most places there is no alternative but a vulgar field. Now this is quite pretty--don’t you think it is quite pretty, Miss Hayward?’

‘There is so much green, and such fine trees, that everything here is pretty,’ said Joyce.

‘You put it much more nicely than I did; but I’m so glad you like the place; and how very gratifying for the Sitwells! It really was time that there should be a demonstration. After beguiling Sitwell here with such large promises, to have the rectory set itself against him! But there is a generosity about society, don’t you think, Miss Hayward, as soon as people really see the state of affairs. It will be a dreadful slap in the face for Jenkinson, don’t you think?’

‘Indeed----’ Joyce had begun, meaning to say she was too ignorant to form an opinion, but her new companion did not wait for the expression of her sentiments.

‘Yes, indeed--you are quite right; and for Mrs. Jenkinson, who, between ourselves, is a great deal worse than the Canon. Every one who comes to St. Augustine’s she seems to think is taking away something from her. That is the greatest testimonial we can give to the ladies,’ said the little gentleman, with a laugh; ‘when they are disagreeable, they are so very disagreeable--beyond the power of any man. But, fortunately for us, that happens very seldom.’ The curate glanced up for the smile of approval with which his little sallies were generally received, but getting none, went on again undismayed. ‘Which kind of children do you like, Miss Hayward,--the quite little ones, the roly-polies, or the big ones? I prefer the babies myself: they roll about on the grass like puppies, and they are quite happy--whereas you have to keep the other ones going. Miss Marsham takes the big girls in hand. You must let me introduce her to you. She is our great stand-by in the district--a little peculiar, but such a good creature. Well, Miss Marsham, how are you getting on here?’

‘Very well, oh, very well. We always do nicely. We have been playing at Tom Tidler’s ground. We just wanted some one to take the head of the other side. Oh, Mr. Bright,’ cried this new personage, clasping her hands together, ‘what a pleasure for everybody; what a good thing; what a thorough success!’

‘Isn’t it?’ cried the curate; and they both turned round to look down upon the many-coloured groups below with beaming faces.

‘Nobody can say now that St. Augustine’s was not wanted,’ said the lady.

‘No, indeed; I have just been saying to Miss Hayward what a slap in the face for the Canon,’ the gentleman added, again giving vent to his feelings in a triumphant laugh.

‘Oh, is this Miss Hayward?’ said Miss Marsham, offering her hand to Joyce. She was a thin woman, with long meagre arms, and hands thrust into gloves too big for her. Without being badly dressed, she had the general air of having been taken out of a wardrobe of old clothes: everything she wore being a little old-fashioned, a little odd, badly matched, and hanging unharmoniously together. Even those gloves, which were too big, had the air of having had two hands thrust into them at random, without any thought whether or not they were a pair. But the old clothes were all of good quality; the little frills of lace were what ladies call ‘real,’ not the cottony imitations which are current in the present day. She had a worn face, lit up by a pair of soft brown eyes, in which there was still a great deal of sparkle left, when their owner pleased.

‘I have heard so much of you,’ she said. ‘Dear Mrs. Sitwell takes such an interest! it is so very kind to come and see how the children are getting on: and here they are all waiting for their game. Mr. Bright, you must take the other side. Now then, children, I hope that is high enough for you. Come on.’

Joyce stood by with great gravity while the game proceeded--Mr. Bright and Miss Marsham making an arch with their joined hands, through which the children streamed. The curate, no doubt, would have taken this part of his duties quite simply if it had not been for the presence of this spectator, whose momentary smile died off into a look of very serious contemplation as she stood by, taking no part in the fun, which, with the stimulus of Mr. Bright’s presence, grew fast and furious. Joyce could not have told why she felt so serious. She stood looking on at Miss Marsham’s old clothes on the one side--the thin wrist, with its little edge of yellow lace, the big glove, made doubly visible by the elevation of the hand--and Mr. Bright in his neat coat, falling to his knee, extremely spruce in his professional blackness, against the vivid green of the sloping field. Joyce thought him very good to do it, nor was she conscious of any ridicule. She compared Mr. Bright with the minister at home, who would have looked on as she herself was doing, but certainly would not have joined in the play: and she thought that the children were very much made of in England, and should be very happy. Presently, however, Mr. Bright detached himself from the game, and came and joined her.

‘I am afraid you thought me a great gaby,’ he said; ‘but at a school feast, you know, one can’t stand on one’s dignity.’

‘Oh no,’ said Joyce, ‘it was I that was the great---- for not joining in. I should like to do something; but I don’t know what would please them.’

‘Something new to play at,’ said Miss Marsham. ‘I always ask strangers if they can’t recommend something new. Look, look!’ she cried, suddenly clutching the curate’s arm; ‘do you see? the Thompsons’ carriage, his very greatest supporters! Dear me, dear me! who could have thought of that!’

‘And Sir Sam himself,’ said the curate exultantly. ‘Well, this is triumph indeed. I must go and see what they say.’

‘Sir Sam himself,’ said Miss Marsham musingly. ‘Do you know, Miss Hayward, if you will not think it strange of me to say it, I am beginning to get a little sorry for the Canon. It is not that Sir Sam is such a great person. He is only a soap-boiler, or something of that sort; but he is enormously rich, and the Canon has always been by way of having him in his pocket. Whatever was wanted, there was always a big subscription from Sir Sam. Yes, dear, by all means. Hunt the Slipper is a very nice, noisy---- You will think it very queer, Miss Hayward, but I am beginning to get sorry for the Canon. I can’t help recollecting, you know, the time before St. Augustine’s was thought of. Yes, yes, my dear; but let me talk for a moment to the young lady.’

‘I know so little,’ said Joyce,--‘scarcely either the one or the other.’

‘And you must think us so frivolous,’ said the kind woman, with a sigh. ‘The fact is, I was very anxious it should be a success. St. Augustine’s was very much wanted--it really was. There are such a number of those people that live by the river, you know--boatmen, and those sort of people--and so neglected. I tried a few things--a night-school, and so forth; but by one’s self one can do so little. Have you much experience, Miss Hayward, in parish work?’

‘Oh, none--none at all.’

‘Ah!’ said Miss Marsham, with a sigh, ‘that’s how one’s illusions go. I thought you would be such a help. But never mind, my dear, you’re very young. Oh, you’ve begun, children, without me! All right, all right; I am not disappointed at all. I want to talk to this young lady. They think we care for it just as much as they do,’ she went on turning to Joyce; ‘but if truth be told, I am a little stiff for Hunt the Slipper. And you can’t think how good the Sitwells are. He is in the parish--I ought to say the district--morning, noon, and night. And she--well, if I did not know she had three children, and did everything for them herself, and really only one servant, for the other is quite a girl, and always taken up with the baby--besides her work about the photographs, you know--I should say she was in the parish too, morning, noon, and night.’

Joyce stood and looked down upon the people flitting in and out of the tent, arranging and rearranging themselves in different groups, and on the rush of the hosts to the swinging-gate, at which a fat man and a large lady were getting down, and listened to the narrative going on in her ear with the accompaniment of the cries and laughter of the children, all in that tone which, to her northern ears, was high-pitched and a little shrill. How strange it all was! She might have fallen into a new world. It was curious to listen to this new opening of human life; but she was young, and not enough of a spectator to be able to disengage herself, and be amused with a free mind by the humours of a scene with which she had nothing to do. She looked still a little wistfully at the little crowd, where there was nobody who knew anything of herself, or thought her worth the trouble of making acquaintance with. Joyce had not heard any fine conversation as yet, nor had she encountered any of the wit or wisdom which she had expected; but still she could not free herself from the idea that to be among the ladies and the gentlemen would be more entertaining than here, with Miss Marsham giving her a sketch of the history of the Sitwells and the church controversies of the place, and the school children quite beyond her reach playing Hunt the Slipper in the background. She was much too young to take any comfort in the thought that such is life, and that the gay whirl of society very often resolves itself into standing in a corner and hearing somebody else’s private history, not always so innocent or from so benevolent a historian.

But presently, and all in a moment, the aspect of affairs changed for Joyce. It changed in a completely unreasonable, and, indeed, altogether inadequate way,--not by an introduction among the best people, the crowd whose appearance filled the clergyman and his wife, and all their retainers, with transports a trifle short of celestial; not in making acquaintance with Sir Sam Thompson, the soap-boiler, whose appearance was the climax of the triumph--a climax so complete that it turned the scale, and made the Sitwells’ hard-hearted partisan sorry for the Canon. None of these great things befell Joyce. All that happened was the appearance of a tall individual, separating himself from the crowd, and walking towards her from the lower level.

‘Here is a gentleman coming this way,’ said Miss Marsham. ‘I don’t think he is one of the school committee, or any one I know. But I am rather short-sighted, and I may be mistaking him for some one else, as I do so often. Dear Miss Hayward, I am sure you must have good eyes: will you look and tell me. Ah, I see you know him.’

‘It is Captain Bellendean,’ said Joyce. Her musing face had grown bright.

‘Who is Captain Bellendean? Does he take an interest in Sunday schools? Is he----’ Here Miss Marsham turned to look at her companion, and though she was short-sighted, she was not without certain insights which women seldom altogether lose. ‘Oh!’ she said, and, with a subdued smile and a sparkle out of her brown eyes, which for a moment made her middle-aged face both young and bright, returned to the children who were playing Hunt the Slipper, and though she had said she was too stiff for that game, was down among them in a moment as lively as any there.

It is to be doubted whether Joyce was conscious that her friend of ten minutes’ standing had left her, or how she left her. She stood looking down upon the same scene, her face still full of musing, but touched with light which changed and softened every line. ‘I have been looking for you everywhere,’ said Captain Bellendean; ‘when I got free of that rabble you were nowhere to be seen. I might have thought you would turn to the children, who have some nature about them. And so I had the sense to do at last.’

‘Do you call them rabble?’ said Joyce.

‘Not if it displeases you,’ he said. ‘But what are they after all? Society is always more or less a rabble, and here you get it naked, without the brilliancy and the glow which takes one in town.’

Perhaps Captain Bellendean had not found himself so much appreciated as he thought himself entitled to be in town, and thus produced these sentiments, which are so common, with a little air of conviction, as if they had never been heard before. And indeed, save in books, where she had often met them, Joyce had never heard them before.

‘And yet,’ said Joyce, ‘when educated people meet--people that have read and have seen the world--it must be more interesting to hear them talk than--than any other pleasure.’

‘May we sit down here? the grass is quite dry. Educated people? I am sure I don’t know, for I seldom meet them, and I’m very uninstructed myself. But I’ll tell you what, Miss Joyce, you are the only educated person I know. Talk to me, and I will listen, and I have no doubt it will be far more entertaining to me than any other diversion; but whether it may have the same effect on you----’ he said, looking up to her from the grass upon which he had thrown himself, with inquiring eyes.

Oh, Andrew Halliday! whose boast was education, who would have tackled her upon the most abstruse subjects, or talked Shakespeare and the musical glasses as long as she pleased,--how was it that the soldier’s brag of his ignorance seemed to Joyce far more delightful than any such music of the spheres?

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXIV

Norman Bellendean appeared very often at Richmond. He made what Mrs. Hayward considered quite an exhibition of himself at that school feast--in a way which no man had any right to do, unless---- People asked who he was--a distinguished-looking man, and quite new to society in Richmond. It is well known that in the country a man who is really a man--neither a boy of twenty nor an aged beau masquerading as such--is always received with open arms. Half a dozen ladies, with water-parties, or dances, or some other merrymaking in hand, asked Mrs. Sitwell anxiously who her friend was. ‘And could you induce him to come to my dance on the 23d?’ or to my picnic, or whatever it might be. He formed in some degree the climax of that most successful entertainment; for the little clergywoman was too clever to confess that in reality she knew nothing whatever about Captain Bellendean. She replied evasively that she did not know what his engagements were,--that he had only come from town for that afternoon; and so got herself much worship in the eyes of all around, who knew how very difficult it was, what an achievement almost impossible, to get a man to come from town, while still the season lingered on. It was just as well, the disappointed ladies said; for a man who could afficher himself, as he had been doing with that Miss Hayward, was either an engaged man, and so comparatively useless, or a dangerous man, who had better be kept at arm’s-length by prudent mothers with daughters. An engaged man, as is well known, is a man with the bloom taken off him. He cannot be expected to make himself agreeable as another man would do--for either he will not, being occupied with his own young lady, or else he ought not, having a due regard to the susceptibilities of other young ladies who might not be informed of his condition. And to see him sitting on the grass at Joyce’s feet was a thing which made a great impression upon two people--upon Lady St. Clair, who knew Norman’s value, and whose heart had beat quicker for a moment, wondering if it was for Dolly, or Ally, or Minnie, or Fanny, that the Lord of Bellendean had come; whereas it appeared it was for none of them, but for the Haywards, and that stiff girl of theirs. The other person was Mrs. Hayward herself, who, after all the trouble she had been at in making up her mind to Joyce, thus found herself, as it seemed, face to face with the possibility of being released from Joyce, which was very startling, and filled her with many thoughts. It would, no doubt, be a fine termination to her trouble, and would restore the household to its original comfortable footing. But besides that she grudged such wonderful good luck to a girl who really had done nothing to deserve it, Mrs. Hayward felt that, even with Joyce married, things could not return to their old happy level. No revolution can be undone altogether; it must leave traces, if not on the soil over which it has passed, at least on the constitution of affairs. The house could never be, even without Joyce, as easy, as complete, as tranquil, as before it was aware that Joyce existed. Therefore her mind was driven back into a chaos of uncertainties and disagreeables.

Besides, it was not in the abstract a proper thing for a man to afficher himself in such a way. It was wrong, in the first place, unless he was very certain he meant it, compromising the girl; and even if he meant it, it was an offence against decorum, and put the girl’s mother, or the person unfortunately called upon to act in the place of the girl’s mother, in a most uncomfortable position; for what could she say? Should she be asked, as it would be most natural that people should ask, whether it was a settled thing, what answer could she make? For she felt sure that it was not a settled thing,--nothing indeed but a caprice of this precious Captain’s. To amuse himself, nothing but that! And yet she felt with an angry helplessness, especially galling to Elizabeth, who had hitherto commanded her husband with such absolute ease and completeness, that this was a case in which she could not get the Colonel to act. He would not bring the man to book: he would not ask him what he meant by it. Of this Mrs. Hayward was as certain as that night is not day. Colonel Hayward could not be taught even to be distant to the Captain. He could not behave coldly to him; and as for herself, how could she act when the father took no notice? This was one of the things which, even under the most skilful management, could not be done.

It kept Mrs. Hayward all the more anxious that young Bellendean continued to appear from time to time without invitation, sometimes indeed bringing invitations of his own. Twice there was a water-party, the first time conducted by Mrs. Bellendean, and to which a party came from town, including Greta--a large and merry party, which the St. Clairs were asked to join as well as the Haywards. The gratification of this, which brought her into bonds of apparent intimacy with Lady St. Clair, her most important neighbour, threw a pleasant mist over Mrs. Hayward’s sharpness of observation; but she was suddenly brought back to her anxieties by remarking the eagerness of Mrs. Bellendean to have Joyce with her on the return voyage. Joyce had been in Norman’s boat on the way up the stream, while Greta sat sedately by her elder relative; but in coming back Mrs. Bellendean had shown so determined a desire for Joyce, that the Captain’s plans were put out. Mrs. Hayward, till that time rapt in the golden air of the best society, feeling herself definitely adopted into the charmed circle of ‘the best people,’ had forgotten everything else for the moment, when she suddenly became aware of a little discussion going on. ‘Joyce, you must really come with me. I have scarcely had the chance of a word. Greta will take your place in the other boat, and you must--you really must give me your company.’ ‘What is the good of disturbing the arrangement?’ said Norman’s deeper voice, in a slight growl. ‘Oh, I must have Joyce,’ said the other. And Mrs. Hayward, looking up, saw a little scene which was very dramatic and suggestive. The Captain, in his flannels, which are generally a very becoming costume, making his dark, bronzed, and bearded face all the more effective and imposing, stooping to hold the boat which Joyce had been about to enter, looking up, half angry, half pleading, as his glance was divided between the two ladies. Joyce’s foot had been put forward to step on board, when her elder friend caught her arm; and Mrs. Hayward’s keen eyes observed the change of expression, the sudden check with which Joyce drew back. And the change was effected, notwithstanding the Captain’s opposition. Mrs. Hayward did the girl the justice to say that she did not look either dull or angry when she was transferred to the other boat; but she was subdued--sedate as Greta had been, and as was suited to the atmosphere of the elder people. The Colonel, it need not be said, was among the younger ones, making himself very happy, but not pleased, any more than his inferior officer, to have Joyce taken away.

This little episode was one concerning which not a word was said. The immediate actors made no remark whatever, either good or bad. Mrs. Bellendean held Joyce’s hand in hers, and talked to her all the way with the tenderest kindness; and save that she had fallen back into more of her ordinary air, and was serious as usual, Joyce showed no consciousness that she had been removed from one boat to another, pour cause. Was she aware of it? her step-mother asked herself; did she know? Mrs. Hayward replied to herself that a woman is always a woman, however inexperienced, and that she must know: but did not specify in her thoughts what the knowledge was.

And in the evening, when all was over, when the visitors had departed after the cold collation which Mrs. Hayward thought it necessary to have prepared for them on their return, though that had not been in the programme of the day’s pleasure--she held a conversation with the Colonel on the subject, which gave much information to that unobservant man. ‘Did you tell me, Henry,’ she said, opening all at once a sort of masked battery upon the unsuspecting soldier, pleasantly fatigued with his party of pleasure, ‘or have I only imagined, that there was some man--in Scotland--some sort of a lover, or engagement, or something--that had to do with Joyce?’

‘My dear!’ the Colonel cried, taken by surprise.

‘Yes, but tell me. Did I dream it, or did you say something?’

‘There was a man,’ the Colonel admitted, with great reluctance, ‘at the cottage that day, who said---- But Joyce has never spoken to me on the subject--never a word.’

‘But there was a man?’ Mrs. Hayward said.

‘There was a man: but entirely out of the question, quite out of the question, Elizabeth. You would have said so yourself if you had seen him.’

‘Never mind that. Most likely quite suitable for her in her former circumstances. But that is not the question at all. What I wanted to know was just what you tell me. There was a man----’

‘I have never heard a word of him from that day to this. Joyce has never referred to him. I hope never to hear his name again.’

‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Hayward, opposing the profound calm of a spectator to the rising excitement of her listener. ‘I wonder, now, what he would think of Captain Bellendean.’

‘Of Bellendean? why, what should he think? What is there about Bellendean to be thought of? Yes, yes, himself of course, and he’s a very fine fellow; but that is not what you mean.’

‘Do you mean to say, Henry, that you did not remark how the Captain, as she calls him, affiches himself everywhere--far more than I consider becoming--with Joyce?’

‘Affiches himself! My dear, I don’t know exactly what you mean by that. So many French words are used nowadays.’

‘Makes a show of himself, then--marks her out for other people’s remark--can’t see her anywhere but he is at her side, or her feet, or however it may happen. Why, didn’t you remark he insisted on having her in his boat to-day, and paid no attention to the young lady from town who was of his own party and came with him, and of course ought to have had his first care?’

‘My dear, I was in that boat. It was natural Joyce should be with me.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs. Hayward; ‘and accordingly Captain Bellendean, with that self-denial which distinguishes young men, put out his own people in order that you might have her near you. How considerate!’

‘Elizabeth! not more considerate, I am sure, than you would be for any one who might feel herself a little out of it,--a little strange, perhaps, not knowing many people,--not with much habit of society.’

‘My dear Henry, you are an old goose,’ was what his wife said.

But when there was another water-party proposed, she looked very closely after her step-daughter--not, however, in the way of interfering with Captain Bellendean’s attentions,--for why should she interfere on behalf of Greta or any one else? let their people look after them,--but only by way of keeping a wise control and preventing anything like this affichement, which might make people talk. Captain Bellendean was a free man, so far as any one knew; he had a right to dispose of himself as he pleased. There was no reason why she should interfere against the interests of Joyce. To be sure, it gave her a keen pang of annoyance to think of this girl thus securing every gift of fortune. What had she done that all the prizes should be rained down at her feet? But at the same time, Mrs. Hayward began to feel a dramatic interest in the action going on before her eyes--an action such as is a great secret diversion and source of amusement to women everywhere--the unfolding of the universal love-tale; and her speculations as to whether it would ever come to anything, and what it would come to, and when the dénouement would be reached, gave, in spite of herself, a new interest to her life. She watched Joyce with less of the involuntary hostility which she had in vain struggled against, and more abstract interest than had yet been possible--looking at her, not as Joyce, but as the heroine of an ever-exciting story. The whole house felt the advantage of this new point of view. It ameliorated matters, both upstairs and down, and, strangely enough, made things more easy for Baker and the cook, as well as for Joyce, while the little romance went on.

All this took place very quickly, the water-parties following each other in rapid succession, so that Joyce was, so to speak, plunged into what, to her unaccustomed mind, was truly a whirl of gaiety, before the day on which Canon Jenkinson called with his wife in state--a visit which was almost official, and connected with the great fact of Joyce’s existence and appearance, of which they had as yet taken no formal notice. Mrs. Jenkinson was, in her way, as remarkable in appearance as her husband. She was almost as tall, and though there were no rotundities about her, her fine length of limb showed in a free and large movement which went admirably with the Canon’s swing. They came into the room as if they had been a marching regiment; and being great friends, and having known the Haywards for a number of years, began immediately to criticise all their proceedings with a freedom only to be justified by these well-known facts.

‘So this is the young lady,’ Mrs. Jenkinson said. She rose up to have Joyce presented to her, and, though Joyce was over the common height, subdued her at once to the size and sensations of a small schoolgirl under the eyes of one of those awful critics of the nursery who cow the boldest spirit. ‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, my dear.’ The Canon’s wife was a very well educated woman, but her English was not perfect. She used various of those colloquialisms which are growing more and more common in ordinary talk. The reader will not imagine that, in reporting such dreadful forms of speech, the writer has any sympathy with persons who are capable of saying that they are very pleased.

‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson; ‘how do you do? I think I ought both to have had information of this wonderful appearance upon the scene and to have had you brought to see me; but that is, of course, not your fault: and though late, I am very delighted to make friends with you. She has a nice face,’ she added, turning to Mrs. Hayward. ‘I like her face. No doubt she will give you a great deal of trouble, but in your place I should expect to make something of a girl with that kind of looks.’

‘I am sure Joyce is very much obliged to you for thinking so well of her. It remains to be seen what we are to make of each other--but I never pretended to be so clever,’ Mrs. Hayward said.

‘As for pretending, that is neither here nor there. I want you to tell me all about it now,--not for my sake, but that I may have something to answer when people bother me with questions. That is the worst of not being quite frank. When you make a mystery about anything, people always imagine there is a great deal more in it. I always say it is the best policy to make a clean breast of everything at once.’

‘There is no clean breast to make. I have all along said precisely the same thing--which is, that she couldn’t possibly have been with us in India, and that she was brought up by her mother’s friends.’

‘The first wife,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson; ‘poor thing, I have always heard she died very young, but never before that she left a child.’

‘Few people are so clever as to hear everything. You perceive that it was the case, nevertheless,’ Mrs. Hayward said, with a sparkle in her eyes.

‘And I hear you are plunging her into all sorts of gaiety, and that there is a follower, as the maids say, already, or something very like one--a Scotch officer, or something of that sort. You are not so pleased to have her, but what you would be resigned to get rid of her, I suppose.’

‘I can’t tell what you suppose, or what you may have heard,’ said the Colonel’s wife. ‘I hope I will do my duty to my husband’s daughter whatever the circumstances may be.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean to throw any doubt upon that; but we were very surprised,’ Mrs. Jenkinson said.

In the meantime the Canon had withdrawn to the other side of the room and called Joyce to him, who had been considerably alarmed by the beginning of this interchange of hostilities. ‘Come here and talk to me,’ he said. ‘You have not kept faith with me. I have got a crow to pluck with you, my new parishioner. You went to that affair of the Sitwells after all.’

‘My father took me,’ said Joyce, with natural evasion; and then she added, ‘but there was no reason I should not go.’

‘Here’s a little rebel,’ said the Canon; ‘not only flies in my face, but tells me there’s no reason why she shouldn’t. Come, now, answer me my question. Are you a good Churchwoman--they turn out very good Church principles in Scotland when they are of the right sort--or are you a horrid little Presbyterian? you wouldn’t answer me the other day.’

‘I am a--horrid Presbyterian,’ Joyce said, with an unusual amusement and sense of humour breaking through her shyness and strangeness. The Canon was the first person who had touched any natural chord in her.

‘I thought as much,’ he said. ‘Hayward, here’s a pretty business. As if it were not enough to have a nest of rebels conspiring under my very nose, here’s a little revolutionary with no respect for any constituted authority whom you’ve brought among us. But I must teach you the error of your ways. You shall come and hear me preach my famous sermon on Calvin, and if after that you find you have a leg to stand upon--but I suppose you’re ready to go to the stake for your religion, however wrong it may be proved to be?’

‘I was never taught,’ said Joyce, with her schoolmistress air, ‘that it was a religion at all--for them that instructed me said we were all at one in our religion, and that it was only the forms of Church government----’

‘Do you hear that, Hayward! This will never do. I see she means to convert me. And that’s why she sympathises with these Sitwells and their demonstrations. You were there too. And they dragged that old boy--that big Sir Sam--to their place, by way of a little extra triumph over me--as if I cared for the soap-boiler. And, Hayward, you were there too.’

‘Elizabeth,’ said the Colonel abashed, ’as they made so great a point of it, thought we might as well go.’

‘And fly in the face of your oldest friend,’ said the Canon. ‘Look here, I am going to be great friends with this girl of yours. I’ll bring her over to my side, and she’ll help me to make mince-meat of these St. Augustine people. What is her name?--Joyce--why, to be sure, that was her mother’s----’ The Canon’s fine bass dropped into a lower key, and he broke of with a ‘poor thing, poor thing! Well, my dear, I don’t mean to stand on any ceremony with you. I mean to call you Joyce, seeing I have known your father since before you were born. You shouldn’t have taken him off to that business in Wombwell’s field, and made him take sides against me.’

‘I did not know--one side from another,’ said Joyce; ‘and besides, it was not me.’

It was very hard for her not to say ‘sir’ to him. He belonged to the class of men who are in the way of visiting schools, and to whom a little schoolmistress looks up as the greatest of earthly potentates; but she resisted the inclination heroically.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t doubt both of these things are true, but you shall hear all about it. Why, I set up the man! It was I who put him in that district--it was I who got it constituted a district--you know, Hayward. They were starving in a curacy when I put them there. Not that I blame Sitwell--it’s that little sprite of a wife of his that is at the bottom of it all. A little woman like that can’t keep out of mischief. She runs to it like a duck to the water. And they thought they would make an end of me by laying hold of that old soap-boiler--old Sam! Soapy Sam, no doubt she’ll call him--that woman has a nickname for everybody. She calls me the Great Gun, do you know? If she doesn’t take care she’ll find that guns, and Canons too, have got shot in them. Why, she’s got that good old Cissy Marsham away from me--that old fool that is worth ten thousand soap-boilers.’

‘Oh no,’ said Joyce.

‘What?’ cried the Canon--‘not worth ten thousand soap-boilers? No, you are right; I meant ten million--I was under the mark.’

And then Joyce told her little story about Miss Marsham’s regrets. And the Canon’s melodious throat gave forth a soft roar of laughter, which brought a little moisture to his eyes. ‘I always knew I should have you on my side,’ he said. ‘Here’s this little schismatic extracting the only little drop of honey there was in all that prickly wilderness--and laughing in her sleeve all the time to see the Church folks quarrelling. But don’t you be too cock-sure: for I’ll have you converted and as stanch a Churchwoman as any in the diocese before Michaelmas--if that Scotch fellow leaves us the time,’ the Canon said, with another big but soft laugh.

That Scotch fellow! Joyce grew very red, and then very pale. There was only one, as far as she was aware, who could be called by that name. And how completely she had forgotten him and his existence, and those claims of his! The shock made her head swim, and the very earth under her feet insecure.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXV

There had been great exultation in St. Augustine’s over the demonstration. At the lively supper-party which was held in the little house which the Sitwells occupied, en attendant the parsonage which had been promised them (it was one of their chief grievances that no steps had been as yet taken towards carrying out this promise), on the evening after the school-feast, the parson’s wife had been more animated, more witty even, than usual. She had made quite a little drama of the possible scene going on in the rectory, where the Canon and his wife were supposed to be discussing the matter. She walked about the room to represent Mrs. Jenkinson panting with rage, demanding, ‘Canon, what were you doing that you let it be? Why didn’t you stop it? Why didn’t you interfere? I’d rather have written to the bishop, and had them turned off on the spot--that man: and that woman! The woman is far the worst, in my opinion. I am very surprised that you didn’t interfere!’ Then Mrs. Sitwell puffed herself out so that you would actually have believed her to be Canon Jenkinson, and made her small voice into something as like his softly rolling bass as was possible to so different an organ. ‘If you will consider, my dear, there was nothing to go to the bishop with. The most contemptible of creatures, even a curate, is committing no crime when he gets up a school-feast; and he may even be so abandoned as to give a garden-party, and still his bishop would not interfere. Bishops have too little power--their hands are dreadfully tied. If ever I take a bishopric, I hope they’ll be good for something more----’ ‘I should hope so, indeed!’ cried the imaginary Canon’s wife in asthmatic pants. ‘The Thompsons too--poor Sir Sam, who is too good-natured for anything. You will see that odious little woman will turn him round her finger. He’ll build their parsonage--he’ll back them up in everything. He’ll get them a grant for their schools, Canon; and it will be your fault if you let him slip through your fingers. Austin, dear!’ cried little Mrs. Sitwell, suddenly becoming herself, with her little ingratiating look, and her voice a little thin, high-pitched, and shrill-- ‘Austin, dear! will you turn upon me if I let him slip out of mine?’

Austin dear had laughed until he had cried over these sketches of his ecclesiastical superiors, and so had the Rev. Mr. Bright, and even good Miss Marsham--for they were well done; and the cleverness with which this small person made herself into the semblance of two large people was wonderful. But afterwards Mr. Sitwell shook his head a little. ‘I hope he will do what you, or rather Mrs. Jenkinson, thinks,’ he said. ‘I sha’n’t mind how much you turn him round your little finger: but these fat men are not so easily influenced as you would suppose,’ he added, with a sigh.

‘And, my dear,’ said Miss Marsham, nervously pulling out the little bit of yellow lace round her wrist, and keeping her eyes upon it, ‘though you make me laugh--I can’t help it, it is so funny to hear you do them--yet, you know, if they feel it as much as that, I am sorry. I want you to get your parsonage, and I want St. Augustine’s to get on. I am sure if I had money enough I should like, above all things, to give it you for all your schemes; but I don’t want them to suffer--I don’t, indeed,’ she said, making a little hole in her lace, and then trying with nervous efforts to draw it together. Miss Marsham was of opinion, ever after, that this hole in her old Mechlin was in some way judicial,--a judgment upon her for having participated, however unwillingly, in the ridicule of her old friends.

‘As for Sir Sam, if he resists Mrs. Sitwell, he will be the first who has done it,’ said Mr. Bright admiringly. He was not aware that she called him ‘Angels ever Bright and Fair’ when he was not present, and sang that sacred ditty with all his little airs and graces, so that the circle permitted to see the performance nearly died with laughter--or so at least they said.

But the demonstration was over, and nothing more happened. The sudden stop which comes to all excitement when it has been stirred up to a boiling pitch, and afterwards has just to subside again and nothing happens--is painful. The Sitwells went on from day to day expecting a letter from Sir Sam, in which he should propose to build the parsonage (he could so easily!--it would not have cost him a truffle from his dinner, of which the doctor said he ate far too much), or to start the subscription for it with a good round sum, so as to induce others to follow--or, at the very least, enclosing a cheque for the schools. But nothing came, not even an invitation to dinner, which would have afforded an occasion to the parson’s wife to turn the fat gentleman round her finger, as she had almost engaged to do. Nothing came except, in a fortnight’s time, an invitation to--a garden-party! Mrs. Sitwell cried with anger and disappointment when this arrived. She took it in to her husband in his study, after she had calmed down a little. ‘Look what I have got!’ she said; ‘an invitation to Alkaleigh--to a garden-party--next month. What shall I say?’

‘A garden-party! is that all it has come to?’ cried the parson; and then he added, angrily, ‘Say we’ve no time for such nonsense--say we never go to garden-parties--say we’re engaged.’

‘I don’t think we should do that. I was very angry too, for the first moment; but when I came to think of it, I felt sure it was her doing. Women never want their husbands to give away their money. And at a garden-party, you know, Austin, there are such opportunities--when you have your wits about you, and can make use of them.’

‘It doesn’t seem as if we did much when we had him in Wombwell’s field--at your command,’ the parson said.

This change of pronouns was very significant, and the sharp little clergywoman perceived it instantly. Austin did not like the idea of wheedling a soap-boiler--especially when it was entirely unsuccessful. He did not want it to be supposed, even by himself, that he ever countenanced such unworthy ways. A man cannot (notwithstanding all Biblical and other warrants for it) control his wife, or get her to refrain from using her own methods; and so long as it is clearly understood that he is not responsible for them---- Adam did not object to the apple,--rather liked it, so far as we have any information; but he wished it to be known that it was his wife’s doing, not any suggestion of his. Unfortunately, however, he could not slide out of the responsibility, as Mr. Sitwell, among a community always disposed to think it was her doing, was not unhopeful of being able to do.

‘I gave in to you about making a demonstration,’ he said. ‘It cost a good deal of money, Dora, and I can’t say I ever heartily approved of it; but I gave in, thinking you knew more of society than I did, and that you might be right. And it was a great success, you all said. No; I don’t say anything against that. I daresay it was a success; but what has come of it? Nothing at all--except twenty pounds for the schools, counting that ten of Cissy Marsham’s, which we should have had anyhow.’

‘Twenty pounds is always something, Austin,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, ignoring the drawback. ‘And it is a great deal to have made it so fully known. Sow your bread, don’t you know, by all waters, and it will return to us after many days.’

‘That’s all very well, my dear,’ said the parson, a little subdued--for how is a man of his cloth to answer when you stop his mouth with a text? He added, however, somewhat dolefully, ‘And not a move about the parsonage; and if we are to stay here another winter, when not a single door or window fits, and the rain is always coming in through the roof----’

‘We must stay here another winter, and there is an end of it!’ cried his wife.’ If the subscriptions were full and money to spare, they couldn’t build the parsonage in four months. You must see the landlord, Austin, and get him to do something. And we must think of something else to get up the money; we haven’t tried half the things we might. Why, if the worst comes to the worst we can have a bazaar. There’s always money to be made in that way: and private theatricals, and a concert--and----’

‘Dora, you know I hate bazaars.’

‘Everybody says so,’ said Mrs. Sitwell. ‘But everybody goes, and everybody buys, no matter what rubbish it is. People that won’t give a shilling will spend twenty in materials for making up some trumpery or other, and twenty more in buying other trumpery that other people have made. Bazaars must respond to some need of human nature, Austin, which it has been left to this generation to find out.’

‘It looks like it,’ says the parson. ‘But don’t talk to me about it, Dora. If it has to be, I suppose I shall find philosophy enough to tolerate it when the time comes.’

‘Oh, tolerate it! You will be out and in ten times a day, making pretty speeches to all the ladies,’ cried little Mrs. Sitwell, with a laugh. ‘Depend upon it, you will find a bazaar responds to some need of your nature too.’ She said this, though he did not find it out, so exactly in her husband’s own tone, and with his manner, that she had to laugh herself at the double joke of her own fun and his unconsciousness. ‘And “Angels ever Bright and Fair” will enjoy it above all things. He will wonder how we never thought of a thing so delightfully calculated to bring people together before.’

This time it was the parson who laughed, recognising the voice of Mr. Bright and all his ways, and even his appearance evolved as if by witchcraft.

‘You are really incorrigible, Dora,’ he said, turning back to his sermon with a mind amused. But he did not know altogether how incorrigible she was, and that he himself, all innocent and unsuspecting, had been a victim too.

‘And I’ll go and see whether I can’t get Joyce to make her father do something,’ cried the parson’s wife.

Joyce had been plunged in spite of herself into this new and strange current of life. The Miss St. Clairs, notwithstanding the momentary intimacy of the boating party, made few advances towards friendship; but Mrs. Sitwell was very eager to secure her society, and also her help in the many activities which absorbed the clergywoman’s busy life. And there could be no doubt that it was very convenient to Mrs. Hayward that her step-daughter should have a friend who would relieve herself from the duty of tolerating Joyce’s constant companionship, and providing for her entertainment. Joyce, with a singular impartiality and fairness of mind, herself perceived the advantages of this, and what it must be to her father’s wife to be now and then free of her presence, and able to act as if no grown-up daughter, no unexpected much-claiming personage had ever been in existence. She had a certain sympathy even with Mrs. Hayward--and she allowed herself to be drawn into the other current, with wistful yet genuine understanding of its expediency. Indeed, Joyce went on day by day making discoveries, learning fully only now when she seemed to have settled into her place in her father’s house, all the difficulties, the almost impossibilities of it. She felt her disjunction from her past growing day by day, and that was perhaps the worst of all.

The very climax of disquietude and distress came upon her suddenly one day when she was sitting in her room writing her usual letter to Janet, the long journal-letter which had been her safety-valve in her early troubles. In the midst of her writing, while she was giving that minute account of herself and of all her actions, which was everything to her old grandmother, Joyce suddenly awoke as from a dream, with a burning blush, and threw away her pen out of her hand, as if it had been that that was in the wrong. That little implement, which, one way or other, does so much for us, betraying us, expounding us even to ourselves, seemed to her for the moment like a tricksy demon drawing out of her things which it was against her honour to say. She got up suddenly, pushing away the table and the letter--things that were in the conspiracy! and with a great deal of agitation walked about the room to subdue the beating in her heart. How was it she had never felt, never recognised till now, the difference? Not Janet’s child, free to secure in everything the sympathy of those old people who belonged to her, but Joyce Hayward, her father’s daughter, bound by a hundred ties, bound above all to betray his household to no one, not to those who were dearest to her. Joyce was very miserable for a time over this discovery. It stopped not only her letter but the whole course of her thoughts. When she resumed her writing, it was with a poignant sense of unreality, a feeling that her letter was fictitious, written not to reveal but to conceal, which took all the comfort and pleasure out of it. She felt that Janet would read between the lines that it was no longer her Joyce that was writing, but Colonel Hayward’s daughter. Their relationship seemed to change in a moment, to become a thing unreal, no longer full of solace and confidence, but fictitious, strained, and untrue.

For a time she no longer cared to write at all, making excuses, finding that she had not time--that to put off till to-morrow was a relief. The change made her heart sick. She felt as if she had been over again cut adrift from what she loved best. And yet it had to be. Hers was not the hand to lift any veil from the doorways of her father’s house, or hand over its household manners to remark, or take refuge from it in another. She wrote a longer letter than usual to Janet after that abrupt awakening, and kissed and cried over it when she sent it away, redoubling the tender words in which she was usually shy of indulging, and writing protestations of affection which had been unnecessary, and which she felt to ring untrue. But how could she better it? It was her first false letter, yet so loyal--the first little rift within the lute, and the music was mute already. She accompanied it with many an anxious, wondering thought, but never knew what Janet thought of it, if Janet had perceived. If Janet did perceive, she never let her nursling suspect it. And not a word was said between them; but it is scarcely to be believed that the acute and keen intellect of the old woman, and her tremulous sympathy with every movement in the mind of her child, could pass over that change which to Joyce’s consciousness was so complete.

To say that the letters to Andrew Halliday grew few and rare would be to say little. Joyce began to feel the writing of them as the greatest burden of her life. She did not know what to say to him--how to address him. His very name made her tremble. Her heart, which had never beaten two beats quicker for his presence, sank now into depths unknown at the thought of him. What if he were to come to claim her! That he would do so one day, Joyce felt a terrifying, awful conviction. And would she be bound to arise and go with him--to leave everything that she was beginning to love? Joyce knew nothing else that could be done. She had pledged him her word. To withdraw from it because--because, as she had said, she was Colonel Hayward’s daughter--how should she do that? He was the inevitable, standing at the end of all things--a sort of visible fate.

Joyce shuddered and turned away from this thought. To escape from it, to hide her face and not see that image in her pathway, became more and more a necessity as the days went on. And this was another reason for finding refuge in the society which was close to her, though it was so perplexing and unfamiliar. Anyhow, it was more comprehensible than garden-parties and lawn-tennis, which, to the spirit of the Scotch peasant which was in her, were inscrutable pleasures regarded with awe. Joyce did not understand these rites. She understood Mrs. Sitwell’s schemes a little better, though still with wonderment and many failures in comprehension. And it took her a long time to find out that the parson’s wife intended to employ her for the furtherance of her own purposes, and that it was the novelty of her and her unlikeness to other people which made her attractive to her new friend. Mrs. Sitwell wooed Joyce with flattering pertinacity. She showered invitations upon her. She took the girl into her confidence, telling her how much she wanted, how little she had, and unbosoming herself about her pecuniary concerns in a way which horrified her listener. For Joyce had the strong Scotch prejudice against any confession of poverty or appeal for help. She had been trained in the stern doctrine that to starve or die was possible, but not to beg or expose your sorrows to the vulgar eye. When the parson’s wife told of her poverty, which she was quite willing to do, to the first comer, Joyce listened with a painful blush, with a sense of shame. She was very sorry--but horrified to see behind the scenes, to be admitted thus, as she felt, to the sanctuary which ought to be kept sacred. But for the woman who had bestowed upon her this painful confidence, Joyce felt that she must be ready to do everything. It could not be for nothing that such a confidence was bestowed.

Mrs. Sitwell, for her part, did not care at all for what poor Joyce considered this exposure of her circumstances. She told her tale with a light heart. She was not ashamed of being poor. ‘It’s very nice of you to be so sorry,’ she said. ‘And, my dear, if you would just say a word to the Colonel, and get him to set things agoing. He could do it quite, quite easily. If you were to take an opportunity when you are walking with him, or when you have him alone. But I don’t doubt you would have done that, you kind thing, without being asked----’

‘Oh no,’ said Joyce; ‘I would not have betrayed your confidence, nor said a word----’

‘Oh, my confidence! It is only rich people that can hope to keep their affairs to themselves. I didn’t want you to make any secret of it. Just say to your father, who is so kind--whatever you please, my dear. I can trust you. Say, “Dear daddy, those Sitwells are so poor! don’t you think you could do something for them?” or any other thing that will please him and make him think well of us.’

‘Oh,’ said Joyce, with a low exclamation of fright and horror. The suggestion that she should say ‘dear daddy’ put a final crown upon the extraordinary mission confided to her. But Mrs. Sitwell thought it the most natural thing in the world.

‘Don’t do it when Mrs. Hayward is by, that’s all. Oh, she’s an excellent woman, I know; but it’s always the women, you know, that hold back. But for the women, we should have had the parsonage long ago; they won’t let people be liberal. I often say, if there were no ladies in the parish--oh, what a difference! I shouldn’t be a bit afraid even of the Great Gun himself.’

‘You seem to think that it is women who do everything--especially everything that is bad,’ said Joyce, with a gleam of amusement.

‘And so it is,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, with a sigh. ‘If one could only get hold of the gentlemen by themselves. I should like to be the one woman to make them do all I wanted,’ she continued, with a laugh. She was the product of a very advanced civilisation, much beyond anything which her untrained companion knew.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXVI

Joyce, being so untrained, had, however, but a poor account to give of her intercession. The Colonel could do nothing without Elizabeth, and his promise to consult his wife and see what steps could be taken did not convey much comfort to the parson’s wife. She listened to Joyce’s account of the manner in which she had fulfilled her commission with a lengthening face. At the end she jumped up and gave the girl a kiss which took Joyce very much by surprise. To this inexperienced Scotch peasant-girl the ways of the English were extravagant and full of demonstration, as are to English persons the manners of ‘foreigners’ in general, both being disposed to believe that to show so much was rather an indication that there was little feeling to show.

‘I am sure you meant it as well as possible,’ she said, ‘but you should have seized an opportunity and spoken to the dear Colonel when there was nobody there. Oh, I am sure you are as good as gold--and perhaps if they will really get up a movement---- But I’ve been promised that so often, I have not much faith in it. I thought you might just whisper a word to your dear father, who thinks all the world of you, and the thing would have been done.’ ‘It is the women,’ continued this oracle, ’as I told you before, who hold back. If we had only the men to deal with, it would be much easier to manage. But the women calculate and reckon up, and they say, “It will be a loss of so much on the year’s income;” or “There is so and so I wanted to buy; if I let him give the money away, I shall have to do without it.” That is how they go on. Whereas the men don’t think; they just put their hands in their pockets, and the thing’s done--or it isn’t done,’ she added, with a sudden smile, looking up in Joyce’s face. ‘Never mind,’ she continued, ‘don’t let us make ourselves unhappy about it. Come and see what I am doing.’ She returned to the corner from which she had sprung up on Joyce’s entrance. ‘Come and I’ll show you my workshop, and how I keep the pot boiling,’ she cried.

The room was divided into two, a larger and a smaller portion, with folding-doors, as is usual in such small habitations; but these doors were always open, and Mrs. Sitwell’s corner was at the farther end, commanding the whole space. Joyce saw with amazement a quantity of small photographs ranged upon the ornate but rather shabby little desk at which her friend worked, and which was covered with sheets of paper, each containing a piece of writing and a number. Mrs. Sitwell took up one of the photographs and handed it to Joyce.

‘Now tell me,’ she said, ‘what would you think was the character of that gentleman, supposing that you were going to marry him, or to make him your friend, or to engage him as your butler? What would you think of him from his face?’

‘I think,’ said Joyce, bewildered, ‘that I should not be--very fond of him: but I don’t know why.’

‘Oh, you dreadful little critic! why shouldn’t you be fond of him, as you say? He is quite nice-looking--better than half the men you see. Now here is what he really is,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, lifting one of the pieces of paper and handing it to Joyce, who read with amazement: ‘No. 310.--This face is that of a man full of strength and character. The brow shows great resolution, the eyes much courage and judgment. The mouth is sensitive, and the nose expresses shrewdness and caution. He will be very decided in action, but never rash; very steady in his affections, but slow in forming any ties. There is a great but suppressed love of art and music in the lines about his eyes.’

‘Well, dear, do not stare at me so; don’t you think, now you look at him again, that it’s all true? or perhaps you would like this one better.’ The second was the photograph of a simpering girl, in that peculiar combination of stare and simper which only photographs give. ‘Now, don’t commit yourself,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, with a laugh. ‘Look at the account of all her perfections before you say anything. “No. 603.--Ethelinda is a young lady of many qualities. Her eyes show great sweetness of disposition. She will be very true, and when she gives her heart, will give it altogether. The lips show a highly sensitive and nervous disposition, feeling too strongly for her own peace. There are also signs of much musical power, and of great constancy in love."’

Joyce put down these two extraordinary literary compositions with something like consternation. ‘It is perhaps stupid of me,’ she said, ‘not to understand.’

‘Oh no; it is not stupid at all. Perhaps you have never seen the Pictorial? It has quite a great circulation, and is very popular. This is a new branch of the answers to correspondents that made the Family Herald such a success. Don’t you know the Answers to Correspondents in the Family Herald? Oh, you must indeed have been brought up out of the world! But the Pictorial is quite in advance of that. If you send your photograph to the editor, you receive next week a description of your character from Myra. Now Myra is me.’

‘Then those--are going into a newspaper,’ said Joyce, looking at the pieces of written paper with a mingling of curiosity and shame.

‘Those--are going into the Pictorial, and they are going to give a great deal of pleasure to various people, and to put a little money into my pocket, which wants it very much,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘Now, what is there to object to in that?’

‘Indeed,’ said Joyce, ‘I was not thinking of objecting. I was only taken by surprise.’

‘Ah!’ cried Mrs. Sitwell, with a little moisture enhancing the keen sparkling of her eyes, ‘that is what you all say, you well-off people, who never knew what it was to want a sovereign! You are surprised at the way we poor unfortunates have to take to make a little money. Why, I would simply do anything for a little money--anything that was not wrong, of course. You don’t know what money means to us. It means clothes for the children and a nursemaid to take care of them, and good food, which they require, and a hundred little things, which you people who never were in want of them never think of.’

‘But I was not accustomed to be rich. I know what it means to have nothing. No,’ Joyce added hurriedly, ‘perhaps that is not true; for when I had nothing I wanted nothing, and that must be the same thing as having everything. I find no difference,’ she said.

‘Then you don’t know anything about it, just the same. The dreadful thing is to have nothing and want a great many things--and this is the case of so many of us. How could we live upon poor Austin’s little pay? People think a clergyman ought to have private means--but where are we to get the private means? We have a little something in my family, but my mother has it for her life. I don’t want my mother to die, who is always so kind to the children, that I may get my little share. It would only be a few hundred pounds, after all. And Austin’s people thought they did enough for him when they gave him his education, as they call it--sending him to Oxford to learn expensive habits. A great deal too much is made of education,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘I don’t think I shall take any trouble about education for my children. They get on better without it, in my opinion.’

This dreadful assertion made Joyce gasp with horror. Not take any trouble about education!--which was the only thing in all the world to take trouble about. But she did not trust herself to say anything, and indeed Mrs. Sitwell did not leave her time.

‘But they shall be comfortable and have things as nice as possible while they are babies,’ cried the parson’s wife; ‘and when I found out that I could do this, I was as pleased as Punch. One goes upon rules, you know--it is not all guess-work; and my opinion is, there is a great deal in it. Austin says that supposing these people had everything in their favour, no bad influences or anything of that kind, then what I find in their faces would be true. Let me see, now. Let me read yours. You have a great deal that is very nice in you, dear. You are of a most generous disposition. You would give anything in the world that you had to give. But you are apt to get frightened, and not to follow it out. And you are musical--I can see it in your eyes.’

‘Indeed, I don’t know anything at all about music.’

‘That has nothing to do with it,’ said Mrs. Sitwell. ‘You would have been if you had known. And you are very sensitive, dear. You put meanings upon what people say, and take offence, or the reverse, when none is meant. You are full of imagination; but you haven’t much courage. You love people very much, or you dislike them very much. You are devoted to them, or else you can’t endure them.’

‘I don’t think I ever do that,’ said Joyce sedately, taking it all with great gravity.

‘Oh, of course you have been modified by education, as Austin says. Nobody is just as nature made them; but that is what you would be if you had been left alone, you know. I’ll write it all out for you when I have a little time. Give me back Ethelinda and No. 310. I have a kind of idea these two simpletons are going to be married, and they want each to know a little more of the other--that is, you know, they want the prophet to agree with them; and say this is the sweetest girl that ever was--and that is the nicest man. And you may be sure that the better you speak of any one, the more you will agree with what they think of themselves. When you say they are musical and intellectual, and all that, they think how wonderful that you should understand them so well! though they may be the stupidest of people that ever were seen.’

‘But----’ Joyce said, with timidity.

‘I don’t want any buts. You would never let any one do anything if you were to carry a “but” with you everywhere. If you heard me say to Sir Sam the soap-boiler what excellent taste he had, and how beautiful his house was, you would think it was wrong perhaps, and put in that “but” of yours. But why? Gillow, who did it all, is supposed to have excellent taste, and poor dear Sir Sam thinks it perfection. And it pleases him to be told so. Why shouldn’t I please him? If I were of his way of thinking, I would admire it too; and don’t you see, when you sympathise with a man, and want to please him, you are of his way of thinking--for the moment,’ the little lady added. ‘Now just wait a minute till I finish off my people,’ she said.

Joyce sat in a bewilderment which had become almost perennial in her mind, and watched the woman of business before her. Mrs. Sitwell took up photograph after photograph, examining each with every appearance of the most conscientious care. She would put down the little portrait, and write a few sentences, looking at it from time to time as a painter might look at his model,--then pausing, biting her lips as if some contradictory feature puzzled her, would take it up again and follow its lines, sometimes with the end of her pen, sometimes with the point of her finger, knitting her brows in the deepest deliberation. ‘I wish people wouldn’t be so much alike,’ she said. ‘I wish they wouldn’t all show the same traits of character. I can’t make all the ladies affectionate and musical, and all the men determined and plucky, can I?--but that’s what they expect, you know. Now here’s one,’ she cried, selecting a photograph, ‘upon whom I shall wreak my rage. She shall be everything she wouldn’t like to be; that will make the others laugh who have got off so much better. I’ll put it as nicely as I can, but she won’t like it. Listen!--“The brows denote much temper, verging upon the sullen, against which I warn Arabella to be on her guard. There is a tendency to envy in the lines of the nose; the thinness of the lips shows an inclination to the use of language which might develop into scolding in later life. The eyes show insensibility to love, which might make her very cruel to her admirers if she has any. Arabella ought to take great care to obtain a proper command of herself, so as to keep these dangerous qualities under. There is a strength in all the lines, which probably will assure her success if she tries; but she will have much to struggle against. There is something in the form of her chin which I suspect to mean love of money, if not avarice; and there seem some traces of greed about the mouth, but of these last I am not quite sure.” There! what do you think of that as a foil? It will make the others more delighted than ever with their own good qualities.’

‘And do you see all that in the face?’

‘Look!’ cried Mrs. Sitwell, placing the photograph before Joyce with a triumphant movement. It was a heavy, unattractive face, such as hang by dozens in the frames of poor photographers, and are accepted by the subjects with that curious human humility which mingles so strangely with human vanity, and teaches us to be complacent about anything which is our own. The parson’s wife snatched it back and threw it among the little heap on the table. ‘Now I have done for to-day,’ she said; ‘and you know you are going with me round my district. Don’t look so miserable about Arabella; I have sacrificed her to the satisfaction of the others--the greatest happiness of the greatest number, don’t you know? But all the same, it’s all there--every word’s true. I’ve no more doubt she’s a nasty, ill-speaking, ill-tempered toad, than I have that you are the nicest girl I know--only it doesn’t always do to say it. If there were many unfavourable ones, inquirers would fall off. I give them one now and then to show what I can do when I think proper. Come along. We’ll take a look at the children first, and then we’ll go--and forget that there ever was a cheap photograph done. Oh, how I loathe them all!’ Mrs. Sitwell said.

They went upstairs accordingly to see the children, of whom there were three, the youngest being a baby of some seven or eight months old. ‘They are not fit to be seen,’ said the nursemaid, who was maintained by those photographs.

‘They have got their nursery overalls on, and not very much underneath,’ said their mother. ‘We keep our swell things for swell occasions. But look at those legs!’ Joyce was not deeply learned in babies’ legs, her experience lying among elder children. But there are few women to whom the round, soft, infantine limbs--‘the flesh of a little child,’ as the Old Testament writer says, when he wants to describe perfect health and freshness--have not a charm, and she was able to admire and praise to the mother’s full content. ‘Little Augustine--we give him his full name to distinguish him from his father, and also because of the church--is really wonderfully clever, though I say it that shouldn’t,’ said Mrs. Sitwell; ‘and little May is the most perfect little mother! You should see her taking care of baby! Do you know, I was at my Characters two days after that boy was born. I couldn’t afford to lose a week! I sat up in bed and did them. Don’t you think it was clever of me?’ she said, with a laugh, as they went downstairs--‘and never did me the least harm.’ The rapid succession of aspects in which this little person disclosed herself took away Joyce’s breath. Her mind was of slower action than that of her new friend. She had not been able to settle with herself what she thought of the photographs and the Pictorial and the sacrifice of the ugly Arabella, when her companion flashed round upon her in the capacity of the devoted and admiring mother, which softened her sharp voice, and lit up her face with love and sweetness.

Joyce had further surprising experiences to go through in the district, to which she now accompanied the parson’s wife, and where everything was new to her. She thought within herself, if the minister’s wife had fluttered into her granny’s cottage in the same way and stirred up everything, that the reception Janet would have given her would have been far from agreeable. Yet probably the minister’s wife had more means of help than Mrs. Sitwell, and the poor women whom she visited more actual money in the shape of wages than Janet had ever possessed. Joyce felt herself retire with a shiver, feeling that quick resentment must follow, when the charitable inquisitor put questions of a more than usually intimate character--but no such result appeared. And there could be no doubt about the practical advantage and thorough sympathy of the visitor. She had a basket in her hand, out of which came sundry little gifts, and her suggestions were boundless. ‘I have some old frocks of my boy’s that would just do for that little man. Are you sure you can mend them and make them up for him?’

‘Well, ma’am, I could try,’ the poor woman would say, with a curtsey.

‘Oh, I don’t believe in trying unless you know how to do it,’ said the parson’s wife; ‘come up to my house at six, and bring the child, and I’ll fit them on him, and show you how. You ought to go to the mothers’ meeting, where they will show you how to cut out and put things together. It would be so useful to you with all your children.’ ‘Well, Mrs. Smith,’ she ran on, darting in next door, ‘I hope things are going on all right with you. Now he’s taken the pledge, you ought to be so much more comfortable. But, dear me! you are in as great a muddle as ever.’

‘He’s took the pledge, but he’s not kep’ it,’ said the woman sullenly.

‘I don’t wonder, if he has only a house like this to come home to. Why, if I were in a cotton gown and a big apron like you, I’d have it all spick and span in an hour. I wish I could turn to this moment,’ cried the little lady, quivering with energy, ‘and show you what sort of a place a man should come home to. Poor Mr. Smith, I don’t wonder he’s broken the pledge. Why, that poor child makes my heart ache. When did it have its face washed?’

‘I haven’t the heart to begin,’ said Mrs. Smith, subsiding into feeble crying-- ‘I’m that ill and weak. And I don’t never get on with anything.’

‘Poor thing! is that so? I thought you couldn’t be well, you’re so helpless. I’ll send the mission woman tomorrow morning to put all straight for you, and you’d better go to the doctor tomorrow and let’s get at the bottom of it. If you’re ill we must get you set right. I’ll come and see what the doctor says, and I’ll send you something down for the man’s supper. But for goodness’ sake wash the baby’s face and get the place swept up a little before he comes in. That can’t hurt you. Come, you mustn’t lose heart--we’ll see you through it,’ said the parson’s wife.

There could not be a better parson’s wife, Joyce acknowledged, strange though to her the type was. She petted and humoured the sick children as if she had been their mother. She sat by a bedridden woman and listened to a long rambling story about her illness and all its details, with every appearance of interest and unquestionable patience. And when the round was got through, she skipped out of the last house with the satisfaction of a child to have got its task over. ‘Now let’s have a run down to the river to see the boats, and then home to tea. You are going to stay with us for tea? I want a good fast nice walk to blow all the cobwebs out of my head.’

‘But you must be tired. And it must make your heart sore.’

‘You say that sore in such a pathetic way,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, laughing and mimicking Joyce with her soft, low-toned, Scotch voice--an action which Joyce only detected after a minute or two, and which made her flush with a troubled sense of being open to ridicule. The sensation of being laughed at was also a thing to which she was entirely unaccustomed. ‘But you can’t help them unless you see what they want,’ the parson’s wife went on. ‘And as half of them will cheat you if they can, and you must find out the truth from your own observation, not from what they tell you, you must simply put your heart in your pocket, and think nothing of its being sore. And as for being tired, I’m never tired, I have so many different things to do. If they were the same, I should die of it. We are going to have some fun to-night--we are going to have “Angels ever Bright and Fair” to meet you. Oh! don’t you know what I mean by “Angels ever Bright and Fair”? I mean Mr. Bright, our curate. He is the best little man in the world, and he is so pleased you agree with him, only putting it so much more nicely.’ Then the little mimic changed her tone, and was more Bright than Mr. Bright himself. ‘He shall sing that song of his for you, and he will try to make a little mild love to you, and it will all be great fun. But first let us go on to the bridge and have a look at the boats.’

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXVII

It was the afternoon of a brilliant summer day, and the Thames was full of water-parties going home, full of frolic and merriment, and pretty ladies in fine dresses, and men in flannels, in that négligé which Englishmen alone know how to make agreeable and pleasant to behold. The sight of all that pleasure had a pleasurable effect upon the parson’s wife, though she had no share in it. And the charm of the scene--the river, struck full by the level sunshine which made it blaze, the colour and movement of the continually passing boats, the more tranquil river-people about--fishermen in their punts, who had sat there all day long, and looked ’as steadfast as the scene,’ immovable like the trees that overhung the water--was delightful to Joyce, who had so soon acquired associations with that river, and to whom her two expeditions upon it were the most delightful of her life. She was leaning upon the bridge, looking over, watching the measured movement of the oars, as a party of small boats together swept down the stream, and thinking, not of them, but of her own water-party, and the strange enchantment in it--when she suddenly saw in one of the passing boats a figure which made her heart jump with sudden excitement. It was Captain Bellendean, who was standing up in the stern of the boat behind a gay party of ladies, steering, which was a difficult operation enough at that moment. He was too much absorbed in his occupation to look up, but Joyce had no difficulty in identifying him. His outline, his attitude, would have been enough for her quick eyes; his face was almost stern in the intentness with which he was surveying the river, guiding the deeply-laden boat through the dangers of that passage, amid a crowd of other boats, many of them manned by very unskilful boatmen,--and entirely unconscious of her observation.

The sight of him gave the sensitive girl a curious shock. She knew very well that his life was altogether apart from hers, that he must be engaged in many scenes and many pleasures with which she had nothing to do, and that the point at which their two lives came in contact at all was a very narrow one. She knew all this as well as it was possible to know such an evident matter of fact; and yet, somehow, this sudden proof of it, and sight of him passing her by, unconscious of her existence, in the society to which, and not to her, he belonged, had an effect upon Joyce altogether out of proportion to the easiness of the incident. Where had he been? Who were the people who were with him? Had it been as delightful to him as when he had made it a scene of enchantment and delight to her? She did not ask herself these questions. She only recognised in one swift moment that there he was in his own life, altogether unaware of, and unconcerned by, hers. The shock, the recognition, the instant identification of all these facts, were complete in a moment--the moment which it took the boat, propelled by four strong pairs of arms, to shoot within the shadow of the bridge--and no more.

‘Why! wasn’t that your friend, Captain Bellendean, standing up steering that big boat?’ Mrs. Sitwell said.

Joyce had a curious sensation as if she were standing quite alone, separate from all the world, and that this was some ‘airy tongue that syllables men’s names’ echoing in her ears. She heard herself murmur as if she too were but a voice, ‘Yes, I think so’--while the glowing river and the drooping trees, and all the gleams of mingled colour, melted and ran into each other confusedly like the mists of a dream.

‘I am sure it is. What a wonderful thing when one has all sorts of things to do, to watch those people who have nothing to do but amuse themselves! He has been philandering about with his ladies all day, and probably he will be out at half-a-dozen parties, or lounging in his club half the night--and the same thing to-morrow and to-morrow. Well, on the whole, you know I think it must be dull, and not half so good as our own hard-working life,’ Mrs. Sitwell said; but she sighed. Then turning upon Joyce with a sudden laugh-- ‘I forgot you were one of the butterflies too.’

‘Oh no,’ said Joyce, ‘only twice’--thinking of those enchanted afternoons upon the water, and having only half emerged from the curious haze of enlightenment, of realisation, if such a paradox may be, which had surrounded her. She thought, but was not sure, that her companion laughed at this inconsequent reply. Only twice! How strange it was that these two frivolous water-parties--mere pleasure, meaning nothing--should have taken such a place in her life, more than all the hard work of which Mrs. Sitwell (with a sigh) asserted the superiority! The school, the labours in which Joyce had delighted, her aspirations, her Shakespeare class, had all melted away and left no trace; while the Thames with its pleasure-boats, the mingled voices of the rowers and their companions, the tinkle of the oars, the sunshine on the water, appeared to her like the only realities in the haze of her present life. They came back to her with the most astonishing distinctness when this sudden glimpse, which felt like a revelation, but was not--how could it be so?--rather the most ordinary circumstance, the most natural accident, befell her. It was at least a revelation to her; for it showed her how distinctly she remembered every incident, every detail, every word that had been spoken; how the Captain had handed her into the boat; how she had been placed near him, her father on the other side; how he had bent over his oar, speaking to her from time to time; how the others had called to him by the name of Stroke--which at first Joyce had supposed to be a playful nickname, not knowing what it meant--to mind his business, to take care what he was about. Joyce did not know why, but had a curious dazzled sense of his eyes upon her face, of his attention to her every movement, of the curious change in everything when she was drawn into the other boat on the way back, and the cloud that had come over his eyes. All these things were as a picture or a dream to her, not things she remembered as having been, but which seemed to go on and continue and be, like an enchanted world, which, having once come into existence, could never cease.

Only twice! but remaining always--so that she could go back at her pleasure, and float again upon the enchanted stream, and hear again the merry mingled voices, the one of deeper tone sounding through. She recognised with a strange confusion that this sudden, unexpected sight of Captain Bellendean steering another boat, with another crew, disturbed the previous image in her mind in some unexplainable way. It was like the sudden plunge of a stone into the midst of a still water full of reflections, breaking up the reflected images, spreading vague circles of confusion through the lovely unreal world that had been there. It was unreal altogether, everything, both that which had been before and that which now was.

Joyce walked back very soberly by Mrs. Sitwell’s side, vaguely listening to the lively strain of talk, which conveyed scarcely any idea to her mind--hearing, answering, knowing nothing, feeling as if the many-sided practical life in which her companion was so busy, was an unfortunate and troublesome unreality, breaking into experiences so far more vivid and true. She was glad to be rid of Mrs. Sitwell for a moment when they reached the house, where Joyce was to be entertained at tea.

While its mistress flew about seeing that all was ready, Joyce sat down, thankful to be alone, very happy to find silence and stillness round her, even in the little shabby sitting-room, with the faded ornamental desk and the mystery of the photographs at the other end. She wanted to think, to make it all out, to realise what had happened. What had happened! and yet nothing had happened at all. She had seen a boat floating down, with a score of others, passing under the bridge; and what was that to her or to any one? A boat passing, a water-party going down the river, and nothing more. But this was not how it appeared to Joyce: thinking is one thing and seeing another. Whatever she might say to herself, what she continued to see was the Captain standing up in the stern of the long boat, with the steerage-ropes in his vigorous hands, with that pretty group of ladies in the shadow of his erect figure,--another world, another life of which she knew nothing at all. Norman Bellendean had by no means neglected his new friends. Only two days before he had appeared in the afternoon, and had filled the place with that something which Joyce did not understand--that influence and personality which seemed to soften all tones and warm all tints, and charm the common day into miraculous brightness. She said to herself that this was society--that interchange of thoughts and feelings which had always appeared to her the most desirable thing in the world. That she should have found the charm in the sole possession of a cavalry officer--who was, it is true, at the same time, a country gentleman, and the lord and superior of the place which had been her early home, and in which everybody regarded him with an interest half feudal, half friendly--did not surprise her, though a cooler head might have found it a very surprising thing. Joyce believed that Mrs. Bellendean produced the same charmed atmosphere around her. They were the symbols of all higher intelligence and finer breeding, and she was not as yet in any way undeceived, nor suspected any other influence in the delightfulness of the Captain’s visits--a delight which had begun with the very first of them, and which had never failed. It was not, therefore, any kind of jealousy which had sprung up in her mind, even unconsciously. She did not suspect among the ladies in that boat some special one who might have all his best looks and words aside. Her mind was not at all in that conscious phase. She only realised with a curious consternation that he lived his life in another world--that the days when he was absent were to him the same as other days, though to her lost in mystery and the unknown. Where he spent them, with whom he was, mattered nothing. She was not even curious as to who his companions were. The wonder, the shock, consisted in the fact that his life had another side to her absolutely unknown.

In all this there was no pang of jealous love. She was unaware that there was love in it, or anything save wonder and disappointment, and a strange realisation of difference and separation. She did not know where he had been, or who were with him: he might have passed her very door--the other side of the hedge--and she would have been none the wiser. She knew him so well, and yet not at all. Something of the astonishment with which the primitive traveller recognises the existence of a hundred circles of human creatures altogether beyond his ken, who must have gone on living for all those years totally outside of his knowledge, filled her now. The thought affected her with fantastic pain, and yet she had not a word to say against it. Her heart made a claim all unconsciously upon those people who had first awakened its sympathies; and to pass him on the road, as it were, like this, he not even seeing her, unexpectant of her appearance, like two strangers, out of reach of even a passing salutation, was more strange, more overpowering, more enlightening, than anything, she thought, that had ever happened before.

The tea after this was bewildering and rather tedious to Joyce. She wanted to get away to think over her new discovery by herself, and instead she was compelled to share in an evening of lively wit and laughter, solidified by much parish talk. A churchwarden, who was no more than a local tradesman--though one of the ‘best people’--and much overawed by finding himself there--and good Miss Marsham, were of the party. Mrs. Sitwell’s voice ran through the whole like the motif of a piece of music, never lost sight of. ‘You must sing, Mr. Bright, as soon as you have recovered your voice a little after tea. Eating, we all know, is very bad for the voice: we will give a little time for tired nature to restore herself, and then the songster must be heard. Miss Hayward has never heard you, don’t you know.’

‘I am not very much to hear. Miss Hayward would not lose much if she remained in that state of deprivation.’

‘Oh, we don’t think so,--do we, Mr. Cosham? What would the choir do without him? By the way, that dear boy of yours is coming on famously. He must have a solo in the anthem on our Saint’s day. He is quite like a cherub in his white surplice. That is one thing the Canon envies us. He would give his little finger to have a surpliced choir--but they won’t let him! Though he is so tyrannical to us, he has to knock under to all the old women who sit upon him. They call it sitting under him, but I don’t. Do you, Mr. Cosham?’

‘Really, ma’am,’ said the churchwarden, with his mouth full, ‘you put it so funnily, one can’t help laughing;’ and with humility, putting up his hand to conceal it, he indulged in an apologetic roar.

‘Oh, let’s laugh a little--it does nobody any harm,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘What I should delight in would be to have a band for the festival: it might be amateur, you know; there are so many amateurs about the world that want nothing for it--that are too glad to be allowed to play.’

‘And oh, so badly,’ said Mr. Bright.

‘Not always so very badly--especially when it is strings. Don’t you think we might have a band, Mr. Cosham, so long as it was strings? it would be such an attraction--with a solo from your dear little boy.’

‘I think it would be a great attraction; what do you think, sir?’ said the churchwarden, looking towards the chief authority. Mr. Sitwell shook his head.

‘Perhaps we think too much of outside attractions when our minds should be set upon higher influences; but if you think the people would like it----’

‘It helps a deal with the collection--does a band,’ said the churchwarden. ‘There’s a church I know where they have the military band, and the place is crowded, with people standing outside the doors.’

‘Not from the best of motives, I fear,’ said the parson, still shaking his head; ‘but to get them to come is something, by whatever means.’

‘That’s what I think--like Mrs. Sitwell; and a brass band----’

‘Oh no, Mr. Cosham!--strings! strings!’ cried the lady. ‘A brass band is a deal too noisy.’ She turned upon the unsuspecting man eyes which had suddenly become dull round orbs like his own, and spoke with the very echo of his voice. ‘It would drown Johnny’s voice, bless him!’ the little mimic cried. Mr. Cosham, good man, thought there was something a little strange and thick in this utterance; but he did not understand the convulsion of suppressed laughter on the curate’s face, nor the smile that curled about the corners of Mr. Sitwell’s mouth. These signs of merriment disturbed him a little, but he did not suspect how. He turned to the ladies, who were quite grave, and replied with much sincerity----

‘That’s quite true, ma’am--it’s wonderful how you do see things; it would drown Johnny’s voice--and he’s got a sweet little pipe of his own, and pleased and proud his mother would be to hear him in church.’

‘The boys’ voices are like angels,’ said Miss Marsham; ‘they’re sometimes naughty little things, but their voices are like heaven. But I can’t help saying, though I don’t like to disagree with you, that I’m not fond of a band in church.’

‘What! not strings?’ cried Mrs. Sitwell, with such an air of ingenuous and indeed plaintive surprise, that the tender-hearted woman was moved in spite of herself.

‘Well--perhaps strings are different,’ she answered, with hesitation.

‘We never thought of anything else: when our kind friend said brass, it was only a slip of the tongue. You meant violins all the time, Mr. Cosham, didn’t you?’ said the parson’s wife, with her appealing gaze, which made the churchwarden blush with emotion and pleasure.

‘I believe I did, ma’am,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I’m sure that’s what’s right if you say so: for naturally being so musical yourself, you know about these things better than me.’

‘Dear,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, addressing Joyce, whom she no longer called Miss Hayward, but whom she did not yet venture, in sight of a certain dignity of silence and reserve about that young woman, to call, except in her absence, by her Christian name,--‘you never give us your opinion on anything. Do give us your opinion; we have all said our say.’

‘Indeed I don’t know anything at all,’ said Joyce--‘nothing at all. I was never used to music--of that kind, in the church.’

‘And yet,’ said Mr. Sitwell, ‘the Scottish Church has a fine ceremonial of her own, where she has not been deadened by contact with Dissent. I have always heard there were things in her service which went further and were more perfect than anything attempted here--until quite recently. But of course there is always a tendency to be deadened by the atmosphere of Dissent.’

The party all listened very respectfully to this, which had almost the weight of an oracular statement. Joyce, for her part, was more bewildered than ever. The words he used bore to her a completely different meaning, and she was not sufficiently instructed to be aware of that which he intended to express. She understood the Canon when he asked her if she was a horrid little Presbyterian, but she had no comprehension of what Mr. Sitwell meant. She was wise enough, however, to be silent, and keep her ignorance to herself.

‘But we all believe the same in the chief points, after all,’ said Miss Marsham, laying her thin hand caressingly on Joyce’s arm. This kind lady could not bear the girl to be distressed if, perhaps, she might happen to be one of those who had been deadened by the atmosphere of Dissent.

‘Well, now that this great question is settled, and we are to have the band and Johnny’s solo--and mind you keep him in good voice, Mr. Cosham--let us go upstairs and have “Angels ever Bright and Fair.” We are so fond of “Angels ever Bright and Fair,"--aren’t we, Austin?’ cried the parson’s wife, putting her hand through her husband’s arm and looking up in his face. He laughed and put her away with a little pat. ‘You are incorrigible, Dora,’ he said. Mr. Bright lifted his eyebrows and looked at the others, asking why.

And then there followed songs and sallies, and bits of that involuntary mimicry of everybody in turn which the lively mistress of the house seemed to be unable to keep under. Joyce saw her assume a serious aspect, with a grave face and a little movement about her lips, as she said something in slow and soft tones, at which Miss Marsham did not laugh, but once more laid her thin hand tenderly upon Joyce’s arm, while the gentlemen did,--the churchwarden bursting out in a short abashed roar, while Mr. Bright went off to a corner, and Mr. Sitwell hid his face with his hand. This little pantomime perplexed Joyce much, but it was not till after that she realised how she herself had been ‘taken off’ for the amusement of her friends.

She got home at last in the dusk of the summer night, feeling as if the world were full of a babble of voices, and of jests, and of calculations and little intrigues, and attempts to do something unnamed by means of something else. Joyce had not been altogether unaware that all was not perfectly straightforward and true in the world before. She had been fully acquainted with the extraordinary little deceptions and stories made up by children to save themselves from punishment, or to procure some pleasure, or even for nothing at all--out of pleasure apparently in the mere invention; but these little falsities were of altogether a different kind, and her brain throbbed with the contact of so many unaccustomed trifles which were like the buzz of the flies in the air. The piquancy of mimicking an individual in his own presence, though she was not insensible to the fact, was strange to her serious soul: it helped to increase the queer unreality of this world in which she found herself, where there were droll little plays going on on all sides upon somebody’s weakness, from the silly correspondents of the Pictorial to the rich soap-boiler who was to be wheedled by praise of his house, and the humble churchwarden who was bound hand and foot in reverential servility by praise of his boy--and people who were to be brought to church by the attraction of a band as being better than not going at all. And what was it for? For the parsonage? Joyce was not so hard a critic as to believe this. She saw the good parson tired with his day’s work, and she had seen that kind mischievous little woman as good as an angel to the poor people. Their meaning at the bottom was good, and the parsonage only an incident in the strong desire they both had to make the district of St. Augustine’s as near perfection as possible, and chase all sorrow and sickness and trouble out of it, and set up a beautiful service, and steal the people’s hearts with angelic voices in the choir and celestial thrilling of violin-strings--to steal their hearts, but only for God, or for what they thought God,--for the Church at least. This part of it Joyce but faintly comprehended, yet more or less divined.

And then from the conception she dimly attained of this real and great motive, her mind came down again to the laughter and the mimicry and the photographs, and that perplexing utterance about an atmosphere deadened by Dissent. What a strange world it was! making good things look bad by dint of trying to get good out of evil! Joyce wondered whether it would not succeed better to reject the artifices, and try what simple means would do. And then having shaken off that coil, her mind suddenly returned with a spring to what was for herself the central event of this day--the Captain standing up in that boat among those unknown people, in that other world. Strange! and he was her friend--but yet belonged to her no more than the river itself flowing on its way, with so many other lawns to reflect besides that little bit of green which Joyce, watching the stream go by, had begun to think of as her own. But it was not hers, and neither was he. Bellendean had been hers, and her old people, and---- Joyce hurried her steps to get refuge in her father’s house from that shadow which began to start up in her path and look at her, and filled her with alarm--a shadow demure and serious, with no thought of other worlds or other influences strong enough to eclipse his own.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXVIII

The next scene in which Joyce found herself which broke the ordinary routine of her life was the great garden-party at the soap-boiler’s, which was all that the poor Sitwells had got out of their supposed great demonstration and triumph of the school-feast. Sir Samuel Thompson lived in a large mansion on the hill overlooking the whole panorama of the Thames valley, with its winding river and happy woods--a scene enchanting enough to have satisfied any poet, and which this rich and comfortable person looked upon with much complacency, as in a manner belonging to himself, and deriving a certain importance from that fact. He was a man who was fond of great and costly things, and it seemed natural to him that his windows should command the best thing in the way of a view that was to be had near enough London to be valuable. And it gave him much satisfaction to gather around him all ‘the best people’ from miles round: it was pleasant thus to be able to prove the value of money, which was the thing that had made him great, and which he liked to glorify accordingly. ‘They all knock under to it in the end,’ he was fond of saying. ‘They think a deal of themselves and their families, and rank and all that, but money’s what draws them in the end.’ And Sir Sam was right. Some people came because his house was a show house, and his table the most luxurious of any far or near; and some because to see him swelling like a turkey-cock in the midst of his wealth was funny; and some by that indefinable attraction which wealth has, which brings the most rebellious to their knees: at all events, everybody came.

Sir Sam was, to use his own phraseology, the chief partner in his own concern. Nobody remarked Lady Thompson. She was not the leader of the expenditure and display, as the wife of a self-made man so often is. She was a homely stout little person, who did not love her grandeur--who would have been far happier in the housekeeper’s room. Even in the finest dresses--and she had very fine dresses--there was to understanding eyes the shadow of an apron, a sort of ghostly representation of a soft white comfortable lap to which a child might cling, where stockings to be darned might lie. She stood a step behind Sir Sam to receive their guests. He said, ‘How do you do? hope I see you well. Hope you’ve brought a large party--the more the merrier; there’s plenty of room for all;’ while she only shook hands with the visitors and beamed upon them. She went everywhere with her husband, but always in this subsidiary capacity. And Sir Sam was by no means reluctant to bestow the light of his countenance. It was not so difficult a thing to persuade him to appear at an afternoon party as the deluded Sitwells had supposed. He liked to show himself and his fat horses and his carriage, which was the last and newest and most comfortable that had ever been fashioned. But there he stopped. He took a cup of tea from any one; but if they thought to get anything more in return they were mistaken, and justly too,--for why should a millionaire’s good offices be purchased by a cup of tea? He had the right on his side.

This poor Mrs. Sitwell found when she made her anxious and at last desperate attempt to gain his ear. To waste his attentions upon the wife of the incumbent of St. Augustine’s did not in the least commend itself to Sir Sam. He was not aware that she was amusing, and could take off all his friends; and he thought with justice that she was not worthy to be selected out from that fine company only because she had asked him to her school-feast. In return for the cup of tea offered to him there--which he did not drink--he had asked her and her husband to his gorgeous house, and put it within their power to drink tea of the finest quality, coffee iced and otherwise, claret-cup or champagne-cup; and to eat ices of various kinds, cakes, fruit, grapes, which at that time of the year, had they been sold, would have been worth ever so much a pound. Sir Sam thought he had given the parson of St. Augustine’s and his wife a very ample equivalent for their cup of tea.

Joyce went to this great gathering in Mrs. Hayward’s train, as usual, following--with a silence and gravity which were gradually acquiring for her the character of a very dignified and somewhat proud young woman--her stepmother’s active steps. She knew a few people now, and silently accepted offered hands put out to her as she bowed with a smile and response to the greeting, but no more. The crowd was no longer a blank to her. She did not now feel as if left alone and among strangers when, in the course of Mrs. Hayward’s more brilliant career, she was left to take care of herself. On this occasion it was not long before she saw the portly Canon swinging down upon her, with the lapels of his long coat swinging too, on either side of the round and vast black silk waistcoat. She had been watching, with a disturbed amusement, the greetings made at the corner of a green alley between Mrs. Jenkinson and Mrs. Sitwell. They had been full of cordiality--the elder lady stooping to give the younger one a dab upon her cheek, which represented a kiss. ‘I could not think it was you,’ Mrs. Jenkinson said; ‘I have been watching you these ten minutes. How are you, and how are the dear children? I am very pleased to see you here. I did not know you knew the Thompsons.’

‘Oh yes; very well indeed,’ said the parson’s wife, with a beaming smile. ‘What a pretty party it is!’

‘A party cannot well fail to be pretty when it is given in such gardens as these; and with such a house behind it, flowing with wine and oil.’

‘You mean with ices and tea. It’s very fine, no doubt; but I like something humbler, that one can call one’s own, quite as well.’

‘No one should attempt these parties,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson, ‘who has not a large place to give them in, and plenty of things going on--tennis and all that, or music, or a beautiful prospect: we have them all here.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, ‘we did very well indeed, I assure you, in Wombwell’s field. You did not do me the honour to come, but everybody else did--the Thompsons and all.’

‘Really,’ Mrs. Jenkinson said. She added pointedly, feeling that she was not a match for the lively and nimble person with whom she was engaged-- ‘It must, I fear, have been very expensive.’

‘Oh, not at all,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘You see, we gave nothing but tea. People don’t come for what they get, though dear Sir Sam thinks so; they come to see other people, and meet their friends, and spend the afternoon pleasantly. Don’t you think so, dear Mrs. Jenkinson? If I had the smallest little place of my own, with a little bit of a garden, such as we might have if there ever is a parsonage to St. Augustine’s, I should not be at all afraid to ask even the Duchess to tea. She would come for me, she is such a dear,’ Mrs. Sitwell said.

‘I am afraid I am not half so courageous,’ the Canon’s wife replied; and she added quickly, ‘There is Lady St. Clair; excuse me, I must say a word to her,’ and hastened away. She was routed, horse and foot; for Mrs. Jenkinson did not know the Duchess, and this little district incumbent, this nobody, this scheming, all-daring little woman, actually did, by some freak of fortune,--and probably would have the audacity--and succeed in it, as such sort of persons so often do--to ask that great lady to tea.

The Canon swooped down upon Joyce after this little scene was over. She was standing by herself, only half-seeing the fun, perhaps because her sense of humour was faint, perhaps only because of her vague understanding of all that lay underneath, and made it funny. He took her hand and drew it within his arm. ‘Here you are, you little rebel,’ he said. ‘I have got you at last. There is nobody eligible within sight. Come and take a walk with me.’

Joyce had very little idea what he meant by some one eligible; but she was very well content to be led away, hurrying her own steps to suit the swinging gait of the big Churchman. He led her through the green alleys and broad walks of the soap-boiler’s magnificent grounds to the mount of vision which crowned them. ‘There now! look at that view,’ he said, ‘and tell me if you have anything like it in Scotland. You brag us out for scenery, I know; but where did you ever see anything like that?’

Joyce looked up in his face for a moment, then answered, with a smile, ‘I like as well to see the Crags below Arthur’s Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them.’

‘Eh!’ cried the Canon, lifting his brows. ‘What do you mean by that? You don’t generally speak like that.’

With nobody was Joyce so much at her ease as with this big impetuous man. ‘There was once,’ she said, in the tone, half bantering, half reproachful, with which she had once been wont to recall her ‘big’ class to the horror of having forgotten something in Shakespeare, ‘a little Scotswoman whose name was Jeanie Deans.’

‘Eh!’ cried the Canon again; and then he pressed, with half angry affectionateness, the hand that was on his arm. ‘Oh, you are at me with Scott!’ he said--‘taking a base advantage; for it’s a long time since I read him. So Jeanie Deans said that, did she? I don’t remember much about her. They say Scott is played out, you know, in these days.’

‘Then, sir,’ said Joyce quickly, ‘they say what they don’t understand; for look how it comes to me just as the natural thing to say. Sir Walter knew--he and some others, they know almost like God--what is in the hearts of the common people that have no words to speak.’

‘Ah!’ said the Canon; and then he laughed and added, ‘So you are one of the common people that have no words to speak? It’s not the account I should have given of you. Sit down here, and let’s pluck our crow. You have gone entirely off, you little schismatic, to the other side.’

‘No,’ said Joyce.

‘No! how can you tell me no, when I know to the contrary? You’ve been out in the district visiting with her. You are going to undertake something about the schools. They’ve had you to tea in company with the curate and that fat dolt Cosham whom they lead by the nose. Oh, you wonder how I know! My dear,’ said the Canon, with a slight blush, if it is to be supposed that a canon can blush, ‘a clergyman in a country parish knows everything--whether he will or not. Now, isn’t it true?’

‘Yes, it is quite true,’ said Joyce; and then she added, looking up at him again with a smile, and a little rising colour, caused by what she felt to be her boldness, ‘But still I like you best.’

‘My dear girl,’ cried the Canon. He patted her shoulder with his large white hand, and Joyce saw with astonishment a little moisture in his big eyes. ‘I always knew you were an exceeding nice little girl,’ he said. ‘I took a fancy to you the first time I met you. It gives me the greatest pleasure that you should like me best. But, my dear, why do you go over to the other side if you are so wise and discerning and sensible as to prefer me?’

Joyce hesitated a little, and then she said, ‘They wish very much to do everything that is best.’

‘Eh?’ the Canon cried, this time in astonished interrogation.

‘They want to do good to everybody,’ said Joyce, in her slow soft voice, which to ears accustomed to lighter and louder tones had an air of being very emphatic. ‘They would like to make their parish perfect.’

‘District,’ said the Canon.

‘District--but I don’t know the difference; and I don’t know many of the things they want to do. I was not brought up that way. Many things they say are all dark to me; but what they want in their hearts is to do good to everybody. They would like to have their church service and everything perfect.’

‘High ritual, as they call it,--music and all sorts of fal-lals.’

‘And to get everybody to come,’ continued Joyce, ‘and to teach everybody, and to help the poor folk. I could not do it that way,’ she added, shaking her head, ‘but to them it’s the right way. They have no other thought but to be good and do their best.’

‘Oh!’ said the Canon, this time in a dubious and disturbed tone.

‘They go among the poor folk every day,’ said Joyce; ‘they would like to take the command of them, and give them everything, and guide them altogether. It is not--oh, not my way--not our way at all, at home; but they say it is the way here. They never spare themselves any trouble. They would like to take it all on their shoulders; to nurse all the ill people, and mend all the bad ones, and even cut out all the clothes for the poor little things that have none. They will sometimes do things that look as if they were--very different: but it is all for this end.’

‘For making themselves important, and proving their own merit, and last, but not least, getting themselves that parsonage about which they make my life a burden to me. Why, your father has taken it up now--that must be your doing. These people, though your excellent sense keeps you from liking them, are taking you in, my dear. The parsonage--that’s what they’re aiming at.’

‘And why not?’ said Joyce.

‘Eh?’ The Canon turned round upon her with a snort of impatience. Then he elevated his large hands, and gave forth a still larger sigh. ‘You women are so gullible,’ he said; ‘you believe whatever is told you.’

‘I believe,’ said Joyce, ‘that it would be better to have a house of your own, and not to pay rent when you have very little money for one that lets in the rain, and is very, very small--so small, it would scarcely hold you,’ she said, looking at her companion.

‘It is fortunate I haven’t got to live in it,’ he said.

‘Very fortunate--for you. But, sir,’ said Joyce, feeling more and more the authority and power of this big friendly man, like a very kind inspector in the old days--‘you are far more fortunate than they are. You are like a prince to them. You have everything you want--money and honour, and a beautiful house, and plenty of room, and power to do what you please. They say in my country, “It is ill talking between a full man and a fasting,"--if you understand that.’

The Canon humphed and shook his head, and then he laughed and said, ‘Oh yes, I understand that. So I am the full man and Sitwell the empty one, you think, Miss Joyce.’

‘It makes a great difference,’ said Joyce; ‘and then they think--that it was promised to them before they came here.’

‘Yes,’ said the Canon, after a pause, ‘it was promised to them in a way--before they showed what sort of free-lances they were.’

‘And that makes a sense of wrong,’ said Joyce, wisely taking no notice of the last remark. ‘If you think there is an injustice, it always hangs on the heart.’

‘The Canon is ‘ere before us,’ said the fat voice of Sir Samuel, as the sound of much scattering of the gravel under heavy feet broke suddenly upon this colloquy; ‘and I would say, by the looks of them, that this young lady has been a-lecturing the Canon. Good joke that, preaching to the Canon, that most times ’as it all his own way.’

Sir Sam’s laugh was a little asthmatic--it shook him subterraneously and in a succession of rolling echoes. ‘Good joke that, preaching to the Canon,’ he went on, as if his announcement of the fact was the climax of the joke. He was followed by Mrs. Jenkinson, tall and energetic, wrapped in a white chudder, the softest and most comfortable of shawls--and by Lady Thompson, panting and red in the face with the climb, and gorgeous in all the colours of the rainbow. The Canon made room for the two ladies on the bench, and Sir Sam got a garden-chair and seated himself in front of them, against the view which they had come to see, half shutting it out with his bulky person. But the view was no novelty to any there.

‘Yes,’ said the Canon, ‘it is quite true. This little thing has been lecturing me. Indeed I don’t hesitate to say she’s been giving it me hot and strong--about the Sitwells,’ he added, in a sort of aside to his wife.

‘I must say,’ said that lady indignantly, ‘I think that young ladies should keep their hastily-formed opinions to themselves. What can she know about the Sitwells that we don’t all know?’

‘Well, she says she likes us best,’ said the Canon, quite irrelevantly; ‘so it’s not from partiality, or taking their side.’

‘Oh!’ cried Mrs. Jenkinson, darting a glance of anger mingled with a certain respect at the girl, whom she immediately set down as a foeman worthy of her steel.

‘She says they’re very hard-working people, working at their district night and day. She doesn’t understand their ways (she’s Scotch, you know), but she sees they mean the best by their people--hush for a moment, my dear. And she says that they think they were promised a parsonage, and that this makes a sense of wrong. Well, you know, she’s about right there--they were promised a----’

‘Before any one knew what they were--before we understood all the schemes and designs--the setting up to be something altogether above--the ridiculous fuss about everything--the flowers and the lights and the surpliced choir, and Bach’s music, with little Johnny Cosham to sing the soprano parts--if she doesn’t do it herself, as I verily believe she does, done up in a surplice and put at the end of the row: such a thing as was never heard of!’

‘Well, my dear--well, my dear! Joyce here’, patting her hand, ‘who has no sympathy with all that (being Scotch, you know), says they mean it all well, to get people to go to church. And they do get a number of that hopeless lot down by the river to go. But, however, that’s not the question; they were promised a parsonage if they got on and stayed a year or two. I can’t say but what that’s quite true.’

The Canon looked at Sir Samuel, and Sir Sam looked at the Canon. The rich man’s countenance fell a little in harmony with that of his oracle, and he replied subdued, ‘I don’t say neither but what it’s true.’

‘She says it makes a sense of wrong: well, perhaps it does make a sense of wrong. We have very nice houses, Sir Samuel,--mine naturally not magnificent like yours, but on the whole a nice, comfortable, old-fashioned place.’

‘Oh, very nice,’ sighed Lady Thompson, who till now had been recovering herself, and had just got back her voice; ‘nicer than this, Canon, if you were to ask me.’

There was a pause, and the two pairs looked at each other, a little conscious, pleased with their own good fortune, feeling perhaps a little prick of conscience--at all events aware that a moral was about to be drawn.

‘Well, and what then?’ Mrs. Jenkinson said at last, in her highest pitch of voice.

Nobody spoke until Joyce said timidly, ‘They would be happier, and she would not scheme any more. The rain comes in upon the little children.’ She had half said ‘bairns,’ which was not at all Joyce’s way, and she changed the word, which would have been very effective if she had but known. ‘There is no room for the little children.’

‘People in such circumstances ’as no business with children. I always said so,’ said Sir Sam, with a wary eye upon his spiritual director, of whose opinion he stood much in awe.

Joyce was as innocent and ignorant as a girl should be. She lifted up her fair serene brow with no false shame upon it, knowing none. ‘How can they help that?’ she said. ‘It is God that sends the children, not the will of men.’

‘Oh, my pretty dear!’ cried Lady Thompson, who was so homely a woman, reaching across Mrs. Jenkinson’s prim lap to seize Joyce’s hand. ‘Oh, my dear!’--with tears in her homely eyes--‘however you knows it, that’s true.’

Mrs. Jenkinson did not say a word: emotion of this kind is contagious, and these two women, though without another feature in common, were both childless women, and felt it to the bottom of their hearts.

‘Canon,’ said Sir Sam, with a slight huskiness in his voice, ‘if you’re of that opinion I’ve got a cheque-book always ’andy. It was an understood thing, so far as I can remember. There was to be an ’ouse.’

‘Yes, there was to be an ’ouse,’ the Canon replied, without any intention of mimicry. At this moment of feeling he could not reprove the soap-boiler even by too marked an accentuation of the h which he had lost. He turned to his wife as he rose to accompany the soap-boiler, laying his hand upon Joyce’s shoulder. ‘This child has got very pretty turns of phraseology,’ he said. ‘Her Scotch is winning. You should have heard one or two things she said.’

‘Oh, go away, Canon!’ cried his wife. ‘She is just a pretty girl, and that is what you never could resist in your life.’

Thus Joyce’s first interference, and attempt to ascertain whether plain truth might not be more effectual than scheming, ended fortunately, as such attempts do not always do. It was her first appearance separately in the society of the new world she had been so strangely thrown into. But she had not time for much more, and perhaps it was as well. Such a success may happen once in a way, but it is seldom repeated. She was found sitting on that garden-seat with those two ladies a short time afterwards by her father, who had come late, and who brought with him Captain Bellendean.

Joyce had not seen Bellendean since that curious moment when she stood a spectator and watched him like a stranger, passing with his friends, steering the laden boat with all the ladies down the river. She was as much startled by his appearance now as if some strange embarrassing thing, requiring painful explanations, had passed since last they met.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXIX

Mrs. Hayward decided that she would walk home.

For what reason?--for no reason at all, so far as she was aware; only, apparently without knowing it, to help out the decisions of fate. There was a stream of other people going home, some of them walking too, as it was so lovely an evening. The air was the softest balm of summer, cool, the sun going down, soft shadows stealing over the sky, the river still lit with magical reflections--those reflections which are nothing, such stuff as dreams are made of, and yet more beautiful than anything in earth or heaven. The rose tints were in the atmosphere as well as the sky. When you turned a corner, the resistance of the soft air meeting you was as a caress--like the kiss with which one loving creature meets another as they pass upon their happy way. It was no longer spring indeed, but matured and full-blown summer, ready any morning, by a touch of north wind or early frost, to become autumn in a moment, but making the very best of her last radiant evening. The well-dressed crowd streamed out of the gates of Sir Samuel’s great house on the hill, and then separated, flowing in little rills of white and bright dresses, of pleasant voices and talk, upon their several ways. Till then, of course, they had all kept together. Afterwards the little accidents, the natural effect of unequal steps and different pace, so arranged it that the older pair dragged behind, having still some good-byes to make, and that the other two, who had fallen together without any intention, went on before.

Joyce was always shy, but she had never been embarrassed by the presence of Norman Bellendean. She had been able even to laugh with him when the gloom of her arrival in this new sphere, and of her severance from the old, was heaviest upon her. She had the reassuring consciousness that he knew all about her, and could not be in any way deceived. No need of fictions to account for her, nor apologies for her ignorance, were necessary with him. And she gave him from the first that most flattering proof of preference by being at her ease with him, when she was so with no one else. But there was something in the air to-night which suggested embarrassment--something too familiar, over-sweet. Mrs. Hayward and the Colonel did not feel this. They said to each other that it was a lovely evening, and then they talked of their own concerns. Joyce was not like them--the rose-tinted vapours on the sky had got into her very soul.

‘Was there ever such a sunset?’ said Norman Bellendean. ‘And yet, Miss Joyce, you and I remember something better still,--the long, long lingering of the warm days----’

‘In summer,’ she said, with a little catching of her breath, ‘when you never could tell whether there was any night at all.’

‘And when the night was better than the day, if better could be, and morning and evening ran into each other.’

‘And it was all like paradise,’ said Joyce, chiming in. Their voices were full of emotion, though they were speaking only of such unexciting things as the atmosphere and the twilight--two safe subjects surely, if any subjects could be safe.

‘It is not like that,’ Joyce added, with a little reluctance; ‘but still the river when the last flash of the sun is upon it, and all the clouds hanging like roses upon the sky, and the water glimmering like a glass, and making everything double like the swan----’

Norman was one of the unread. He did not know what swan it was that floated ‘double, swan and shadow,’ for ever and ever, since that day the poet saw it: but he understood the scene and the little failure of breath in the enthusiasm of her description with which Joyce spoke.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was like that the other night--but there was a charm wanting.’

‘Oh,’ Joyce said, still breathless; and she added, with an impulse that was involuntary, beyond her power of control, not what she meant or wished to say-- ‘When you were up the river--the other night--passing----’

Did she mean it as a reproach? He looked at her quickly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is true I passed--the very lawn, the enchanted place--and looked and looked, but did not see you.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘but I saw you, Captain Bellendean. I saw you go below the bridge steering. It was strange, among all the strange folk, and the boats coming and going, suddenly to see--a kent face.’

She laughed, in a curious embarrassed way, as if laughing at herself, yet with a rising colour, and eyes that did not turn to him, rather avoided him. Norman had a sudden gleam of perception, and understood more or less the little fanciful shock which Joyce had received to see him pass.

‘You could not think it more strange than I did,’ he said, in an unconscious tone of self-defence, ‘nor half so disagreeable. To pass with people I cared nothing for, the same way that has become associated to me with--with---- And to look perhaps as if it were just the same whether it was they or--others.’

He began with self-defence, but ended with an inflection of half complaint and subdued indignation in his tone.

‘Indeed,’ said Joyce, startled, ‘I did not think----’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you did not think about me at all, and I am a fool for supposing you did; but if you thought for a moment that it was any pleasure to me to be there, apart from all that had made it delightful----’

‘Oh,’ cried Joyce, in an anxious effort not to understand this inference which flooded all her veins with a sudden rush of indescribable celestial delight, ‘but the river was as bright as ever I saw it, and the sky like heaven; and why should you not be happy--with your friends?’

He had given her a sensation more exquisite than any she had ever known in all her life; and on her side she was giving him pain, and knew it, and was not ill-pleased to have it so. Such, as the old moralists would say, are the strange contradictions of human feeling! He turned upon her an aggrieved expostulating glance.

‘You think it was the same, whoever my companions might be? You don’t understand what it was to me to be bound to the oar like the galley slaves, to listen to all their inane nonsense and their jokes, when my heart was in--oh, a very different place.’

‘You have been all over the world, Captain Bellendean, you must remember so many other places--more beautiful than this.’

‘Do you think that is what I mean?’ he said quickly, in a tone almost of irritation. Joyce knew very well it was not what he meant. But she had to defend herself with the first weapons that came in her way.

‘Don’t you know,’ he said, after a pause, ‘that this has been such a summer as I never had before? I have been a great deal about the world, as you say. I have had many experiences: but never yet have I felt as I have felt this year. I never was romantic, nor had I much poetry in me. But I begin to think the poets are the fellows, after all, who understand best.’

‘That is true, I am sure,’ said Joyce in a subdued voice. She was thankful to find something that she could say. She walked along mechanically by the Captain’s side, feeling as if she were floating in some vague enchantment, not able to pause or realise anything, not able to escape, carried along by the delicious soft air which was breathing within her being as well as without, a rapture that could not be explained.

‘I believe it is true--but I never thought so before. And the cause is that I never knew--you before,’ the Captain said.

Did the people know who were passing? could they see in the faces of those two walking--nay, floating by, surrounded by a golden mist--what was being said between them? A vague wonder stole into Joyce’s mind as she perceived dimly through that mist the face of a wayfarer going by. She herself but vaguely realised the meaning of the words. She understood their sentiment well enough,--felt it in that silent ecstasy that swept her along, but had no power to think or exercise her own faculties at all, only to let herself be carried on, and away.

‘You have been the enchantment to me,’ he said hurriedly; ‘and now it is almost over, and I shall have to go away. The charm will be gone from everything. I don’t know how I am to reconcile myself to the dull world and the long days--unless----’

‘Captain Bellendean----’ Joyce said faintly, hearing her own voice, as if it came from a long distance, feeling a vague necessity for a pause.

‘Unless I may--come back,’ he said. ‘I must go home and put things in order--but it need not be for very long--if I may come back?’

There was something vaguely defective in these words, she could not tell what. For that very reason they relieved her, because they were not what they might have been. She came to herself as if she had touched the earth after that vague swaying, floating, in realms above the earth, in the soft delicious air.

‘Surely,’ she said, ‘you will come back. There is no reason for not coming back.’

He, it seemed, had not felt that touch of reality which had brought Joyce out of her rapture. He was confused and floating still. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘not to return merely to town or--but to come back to this moment, to those days. I have never known anything like them. They have opened a new world to me: Joyce----’

‘Captain Bellendean!’

‘I mean no familiarity--no want of respect; could you think so? The name came out without intention--only because I say it over, and over---- Joyce--I may come back?’

Surely the passers-by must see! He had turned and was looking at her with pleading eyes; while she, with the red of the western sky in her face, with the mist in her eyes, did not look at him, or make him any reply.

‘I don’t ask you to say more. This is not the place. I don’t want to disturb your mind,--only say I may come, and that you will not send me away?’

Her heart had sprung up and was beating loud. A terror of what the people on the road would think took possession of her. ‘No, it is not the place,’ she murmured, scarcely knowing what she said.

‘What could I do? there was no other: say I may----’

‘Bellendean!’ cried Colonel Hayward’s cheerful voice from behind; ‘are you coming in to have some dinner? You had better. Why, you are taking the way to the river, Joyce and you.’

‘I beg your pardon!’ cried Captain Bellendean, with a startled air. ‘I beg your pardon! I did not observe----’

‘Joyce should have observed,’ said Mrs. Hayward quietly. ‘It is nearly half-past seven. You cannot do less than stay to dinner--especially as I hear you are going away.’

‘I will, with many thanks,’ said Norman. He looked like a man waked out of a dream; and Mrs. Hayward hastened on, not without a sense of Christian charity, to let them have it out, as she said to herself. But they were now both awakened. The charm was broken, and the golden air dispersed. They walked on behind the elder pair to the door, and went in very gravely both of them, without another word said.

A more extraordinary evening never was. Joyce had known many agitated and unhappy ones within the last six months, but none like this, during which she saw everything through a haze of excitement, with something weighing on her eyelids--something murmuring in her ears--something which made it impossible for her to meet the light or clearly realise what was going on. There seemed a sort of dumb expectation in the air besides that curious sense of something arrested and untold that was in her own mind. Her step-mother looked at her with a question in her eyes, and even touched her with a half-caress as she went upstairs to prepare for dinner. Joyce did not know why, and yet had a sort of far-off perception of some meaning and kindness in it, which notwithstanding was half an offence. And when she came downstairs the haze had filled the dining-room, so that she could not see clearly the face on the other side of the table--the face which did not look at her any more than she looked at him, and yet was keenly aware of every movement on her part, as she was of his. She herself scarcely spoke a word during the whole meal, and he not much,--not more than was necessary. The others went on with their ordinary conversation, which seemed to drift about upon the haze; names--the names with which Joyce’s mind had been busy a little while before--floating about, falling now and then like stones, catching her vague attention. Sir Sam, the Canon, the Sitwells--who were they, all these people? It seemed so strange that any one could concern themselves with their vague affairs.

The dinner was very long, and yet flew like a dream; and then came the twilight drawing-room, the dimness outside, the evening chilled out of that heavenly warmth and calm. Joyce did not go out to-night as was her wont, though she could not tell why. She kept by Mrs. Hayward, sedately seated near a table, upon which there was work, as if that were her object. Captain Bellendean stood near her when the gentlemen came from the dining-room. There was not much light, and he stood up like a tall pillar, slightly inclining over her, a sort of Pisan tower, leaning, yet firm. If he had anything more to say to her, it was clear that was not the place, any more than the road with the Colonel and his wife behind. But he lingered there still, saying little, until Colonel Hayward had to say, ‘I don’t want to hurry you, Bellendean. You’re always welcome, and my wife would give you a bed with pleasure; but if you are going by that train----’ Then Captain Bellendean roused himself like a man startled out of a dream, and shook hands with them all. He said Good-bye, not Good-night; and when Joyce had seated herself again, all trembling after that pressure of her hand, which almost hurt her, he suddenly came back, and looked in at the door. Mrs. Hayward’s back was turned: she had indeed gone out to the verandah to look at the moon, as she said afterwards. He looked in, then made one step to where Joyce was sitting, and took her hand and kissed it. ‘Remember I am to come back!’ he said, and then was gone.

‘What did Bellendean forget? his gloves, or a book, or what was it?’ the Colonel said, with some curiosity, when the door was closed and the visitor departed.

‘I don’t know,--I was in the verandah,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘What did he forget, Joyce?’

Joyce looked at them with a startled, guilty countenance, knowing what they had said, yet not knowing, and made no reply. She dared not move, nor speak, lest she should betray--what? There was nothing to betray, except that he was coming back, and that was no information--for of course he was coming back. She was very glad to escape to her room when the lawful time came for that, and Mrs. Hayward gave the signal, but had not the strength or courage even to rise from her seat till that signal was given, not knowing whether she would be able to walk straight, or to preserve her ordinary appearance if she relinquished, with both those eyes upon her, the support of her chair. She was vaguely sensible of Mrs. Hayward’s inquiring looks, which were half indignant, half angry, as well. When they said good-night, her step-mother took her hand with a quick monitory touch. ‘Have you anything to tell me, or would you like to speak to your father?’ she said. Joyce gave her a wondering look, and said ‘No.’ ‘I am not thrusting myself into your confidence: but tell your father,’ Mrs. Hayward said again imperatively, with a gleam of excitement in her blue eyes. Then as Joyce made no response, her step-mother flung past her, flushed and indignant. ‘I might have known better than to make any such appeal,’ she cried angrily, and shut her door with a clang that rang through the silent house.

Joyce stole away very silently into her room, disturbed and full of trouble. What could she tell? there was nothing to tell. She felt guilty without having any reason for it, and very sorry to offend without knowing how to help it. Tell her father!--but when she had nothing to tell him! There was a grieved look on his countenance, too, when he said good-night. It was all a confusion, and wrong somehow; but what could she do? Disturbed by this, there was a moment of troubled uncertainty in Joyce’s mind a longing to be pardoned, to say that she was sorry, that she was concealing nothing, which was, however, contradicted by the desire she had to be alone, and the shrinking even from a look which might penetrate her seclusion, and read the secret of her heart before she had spelled it out to herself. Softly, apologetically, with a sense of asking pardon, she closed her door and then sat down and came face to face with herself.

It was a very strange agitated meeting, as with some one she was unwilling to see and still more unwilling to question--some one who had a story to tell which would crush all the beginnings of peace and all the gleams of happiness that had been in Joyce’s life. She thought in the confusion of her mind of De Musset’s spectre, whom he had seen sitting by him in all the conjunctions of his life--the being, qui me ressemblait comme un frère; but Joyce’s meeting with herself was more important than anything recorded by the poet. All trembling with the sensations she had gone through, her nerves vibrating with the strain, her energies all melted in the exquisite sense of happiness which had floated her away, and in the chill check of the real which had brought her to earth again, she had questions to revolve and discoveries to make such as she knew now she had avoided and turned away from. She was afraid to look into those eyes which were her own, and find out the secret there. She sat down, putting her candle on the table, without lighting any other, conscious that she preferred the darkness, and not even to see, if she could help it, what she must see,--what could not be hidden any more. What had she done? She had meant no harm, thought of nothing that was wrong, nor of injuring any one, nor of failing in her faith. If Joyce had been made to disclose her opinion of herself, she would have described herself as true and faithful--faithful above all things. She would not have claimed excellence, though she might think perhaps that there was that in her which was above the multitude; but she would have claimed to be faithful and constant, not variable in her affections, true to the last, whatever temptation might come upon her.

Oh, strange delusion! oh, failure beyond example! when all the time she had failed, failed without knowing it, without meaning it, helplessly, like a fool and a traitor! It all came upon her in a sudden scathing flash of consciousness, which seemed to scorch her drooping face. She, in whom Joyce had always felt such confidence, herself--she, betrothed and bound and beyond all possibilities of other sentiment--almost as much as a wife already in solemn promise and engagement--she! heaven help her! what had she done? Her veins all swelled to bursting with the rush of her guilty blood. Horror and darkness enveloped her all around; she hid her face in her hands, and her lips gave forth a low quivering cry. She--loved another man. It was all the worse for her that she had felt herself superior to all vagaries of passion, thought herself above them, and believed that her own half-shrinking acceptance of love was all that was consistent with a woman’s dignity. She had thought this, and she thought it still--yet discovered that she had departed from it, thrown all those restraints to the winds, and loved--loved--Norman Bellendean! The discovery horrified, humiliated, crushed her to the ground, and yet sprang with an impulse of warmer life than she had ever known before through all the throbbing of her veins.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXX

‘You must try and get her to tell you when you are out this morning,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘She is probably silent on account of me; but you are her father, and you ought to know.’

‘My dear,’ said the Colonel, ‘why should she be silent on account of you?’

‘Oh, we need not enter into that question, Henry. Get her to tell you; it will be a relief to her own mind when she has got it out.’

‘Perhaps, Elizabeth, after all, we are going too fast. Bellendean has always been very friendly. He came to see me, and sought me out as his old colonel, before there was any Joyce.’

‘So you think it’s for you!’ Mrs. Hayward cried. And then she added severely, ‘If we should be going too fast, and there has been no explanation, Henry, you must bring him to book.’

‘Bring him to book? I don’t know what you mean, Elizabeth,’ said the Colonel, with a troubled countenance.

‘You must not allow it to go on--you must put a stop to it--you must let him know that you can’t have your daughter trifled with. You must ask him his intentions, Henry.’

The Colonel’s countenance fell: he grew pale, and horror filled his eyes. ‘Ask him--his intentions! his intentions! Good Lord! I might shoot him if you like; but ask him--his intentions towards my daughter, Elizabeth! Good Lord!’ The Colonel grew red all over, and panted for want of breath. ‘You don’t know what you say.’

‘I--don’t know what I say? As good men as you have had to do it, Henry. You must not let a man come here and trifle with Joyce. Joyce must not be----’

‘I wish you would not bring in her name,’ cried the old soldier--‘a young woman’s name! I know what you say is for--for our good, Elizabeth; but I can’t, indeed I can’t--it’s not possible. I ask a man--as if I meant to force him into---- My dear, you can’t know what that means; you can’t say what you’re thinking. I to put shame upon my own child!’ The Colonel walked up and down the room in the greatest perturbation. ‘I can’t--I can’t!’ he said; ‘you must never think of such a thing again. I--Elizabeth! Good Lord----!’ He stopped. ‘My dear, I beg your pardon. I don’t mean to be profane--but to tell me--oh, good Lord!’ the Colonel cried, feeling that no words were adequate to express the horror and incongruity of the suggestion.

Mrs. Hayward had stood watching him without any relaxation of her look. There was a certain vulgar fibre in her which was not moved by that incongruity. A faint disdain of his incapacity, and still more of his delicacy about his daughter’s name, as if she were of more importance than any one else, was visible in her face. Who was Joyce that she was not to be warned, that her lover was not to be brought to book? Mrs. Hayward, in that perpetual secret antagonism which was in her mind, though she disapproved of it and suffered from it, was more vulgar than her nature. She was ready to scoff at these prejudices about Joyce, though in her natural mind she would have herself shielded a young woman’s name from every breath.

‘I am speaking in Joyce’s interests,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t want to break her heart.’

‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth!’ said the Colonel, ‘I beseech you, don’t talk like that. Why, you can’t know, you can’t, you don’t realise what a girl is to a man, especially when he is her father. It’s bad enough to think of her caring for one of those fellows at all; but to break her heart--good Lord!--and for me to interfere, to call up a man to--to the scratch--to---- Oh, good Lord, good Lord!’ cried Colonel Hayward, with a blush like a girl. ‘I might shoot him and take the penalty, but you might as well ask me to--to shoot myself at once--as to do that: or to acknowledge that my child, that young creature, my Joyce----’

‘You can’t expect me to follow you in your raptures, Henry,’ said his wife, sitting down at the breakfast-table, for this discussion had been held in the morning, before Joyce appeared: and at that moment the door opened and she came in, putting a stop to the conversation. She was paler than usual, and graver; but the two were confused by her entrance, and for the moment so much taken up in concealing their own embarrassment, that they did not remark her looks. Joyce was very quiet, but she was not unhappy. How could she be with the thrill of Norman Bellendean’s voice still in her ears, and his last look, which meant so much, so clear before her? She was wrong, she was guilty; it might be that misery and shame should be her portion. She knew that she had failed to honour, if not to love, and that her way before her was very dark; but do what she would, Joyce could not force herself to be unhappy now. The first thing that had occurred to her when she opened her eyes upon the morning light was not any breach of faith or failure in duty, but that voice and those eyes with their revelation which made her heart bound out of all the shadows of the night. She was pale with all this agitation, uneasy even when she slept, distracted by spectres; but in the morning light she could not be wretched, however she tried. She was very quiet, however, much more so than usual; and the absence of that eager vitality which kept continual light and shadow on her sensitive face gave her a certain dignity, which was again enhanced by her complete unconsciousness of it. Her father cast a glance at her in this composed stateliness of aspect, and had to hasten away to the sideboard and cut at the ham to hide the horrified shame of his countenance. A creature like that to break her heart for any fellow! to be called upon to ask any man his intentions--his intentions--in respect to her! The Colonel hewed down the ham till his wife had to remonstrate. ‘You are not cutting for a dozen people, Henry.’ ‘Oh, I beg your pardon my dear,’ he cried, and came back to his seat very shamefaced with a small solitary slice upon his plate.

When the Colonel went out for his usual walk, with Joyce as his companion, Mrs. Hayward came after them to the door, and laid her hand significantly on her husband’s shoulder. ‘Now don’t forget,’ she said. Forget! as if he were likely to forget what weighed upon him like a mountain. He thought to himself that he would put off any allusion till the walk was half over; but the Colonel had not the skill nor the self-control to do this, the uneasy importance of his looks betraying something of his commission even to the dreamy eyes of Joyce. Had she been fully awake and aroused, she must have seen through all his innocent devices at the first glance.

‘It was rather a pleasant party, yesterday,’ he said, ‘especially afterwards, when we were by ourselves.’ The Colonel meant no bull, but had lost himself in a confusion of words.

‘Yes,’ said Joyce very sedately, without even a smile.

‘By the way,’ said the Colonel briskly, seizing the first means of avoiding for a little longer the evil moment, ‘you did great execution, Joyce. I don’t know what you said to the Canon, my dear, but I think you accomplished in a minute what all the good people have been trying to do for weeks and weeks. What did you say?’

What did she say? She gave her father a wondering look. Who was the Canon, it seemed to ask, and when was yesterday? It looked a century ago.

‘That is what I like to see a woman do,’ cried the Colonel, rousing himself into enthusiasm for the sake of gaining a little time--‘not making any show, but with a word of hers showing what’s kind and right, and getting people to do it. That’s what I like to see. You have done your friends the best turn they ever had done them in their life.’

‘Was it so?’ said Joyce, with a faint smile. ‘I am very glad; but it was the Canon that was good to pay attention to the like of me.’

‘The like of you!’ cried the Colonel. ‘I don’t know the man that wouldn’t pay attention to the like of you.’ Then he got suddenly grave, being thus brought back headlong to the very subject which he had been trying to escape. ‘Oh, I was going to say,’ he added, with a look that was almost solemn-- ‘I am afraid we shall miss him very much--I mean Norman Bellendean.’

‘Yes,’ said Joyce. He spoke slowly, and she had time to steady her voice.

‘Perhaps you knew before that he was going, my dear?’

‘No,’ she replied, feeling all the significance of these monosyllables, yet incapable of more.

‘I thought he had perhaps told you--at least Elizabeth--Elizabeth thought he might have told you.’

‘Why should he have told me?’ said Joyce, with an awakening of surprise.

The Colonel was full of confusion. He did not know what to say. He felt guilty and miserable, like a spy, and yet he was faithful to his consigne, and to the task that had been set him to do. ‘Indeed,’ he said, in his troubled voice, ‘my dear, I don’t know; but it was thought--I mean I thought, perhaps, that it would be a comfort to you--if you could have a little confidence in me.’

Joyce began to perceive dimly what he meant, and it brought a flush to her pale face. ‘But I have confidence--a great confidence,’ she said, very low, not looking at him. The Colonel took courage from these words.

‘Your father, you know, Joyce,--that is very proud of you, and to have such a daughter--and that would let no one vex you, not for a moment, my dear--not by a word or a thought--and that would like you to make a friend of him, and tell him--whatever you might like to tell him,’ he added, hastily breaking off in the middle of what he had meant to be a long speech, and giving double force to so much as he had said by these means.

Joyce had gradually aroused herself out of her dreams to understand the meaning in her father’s voice, which trembled and quickened, and then broke with a fulness of tender feeling which penetrated all the mists that were about her. There suddenly came to her a sense of help at hand--a belief in the being nearest to her in the world--a sort of viceroy of God more true than any pope--her father. What no one else could do he might do for her. It would be his place to do it; and it would be her right to appeal to him, to put her troubles into his hands. She had never realised this before: her father--who would let no one vex her, who would stand between her and harm, who would have a right to answer for her, and take upon himself her defence. The tears rushed to her eyes, and a sense of relief and lightening to her heart.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I will mind that. I will never forget it: my father, that is like God, to know the meaning in my heart, even if I am far wrong: and not to be hard on me, but to see where I was deceived, and to take my cause in hand.’

‘Deceived!’ the Colonel faltered, with mingled consternation and wrath. ‘Show me the man that would deceive you, my dear child, and leave him to me--leave him to me.’

‘What man? There is no man,’ said Joyce, shaking her head. ‘Oh, if it was but that! but when it is me that has been the deceiver--and yet meant no harm!’

Her eyes swimming in tears that made them larger and softer than ever eyes were, the Colonel thought, turned to him with a tender look of trust which went to his heart, and yet was less comprehensible to him than all that had gone before. He was puzzled beyond expression, and touched, and exalted, and dismayed. He had gained that confidence which he had sought, and yet he knew less than ever what it meant. And she had said he was like God, which confused and troubled the good man, and was very different from the mission that had been given him to find out his child’s secret, and to bring to book--what horrible words were these!--to bring to book! But whatever Joyce had on her mind, at least it was not Norman Bellendean.

And here in the emotion of the moment, and the rising of other and profounder emotions, the Colonel dropped his consigne, and gave up his investigations. He did not in the least understand what Joyce meant; but she had given him her confidence, and he was touched to the bottom of his tender heart. She had said that he would take her cause in hand, that he was her father like God--a new and curiously impressive view, turning all usual metaphors round about--that he would know her meaning, even if she were far wrong. Not a word of this did the Colonel comprehend--that is, the matter which called forth these expressions remained entirely dark to him; but it would have been profane, he felt, to ask for further enlightenment after she had thus thrown herself upon him for protection and help. He was glad to relieve the tension by having recourse to common subjects, so that without any further strain upon her, his delightful, tender, incomprehensible child might get rid of the tears in her eyes, and calm down.

The result was that the Colonel talked more than usual on that morning walk, and told Joyce more stories than usual of his old Indian comrades, and of things that had passed in his youth, going back thirty, forty years with at first a kind conscious effort to set her at her ease again, but after a while with his usual enjoyment in the lively recollection of these bright days which the old soldier loved to recall. And Joyce walked by his side in an atmosphere of her own, full of the bewitchment of a new enchanting presence suddenly revealed to her, full of the mystic, half-veiled consciousness of Love--love that was real love, the love of the poets, not anything she had ever known before. Her father’s voice seemed to keep the shadow away, the thought of the wrong she had done and the troth she had broken, but did not interfere with that new revelation, the light and joy with which the world was radiant, the inconceivable new thing which had looked at her out of Norman Bellendean’s eyes. She walked along as if she had been buoyed up by air, her heart filled with a great elation which was indescribable, which was not caused by anything, which looked forward to nothing, which was more than happiness, a nameless, causeless delight.

If she had been in a condition to examine what Captain Bellendean had said, or in any way to question what Mrs. Hayward called his intentions, Joyce’s feelings might have been very different. But of this she took no thought whatever, nor asked herself any question. What she did ask, with a triumphant yet trembling certainty, was whether this was not the Vita Nuova of which she had read? The answer came in the same breath with that question. She knew it was the Vita Nuova--the same which had made the streets of Florence an enchanted land such as never was by sea or shore, and turned the woods of Arden into Paradise. The pride and glory and delight of having come into that company of lovers, and received her inheritance, softly turned her dreaming brain. She had never been so much herself--for all those references to other people and pervading circumstances which shape a young woman’s dutiful existence had disappeared altogether from her consciousness--and yet she was not herself at all, but a dream. The accompaniment of her kind father’s pleasant voice, running on with his old stories, gave her a delightful shelter and cover for the voiceless song which was going on in her own heart. She had put her cause into his hands, as she felt, though she was not clear how it had been done. He would not blame her, though she was wrong. He would defend her. And thus Joyce escaped from life with all its burdens and penalties, and floated away upon the soft delicious air into the Vita Nuova. Never was such a walk--her feet did not touch the ground, her consciousness was not touched by any vulgar sound or sight. Soft monosyllables of assent dropped from her dreaming lips as the delighted historian by her side went on with the records of his youth. He felt that he had all her interest--he felt how sweet it was to have a dear child, a girl such as he had always wished for, who had given him her full confidence, and who cared for everything that ever had happened to him, and was absorbed in it as if the story had been her own. In all their goings and comings together, there had never been a walk like this.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXI

‘Well?’ said Mrs. Hayward, somewhat sharply, as she followed her husband upstairs.

‘Well, my dear! everything is quite right and sweet and true about her, as I always thought it was.’

‘I daresay. That is all very charming, Henry, and I am delighted that you are so much pleased. But what about Captain Bellendean?’

‘Oh!--about Captain Bellendean,’ said the Colonel, rubbing his hands with an attempt to look quite at his ease and comfortable. Then he added still cheerfully, but with a sinking of his heart, ‘Do you know, I don’t think there was anything quite definitely said between us about Norman Bellendean.’

‘Oh, there was nothing definitely said!’

‘Not by name, you know,’ said Colonel Hayward, with a propitiatory smile, still softly rubbing his hands.

‘And what did you talk of definitely, may I ask? You’ve been a long time out. I suppose something came of it,’ said Mrs. Hayward more sharply than ever.

‘Oh yes, certainly,’ said the Colonel, very conciliatory. ‘Joyce desired nothing better than to give me her full confidence, Elizabeth. She has a heart of gold, my dear. She said at once that she knew I would never misunderstand her--that I would always help her; and nothing could be more true. I think I may say we understand each other perfectly now.’

Elizabeth’s keen eye saw through all this confidence and plausible certainty. ‘What did she tell you then--about last night?’ she said.

‘About last night? Well, my dear, I told you we did not go into things very definitely--we did not put all the dots on the i’s. It was rather what you might call--general. No names, you know,’ he repeated, looking at her with a still more ingratiating smile.

‘No names, I know! In short, Henry, you are no wiser than when you went out,’ Mrs. Hayward said, with an exasperation that was not unnatural. ‘I knew how it would be,’ she added. ‘She has just thrown dust in your eyes, and made you believe whatever she pleased. I never expected anything else, for my part.’

‘Indeed, my dear, you are quite mistaken. She said to me in the most trusting way that she had the fullest confidence---- My dear Elizabeth, I don’t think you do justice to Joyce.’

‘Oh, justice!’ she cried: perhaps she did well to be angry. ‘I must trust, then, to myself,’ she said, ’as I generally have to do.’

‘But Elizabeth--Elizabeth!’

‘Oh, don’t bother me, please!’ the angry woman said.

Joyce went up stairs to take off her hat, and as she did so her eyes fell upon certain little closed cases upon her table. One of them was that photograph of old Janet Matheson in her big shawl and black satin bonnet, with Peter, a wide laugh of self-ridicule yet pleasure on his face, looking over her shoulder. It was from no scorn of those poor old people that the little case was closed. Mrs. Hayward’s maid had made some silly remark about ‘an old washerwoman,’ and Joyce, almost with tears of anger, had shut it from all foolish eyes. She took it up and opened it now, and kissed it with quivering lips--wondering would granny understand her? or would she be so overjoyed, so uplifted, by the thought of the Captain, that everything else would be dim to her. Joyce put down the little homely picture, but in so doing touched another, which lay closed, too, beside it. She did not open that case--she recoiled with a low cry. The outside was enough--it filled her with a sudden repugnance, a kind of horror. She moved even from the side of the table where it was. She thought she saw him standing there looking at her, in the attitude in which he had stood for his portrait; and she remembered, nay, saw with a clearness beyond that of mere vision, his look as he had presented her with this memorial of himself. ‘It is said to be very like,’ he had said; ‘I am no judge.’ She remembered the ineffable little tone in which he had said it--a tone which even then filled her with something between ridicule and shame.

And now--oh, how could Joyce think of it! how could she look back upon that time! Now it was odious to her to recall him at all, to see him spring up and put himself into his attitude--so gentlemanly, as his mother said. Joyce grew crimson, a scorching flush came all over her. She shrank away from the wretched little photograph as if it had been a serpent, and could sting her. She had never liked it. It had always seemed an uncomfortable revelation, fixing him there in black and white, much worse even than he was: even! Joyce hid her face in her hands, in an agony of self-horror and shame. Oh, how mean, dishonourable, vulgar, she was! He had been better than all the lads about, who would have thrust their awkward love upon her in the old days. An educated man, able to talk about poetry and beautiful things. She had been honoured by his regard--it had been a great thing for her to be engaged to such a man--and now! There was nothing, nothing which could excuse the baseness of her desertion of him. What could she say for herself? There was only one thing she could say, and that was what no one would understand. The one thing was, that she had not known what love was, and now love had come. Ah! if it had been love for some one poorer, less desirable than Andrew, her plea might have been believed. But love for Norman Bellendean--love that would put her in the place which was as good as a queen’s to all the country-side--love by which she would better herself beyond conception.

Joyce felt a chill come to her heart after that hot rush of shame--how was she to say it, how accept it even in her own heart? Even granny would be ashamed--granny who had prophesied that he would be the first to be cast off--but without thinking that it would be Joyce--Joyce herself, not any proud father--who would cast off the poor schoolmaster. Joyce’s honest peasant breeding, with its contempt for the parvenu, gave her a keener horror and shame than would have been possible, perhaps, to any other class. She felt humiliated to the very dust, angry with herself, disgusted at her own treachery. What should she do?--how represent it to those keen cottage critics, who would look at her behaviour with such sharp eyes? To give up Andrew Halliday for the Captain,--the meanest woman might do that--the one that was most ignoble. And who was to know, who was to understand, that it was true love, the first love she had ever known, and not pride or advantage that, before she knew it, had snatched Joyce’s heart away?

She was not sufficiently composed to allow herself to think that she had never shown to her rustic suitor any more preference than was natural to the fact that he was more congenial to her than the ploughman. She had accepted sedately his attentions. She had consented vaguely to that half proprietorship which he had claimed in her; but there had been little wooing between them, and Joyce had put aside all those demonstrations of affection which Andrew had attempted. But she said to herself none of these things. She even did not say that it was a mistake, for which in her youthfulness and ignorance she was scarcely to blame. She took it very seriously, as a sin which she had committed, but meaning no harm, meaning no harm, as she repeated to herself, with tears in her eyes. For the other had come upon her like a flood, like a fire, like some natural accident of which there was no warning. All had been tranquillity in her heart one moment--and in the next she knew that she was a traitor, forsworn. There had been no warning. She had not known of any danger--but in a moment she had discovered that she was a false woman, false and forsworn.

She went down to the luncheon-table after a long interval--long enough to make her late for that meal, which was a fault Mrs. Hayward did not approve. But Joyce had to bathe her hot eyes which could not shed any tears, but burnt in their sockets like fiery coals, she thought, and then to wait till the glaze and flush produced by the bathing had worn off. It had not altogether worn off when she came downstairs, but remained in a suspicious glow, so that she seemed to have been crying, though she had not been able to afford herself that relief. The Colonel cried, ‘Why, Joyce!’ when she appeared, and was about to make some further remark, when a look from his wife checked him. This looked like mercy on Mrs. Hayward’s part, but perhaps it was only in order to inflict a more telling blow.

For, after some time when all was quiet, and Joyce, taking refuge in the tranquillity, had begun to breathe more freely, Mrs. Hayward all at once introduced a subject of which as yet there had been no discussion. ‘By the way,’ she said, suddenly and lightly, ‘where are we going this autumn? It is nearly August, and we have not yet settled that.’

The Colonel answered, that for his part he was always very well disposed to stay at home; and that he thought, as there had been a great deal of excitement that year----

‘No, I don’t feel disposed to give up my holiday,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘Where shall we go? I know what you mean, Henry. You mean to beguile us into staying quietly here, and then when the Twelfth comes you will find some irresistible business that calls you away--to Scotland or somewhere. And you do not care what we are to do in the meantime, Joyce and me.’

The Colonel protested very warmly that this was not what he meant. ‘Indeed it is very seldom I get an invitation for the Twelfth, not once in half a dozen years; and as for leaving you behind----’

‘We will not be left behind,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with that alarming gaiety. ‘No. I’ll tell you what we will do to suit all parties. You shall go to Scotland for the Twelfth, and Joyce and I will do what I know her heart is set upon. We will go to see her old people in her old home. That will please you, Joyce, I know?’

This terrible suggestion was to Joyce as if a gun had suddenly been fired at her ear. She was entirely unprepared for anything of the kind, and she started so that the very table shook.

‘To go to--my old home?’

‘Yes, my dear. It would give the old people a great pleasure. We promised, you know, to bring you back.’

It was a cruel experiment to try. Joyce flushed and paled again with an agitation beyond control. ‘It is very kind,’ she faltered, ‘to think of--but they would not look for me now.’

‘Why not now? They don’t go away on a round of visits in autumn, I presume.’

‘My dear!’ said the Colonel, in a shocked admonitory voice.

‘Well, Henry! I mean no harm; but one time is the same as another to them, I should suppose. And we all know how fond they are of Joyce, and she of them. What more natural than that she should go to see them when the chance occurs?’

It was natural. There was nothing to reply. If all was true that Joyce had professed of love and reverence for these old people, what could be thought of her refusal, her reluctance to go and see them? She sat there like a frightened wild creature driven into a corner, and not knowing how to escape, or what to do, looking at them with scared eyes.

‘My dear,’ said Colonel Hayward, that all looks reasonable enough, and if Joyce wished it--but she must know best when it would be convenient to them. It might not be convenient at this time of the year, for anything we know.’

‘It would be harvest,’ said Joyce, thankful for the suggestion; ‘they would be busy, busy: another time it would be better. Oh,’ she cried suddenly, in an outburst of despair, ‘how can I go home?’

‘Joyce!’

‘Oh, I’m unnatural! I’m not fit to live! How am I to go home!’ cried the girl, who, less than three months ago, had left old Peter and Janet with, as she thought, a breaking heart. The two calm people at either end of the table put down their knives and forks to look at her--the Colonel with great sympathy, yet a certain pleasure; Mrs. Hayward with suppressed scorn.

‘It is not so very long since you were sighing for it, Joyce,’ she said; ‘but a girl at your age may be allowed to change her mind.’

‘And, my dear,’ said her father, ‘I am very joyful to think that your own real home is more to you than any other; for that’s how it ought to be.’

Joyce looked at them both with the troubled, dumb stare of helpless panic and stupefied cruel terror which comes to a wild thing in a snare. Her cry had been uttered and was over. She had no more to say; but she had not sufficient command of herself to perceive that she should not have uttered that cry, or should seek to put some gloss upon it, now that it was beyond recall.

‘And now you see that Joyce does not wish it, my dear,’ said Colonel Hayward, ‘of course you will never press that. It was only because we thought it would please you, Joyce; but you may be sure she is right, Elizabeth. It would be too soon--too soon.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, if she thinks so,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘Of course I don’t mean to press it. I thought it would delight Joyce; but it appears I have made a mistake. Let us think of something else, Henry. Let us go abroad.’

‘You would like that, my dear child?’ her father said. He was greatly touched by this clinging to himself, as he thought it--this preference of her new home to the old. To him there was neither variableness, nor the desertion of old ties, nor anything in it which impaired the character of his child, but only a preference for himself, a desire to be with him and near him, her father, upon whom she had made so tender a claim,--who, she had said, would be like God. Naturally she would rather be with him than with any one. He put out his hand and stroked hers caressingly. ‘You would like that? It would be a complete change. We might go to Switzerland, or even to the Italian lakes. You are very fond of Como, Elizabeth. Come now, say you would like that.’

Their eyes were upon her, and how were they to know the tempest of feeling that was in Joyce’s mind? She seemed to see the two old figures rise reproachful, their faces looking at her across the table--oh, so deeply wounded, with long looks of inquiry. Was it possible that already--already her heart had turned from them? And Janet’s words came surging back in the tempest of Joyce’s thoughts, how she would mean no harm, yet be parted from them, and find out all the differences. So soon, so soon! Janet’s eyes seemed to look at her with deep and grieved reproach; but, on the other hand, who were these two who shut out Janet’s face from her? Andrew in the attitude of the photograph, complacent, self-assertive, and Norman Bellendean, stooping, looking down upon her. Oh no, no, no! not home where these two were--not home, not home!

‘I must say I am surprised, Joyce. Still, if that is what you feel, it is not for me to press the visit upon you. And so far as I am concerned, I like home much the best. I am not very fond of Scotland. It’s cold, and I hate cold. Of course Joyce would like Como--every girl would like it--so long,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with meaning, ’as there was not absolutely any other place which they liked best.’

This arrow fell harmlessly upon Joyce, who had fallen into such a storm of troubled thoughts that missiles from without failed to affect her. Of all places in the world there was but one only which was impossible to her, the beloved home where the man whom she loved was in the high place, and the man who loved her was in the lowly. These two antagonistic figures blurred out the two others--the old pair to whom she owed everything, to whom her heart went out with an aching and longing even while she thus abandoned them; and dear Bellendean, of which she thought with such horror and panic, the place she loved best in the world,--the only place in the world to which she dared not, must not go.

‘There is no engagement,’ said Mrs. Hayward to her husband when Joyce had escaped to her room.

‘No engagement?’ he repeated, with a surprised question.

‘There has been no explanation. He has said nothing to her. And I think, after dangling after her for nearly three months, that he is not treating her well. If he comes back, Henry, I have told you what is your duty. You must ask him what his intentions are.’

‘I would rather shoot him, or myself. You don’t know what you are saying, Elizabeth,’ the Colonel cried.

‘Shooting him, or yourself, would not advance matters at all,’ his wife said.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXII

Andrew Halliday had not spent a pleasant summer, and the winter closed in upon him with still less consolation. His love, his ambition, and all his hopes were centred in Joyce, and his mind was greatly distracted from those occupations which hitherto had filled his life. He no longer took the satisfaction he once had done in perfecting the school at Comely Green, in pushing on his show pupils, and straining every nerve for the approbation of the inspectors, and to acquire the reputation of the best school in the district. All his pleasure in the nice schoolhouse, which he had once inspected with such bright hopes, thinking what a home Joyce would make of it, what a place it would be, superior to all other schoolhouses, under her hands, which embellished everything--was gone. And even his Shakespeare class, and all the intellectual enthusiasms in which he had been stimulated by her, and which were the pride of his life and buoyed him up, with that sense of culture and superiority which is one of the most ineffable and delightful of human sensations, failed to support him now. For that beatific condition requires calm, and Andrew was no longer calm. He kept looking night and day for a summons into higher spheres. He dreamed of headmasterships in the ‘South’ which would be opened to him; of noble English schools where every boy was a little lord, and for which his own intellectual gifts, apart from any vain paraphernalia of university degrees, would, backed by Colonel Hayward’s influence, make him eligible. It may seem strange that a man of any education should have believed in anything so preposterous; but Halliday was very ignorant of the world, though he was entirely unaware of that fact, and had no experience out of his own narrow circle. Little as this is recognised, it is nevertheless true that a clever man in his position is capable of misunderstandings and mistakes which would be impossible to a dolt in a higher sphere. He did not know that he had as little chance of becoming a headmaster in a great school, by dint even of the greatest of natural gifts, as of becoming Prime Minister--far less, indeed, for political genius might force a way in the one direction, while the most exalted intellectualism would do nothing in the other. Andrew, bewitched by hope and aspiration, and the novel and intoxicating sense of having ‘friends’ in high places, whose greatest object in life must be his advancement, believed and hoped everything which the wildest fancy could conceive.

This made his life much less satisfactory to him in the general, and reduced the efficiency of the parish school of Comely Green, the success of which was less to him than it had ever been, and its routine less interesting. As for the house, and even the new furniture he had bought, he looked at them with scorn, almost with disgust. What was the little parlour, which was all that a set of prejudiced heritors allowed to the schoolmaster, in comparison with the lovely old-fashioned mansions which he had seen described in books, and which were full of every luxury which a headmaster could desire? This hope, which at first was almost a certainty, of better things, made life as it was very distasteful to Andrew. For the first three months there was scarcely a day when he did not expect to hear something. When he went out he thought it possible that a letter, or better, a telegram, might be waiting for him when he came back--and never stranger approached the school, that his heart did not beat expectant of the messenger who should bring him news of his promotion. When the inspector came for his annual examination, Andrew thought that there was something particular about all that he said and looked, and that this official was testing him and his success, to see how he would do for the higher sphere which was opening to receive him. The inspector happened to have letters to post as he passed through the village, one with the mystic H.M.S. printed upon it, and the unfortunate schoolmaster felt his heart beat, believing that it contained his character, his certificate, the description of himself, which would justify Government in translating him to a higher and a better sphere; and in this suppressed excitement and expectation he passed his life.

However, when the summer had given place to autumn a curious thing occurred to Andrew. Joyce’s letters, which had been short but very regular, and exceedingly nicely written, and so expressed as to trouble his mind with no doubts--for, indeed, Andrew was scarcely capable of doubting the faith of a girl who had the privilege of being chosen for his mate--suddenly stopped. They had come weekly--an arrangement with which he was satisfied--and it was not until for the second time the usual day came and brought him no letter that he began to think her silence strange. When he heard from Janet, whom he visited regularly, with great honesty and faithfulness to his promise--though, as a matter of fact, he was not anxious to be seen to be on terms of intimacy with such very lowly people--that Joyce had gone abroad with her father, this seemed a not inadequate excuse for her. Andrew’s heart swelled with the thought that to him, too, the possibility might soon come of going abroad for his holidays--a dignity and splendour which in anticipation raised him to a kind of ecstasy.

And for a time this satisfied him fully. But time went on, and Joyce, he knew, returned, and yet no communication came. He could not think why this should be, especially as Janet went on receiving letters, of which she would read extracts with a scarcely suppressed sense of superiority which was very galling to the schoolmaster. ‘Ou ay, Andrew; come ben and tak’ a seat; there’s been a letter. She never lets an eight days pass without one--she’s just as regular as the clock,’ Janet would say, not unwilling to inflict that little humiliation; and then she would read to him a little bit here and there. If it had not been for that still lively hope, Andrew would have been seriously angry and anxious: and even when another month had stolen away, he was, though greatly surprised, yet still willing to believe that she was putting off in order to give him a delightful surprise at last,--in order to be able to tell him of some wonderful appointment which she was in the meantime straining every energy to obtain. But there was no doubt that this constant suspense did undermine his tranquillity. At the last, his temper began to suffer; he began to grow jealous and irritable. When the Captain came back to Bellendean and went to see Janet, and talked to her for hours about her child--as the old woman reported with as much pride as her dignity permitted--Andrew took heart again for the moment, expecting nothing less than that a similar visit should be paid to him, who certainly, he thought, was much more in the Captain’s way--far more able to hold a conversation with him on topics either public or individual than an old ploughman and his wife. But the Captain never came; and there was no letter, no message, nothing but silence, and a darkness in which not only the headmastership but Joyce--who, to do him justice, was more to him than any promotion--seemed to be vanishing away.

This blank was made all the greater from the fact that Janet in the meantime never failed to get her letter. Joyce wrote long tender letters to her beloved granny, telling her everything--and nothing; a fact which the keen-witted old woman had long ago discovered, but which naturally she kept to herself, not even confiding to Peter--whose chief amusement it was to hear these letters read over and over--the deficiency which she felt. Joyce described all her travels with a fulness which was delightful to the old people. ‘Ye can read me yon bit again about the bells and the auld man in the kirk,’ Peter would say; or, ‘Yon about the muckle hills and the glaciers--as daftlike a name as ever I heard; for there’s no’ mony glaziers, I’m thinking, yonder away--na, nor plumbers either.’ Janet fumbled for her spectacles, and got the letter out of a work-box which had been a present from Joyce, and prepared to read with every appearance of enthusiasm; but she said to herself, ‘She can tell me about glaciers and snawy hills, but no’ a word about hersel’.’ It is doubtful, however, whether Andrew would have perceived this want any more than Peter. He would have been satisfied with letters about the glaciers and all the wonders she was seeing; but to have that information only at second-hand was hard upon him, and it was hard to be left out. Even if this silence should be caused by her desire to give him a delightful surprise--even if she were indeed waiting from week to week always expecting to have that piece of news to tell him--even in that case it was very hard to bear.

He came to the cottage one evening when the early winter had set in. The days had grown short and the nights long. The house of Bellendean stood out with a half-naked distinctness among the bare trees, and every path was thick with fallen leaves. Through the village street the wind was careering as though pursuing some one, and breathing with a long sough that told of coming rain among the houses. A dreary night, with little light and little comfort in it--not a night to come out for pleasure. Andrew Halliday had brought a lantern to light him on various parts of his long walk, and he went in with a gloomy countenance like the night. The scene was a very homely one: the occupants of the cottage were poor, with none of the interest that attaches to beauty or youth, and yet there was much that was touching in the little interior. The supper was over, the things were all put away; it was nearly time for bed, for they rose early, and were tired with the work of the day. The Bible was on the table for the ‘worship’ which was their last waking act. But in the meantime Peter sat in his old arm-chair beside the fire smoking his last pipe, his rugged countenance lit up by its proud smile, and a little moisture in his eyes. The laugh with which he sometimes interrupted the reading had the far-off sound of a sob in it. Janet sat on the other side of the fire holding up the page she was reading to the light. It was Joyce’s last letter. No book in the world had so much charm for them. It provided their literature for the week, and Peter had nearly got the current letter by heart before the next came. Out at his work among the dark wintry furrows, he would sometimes burst forth into an explosion of that tremulous laughter, repeating over one of the ‘bits’ in Joyce’s letter, saying to himself, ‘It’s just extraordinar’! Whaur did she get a’ thae remarks, that never would have come into my head, and me her grandfaither?’ Of this admiration and emotion and tender love the air of the little room was full.

‘Is that you, Andrew? Dear, man, I hope naething’s the matter--you have an awfu’ troubled countenance,’ Janet said.

‘There is nothing particular the matter,’ said Andrew grimly, ‘but I’m tired of waiting for what never comes, and I’m thinking of going up to London. I thought it best to let you know, in case you might have any message. Though, as you’re always in correspondence----’

‘Ou ay, we’re always in correspondence,’ said Janet.

‘Just read ower that bit again, Janet, my woman,’ said her husband. ‘It’s real diverting,--just like having a book to read that’s a’ your ain. Whaur she gets it a’ is mair than I can tell.’

‘No, thank you--I’ve no time,’ said Andrew, ‘and most likely it would not divert me; for, to tell the truth, I’m very serious, and things have come to that pass that I must just come to a settlement one way or other. So if you have any parcel or any message----’

‘But you’re no’ going to throw up the school, or do anything rash? Do nothing rash, Andrew--that would be the warst of a’.’

‘I hope I’m not an unknown person,’ said the schoolmaster; ‘if I throw up one I’ll get another, for there’s plenty that knows my value. But I have no intention to be rash. There’s three days’ vacation for the preachings, and I am going then.’

‘For the preachings! Dear, lad, would you be away at the preachings?’ Janet cried.

‘Preachings or no preachings, I’m going to London,’ he said, with impatience. ‘I’ll hear what she has to say; but I’m not a man to be just kept hanging on. She’ll have to take me or to want me.’ He was much impressed with the tremendous character of the choice that Joyce would have to make. It sobered his tone. ‘I hope nobody will think that I would be hard upon her: but she must satisfy me that all’s well, or else----’ He did not finish the sentence; but the sternness of the determination which he would not utter was visible in his eyes.

‘I wouldna speak to her in a tone like that, if I was you. Ye may lead Joyce with love and kindness many a mile, but ye’ll no’ drive her an inch--no’ an inch. Though she’s our ain, she has her faults, like every ither mortal creature. If ye wag your finger at her in the way of a threat----’

‘He’ll no’ do that,’ said Peter, in a tone of quiet decision, looking the schoolmaster all over. Andrew was a much younger man, but the arm of the gigantic old labourer could still have laid him low. Andrew, however, was irritable and sore, and he looked up with by no means a conciliatory demeanour.

‘I’ll do what’s becoming,’ he said. ‘I’ll not be dictated to. A man has a right to know what a woman means that has accepted him for her husband. Either she’ll fulfil her contract or--we’ll have to come to other terms.’

‘Oh!’ cried Janet, unable to refrain from that little triumph. ‘Did I no’ tell ye that? Ye were fain to make friends with yon grand gentleman, and leave Peter and me on the ither side, but I telt ye ye would be the first to feel it--and so it’s turned out.’

‘That remains to be seen,’ said Andrew, buttoning his overcoat. ‘It’s a very dark night, and without a light I could scarcely have kept the road--though I should know it well enough,’ he added, with a little bitterness. ‘I was not called upon to take all this trouble to come over and see you. But I would not go without letting you know. I was not asking your opinion. The thing is, if you have any message or parcel--I could take a parcel.’

‘I’m sure I canna tell what I could send her, unless it was some fresh eggs, or a bunch of the monthly roses off the wa’. She’ll have everything that heart can desire--and the eggs would be a trouble to ye. And nae doot she has far better flowers than a wheen late roses off a cottage wa’.’

Peter had got up while Janet was speaking, and opened his large knife. ‘Len’ me your lantern, Andrew,’ he said, and went out with heavy slow steps to the little garden, or ‘yaird’ as they called it. He came in, a minute after, with a branch from the old China rose, which half covered that side of the house. The old man, with his heavy figure and rugged countenance, the lantern in one hand and the cluster of pale roses in the other, might have made a symbolical picture. He set down the lantern and began to trim off the thorns from the long bough with its nodding flowers. There could not have been a more wintry posy. The leaves were curled up and brown with frost; the hips, only half coloured, pale as the flowers, hung in clusters, glistening with cold November dews; and the faint roses gave a sort of plaintive cheer and melancholy prettiness, like the faces of children subdued into unnatural quiet. ‘Ye’ll take her this from her auld folk,’ Peter said.

‘Eh, but it’ll be hard to carry a lang brainch like that: tak’ just the flowers, Andrew; ye can pit them in your hat.’

‘I’ll take it as it is,’ said Andrew. He was not below the level of that tender feeling; and though there was a great deal of angry disappointment, there was love also in his heart. He took the branch of roses and unripe hips, and frost-bitten leaves, and disappeared into the darkness with it, with a curt ‘good-night.’ The old couple stood by the fire, listening to his steps as he went quickly out of hearing; then shut the door for the night, and opened the Book, and said their prayers for Joyce,--‘her that Thou gavest us, and that Thou hast taken from us, we darena doubt for her good; and oh, that a’ the blessings o’ the covenant may rest upon her bonnie heid!’ It was the petition of every night, and Janet gave the response of nature (though responses, it need not be said, were profoundly contrary to all her principles) in a whispered repetition of the words, and a faint little sob.

Andrew walked the three miles with his lantern in one hand and his long branch of roses in the other, a strange apparition to have met upon the road in the darkness of the November night. And next evening he set out, after having completed all his school work, by the night train, with a great determination in his heart, and yet many softened and wistful thoughts. He was going to ‘put it to the touch, to gain or lose it all,’--repeating to himself over and over Montrose’s noble verse. He was going to decide his fate: if there was no hope of that headmastership; if, perhaps, competition and vile interest and patronage--always vile when they are opposed to one’s self--had rendered all efforts impossible: to bid them strive no more, since he was content to wait for the reward of a conscious merit which did not, after all, want any foreign aid to gain eventually all that was meet; and in the meantime to secure his love, to insist upon it that no circumstances should separate him from Joyce. He went over and over in his imagination the interview he would have with her, fancying how she would excuse herself that she had waited for good news, and answering, with a little burst of natural eloquence, ‘Do you think I would not rather have a kind word from your hand than all the news in the world? Do you think a grand appointment would make up to me for losing sight of you?’ A hundred speeches like this floated through his mind, and were said over by his lips in the little preliminary journey to Edinburgh in the chill afternoon. The thought of going to London was in itself a great excitement too.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXIII

Halliday was both gloomy and angry when he left home, full of that sense of unappreciated merit which cuts with peculiar keenness into the minds of those who entertain no doubt as to their own superiority over the ordinary level; but the influence of external things and the distraction of travel soon succeeded in clearing to a great degree his mental firmament. The bustle of the great station at Edinburgh, the care of selecting a comfortable corner for his journey, the hurrying and rush of less fortunate persons hampered by luggage and children, amused his mind and distracted his thoughts. He travelled, as a matter of course, in the third-class; and, equally as a matter of course, he regarded with a dignified derision the stalwart young men in deer-stalking coats, and with every superfluity imaginable in the way of wraps and sticks and dressing-cases, who indulged themselves in the luxury of sleeping-carriages. Sybarites he called them in his mind, with a half-contemptuous, half-indulgent smile--frivolous creatures, altogether unaware that in a corner of a third-class carriage a man so much their superior in everything was calmly regarding them, making the inevitable comparison between folly and its comfortable cushions, and wisdom, which, if it did not trudge afoot, yet used only such conveniences as dignified necessity required. The deer-stalking young men, who never thought of the matter, would indeed have been highly surprised had they known how they were set down at their proper value by their travelling companion. The comparison did Andrew good: it made him feel his own dignity, his superiority to the external, yet made his breast swell with a pathetic wonder. Was it perhaps possible that Joyce, after three months’ experience of luxury, should prefer these brainless ones, so much lower in the intellectual scale? Surely, surely that could not be possible. He saw with a smile that they took copies of the Field and the Sporting News into their luxurious carriages with them. He himself had the Saturday Review. There is nothing so sustaining as this sense of being better than one’s neighbours. It comforted poor Andrew, and kept him warm during his journey. The gentlemen in the sleeping-carriages might rest better, but they did not, nay could not, feel half the moral elevation of the schoolmaster in his corner of the third-class.

London, too, veiled in a grey-and-yellow fog, through which the lamps, not yet extinguished, and a line of dusky sunrise among the clouds, looked red, brought an excitement to his mind which few perhaps of the companions of his journey shared. Andrew greeted the great city as people greet it in books,--as adventurers in the days of Dr. Johnson saluted that centre of the world. He thought with a tingle of strange emotion in his breast that the great roar of humanity might become familiar to his ears ere long. He rose to the sound and commotion with a sense of predestined greatness. The people in the sleeping-carriages tumbled out drowsily, rubbing their eyes in the midst of a dream. But Andrew stepped forth inspired by the recollection of many a great man who had arrived like himself, not knowing what might befall him. His hopes, his courage rose more and more as he felt where he was--in a great place where he was sure to be understood, and where the human mind was in a perpetual progress, not stagnant as in the country. He felt, indeed, not as he had done when he left home, as if his mission were a forlorn hope, but rather as if he were coming like a conqueror to see and to vanquish. It wanted only, he said to himself, that touch of reality to chase all the chimeras away. He would, he must, find Joyce faithful as ever, keeping silence only because her plans were not yet ripened for his advancement. He would find her father full of that respect which the man of action feels for the man of mind. He would be received as an honoured guest; he would be admitted into their confidence, and made acquainted with their hopes. Visions of a noble old house in some sort of cloistered dignified centre of learning rose again before his eyes--A. Halliday, Headmaster. He did not definitely fix upon Eton or Harrow, having no actual knowledge of either of those places; but something exhilarating, sweet, a strong yet soft delusion, stole into his being. He was so entirely inexperienced and full of the ignorance of his class (although a man so well instructed), that he was not aware of any restriction upon such appointments that could not be got over by sufficiently powerful influence. Influence could do everything, Halliday thought.

He got a bath and breakfast at the nearest hotel, undiscouraged even by its grim and chill nakedness, and feeling a wonderful freedom and elation in the consciousness of thus doing what the best people did, and being waited upon, served by a man-servant (if you liked to put it in that way) like the best. It cost a good deal, but it was worth the expenditure. The fog cleared off as the morning advanced, and it was in the sunshine of a bright hazy morning that he set off on the final stage of his journey. He had dressed himself with the utmost care and all the resources of his wardrobe. His tie was blue, his coat a frock-coat of extreme solemnity, which he usually wore at funerals. He thought, as he was a traveller, that it was the right thing to wear with this a round hat such as he wore in the country. He had a pair of lavender gloves, his umbrella was very neatly rolled up--in short, at half a mile off you recognised his unquestionable character and doubtful gentility with as much ease as if he had written Andrew Halliday, schoolmaster at Comely Green, upon his manly breast; but he had not the least idea of that. His clear and ruddy complexion was a little paled by the night’s journey, and by the mixture of agitation and excitement which he could not but feel as the moment of meeting approached. He looked a most respectable young man, very respectable, honest as the day. You would scarcely have suspected, however, to see him, how superior he felt to the people in the sleeping-carriages, and how, when they got the Field and the Sporting Times at the bookstalls, he had bought the Saturday Review.

He went by the railway from Waterloo, admiring the river which ran glistening grey, like a great worm, under the shining of the wintry sun--and got out with a great heartbeat at the station. How near he was now! He felt inclined to take a walk, to see the place and look at the view, pushing off the decision for a time, the certainty--for he had so little doubt by this time that it was a certainty--of the happy meeting. To see Joyce in perhaps a few minutes; to hear her cry of astonishment and delight; to have her come up to him in her shy way, never demonstrative, unless perhaps the long separation might have made her more so. ‘Oh, Andrew! and I was just going to write to tell you----’ He would not wait till she said ‘about the headmastership.’ He would take her in his arms, whoever was there (for had he not the right?), and say, ‘About yourself, my dearest--that’s what I want to hear about.’ He thought he would take a walk first to savourer a little this delightful scene, and think how she would look and what he would say. It was so near, so very near! He would keep it at arm’s-length a little in order to enjoy it the more.

It sobered him, however, to hear that Colonel Hayward’s house was some distance off, and to receive confused instructions which he could not follow. As a matter of fact, the instructions were not at all confused, they were only too rapid and clear. ‘First turning to the right, second turning to the left; then go straight on till you pass the church; then first turning, second turning.’ How could he keep all that in his mind? It was he that was confused, not the direction. If they had said, turn to the west and then a little to the north---- He stumbled along, forgetting whether it was the first, second, or third turning he ought to take, till he came to a church, which was not the church to which he had been directed; and from thence he stumbled on again by a great many roads clothed with pretty houses, which bewildered him. He stopped finally to ask his way of a brisk little lady, who cried, ‘Oh, Colonel Hayward’s!’ her eyes dancing with instant interest, and a look full of interrogations, as if she would have liked to ask him a hundred things. Andrew could scarcely restrain himself from asking, ‘Do you know Joyce?’ He felt at once that this eager little lady jumped at some conclusion about himself, and was eager to ask who he was--perhaps whether he was the lover of whom Joyce must have spoken to everybody with whom she was intimate. And Andrew’s instinct was indeed not far wrong: for Mrs. Sitwell immediately divined him to be somebody out of the mysterious past life of which none of the Haywards spoke, and wondered whether, perhaps, he was some one with whom Joyce had got ‘entangled’ in these dark ages. She stood and looked after him when she had given him his instructions, with curious eyes, noting his long frock-coat and his low hat. How dreadful! she said to herself, and could scarcely contain the curiosity that filled her. Should she make a hurried round through the district, and then approach the Haywards’ on the other side, so as to catch him there, and see with her own eyes the position of affairs? Mrs. Sitwell knew that Joyce would be just going in with her father from their morning walk, and would be caught by the visitor, and would be unable to escape.

Certainly she must know Joyce: she must divine who he was: Andrew said this to himself, and was further exhilarated and strengthened by the idea. Of course, Joyce must have told her friends. He went on with better success this time, inspired by the little active lady with those eager eyes, who must know--and at last got to the very door. His heart was beating now very quickly indeed. Joyce’s door--so different from the cottage where he used to find her. There she had always been shy, keeping behind old Janet, never willing to permit any demonstration. Would things be different now? Would she rush to him after his long separation, laying her head upon his shoulder? This image filled Andrew’s face with light and colour as he knocked at her father’s door.

‘Is Miss Hayward at home?’ The appearance of Baker gave him a distinct sensation of pleasure. Colonel Hayward’s butler or upper servant, a domestic of a high class. Andrew would have liked to see a footman or two behind, but pleased himself with the thought that this must be considered higher ton. ‘Is Miss Hayward at home?’

‘Miss Hayward? well, I can’t say. She’s been out walking with the Colonel, and whether they’ve come back or not, I can’t tell you. Mrs. Hayward is in,’ Baker said. He was not impressed by the appearance of the visitor. He thought it must be some man from a shop, or a person about a subscription, at the best.

‘It is not Mistress Hayward but Miss Hayward I want.’

‘Very well,’ said Baker-- ‘I hear you. If you’ll wait a bit, I’ll go and see.’

And Andrew had to wait, sadly against his will, outside the door. ‘You’ll excuse me, but Missis’s charges are as the door is always to be shut,’ Baker said, with a restrained chuckle, instinctively delighted to do his duty in a way that was offensive to the newcomer, whom he saw to be of inferior condition, and likely to be an undesirable guest. Andrew’s sensations when he was left outside his love’s door were not pleasant. He ceased to think of the butler as a high-class domestic, and called him in his mind a pampered menial, but consoled himself with the thought of the downfall that would happen to Baker when he knew who it was whom he had shut out. It was, however, a disagreeable moment of suspense. He tried to distract his mind by an examination of the great flower-vases at the door, the shrubs in their winter green, the perfectly swept and close-cut turf, all the careful surroundings of the place, not imposing or vast, but so exquisitely kept,--more perfect even than Bellendean. To think that he should have time to investigate all this, while she sat within with a beating heart, divining--would she divine?--his approach. When the butler described him, she would know, and come rushing out. She would rush to him, and the pampered menial would see---- At this moment the door opened quickly, and Baker said, ‘Hi! Missis will be obliged if you’ll send in your name.’

This unceremonious address startled Andrew. He said, ‘My name?’ arrested in the middle of his thoughts.

‘I suppose you’ve got one,’ Baker said.

Though this was so far from the reception he expected, he was not unprepared. He took his card-case out of his pocket, partially restored to himself by the pleasure of using it, which was a thing that did not occur often, and gave the pampered menial a card. He stepped briskly inside as he did so, resolved to bear no more of this, and followed the man as he returned to the drawing-room with the card in his hand. Andrew’s heart beat very quickly now,--his tranquillity was considerably disturbed. The moment had come: another instant and Joyce would be in his arms, putting all pampered menials to scorn----

The door opened. There was a faint rustle of ladies’ dresses, a glow of softened light, the sound of his own name, ‘Mr. Andrew ‘Alliday,’ and then a cry. She did not rush into his arms. He came to himself after that interval of excitement, and saw Joyce standing, her hands clasped, her eyes with a look of horror in them, drawing back as if she would have fled, with her face turned towards the door. He put down his hat upon the nearest chair, and crying ‘Joyce!’ went forward with outstretched arms.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXIV

Joyce had just come in from her morning walk. She was standing in the middle of the room with her hat, which she had just taken off, in her hand. And Mrs. Hayward had been making some remarks to her, such as mothers often, and step-mothers in some cases, feel it their duty to make. It was on the subject of the Sitwells, whom Mrs. Hayward regarded in their poverty (notwithstanding that the parsonage-house had been begun, and things were on the whole going well with them) with a certain contempt.

‘I think, indeed, you prefer such people to those of your own class.’

This was what Mrs. Hayward was saying when Baker, still more contemptuous of the inferior world than she, opened the door. ‘There is a person,’ he said, ‘asking for Miss Hayward.’

‘A person--one of your district people, no doubt. They come at all hours. There really must be a stop put to this, Joyce.’

‘Well, ma’am, it’s a male person, with a haccent,’ said Baker--‘not one from these parts.’

‘Miss Hayward can’t see every idler who chooses to ask for her: inquire his name,’ said the mistress of the house.

And no premonition crossed the mind of Joyce. She stood to receive the interrupted lecture, with her head a little bent, and her hat in her hand. She never made any stand for herself on such occasions, nor said a word in self-defence--probably afraid to trust her voice, and too proud to squabble. This made her, it need scarcely be said, very provoking to her step-mother, and aggravated any original offence in the most insufferable way. She stood quite silent now, waiting till she should be dismissed. And to tell the truth, Joyce, in the multitude of her thoughts, was very sick of everything about her, and of the friends for whom she was incurring reproof, and of the petty fault-finding which seemed to surround her steps wherever she went. Mrs. Hayward did not resume her lecture. She sat down, slightly flushed and angry, expectant to see what new visitor might betray Joyce’s inclination towards shabby persons. ‘Mr. Andrew ‘Alliday,’ said Baker, reading from the card. And then Joyce uttered that cry--her hat fell out of her hand upon the floor. She started violently, gave a hurried glance round as if looking for some way of escape, then turned a pale and terrified countenance towards the door.

‘Joyce!’

The man was quite respectable; his frock-coat made him look like a Dissenting minister, or perhaps a commercial traveller, or something of that kind. This was Mrs. Hayward’s bewildered reflection. She sat and looked on as if it had been a scene in a play.

‘Oh!’ Joyce said, clasping her hands. Then with a great effort she held out one hesitatingly to the new-comer, and said, ‘Andrew!’ her voice dying away in her throat.

He seized her hand in both his. Though he loved Joyce, and his heart bounded at the sight of her, he was also anxious to impress the pampered menial with a sense of the hideous mistake he had made. ‘My darling!’ he cried.

Baker did hear, and grew purple with horror, and lingered about the door after he had reluctantly closed it, to hear more if possible. But Joyce retreated before the ardent advance of her lover. The light began to fail in her eyes. She put up her hands faintly to keep him back. ‘Oh, Andrew! what has brought you here?’ she cried.

‘Who is this--person?’ said Mrs. Hayward, rising from her chair.

Andrew turned round upon her with a smile. ‘It is a long time since we have met,’ he said. ‘She is a little agitated. She was always very shy. Another man who did not understand might think this was a cold reception. But I know her better. You will be Mrs. Hayward, ma’am, without doubt?’

‘Yes, I am Mrs. Hayward; but what have you to do with Joyce? and how do you dare to call Miss Hayward by her Christian name?’ cried the lady of the house.

Andrew smiled again--he was prepared even for this emergency. ‘My name,’ he said, smiling with a complacency which diffused itself all over him, and shone even in the glister of his well-blacked boots, ‘should be sufficient passport for me in this house. But perhaps you did not properly catch my name, for English servants clip the consonants in a surprising manner. Allow me----’ He had taken out the card-case, that infallible mark of gentility, and here handed her a card with an ease and grace to which he felt no objection could be made. Mrs. Hayward, confounded, read out aloud, ‘Mr Andrew Halliday.’ Underneath, in very small letters, was written, ‘Schoolhouse, Comely Green.’

‘You will at once perceive, ma’am,’ said Andrew, ‘that if I ask to be left for a little alone with Joyce, I am asking no more than my right.’

‘Alone with Joyce! You want--what do you want? ME to take myself out of your way! Oh, this is too much!’ Mrs. Hayward cried.

‘It is not too much, madam,’ said Andrew, increasing in dignity, ‘if you consider the circumstances. It is surely no more than any man in my position has a right to ask.’

‘Joyce, who is this man? Joyce, do you hear that he wants to turn me out of my own drawing-room? For goodness’ sake----! Oh, I must call Colonel Hayward.’

‘That will be just in every sense the best way. The Cornel knows me, and he will at once understand,’ said Andrew, with the blandest self-possession. He opened the door for Mrs. Hayward, which he knew was the right thing to do; and it was sweet to him to feel that he was acting as a gentleman should from every point of view.

‘Joyce!’ he cried--‘my Joyce! now we are really alone, though perhaps only for a moment--one sweet look, my own dear!’

Joyce drew back from him, shrinking to the very wall. ‘Don’t,’ she said, ‘don’t!’ retreating from him. Then, with something of her old authority, ‘Sit down there; sit down and tell me, has anything happened? What has brought you here?’

‘Oh, is that what is wrong?’ he said. ‘I’ve frightened you, my dear one. No, no--no reason to be frightened. They are all well, and sent every message. Joyce, can you ask why I came? Because I could do without you no longer--because I was just longing for a look, for a kind word----’

‘Sit down,’ she said in peremptory tones, ‘sit down!’ She herself kept standing, leaning upon the glass door which led out to the verandah, her slender figure standing dark against the light. Her heart beat so, that there was a thrill and tremble all over her, visible against that background to which she clung. But it gave her a little relief when he obeyed her, and deposited himself upon a chair.

‘I am very sorry to have alarmed you, my dear. I thought that when you heard my name, your first thought would be for me. It was not too much to expect, was it, after being engaged--for more than a year?’

‘Andrew,’ she said, with a shiver-- ‘Andrew.’

‘What, my dearest? I know you’re very shy--very, very diffident--far more than you ought to be. If ever girl should have a little assurance, a little confidence, surely it would be you with me.’

He could not but be superior still--trying to reassure her, to give her a little boldness, smiling upon her in his most protecting, encouraging way.

‘Andrew,’ she said again. And then Joyce’s courage failed her altogether. She seized on any, the first expedient that occurred to her to postpone all personal questions. ‘You are sure they are well,’ she said tremulously. ‘Granny--and my grandfather--and all; and not missing me--not too much--not breaking their hearts----’

‘Breaking their hearts! But why should they, poor old bodies?--the feelings get blunted at that time of life. So long as they have their porridge and their broth, and plenty of good cakes--and a cup of tea. It is me you should ask that question. Do you know you have used me ill, Joyce? You have written oftener to them than to me--though it is me,’ Halliday said, ‘with whom you have to spend your life--I am not saying at Comely Green. No doubt you’ve got different notions in a house like this. It’s always difficult to go back, and I would not wish it--I would not ask it. But in some more refined, more cultivated place--in some position like what we read of--like what able men are securing every day----’ He rose as he spoke, inspired by this conviction, and approached her once more with outstretched arms.

Mrs. Hayward could not find her husband upstairs or down. He went to his library invariably after his walk, but he was not there to-day. He had not gone to his room upstairs. He was not among his flower-seeds in the closet, where he had at the present season a great deal to do, arranging and naming these treasures. At last she met him coming in, in his tranquil way, from the garden, a pot of flowers in his hands.

‘Look at these begonias, my dear. Now isn’t it worth while to take a little trouble when one gets a result like this? I am carrying it in for your own little table.’

‘It is a fine time to talk of begonias,’ she cried, pushing away the plant which he held out to her. ‘Henry, for goodness’ sake hurry into the drawing-room and put a stop to it at once! That man is there with Joyce.’

‘That man!’ cried the Colonel, astounded. ‘What man? Bellendean?’

‘Oh, how can you talk! What objections could there be to---- Henry, wake yourself up, for goodness’ sake! It is the man--the man you would never tell me of--the schoolmaster--the Scotchman. Go, go! and put a stop to it. I have been hunting for you high and low. Who can tell what they are settling all by themselves? Henry, I tell you go and put a stop to it!’

The Colonel put down the pot upon the hall table. He was quite bewildered. ‘The Scotchman?’ he said; ‘the--the--schoolmaster?--with Joyce? I suppose, my dear, it must be one of her old friends?’

‘I suppose, my dear, it is the man you--never told me of,’ cried Mrs. Hayward fiercely. ‘The man she was to marry. Go, I tell you, and put a stop to it, Henry!’

‘I put a stop to it!’ he said. The Colonel grew red like a girl--he grew pale--he wrung his hands. ‘Elizabeth, my dear, you know all about that better than I ever could do; you understand--such things? How could I--put a stop to it?’ In his trouble he paced up and down the hall, and knocked against Baker, who was hanging about in the hope of hearing something, and ordered him off in a stentorian voice. ‘What are you doing here, sir? Be off, sir, this moment!’ cried the Colonel. Then he added, apologetic yet angry, ‘These servants take a great deal upon them. You should teach them their proper place.’

‘Henry,’ cried Mrs. Hayward, ‘it is not like you to save yourself behind the servants. You must come with me, at least. I insist upon it. What authority have I over her? If I must interfere, it can only be as representing you. They may have settled everything by this time,’ she cried, and seized her husband’s arm. It was not to support him, as he very well knew, but to drag him to the sacrifice.

Andrew had risen: he had gone towards his love, holding out his arms. His figure, not graceful in itself, with the long frock-coat coming down a little too low, and putting him out of drawing, showed against the light; while Joyce, trembling, pressed against the window, shrinking from his advance, seemed to stand on the defensive, with a pale and panic-stricken face. When the Colonel saw this scene, he no longer needed any stimulant. He dropped his wife’s arm, and, stepping forward quickly, put his hand upon the intruder’s shoulder. ‘Hey, sir! don’t you see the young lady is afraid of you?’ he cried.

Andrew turned round at once with a quick recovery, and instantly extended his hand. He required not a moment to recover himself, being primed and ready for whatever might happen. ‘How do you do, Cornel?’ he said; ‘I’m extremely glad to see you. I was telling Mrs. Hayward--as I presume that lady is, though Joyce, being so shy, did not introduce me--I was telling her that this happy meeting would be incomplete without a sight of you.’

‘What do you want here, sir?’ cried the Colonel. ‘What have you to do with my daughter?’ Then Colonel Hayward’s natural courtesy checked him in spite of himself. ‘I--I beg your pardon,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Perhaps I’m making a mistake--perhaps it’s me you want, and not my daughter. Joyce, no need to be frightened, my love, when your father’s here.’

Andrew had not given way an inch. He had no want of courage. He confronted the angry warrior without flinching. ‘What do I want here, Cornel?’ he said. ‘I see you have forgotten me. I have just come to see her. It is natural I should want to see the young lady I am engaged to. You took her away in such a hurry, I had no time to make any arrangement. But nobody will doubt my right to come and see her, I suppose. Joyce, my dear one----’

‘Be silent, sir!’ the angry Colonel cried.

Andrew shrugged his shoulders. ‘Silent or not, it makes little difference. Words between you and me, Cornel, will change nothing,’ he said.

‘Joyce,’ cried the Colonel, with a gasp, ‘what does this fellow mean? You are almost fainting with terror. Go away, and leave me to deal with this man.’

‘She’ll not do that,’ said Andrew calmly.

‘She’ll not do that? She shall do what I wish, sir, I can tell you, and nobody shall interfere with her actions in her father’s house.’

‘She’ll not do that, Cornel, for this good reason, that Joyce will never give up her word pledged and her promise given. If you think so, it is clear you know very little of Joyce, Colonel Hayward, though you are her father,’ Halliday said.

He did not look at Joyce to intimidate her. He held up his commonplace head; and though he was of unimposing stature, and his frock-coat was too long, the schoolmaster looked every inch a man. His homely features grew dignified, his attitude fine. The Colonel stared at him, silent, not comprehending the transformation; while Joyce, roused too by this subtle change in the air, stood upright apart from the window on which she had been leaning, and turned to her father with a steadiness which was given at once by the sudden stimulus and by the rising despair.

‘Father,’ she said, ‘it is quite true. I--did not expect him--and it gave me a shock. I thought perhaps--he might be bringing ill news. It is true,’ she said, after a pause; ‘I am engaged--to Andrew Halliday. He has a right to come--for me----’ Her voice stopped again. She stood quite still for a moment, then flinging herself suddenly on the Colonel’s shoulder, ‘Oh, father! FATHER!’ she cried.

‘What do you think of this, sir?’ cried the Colonel, clasping her fast with one arm, holding out the other with an oratorical wave.

‘I think just what she has said herself, that she is excited and overdone. I am very sorry I did not write and tell her I was coming. It would have saved her all this. But her nerves were not in this agitated state in the old days. I would like to know what you have been doing to my betrothed among you in England,’ the schoolmaster said, ‘to make her like this.’

Colonel Hayward was too angry, too much bewildered and agitated, to reply. He took Joyce to the sofa, and made her sit down. ‘My dear child,’ he said, ‘you must not let yourself be intimidated--you mustn’t give way. You may be sure you are quite safe. Nobody shall bully you or put forth a false claim upon you here.’

Mrs. Hayward had not said a word all this time, her husband having unexpectedly risen to the height of the occasion. Elizabeth knew how to hold her tongue. But she intervened now with calm authority. ‘We’ve no right to say it is a false claim,’ she said, ‘till we know more about it; but you can see for yourself, Mr.--Mr. Halliday, that she is not in a state now to have it proved. Come back later; nothing can be done now. Come back in the evening, and my husband will see you finally.’

‘Finally!’ said Andrew. ‘You will see me finally, ma’am, when I take away my wife--but not till then. After that, you may be sure I will have little temptation to show myself in this house.’

The schoolmaster was roused. All that was best in him--his real love, his true independence, his sense of manhood, all came to his aid. He knew his rights and his power, and that no father could crush a lover so determined. But though he said these words with genuine and indignant feeling, the utterance of them brought another side of the question back to his mind. If it came to that--yes; he was man enough to carry his love away, herself alone, as he had wooed her for herself alone. But nobody but he knew how many glorious visions, how many hopes, would be cut off if he shook the dust from off his feet and resolved to cross that threshold no more. He would not give up Joyce, but he as good as gave up the headmastership--that dream of glory. He saw it melt away in the air, the baseless fabric of a vision. He felt himself come down, with a giddy sense of descent and failure, and become once more Andrew Halliday, schoolmaster, Comely Green. He had even perhaps a little neglected Comely Green for the sake of that too sweet, too tempting illusion. And now he must resign all thought of it, all hope. The renunciation thrilled through all his nerves, as he stood there facing the prejudiced and foolish people who did not perceive what it was they were throwing away. But even this did not shake his faith in himself and his confidence in his rights. He cast a glance which was full of compassion yet disapproval at the group on the sofa. ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘that Joyce is too much agitated to be responsible, and that the Cornel is excited and unable to see the rights of the situation. Therefore, ma’am, I will take your advice. It is not the reception I had a right to expect; but, nevertheless, I have full faith in Joyce when she comes to herself. I will withdraw till this evening. No ceremony, I beg,’ cried Andrew hurriedly. ‘I will find my way out--there’s no need for any one to open the door.’ Even in the midst of questions so much more serious, he remembered that it would be bitter indeed to show his discomfiture to the pampered menial who had admitted him. That at least he would not endure.

Mrs. Hayward followed him out of the room, sparing him this indignity. Perhaps the sight of Joyce leaning upon her father, absorbing his every thought, was as little agreeable to her as to Andrew. If Joyce was in trouble, it was at least her own making, whereas the innocent people whom she dragged into it had done nothing to deserve it. Mrs. Hayward regarded Andrew with angry contempt, but she was not without a certain fellow-feeling for him as a sufferer from the same cause. His air of terrible respectability, his coat, his hat, his gloves, everything about him, were so many additions to the sins of Joyce. And yet she felt herself more or less, as against Joyce, on Andrew’s side. She stood behind him while he opened the door, grimly watching all his imperfections. The back-door, she said to herself, the servants’ hall, would have been his right place. And yet, if the man spoke the truth, he was quite a fit and proper match for Joyce!

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us