Joyce

CHAPTER VII

‘Certainly, mem, ye may come in, and welcome. Come away,’ said Janet, lifting a wooden chair, and placing it, though the day was very warm, within reach of the fire. It was clean as scrubbing could make it, yet she dusted it mechanically with her apron, as is the cottager’s use. Mrs. Hayward watched every movement with her bright eyes, and observed all the details of the little house. A simple woman, looking like a French peasant with her thick cap; a little rustic village house, without the slightest pretension of anything more. And this was the house in which the girl had been bred who Henry said was a lady—a lady! He knew so little, poor fellow, and men are taken in so easily. No doubt she was dressed in cheap finery, like so many of the village girls.

‘I wanted, if you will allow me, to make some inquiries about your—but she is not your daughter?’

‘About Joyce?’ said the old woman quickly. She put down the bowl and came forward a few steps, from henceforward departing from her rôle of simple hospitality and friendliness, and becoming at once one of the parties to a duel, watching every step her adversary made. ‘And what will ye be wanting with Joyce?’ she asked, planting her foot firmly on the floor of her little kingdom. She was queen and mistress there, let the other be what she might.

‘It is difficult to say it in a few words,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘I have heard that though you have brought her up like your child, and been so tender to her, yet that she is no relation of yours.’

‘There are idle folk in every place,’ said Janet sententiously, ‘who have nothing to do but to stir up a’ the idle tales that ever were heard about the country-side.’

‘Do you mean, then, that this is an idle tale?’

The two antagonists watched each other with keen observation, and Janet saw that there was something like pleasure, or at least relief, in her adversary’s manner of putting the question. ‘It a’ depends on the sense it’s put in,’ she said.

‘We can’t go on fencing like this all day,’ cried Mrs. Hayward quickly. ‘I will tell you plainly what I want. My husband has seen the girl whom you call Joyce.’

‘Mem, you might keep a more civil tongue in your head,’ said Janet, ‘and ca’ her something else than the girl.’

‘What should I call her? I have not seen her. It is not with any will of my own that I am here. I hear her very highly spoken of, and your great kindness to her, and her—what is far more uncommon—gratitude to you.’

‘Mem,’ said Janet, ‘we Scots folk, we’re awfu’ unregenerate in the way of pride. We are little used to have leddies coming inquiring into our maist private concerns, ca’ing a woman’s affection for her bairn kindness, and a good lassie’s good heart for her faither and mither gratitude.’

‘I quite agree with you,’ said Mrs. Hayward, rising up suddenly and putting out her hand. ‘You are quite right, and I am—unregenerate as you say. The reason is, I have been a little put out this morning, and I have inquiries to make which I don’t make with any heart. I have come to ask you to let me see the things which Joyce’s mother left behind her—or at least the letters which Mrs. Bellendean told my husband of. A glance at them would possibly settle the question. My husband thinks—that he knows who she is.’

Janet had wiped her hand with her apron, and given it to her visitor, but with some reluctance. ‘And wha may your husband be, mem?’ she said.

‘He says he spoke to you the other day. He is, though I say it, a distinguished soldier. He is Colonel Hayward, who was Captain Bellendean’s commanding officer.’

Janet was not greatly moved by Colonel Hayward’s distinction, nor by his grade, but that he should be the Captain’s commanding officer impressed her at once. ‘Then he’ll be a gentleman that’s far aboon the like of us,’ she said, ‘and no’ a man that would put forth his hand for naught, or disturb a decent poor family without just cause.’ She stood a little, fingering her apron, ‘glowering frae her,’ as she would have said, casting a wistful look into vacancy. ‘It will maybe be something—that would make a great change,’ she said, her lips quivering a little, ‘if it cam’ true.’

‘I am afraid it would make a great change,’ said Mrs. Hayward, and she added with a sigh, ‘both to you and to me.’

‘To you!’ Janet clasped her hands. ‘What will you have to do with it? What would it be to the like of you? You’re no—you’re no——? or the Cornel——?’ The old woman put her hand with natural eloquence to her breast. ‘My heart’s just louping like to choke me. Oh mem, what would it be to you?’

‘Look here,’ said her visitor. ‘We may be giving ourselves a great deal of unnecessary trouble. It may happen that when I see the letters it will all come to nothing. Then let me see them directly, there’s a dear woman. That is the best and the only thing to do.’

There was a sweep of energetic movement about this rapid little lady that pressed forward Janet’s reluctant feet. She took a step or two forward towards the stair. But there she paused again. ‘I’ve aye said to Peter we must keep a loose grip,’ she said. ‘And when she was only a wean it would have been nothing: but she’s come to be that between him and me, that I canna tell how we’re ever to part. I’ve never said it to her. Na. I’m no’ one to spoil a young cratur’ with praisin’ her. I’ve kept it before her, that if she had mair headpiece than the rest, it was nae credit of hers, but just her Maker that had made her sae. It’s no’ for that. It’s no because she’s an honour and a glory to them that have brought her up. Whiles the one that ye are proudest of is just the one that will rend your heart. But she’s that sweet—and that bonnie—bonnie in a’ her ways—ye canna help but see she’s a leddy born; but to take upon hersel’ because o’ that. Na, na. That shows ye dinna ken our J’yce. Oh, I aye said haud a loose grip!’ cried the old woman, with broken sobs interrupting her speech. ‘I’ve said it to my man a thoosan’ times and a thoosan’ to that; but it’s mair than I have done mysel’ at the hinder end.’

The stranger’s bright eyes grew dim. She put her hand on Janet’s arm. ‘I should like to cry too,’ she said—‘not like you, for love, but for pure contrariness, and spite, and malice, and all that’s wicked. Come and show me the letters. Perhaps we are just troubling ourselves in vain, both you and I——’

‘Na, na, it’s no’ in vain,’ said Janet, restraining herself with a vehement effort. ‘If it may be sae this time, it’ll no’ be sae anither time. We may just be thankful we have keepit her sae lang. I never looked for it, for my pairt. I’ll gang first, mem, though it’s no’ mainners, to show you the way. This is her cha’amer, my bonnie darling; no’ much of a place for a leddy like you to come in to, or for a leddy like her—God bless her!—to sleep in. But we gave her what we had. We could do nae mair—if ye were a queen ye could do nae mair. And she’s been as content all her bonnie days as if she was in the king’s palace. Oh, but she’s been content; singing about the house that it was a pleasure to hear her, and never thinking shame—never, never—of her auld granny, wherever she was. She has ca’ed me aye granny—it was mair natural; and nae slight upon the poor bonny bit thing that is dead and gone.’

Janet went on talking as she placed a chair for the visitor, and went forward to the rude little desk where Joyce kept her treasures. She talked on, finding a relief in it, a necessity for exertion. Mrs. Hayward looked round the little homely place, meanwhile, with a curiosity which was almost painful. It was a tiny little room with a sloping roof, furnished in the simplest way, though a white counterpane on the little bed, and the white covering of the little dressing-table in the window, gave an air of care and daintiness amid the simple surroundings. A few photographs of pictures were pinned against the wall. But the place of honour was given to two photographic groups framed, one representing a group of school children, the other a band of (Mrs. Hayward thought) very uncouth and clumsy young men. Janet, with a wave of her hand towards these, said— ‘Hersel’ and her lassies,’ and ‘Andrew and some of his freends.’ It seemed to the keen but agitated observer, in the formality of the heavy cluster of faces, as if all were equally commonplace and uninteresting. She sat down and watched, with an impatience which nothing but long practice could have kept within bounds, while Janet opened the desk which stood against the wall, and then a drawer in it, out of which at last, with trembling hands, she brought a little parcel, wrapped in a white handkerchief. Janet was as reluctant as her visitor was eager. She would fain have deferred the test, or put it aside altogether. Why had she kept these papers for her own undoing? She undid the handkerchief slowly. There fell out of it as she unfolded it several small articles, each done up in a little separate packet. ‘A’ her bit things that she had,’ Janet explained. ‘A locket round her neck, and a bit little watch that winna go, and the chain to it, and twa rings. I wanted Joyce to wear them, but she will wear nothing o’ the kind, no’ so much as a bit brooch. Maybe you will ken the rings if you see them,’ said Janet, always anxious to postpone the final question, putting down the larger packet, and picking up with shaking fingers, which dropped them two or three times before they were finally secured, the tiny parcel in which the ornaments were enclosed.

‘No, no,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘The letters are the only things. Show me the letters, I implore you, and don’t let us torture ourselves with suspense.’

‘Ae kind of torture is just as bad as another,’ said the old woman, undoing with great unsteadiness the cotton-wool in which the trinkets were enclosed. She held them out in the palm of her brown and work-scarred hand. A little ring of pearl and turquoise, made for a very slender finger, in a simple pattern, like a girl’s first ornament, and beside it another, equally small, a ruby set round with brilliants. The glimmer of the stones in the old woman’s tremulous hand, the presence of these fragile symbols of a life and history past, gave the spectator a shock of sympathetic pain almost in spite of herself. She put them away with a hurried gesture— ‘No, no; nothing but the letters. I never saw these before; I know nothing—nothing but the letters. Show me the letters.’

Janet looked at the trinkets and then at Mrs. Hayward, with a rising light of hope in her eyes. ‘Ye never saw them before? It will just be somebody else and no her ye was thinking of? That’s maist likely, that’s real likely——’ wrapping them up again slowly in their cotton-wool. Her fingers, unused to delicate uses, were more than ever awkward in their tremor. To put them back again was the business of several minutes, during which she went on: ‘You will not be heeding to see the other things? I have them here in her box, just as she left them—for Joyce would never hear of puttin’ on onything—and they’re auld-fashioned, nae doubt, poor things. You’ll no be heeding?—oh ay, the letters—I’m forgetting the letters. But, mem, if ye’ve nae knowledge of her bit rings and things, ye will get nothing out of the letters. There’s nae information in them. I’ve read them mysel’ till I could near say them off by heart, but head or tail of them I could mak’ nane. Here they are, any way. She’s made a kind of a pocket-book to put them in—a’ her ain work, and bonnie work it is—flowered with gold; I never kent where she got the gift o’t. Ye would think she could just do onything she turned her hand to. Ay, there they are.’

And with no longer any possible pretence for delay, she thrust a little velvet case into Mrs. Hayward’s hand—who between impatience and suspense was as much excited as herself. It was worked in gold thread with a runic cross, twisted with many knots and intertwinings, and executed with all the imperfections of an art as uninstructed as that of the early workers in stone who had wrought Joyce’s model. Inside, wrapped carefully in paper, were the two silent witnesses—the records of the tragedy, the evidence which would be conclusive. Mrs. Hayward’s hands trembled too as she came to this decisive point—they dropped out of her fingers into her lap. Her heart gave a leap of relief when her eye fell on the handwriting of the uppermost, which was unknown to her. The other was folded, nothing showing but the paper, yellow and worn at the edges with much perusal. In spite of herself, she took this up with a feeling of repugnance and dread—afraid of it, afraid to touch it, afraid to see—— what instinct told her must be there. She paused, holding it in her hand, and gave Janet a look. No words passed between them, but for the moment their hearts were one.

Mrs. Hayward opened the folded paper, then gave a low cry, and looked at Janet once more—and to both the women there was a moment during which the solid earth, and this little prosaic spot on it, seemed to go round and round.

‘It will be what you was looking for?’ said Janet at last. She had been full of lamentation and resistance before. She felt nothing now except the hand of fate. The other shook her head.

‘Yes,’ she replied, and said no more.

CHAPTER VIII

In the meantime Colonel Hayward was walking up and down the village street, waiting for his wife. He passed and repassed the door two or three times. He was very nervous, hanging about, not knowing what to make of himself. The church stood at the end of the street, and a path led down by the side of the churchyard, in the direction of Bellendean. As he came to the end of this, he stopped in the abstraction of his mind to look down the line of shade which a high hedgerow opposite to the low mossy wall of the churchyard threw half-way across the path. Some one was coming along in this clear and soft shadow, which was so grateful in the midst of the sunshine. It startled him to see it was Joyce, in her dark dress, her face relieved against the broad brim of an untrimmed straw hat, which added in its tone of creamy white additional force to the very delicate tints of her face, so clear in the shadowy air, with an impression of coolness in the midst of great warmth. He cast an anxious look of suspense over his shoulder towards the house where his wife was; but as he did not see her, nor any sign of her coming, he turned down the path to meet Joyce. It was rather by way of diverting his own anxiety than from any eagerness to address her. He seemed to want somebody to whom he could talk to relieve his own mind; for up to this moment, except from curiosity and anxiety in respect to the past, and a certain admiration of herself and her demeanour, it had not been Joyce, upon her own account, who had interested the Colonel. He had not had leisure as yet to get so far as her—for herself. He went on to talk to her because she was in it, concerned like himself, though she might not be aware of the fact, in the matter which his wife at present was engaged in clearing up. It was as if the scene then going on at the cottage was a consultation of doctors upon the life or death of a beloved patient. Those who are waiting breathless for the opinion, which is at the same time a sentence, are glad to get together to ask each other what they think,—at least, to stand together and wait, feeling the support of company. This was Colonel Hayward’s feeling. He went towards the girl with a sense that she had more to do with it than any one else—but not with any perception of its immense importance to her.

Joyce had gone out in the freedom which comes to all the members of the scholastic profession, small and great, with the first morning of the holidays. To have no lessons to give, no claim of one kind or another, nothing but their own occupations, whatever they may be, gives to these happy people a sense of legitimate repose. For one thing, the members of almost every other profession have to go away to secure this much-desired leisure, but to the teacher it comes, without any effort, by appointment of nature, so to speak, by a beneficent arrangement which takes all selfishness out of the enjoyment, since it has been invented, not for the good primarily of himself, but of the flock who are so happily got rid of, to their own perfect satisfaction. The sweet consciousness that the happiness and freedom of so many sufferers have been consulted before one’s own, gives sweetness and grace to it. Joyce had risen this morning with that exquisite sense of freedom, and she had gone out with a book as soon as the household work she never neglected was over, to read and muse on a favourite spot, a point in the park at Bellendean out of reach of the house, where behind a great screen of trees the wayfarer came suddenly in sight of the Firth, the circle of low hills which protects the narrower sea at the Queen’s Ferry, and the sheltered basin of St. Margaret’s Hope. The sight of this wonderful combination of sea and sky and solid soil, the soft hills rising round, the mass of grey stones on the water’s edge, which marks a ruined castle, the island in the midst, the widening out beyond into the infinite, into the wider Firth and the stormy waters of the northern sea, affording an ever-open door for the fancy,—were delightful to this imaginative girl. She had taken her book, but she did not open it—for which she upbraided herself, confessing in the secret depths of her soul that Andrew would not have done so,—that he would have read and expounded and discussed and found a new beauty in every line, where she, so much his intellectual inferior, did nothing. She did not even think—if further avowal must be made, she did not even see the lovely landscape for the sake of which she had come here. It entered into her, reflecting itself in her dreamy eyes, and printing itself in her mind; but she did not look as Andrew would have done, finding out beautiful ‘lights,’ and commanding all the details of the scene. Joyce was a little short-sighted, and did not see the details. It was to her a large blurred celestial world of beauty and colour, and abundant delicious air and sunshine. Her thoughts went from her, where she sat in the heart of the morning, looking over the Firth, with all its breadth of melting light and reflection, to those low hills of the farther shore.

It had been thus that she had entered upon her holidays in the other days when life had no cares. The dreamings about Lady Joyce, and all the speculations as to her future, had come in other scenes, where there was a want of brightness and of a stronghold of her own to retire into. Here she had not needed that fanciful world of her own. But to-day Joyce was in a different mood. After a while she began to become insensible altogether to the scene, and resumed more personal musings instead. ‘Young lady, where did you get your name?’ It was not the first time she had been so questioned. Half the people she met asked her the same: but not as Colonel Hayward did. ‘I knew some one once’—what did he mean? why did he not come back and tell her? These thoughts became urgent after a while, so that she could not sit and dream, as was her wont in her favourite spot. She got up with a little impatience and vexation and disappointment to return home. But in the lane which led up to the village street, in the clear shadow of the tall hawthorn hedge, behold some one advancing to meet her, at sight of whom her heart began to beat—more loudly than it had ever beaten at the sight of Andrew Halliday; it sprang up thumping and resounding. ‘He knows who I am,’ she said to herself. ‘Perhaps he will tell me; perhaps he is looking for me to tell me. Perhaps he is something to me.’ Her veins seemed suddenly to fill with a rushing quick-flowing stream.

Colonel Hayward took off his hat as he came up. This was to him an everyday action, but to her an unusual grace, a homage which only lately had ever been given to her, and which she esteemed disproportionately as a sign of special chivalry. It brought the colour to her cheeks, which ebbed again the moment after in the fluctuations of her anxiety. The old Colonel looked very anxious too; his face was agitated, and paler than usual. When he came up to her he stopped. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that we were ever introduced to each other; but still—— You have been taking a walk this fine morning?’

‘The holidays have just begun, sir,’ said Joyce respectfully. ‘This is the first day: and though I am very fond of my work, freedom is sweet at first.’

‘Only at first?’

‘It is always sweet,’ she said, with a smile; ‘but never so delicious as the first day.’

Their hearts were not in this light talk, and here it came to an end. He had turned with her, and they were walking along side by side. Great anxiety—tremulous and breathless suspense—were in the minds of both on the same subject—and yet they regarded it in aspects so different! The soft transparent shadow of the hedge kept them from all the flicker of light and movement outside, giving a sort of recueillement, a calm of gravity and stillness, to the two figures. Had they been in a picture, there could have been no better title for it than ‘The Telling of the Secret.’ But yet there was no secret told. He was absorbed in his own thoughts, and unconscious of the wistful looks which she gave him timidly from time to time. At last he turned upon her, and asked the strangest question, with a tremor and quiver in all his big frame.

‘Do you remember your mother?’ he said.

‘My mother!’ The sudden shock brought a wave of colour over her. ‘Oh, sir,’ said Joyce, ‘how could I remember her? for she died when I was born.’

‘True, true—I had forgotten that,’ he said, with an air of confusion. Then added— ‘You must forgive me. My mind was full——’

Of what was his mind full? He fell silent after this, and for some time no more was said. But it gradually came to be impossible to Joyce to keep silence. She turned to him, scarcely seeing him in the rush of blood that went to her head.

‘Did you know my mother?’ she said. ‘Oh, sir, will you tell me? Do you know who she was?’

‘I can’t tell—I can’t tell,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It may be all a mistake. We must not make too sure.’

‘Then you think——’ she cried, and stopped, and looked at him, searching his face for his meaning—the anxious open face which was held before her like a book—though he did not look at her in return. She put her hand, with a light momentary touch, on his arm. ‘Perhaps you don’t know,’ she said hurriedly, ‘that I have things of hers—things she left—that would settle it—that would show you——’

He made a little gesture of assent, waving his hand. ‘My wife is there: that is what keeps me in this suspense.’

‘Where? Where?’

He pointed vaguely in the direction of Joyce’s home. ‘She has gone—to see everything,’ he said.

For the moment a flash of sudden anger came to the eyes of Joyce. ‘They are all mine!’ she cried. ‘It was to me she ought to have come. I am the one chiefly concerned!’ Then the flash quenched itself, and her look grew soft and wistful once more. ‘Oh, sir,’ she said, ‘if it was the Joyce you thought—if it was her you supposed—who was she? To tell me that, even if it should turn out all different, would do no harm.’

‘It would do no good either,’ he said: then turned round to her, and took her hand between his two large brown hands, which were trembling. ‘You are very like her,’ he said—‘so like her that I am forced to believe. She looked just as you are doing when I saw her last. Some relationship there must be—there must be!’ Here he dropped her hand again, as if he had not known that he held it. ‘There was wrong done to her—the Joyce I mean. She was made very unhappy; but no wrong was meant on—on my—on—on his part. Would you really like to hear the story? But it may turn out to be nothing—to have nothing to do with you.’

‘Oh, tell me; it will fill up the time; it will ease the suspense.’

‘That is what I feel,’ he said; ‘and you will keep the secret—that is, there is no secret; it is only what happened to—— what happened long, long ago—to—to one of my friends: you understand,’ he said tremulously, but with an effort to be very firm, looking at her, ‘to—one of my friends.’

Joyce made a sign of assent, too much absorbed in what she was about to hear to think what this warmth of asseveration meant. It was a relief to him to speak. It was like going over all the changes of the illness when a beloved sufferer lies between life and death.

‘They met,’ he said, ‘abroad, at a foreign station. She was very young. She was with people that were not kind to her. They married in a great hurry, without proper precautions, without thinking that anything could be wrong. They came home soon after for her health, and I—I had to—I—I don’t quite remember——’ his voice seemed to die away in his throat; then with another effort he recovered it and went on— ‘Her husband had to leave her and go back—to his duty: and then she heard from some wicked person—oh, some wicked person!—God forgive her, for I can’t—that it was not a true marriage. It was, it was! I protest to you no thought of harm—good Lord! nothing but love, honest love—and it was all right, all right, as it turned out.’

‘But she thought—she had been deceived!’ Joyce listened with her head drooping, keeping down the climbing sorrow in her throat, hardly able to find her voice.

‘She was always hasty,’ he said. ‘I am not the one to blame her—oh no, no—it was not wonderful, perhaps, that she should believe. And letters to India were not then as now—they took so long a time; and something happened to delay the answer. It was what you call nobody’s fault—only an accident—an accident that cost——’

‘You are very, very kind—oh, you are kind; you speak as if you had felt for her with all your heart—as if she had been your very own.’

He gave her a startled look, and made a momentary pause: then he proceeded, ‘That’s all,—all that anybody has known. She disappeared. His letter came back to him. He could not get home to search for her. It had to be trusted to others. After years, when I came back, I—I—but nothing could ever be found.’

‘Sir,’ said Joyce, gasping a little to keep down her sobs, ‘I think that must have been my mother. I—think it must be. She begins in her letter to tell him—she calls him Henry—was that his name?’

The old Colonel made a noise in his throat which sounded like a sob too: he nodded his head in assent, as if he could not speak.

‘She begins to tell him—is he living still?’

This question had the strangest effect upon Colonel Hayward. He turned round upon her, steadying himself, looking her in the face, with momentary wonder and something like indignation: then the energy died out of him all at once, and he nodded his head again.

‘My father! then I have a father,’ said Joyce, with a voice as soft and tender as a dove’s. She was not now paying any attention to him or his looks, but was entirely absorbed in this new wonderful discovery of her own.

But he started with a sudden cry— ‘Good God!’ as if something new—something too astounding to understand—had flashed upon him. Her father! why, so it was!—so he was—— He had thought of no subject but this for days, and yet this point of view had not opened upon him. They had reached the head of the lane, and were now in the village street, turned towards the cottage in which Joyce had lived all her life, and near enough to see the light little figure of Mrs. Hayward standing at the door. This caught his attention, but not hers. For Joyce had plunged suddenly with a new impulse back into the enchanted country of her dreams. A father—and one who had done no wrong—who was not to blame—a living father! It was only when she turned to Colonel Hayward, after the first bound of exhilaration and breathless pleasure, to ask him, clasping her hands unconsciously, ‘Who is my father?’ that she saw the extraordinary commotion in his face. He was looking at her, and yet his eyes made quick voyages to and from his wife. The lines of his face had all melted into what Joyce felt to be the ‘kindest’ look she had ever met. And yet there was alarm and boundless anxiety in it. He looked as if he did not hear her question, but suddenly laid his hand upon hers, and gave it a strong momentary pressure. ‘I must know first. I must speak to my wife,’ he said incoherently. ‘God bless you!—I must ask Elizabeth. You must wait: I must speak to Elizabeth. But God bless you, my dear!’

He was already gone, hastening with long steps up the street. The thought passed through Joyce’s mind that this must have been a dear friend,—some one, perhaps, who had loved her mother: and a man with the tenderest heart. There was something in his ‘God bless you’ which seemed to fall upon her like the dew—a true blessing; the blessing of one who had always been her friend, though she had never known him. She did not hurry to follow him to satisfy herself, but went on quietly at her usual pace, looking at the old gentleman’s long swift steps, and thinking of a camel going over the ground. He was from the East, too; and he devoured the way, hastening to the little figure which had perceived and which was waiting for him. Joyce had the faculty of youth to remark all this, yet keep up her own thoughts at the same time. She saw old Janet standing at the door looking out, with the hem of her apron in her hand, which was her gesture when her mind was much occupied or troubled: and the little lady in the street standing waiting, and then, her own old friend, the Colonel, hurrying up, putting his arm within the lady’s, leading her away with his head bent over her. There was a certain amusement in it all, which floated on the surface of the great excitement and wonder and delight of the discovery she had made. A father; and a dear old friend, the kindest, the most sympathetic, who blessed her, and who had a right to bless her, having loved (she could not doubt it) her mother before her.

Joyce did not know what the next disclosure might be,—did not think for the moment that, whatever it was, it must change the whole tenor of her life. Nor did she think that there was still a doubt in it,—that it might yet come to nothing, as he had said. Oh no, it could not come to nothing; everything pieced in to the story. The doubt with which Janet had always chilled her, that a young creature disappearing so utterly, with no one to care for her, no one to inquire after her, must have had a story in which shame was involved—how completely was it dissipated and explained by this real tale! Oh, no shame! she had felt sure there could not be shame—nothing but the cruel distance, the fatal accident that had delayed the letter, those strange elements of uncertainty which mix in every mortal story, which (Joyce remembered from that reading which had hitherto been her life) the ancients called fate. And what could they be called but fate? If it had come in time that letter! as letters which mean nothing, which are of no consequence, come every day—and yet he had said the delay was nobody’s fault. Was it less fatal, less fateful than those incidents that lead towards the end of a tragedy in the poets? and this was a tragedy. Oh, how sad, how pitiful, to the Joyce of twenty years ago! but not to our Joyce, who suddenly found this July morning her vague dreams of youth, her fancies that had no foundation, coming true.

‘You’ve been a long time away,’ said Janet from the door. She had watched Joyce’s approach until they were within a few steps of each other, when she had suddenly withdrawn her eyes, and taking to examining the hem of her apron, which she laid down and pinched between her fingers, as if preparing it to be hemmed over again. The corners of Janet’s mouth were drawn down, and a line or two marked in her forehead, as when she was angry and about to scold her nursling. ‘I could wuss,’ she said, ‘that ye wouldna stravaig away in the mornin’ without a piece or onything to sustain ye, and maybe getting your death o’ cauld, sittin’ on the grass.’

‘It is the first day of the holidays, granny,’ said Joyce. She came in smiling, and put down her book, and going up to her faithful guardian, put an arm round her, and laid her cheek against hers. Caresses are rare in a Scotch peasant’s house. Janet half turned away her own wrinkled cheek. The intensity of the love within her rose into a heat which simulated wrath.

‘I’m no a wean to be made o’. I like nane o’ your phrasin’s. I like when folk do as I bid them, and make nae steer.’

‘Oh, granny,’ said Joyce, ‘but my heart is so full, and I have so much to tell you.’

‘What can ye have to tell me? I have maybe mair to tell you than ever ye thought upon; and as for a full heart, how can the like of you, with a’ your life before ye, ken what that means?’

‘Granny, I have had a long talk with that gentleman—the gentleman that thought he knew my mother.’

‘And what had he to say to you? I’m thinking your mother has been just killed among them. That’s my opinion. A poor young solitary thing, that had naebody to stand up for her. And sae will ye be if ye lippen to them,’ cried Janet, suddenly sitting down and covering her face with her apron,—‘sae will ye be. Ye are weel off now, though maybe ye dinna think sae.’

‘Granny, have I ever given you any reason to say that?’

Janet withdrew her apron from her eyes. Her eyes were red with that burden of tears which age cannot shed like youth. The passion of love and grief which overflowed her being could only get vent in this irritation and querulous impatience. Her long upper lip quivered, a hot moisture glistened on the edges of her eyelids. She looked at the young creature, standing half on the defensive before this sudden attack, yet half disposed to meet it with tender laughter and jest. ‘Oh, ye can make licht o’t,’ she cried. ‘What is’t to you? just the life ye’ve aye been craving for,—aye craving for,—ye canna say nay. But to me what is it?’ said the old woman. ‘It’s just death. It’s waur than death; it’s just lingering and longin’ and frettin’ wi’ my Maker for what I canna have! When we took ye to our airms, a bit helpless bairn, maybe there was that in our hearts that said the Lord was our debtor to make it up to us. But them that think sae will find themselves sair mista’en; for He has just waited and waited till ye had come to your flower and were our pride! And now the fiat has gaen forth, no’ when ye were a little bairn; and I aye said, “Haud a loose grip!” But now that a’ the danger seemed overpast, now that—wheesht!’ cried Janet suddenly, coming to an abrupt pause. In the silence that followed they heard a slow and heavy foot, making long and measured steps, advancing gradually. They heard that among many others, for it was the time when the labourers were coming home to dinner; but to Janet and Joyce there was no mistaking the one tread among so many. Janet got up hurriedly from the chair. ‘Wheesht! no’ a word before him; it’s time enough when it comes,’ she said. Joyce had not waited even for this, but had begun to lay the table, so that Peter when he came in should find everything ready. He came in with his usual air of broadly smiling expectation, and took his bonnet from his grizzled red locks, which was the fashion Joyce had taught him, as he stepped across the threshold. ‘It’s awful warm the day,’ were his first words, as he went in, notwithstanding, and placed himself in the big chair near the fire. The fire was the household centre whether it was cold or warm. ‘So you’ve gotten the play?’ he added, beaming upon Joyce, awaiting something which should make him open his mouth in one of those big brief laughs that brought the water to his eyes. It was not necessary that it should be witty or clever. Joyce was wit and cleverness embodied to her foster-father. When she opened her lips his soul was satisfied.

And before Peter the cloud disappeared like magic. Janet was cheerful, and Joyce like everyday. They listened to his talk about the ripening corn, and where it was full in the ear, and where stubby, and about the Irish shearers that will be doun upon us like locusts afore we ken,—‘and a wheen Hieland cattle too,’ said Peter, who was not favourable to the Celts. Then the broth was put on the table and the blessing said, and the humble dinner eaten as it had been for years in the little family which held together by nature, and which, so far as had appeared, nothing could ever divide.

CHAPTER IX

The Colonel was very apologetic. ‘I am afraid I am dense,’ he said; ‘but, my dear, I always like to wait till I know what you think—and as yet you have said nothing. How was I to suppose——’ Here he broke off, seeing in his wife’s eyes more than he could read all at once, and with a tremulous movement laid his hand again upon her arm. ‘What is it?’ he said.

She was tremulous too, but in a different fashion. She began to open out a little parcel which she held in her hand quickly, almost with indignation. ‘You will know what to think when you see you own hand and name,’ she said. ‘There! that’s been laid up waiting for me—fancy! for me to find it—these twenty years.’

The Colonel looked at the yellow old letters with increasing agitation, but no increase of understanding. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What does it mean, Elizabeth? I did not go through all this, only to come to an old letter of my own at the last.’

The little woman stamped her foot with a kind of fury. ‘I think you are determined not to understand,’ she cried. ‘Look who that letter is addressed to—look at this other along with it; for God’s sake, Henry, don’t worry me any more! don’t ask what I think: look at them for yourself.’

He did look, but with so bewildered an expression that compassion overcame her. She took the papers over which he was puzzling, looking at his own writing vaguely, with a quick impatient movement.

‘You have been right, quite right in your conjectures,’ she said; ‘the poor girl that came here alone twenty years ago, and had her baby, and went wrong in her head, and died, was your poor young wife, Joyce Hayward, Henry. There is your letter to her—not the kind of letter I should have thought you would have written; and there is hers to you, a voice out of the grave. Don’t look at me in that pitiful way. I don’t expect you to read it here. Go away to your own room or into the woods, Henry, and read your wife’s letter. Go away! go away! and do this for yourself without me. I am not the person,’ cried Mrs. Hayward, thrusting them into his hands, and pushing him impatiently from her,— ‘I am not the person to read your wife’s letter. Go away! go away!’

‘My wife’s letter,’ he said, with a momentary look of awe and trouble. Then suddenly he put one arm round her, and, half sobbing, said, ‘Twenty years since! it has always been right, all the time, my darling, between you and me.’

‘Oh, Henry!—is that all you think of at such a moment?’

He patted her shoulder with his large and unsteady hand, and held her close. ‘If it is not all, it’s the first and foremost,’ he said; ‘you will never again, Elizabeth, never any more——’

‘Oh, go away! go away!’ she cried, stamping her foot upon the path. There were tears in her eyes, half love and softness, half impatience and fury. She pushed him away from her with all her strength, and turning her back upon him, walked quickly through the trees and across the park in the full sunshine. She was distracted with conflicting sentiments, unwilling to be melted, yet touched to the heart; determined that he should go back by himself into that distant past with which she had nothing to do, yet scarcely able to resist the habit of doing everything for him, of encountering even that for him. She hurried along until she had got within the shade of a belt of wood, and out of sight of the spot where she had left her husband. Here Mrs. Hayward suddenly sat down upon the grass, and hid her face in her hands. Sometimes it became necessary for her, even in the ordinary course of affairs, to escape for a moment now and then from the Colonel’s constant demands. But to-day it seemed to her that she must do this or die. The sudden summons, the long journey, the agitating news, the commission so suddenly put into her hands, the discovery she had made, all united had overwhelmed her at last. She cried heartily, as she did everything, with an abundant natural overthrow of feeling which relieved and exhausted her, and a sensation underneath all which she could not define whether it was happiness or pain.

This Joyce, who had been from the beginning the shadow upon her married life, in despite of whose possible claims she had married, and whom she had regarded all through with a mixture of pity and indignation and fear, roused in her, dead, almost as strong feelings as if she had been a living claimant to the name and place which were hers. The very fact that the poor girl’s story was so pitiful, and that nothing could take away the interest and compassion roused by the image of a young forsaken creature dying so miserably with no one near who loved her, was to Mrs. Hayward at this moment an additional aggravation, adding a pang to all the rest. And yet there was in it an unspeakable relief; and the fact that this, and not any revival of the romance of his youth, had been her husband’s first thought, was exquisite to her, yet with a certain acrid sweetness, not unmingled with pain and the contradictoriness of a highly sensitive, impatient, and intolerant soul, sharply conscious of every complication. For notwithstanding her strong personal share in the matter, it was clear to Elizabeth that he ought to have thought of the other, the poor girl in her youth and misery, first; and that the sight of her letter, the words written in her anguish, coming to him as it were from her grave, across the silence of twenty years, ought to have transported the man to whom these words were addressed out of all recollection of the present,—out of everything save that tragedy of which, however innocently, he was the cause. She could not but feel it sweet that it was herself and not the dead Joyce of whom in reality he had thought: yet, in a manner, she resented it, and was wounded by it as a thing against nature which ought not to have been. ‘That is all that a man’s love is worth,’ she said to herself. ‘He cost her her life, and it is me he thinks of, who am well and strong, and in no trouble.’ And yet it went to her heart that he should have so thought.

In this keen complication of feeling, Mrs. Hayward, for the time, could realise nothing else. It was not possible to think of the dead girl and herself but as rivals: and this, too, gave her a pang. How mean, how ungenerous, how miserable it was! Such a story in a book, much more in real life, would have moved her to warm tears; but in this, which touched herself so closely, she could feel no true pity. It was her rival; it was one who had come before her, whose shadow had lain upon her life and darkened it, who even now was bringing trouble into it—trouble of which it was impossible to fathom the full extent. How could there be tenderness where such sharp antagonism was? And yet, how poor, how small, how petty, how unworthy was the feeling!

In these contrarieties her mind was caught, and thrilled with sharp vexation, shame, scorn of herself, and sense of that profound vanity of human things which makes the present in its pettiness so much greater than the past, and dims and obliterates everything that is over. To think that such a tragedy had been, and that those who were most concerned thought of their poor share in it first, and not of her who was the victim! That contradiction of all that was most true and just, that infidelity which is in every human thing, the callousness and egotism which ran through the best, jarred her with a discord which was in herself as well as in all the rest. But when she had cried her heart out, Mrs. Hayward, as was natural, exhausted that first poignant sensation, and came to contemplate, apart from all that was past, the present condition of affairs, which was not more consolatory. Indeed, when, putting the tragedy of the poor Joyce who was dead out of her mind, she returned to the present, the figure of the living Joyce suddenly rose before her with a sharp distinctness that made her spring to her feet as a soldier springs to his weapon when suddenly confronted by an enemy. Mrs. Hayward had never seen Joyce, so that this figure was purely imaginary which rose before her, with a stinging touch, reminding her that here was something which was not past but present, a reality,—no affair of memory or sentiment, but a difficulty real and tangible, standing straight before her, not to be passed by or forgotten. She sprang up as if to arms, to meet the new antagonist who thus presented herself, and must be met, but not with arms in hand, nor as an antagonist at all. Joyce herself would scarcely have been so terrible to encounter as Joyce’s child thus coming between her husband and herself, taking possession of the foreground of their existence whether they would or not. What Mrs. Hayward would be called upon to do would be—not to retire before this new actor in her existence, not to withdraw and leave the field as she had always felt it possible she might have to do, but to receive, to live with,—good heavens! perhaps to love her! Yes! no doubt this was what the Colonel would want; he would require her to love this girl who was his child. He would take it for granted that she must do so; he would innocently lay all the burden upon her, and force her into a maternity which nature had not required of her. A mother! ah yes, she could have been a mother indeed had God willed it so; but to produce that undeveloped side of her, that capacity which she had been so often tempted to think Providence had wronged her by leaving in abeyance, for the benefit of this country girl, this Scotch peasant, with all her crude education, her conceit (no doubt) of superiority, her odious schoolmistress’s training!

Mrs. Hayward could not sit still and look calmly at what was before her. There was something intolerable in it, which stung her into energy, which made her feel the necessity of being up and doing, of making a stand against misfortune. However much she might resent and resist in her private soul, she would have to do this thing, and put on a semblance of doing it with, not against, her own will and liking. Talk of the contradictions of fate! they seemed to be all grouped together in this problem which she had to work out. If the child had been a boy, the Colonel would have been compelled more or less to take the charge upon himself. There would have been school or college, or the necessities of a profession, to occupy the newcomer; but that it should be a girl—a girl, a young woman, a creature entirely within the sphere of Colonel Hayward’s wife, whose business it would be not only to be a mother to her, but to receive her as a companion, to amend her manners, to watch over all her proceedings, to take the responsibility night and day!

Mrs. Hayward felt that she could have put up with a boy. He would not have been her business so much as his father’s, and he would not for ever and ever have recalled his mother, and put her in mind of all that had been, and of all she herself had already borne. For though she had accepted the position knowing all that was involved, and though it was, so to speak, her own fault that she had encountered these difficulties, still there could be no doubt that she had for years had much to bear; and now what a climax, what a crown to everything! A second Joyce, no doubt, with all the headstrong qualities which had made the first Joyce spoil her own life and the lives of others, with all the disadvantages of her peasant training, of her education even, which would be rather worse than ignorance. Mrs. Hayward conjured up before her the image of a pupil-teacher, a good girl striving for examinations, immaculate in spelling, thinking of everything as the subject of a lesson: looking up with awe to the inspector, with reverence to some little prig of a schoolmaster, a girl with neat collars and cuffs, knowing her own condition in life, and very respectful to her superiors: or else bumptious, and standing upon her dignity as an educated person, which Mrs. Hayward had heard was more the way of the Scotch. In either point of view, what a prospect, what a companion!

And the Colonel’s wife knew how that good man would conduct himself. He would remonstrate with her if the girl were gauche, or if she were disagreeable and presuming. He would say, ‘You must tell her’—‘you must make her do so-and-so.’ If his taste was shocked, if the girl turned out to be very dreadful, he himself, who ought to know so much better, would throw all the blame upon her. Or perhaps, which would be still more intolerable, his eyes would be blinded, and he would see nothing that was not beautiful and amiable in his child. With a sudden flush of irritation, Mrs. Hayward felt that this would be more unbearable still. Joyce had been the bugbear of his life in the past; what if Joyce were to be the model, the example of every good quality, the admiration and delight of his life to come: and she herself, the step-mother, the half-rival, half-tyrant, the one who would not appreciate the new heroine! No one was so ready as Elizabeth to perceive all her husband’s excellent qualities. He was good as an angel or a child—there was no soil in him. His kindness, his tenderness, his generous heart, his innocent life, were her pride and delight. And the perpetual appeal which he made to her, the helplessness with which he flung himself upon her for inspiration and counsel, made him dearer still. She herself laughed and sometimes frowned at the devout aspiration, ‘If only Elizabeth were here!’ for which all his friends smiled at the Colonel; but at the same time it warmed her heart. And yet there was no one in the world so feelingly alive to the irritations and vexations which were involved in this supreme helplessness and trust. There were moments when he worried her almost beyond endurance. She had to be perpetually on the watch. She had to subdue herself and forget herself, and make a thousand daily sacrifices to the man whom she ruled absolutely, and who was ready at her fiat almost to live or die. But of all intolerable things, that which was most intolerable was the suggestion that he might in this matter judge for himself without her aid,—that he might admit this strange girl into his heart, and place her on the pinnacle which had hitherto been sacred to Elizabeth alone.

She had seated herself on a grassy bank under the shade of the trees which skirted one side of the park of Bellendean. Instinctively she had chosen a spot where there was ‘a view.’ How many such spots are there to which preoccupied people, with something to think out, resort half unawares, and all-unconscious of the landscape spread before them! Edinburgh, gray in the distance, with her crags and towers, shone through the opening carefully cut in the trees, the angle of the castled rock standing forth boldly against the dimness of the smoke behind; and the air was so clear, and the atmosphere so still, that while Mrs. Hayward sat there the sound of the gun which regulates the time for all Edinburgh—the gun fired from the Castle at one o’clock—boomed through the distance with a sudden shock which made her start. She was not a fanciful woman, nor given to metaphors. But there was something in the peace of the landscape, the summer quiet, broken only by the hum of insects and rustle of the waving boughs, the distant town too far off to add a note to that soft breathing of nature, which made a centre to the picture and no more—when the air was suddenly rent by the harsh and fatal sound of the gun, making the spectator start—which was to her like an emblematic representation of what had happened to herself. To be sure, if she had but thought of it, that voice of war had been tamed into a service of domestic peace, a sound as innocent as chanticleer; but Mrs. Hayward was a stranger, and was unaware of this. As she rose up hurriedly, startled by the shock in the air, she saw her husband coming towards her across the sunshine. He was moving like a man in a dream, moving instinctively towards where she was, but otherwise unconscious where he was going, unaware of the little heights and hollows, stumbling over the stump of a tree that came in his way. The sight of his abstraction brought her back to herself. He came up to her, and held out the little packet in his hand.

‘Put them away,’ he said hoarsely; ‘lock them up in some sure place, Elizabeth. To think all that should have been going on, and I ignorant—oh, as ignorant as the babe unborn!’

‘How could you know when she never told you?’ Mrs. Hayward cried quickly, instinctively taking his part, even against himself. He put his large hand upon her small shoulder, and patted her with a deprecating, soothing touch, as if the wrong and the sorrow were not his but hers.

‘But she meant us to know—that letter, if I had ever got it! She was young and foolish, young and foolish. Put it away, my dear; don’t destroy it, but lock it away safe, and let us think of it no more.’

‘That is impossible, Henry. You must think of it, in justice to her—poor thing;’ this Mrs. Hayward said unwillingly, from a sense of what was right and fitting, and with a compunction in her heart,—‘and for the sake,’ she added firmly, after a moment, ‘of your child.’

‘The girl,’ he said vaguely. Then he came closer to her, and put his arm within hers. ‘You will see to all that, Elizabeth. You understand these sort of things better than I do. It would be very awkward for me, you know, a man.’ To describe the persuasive tone, the ingratiating gesture with which, in his simplicity, he put this burden upon her, would be impossible. Even she, well as she knew him, was struck with surprise—a surprise which was half happiness and half indignation.

‘Henry!’ she cried, resisting the appealing touch, ‘have you no heart for your own child?’

He leant upon her for a moment, drawing as it seemed her whole little person, and all her energy and strength, into himself. ‘I’m all upset, Elizabeth. I don’t know what I have, whether heart or anything else—except you, my dear, except you. Everything will go right as long as I have you.’

CHAPTER X

She said nothing, but she longed also for the quiet and shelter of that room. She recognised, as indeed she might have done from the first, that whatever had to be done, it was she that must do it. And Mrs. Hayward was entirely dépaysée, and did not know how to manage this business. Janet Matheson was a new species to a woman who had done a great deal of parish work, and was not unacquainted with the ordinary ways of managing ‘the poor.’ She did not understand how to deal with that proud old woman, to whom she could not offer any recompense, whom she would scarcely dare even to thank for her ‘kindness.’ Janet had repudiated that injurious word, and Mrs. Hayward felt that it would be easier to offer money to Mrs. Bellendean than to this extraordinary cottager. To be sure, that was nothing—a trifle not worth consideration in face of the other question, of Joyce herself, who would have to be adopted, removed from the cottage, taken home as Miss Hayward, a new, and perhaps soon the most important, member of the family. Elizabeth’s heart beat as it had never done before, scarcely even when she married Captain Hayward, accepting all the risks, taking him and his incoherent story at a terrible venture. That was an undertaking grave enough, but this was more terrible still. She felt, too, that she would be thankful to get into the quiet of her own room to think it over, to decide what she should best do.

This, however, was more easily said than done. The anxious pair were met in the hall by Mrs. Bellendean with looks as anxious as their own. She was breathless with interest, expectation, and excitement: and came up to them in a fever of eagerness, which, to Mrs. Hayward at least, seemed quite unnecessary, holding out a hand to each. ‘Well?’ she cried, as if their secrets were hers, and her interest as legitimate as their own. In short, the pair, who were very grave and preoccupied, having exhausted the first passion of the discovery, had much less appearance of excitement and expectation than this lady, who had nothing whatever to do with it. A shade of disappointment crossed her face when she saw their grave looks; but Mrs. Bellendean’s perceptions were lively, and she perceived at the same moment tokens of agitation in the old colonel’s face which reassured her. It would have been too much if, after all her highly-raised expectations, nothing had happened at all.

‘Come into my room,’ she said quickly; ‘we have half an hour before luncheon, and there we shall be quite undisturbed.’ She led the way with a rapidity that made it impossible even to protest, and opening the door, swept them in before her, and drew an easy-chair forward for Mrs. Hayward. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me! You have found out something, I can see.’

They looked at each other,—Mrs. Hayward with the liveliest inclination to tell the lady, whom she scarcely knew, that their affairs were their own. It would have been a little relief to her feelings could she have done so; but this was just the moment, as she knew very well, in which the Colonel was sure to come to the front.

‘Yes,’ he said, with a sigh, in which there was distinct relief. (He found it so easy to relieve himself in that way!) ‘We have found out—all we wanted, more than we expected. Apart from all other circumstances, this is a memorable visit to me, Mrs. Bellendean. We have found—or rather Elizabeth has found—— She is always my resource in everything——’

‘What?’ cried Mrs. Bellendean, clasping her hands. ‘Please excuse me—I am so anxious. Something about Joyce?’

‘You must understand that I had no notion of it, no idea of it all the time. I was as ignorant—— There may have been things in which I was to blame—though never with any meaning: but of this I had no idea—none: she never gave me the slightest hint—never the least,’ said the Colonel earnestly. ‘How could I imagine for a moment—when she never said a word?’

Mrs. Bellendean looked at Mrs. Hayward with an appeal for help, but she gave a smile and glance of sympathy to the Colonel, who seemed to want them most. His wife sat very straight, with her shoulders square, and her feet just visible beneath her gown—very firm little feet, set down steadily, one of them beating a faint tattoo of impatience on the carpet. She was all resistance, intending, it was apparent, to reveal as little as possible; but the Colonel, though his style was involved, was most willing to explain.

‘It is,’ he said, ‘my dear lady, I assure you, as much a wonder and revelation to me as to any one. I never thought of such a possibility—never. Elizabeth knows that nothing was further from my mind.’

‘Henry,’ said his wife suddenly, ‘you have been very much agitated this morning. All these old stories coming up again have given you a shake. Go up, my dear, to your room, and I will tell Mrs. Bellendean all that she cares to hear.’

‘Eh? do you think so, Elizabeth? I have got a shake. It agitates a man very much to be carried back twenty years. Perhaps you are right: you can explain everything—much better than I can—much better always; and if Mrs. Bellendean thinks I am to blame, she need not be embarrassed about it, as she might be before me. I think you are right, as you always are. And perhaps she will give you some good advice, my love, as to what we ought to do.’

‘I am sure I shall not think you to blame, Colonel Hayward,’ cried Mrs. Bellendean, with that impulse of general amiability which completed the exasperation with which Elizabeth sat looking on.

‘Yes, no doubt, she will give me good advice,’ she said, with irrepressible irritation; ‘oh, no doubt, no doubt!—most people do. Henry, take mine for the moment, and go upstairs and rest a little. Remember you have to meet all the gentlemen at luncheon: and after that there will be a great deal to do.’

‘I think I will, my dear,’ Colonel Hayward said: but he paused again at the door with renewed apologies and doubts—‘if Mrs. Bellendean will not think it rude, and even cowardly, of me, Elizabeth, to leave all the explanations to you.’

Finally, when Mrs. Bellendean had assured him that she would not do so, he withdrew slowly, not half sure that, after all, he ought not to return and take the task of the explanation into his own hands. There was not a word said between the ladies until the sound of his steps, a little hesitating at first, as if he had half a mind to come back, had grown firmer, and at last died away. Then Mrs. Hayward for the first time looked at the mistress of the house, who, half amused, half annoyed, and full of anxiety and expectation, had been looking at her, as keenly as politeness permitted, from every point of view.

‘My husband has been very much agitated—you will not wonder when I tell you all; and he is never very good at telling his own story. A man who can do—what he can do—may be excused if he is a little deficient in words.’

She spoke quickly, almost sharply, with a little air of defiance, yet with moisture in her eyes.

‘Surely,’ said Mrs. Bellendean, ‘we know what Colonel Hayward is; but pardon me, it was a much less matter—it was about Joyce I wanted to know.’

‘The one story cannot be told without the other. My husband,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with a long breath, ‘had been married before—before he married me. He had married very hurriedly a young lady who came out to some distant relations in India. They were at a small station out of the way. She was not happy, and he married her in a great hurry. Afterwards, when she was in England by herself, having come home for her health, some wicked person put it into the poor thing’s head that her marriage was not a good one. She was fool enough to believe it, though she knew Henry. Forgive me if I speak a little hastily. She ought to have known better, knowing him; but some people never know you, though you live by their side a hundred years.’

She stopped to exhale another long breath of excitement and agitation. It was cruel to impute blame to the poor dead girl, and she felt this, but could not refrain.

‘And suddenly, after one letter full of complaint and reproach, she wrote no more. He was in active service, and could not get home. It was not so easy then to come home on leave. He wrote again and again, and when he got no answer, employed people to find her out. I can’t tell you all the things that were done—everything, so far as he knew how to do it. I didn’t know him then. I daresay he wasted a great deal of money without getting hold of the right people. He never heard anything more of her, never a word, till the other day.’

‘Then that poor young creature was—— And Joyce—Joyce!—who is Joyce? Mrs. Hayward, do you mean really that Joyce——’

‘Joyce—was his first wife: and this girl—who has the same name,—I have not seen her, I don’t know her, I can express no feeling about her,—this young lady is my husband’s daughter, Mrs. Bellendean.’

‘Colonel Hayward’s daughter!’ Mrs. Bellendean sprang to her feet in her surprise and excitement. She threw up her hands in wonder and delight and sympathy, her eyes glittered and shone, a flush of feeling came over her. Any spectator who had seen the two ladies at this moment would have concluded naturally that it was Mrs. Bellendean who was the person chiefly concerned, while the little woman seated opposite to her was a somewhat cynical looker-on, to whom it was apparent that the warmth of feeling thus displayed was not quite genuine. The Colonel’s wife was moved by no enthusiasm. She sat rigid, motionless, except for that one foot, which continued to beat upon the carpet a little impatient measure of its own.

‘Oh,’ cried Mrs. Bellendean, ‘I always knew it! One may deceive one’s self about many people, but there was no possibility with Joyce. She was—she is—I never saw any one like her—quite, quite unprecedented in such a place as this: like nobody about her—a girl whom any one might be proud of—a girl who—oh yes, yes! you are right in calling her a young lady. She could be nothing less. I always knew it was so.’

‘She is my husband’s daughter,’ said Mrs. Hayward, without moving a muscle. She remained unaffected by her companion’s enthusiasm. She recognised it as part of the burden laid upon her that she should have to receive the outflowings of a rapture in which she had no share.

‘And what did Joyce say?’ asked the lady of Bellendean. ‘And poor old Janet! oh, it will not be good news to her. But what did Joyce say? I should like to have been there; and why, why did you not bring her up to the house with you? But I see,—oh yes, it was better, it was kinder to leave her a little with the old people. The poor old people, God help them! Oh, Mrs. Hayward, there is no unmixed good in this world. It will kill old Janet and her old husband. There’s no unmixed good.’

‘No,’ said Mrs. Hayward quietly. She sat like a little figure of stone, nothing moving in her, not a finger, not an eyelash,—nothing but the foot, still beating now and then a sort of broken measure upon the floor.

Mrs. Bellendean sat down again when she had exhausted her first excitement. There is nothing that chills one’s warmest feelings like the presence of a spectator who does not share one’s satisfaction. Mrs. Hayward would have been that proverbial wet blanket, if there had not been in the very stiffness of her spectator-ship signs of another and still more potent excitement of her own. Strong self-repression at the end comes to affect us more than any demonstration. Mrs. Bellendean was very quick, and perhaps felt it sooner than a less vivid intelligence might have done. She sat down, almost apologetically, and looked at her guest.