Joyce

‘I am afraid,’ she said, faltering, ‘you are not so glad as I am. I hope it is not anything in Joyce. I hope—she has not displeased you. If she has, I am sure, oh, I am very sure she did not mean it. It must have been—some mistake.’

‘Mrs. Bellendean,’ cried Elizabeth suddenly, ‘I am sure you are very kind. You would not have invited me here as you have done, without knowing anything of me, if you had not been kind. But perhaps you don’t quite put yourself in my place. I did not mean to say anything on that subject, but my heart is full, and I can’t help it. I married Colonel Hayward—he was only Captain Hayward then—knowing everything, and that it was possible, though not likely, that this wife of his might still be alive. It was a great venture to make. I have kept myself in the background always, not knowing—whether I had any real right to call myself Mrs. Hayward. Joyce has not been a name of good omen to me.’

‘Dear Mrs. Hayward!’ cried the impulsive woman before her, leaning over the table, holding out both her hands.

‘No, don’t praise me. I believe I ought to have been blamed instead; but, anyhow, I took the risk. And I have never repented it, though I did not know all that would be involved. And now, when we are growing old, and calm should succeed to all the storms, here is her daughter—with her name—not a child whom I could influence, who might get to be fond of me, but a woman, grown up, educated in her way, clever:—all that makes it so much the worse. No! don’t be sorry for me; I am a wicked woman, I ought not to feel so. Here I find her again, not a recollection, not an idea, but a grown-up girl, the same age as her mother. Joyce over again, always Joyce!’

Mrs. Bellendean did not know how to reply. She sat and gazed at the woman whom she wanted to console, who touched her, revolted her, horrified her all in one, and yet whose real emotion and pain she felt to the bottom of her sympathetic heart. Too much sympathy is perhaps as bad as too little. She was all excitement and delight for Joyce, and yet this other woman’s trouble was too genuine not to move her. It was very natural too, and yet dreadful,—a pain to think of. ‘I am sure,’ she said, faltering, ‘that when you know her better—when you begin to see what she is in herself: there is no one who does not like Joyce.’

Mrs. Hayward had got rid, in this interval, of a handful, so to speak, of hot sudden tears. She was ashamed of them, angry with herself for being thus overcome, and therefore could not be said to weep, or make any other affecting demonstration, but simply hurried off, threw from her angrily, these signs of a pang which she despised, which hurt her pride and her sense of what was seemly as much as it wrung her heart. She shook her head with a sudden angry laugh in the midst of her emotion. ‘Don’t you see! that is the worst of all,’ she cried.

But at this moment, in the midst of this climax of pain, exasperation, self-disapproval, there arose in soft billows of sound, rising one after the other into all the corners of the great house, the sound of the gong. It reached all the members of the household, along the long corridors and round the gallery, roused Colonel Hayward from the softened and satisfied pause of feeling which his withdrawal upstairs had brought him, and called Mrs. Bellendean back from the wonderful problem of mingled sentiments in which she was embroiling herself, taking both sides at once, into the more natural feelings of the mistress of the house, whose presence is indispensable elsewhere. But she could not break off all at once this interview, which was so very different from the ordinary talks between strangers. She hesitated even to rise up, conscious of the ludicrous anti-climax of this call to food addressed to people whose hearts were full of the most painful complications of life. At the same time, the sound of her guests trooping downstairs, and coming in from the grounds, with a murmur of voices, and footsteps in the hall, became every moment more and more clamant. She rose at last, and put her hand on Mrs. Hayward’s shoulder. ‘The gentlemen speak,’ she said, ‘of things that are solved walking. It will be so with you, dear Mrs. Hayward. It will clear up as you go on. Everything will become easier in the doing. Come now to luncheon.’

‘I—to luncheon!—it would choke me,’ cried Elizabeth, feeling in her impatience, and the universal contrariety of everything, as if this had been the last aggravation of all.

‘No,’ said Mrs. Bellendean, putting her arm through that of her guest; ‘it will do you good, on the contrary: and the Colonel will eat nothing if you are not there. You shall come in your bonnet as you are; and Colonel Hayward will make a good luncheon.’

‘I believe he is capable of it,’ Mrs. Hayward cried.

CHAPTER XI

The party was diminished, but still it was a large party. The dining-room at Bellendean was a long room lighted by a line of windows at one side in deep recesses, for the house was of antique depth and strength. The walls were hung with family portraits, a succession of large and imposing individuals, whose presence in uniform or in robes of law, contemplating seriously the doings of their successors, added dignity to the house, but did not do much to brighten or beautify the interior, save in the case of a few smaller portraits, which were from the delightful hand of Raeburn, and made a sunshine in a shady place. The long table, with its daylight whiteness and brightness, concentrated the light, however, and made the ornaments of the walls of less importance; and the cheerful crowd was too much occupied with its own affairs to notice the nervousness of the newcomer, the Colonel’s wife, who had only made a brief appearance at breakfast to some of them, and attracted as little warmth of interest as a woman of her age generally does. She sat near Mr. Bellendean at the foot of the table, but as he was one of the men to whom it is necessary to a woman to be young and pretty, Mrs. Hayward had full opportunity to compose and calm herself with little interference from her host. She was separated almost by the length of the table from her husband, and consequently was safe from his anxious observation; and in the bustle of the mid-day meal, and the murmur of talk around her, Mrs. Hayward found a sort of retirement for herself, and composed her mind. Her self-arguments ended in the ordinary fatalism with which people accept the inevitable. ‘If it must be, it must be,’ she said to herself. Perhaps it might not turn out so badly as she feared; that vision of the pupil-teacher, the perfectly well-behaved, well-instructed girl, who would make her life a burden, and destroy all the privacy and all the enjoyment of her home, was a terrible image: but the sight of so many cheerful faces gradually drove it away.

‘Who was I, Uncle Bellendean? I was a Saxon court lady. I was in attendance upon Queen Margaret. But she was not queen then; she was only princess, and an exile, don’t you know? We had all been nearly drowned, driven up from the Firth by the wind in the east.’

‘And where were you exiled from? and what were you doing in the Firth?’ said Mr. Bellendean, who was not perhaps thinking much of what he said.

‘Well I am sure,’ said Greta, with her soft Scotch intonation, ‘I don’t very well know; but Joyce does. She will tell you all about it if you ask her.’

‘This Joyce is a very alarming person. I hear her name wherever I turn. She seems the universal authority. I thought she must be an old governess; but I hear she’s a very pretty girl,’ said young Essex, who was at Greta’s side.

‘Far the prettiest girl in the parish, or for miles round.’

‘Speak for yourself, Greta,’ said a good-natured, blunt-featured young woman beside her, with a laugh. ‘I have always set up myself as a professional beauty, and I don’t give in to Joyce—except in so far, of course, as concerns Shakespeare and the musical glasses, where she is beyond all rivalry.’

Sir Harry, who was as little open to the pleasantry of Mid-Lothian as the Scotch in general are supposed to be to English wit, stared a little at the young person who assumed this position. He thought it possible she might be ‘chaffing,’ but was by no means sure. And he had no doubt that she was plain. He was too polite, however, to show his perplexity. ‘Does she receive any male pupils?’ he asked. ‘My tastes are quite undeveloped: even Shakespeare I don’t know so well as I ought. One has to get up a play or two now and then for an exam.: and there’s “Hamlet,” etc., at the Lyceum of course.’

‘Joyce would never forgive you that “Hamlet,” etc.,’ said the plain young lady. ‘You need never hope after that to be pupil of hers.’

‘Why, what should I say? Irving has done a lot of them. Shylock and—and Romeo, don’t you know? You don’t expect me to have all the names ready. A middle-aged fellow had no business to try Romeo. Come, I know as much as that.’

‘They are all real people to Joyce,’ said Greta. ‘She is not like us, who only take up a book now and then. She lives among books: she thinks as much of Shakespeare as of Scotland. He is not only a poet, he is a—he is a—well, a kind of world,’ she said, blushing a little. ‘I don’t know what other word to use.’

‘You could not have used a better word,’ said Norman Bellendean. ‘I am not a very great reader, but I’ve found that up at a hill-station where one had neither books nor society. I think that was very well said.’

Norman looked with a friendly admiration at his little cousin, and she, with a half glance and blush of reply, looked at Mrs. Bellendean at the head of the table, who, on her side, looked at them both. There was a great deal more in this mutual communication than met the eye.

‘Decidedly,’ said Sir Harry; ‘no one is good enough for this society unless he has undergone a preliminary training at the hands of Miss Joyce.’

‘Don’t you think,’ said a new voice hurriedly, with a ring of impatience in it, ‘that to bandy about a young lady’s name like this is not—not—quite good taste? Probably she would dislike being talked about—and certainly her friends——’

The young people turned in consternation to the quarter from which this utterance came. The Colonel’s wife had not hitherto attracted much attention. It had been settled that he was ‘an old darling:’ but Mrs. Hayward had not awakened the interest of these judges. They had decided that she was not good enough for him—that she had been the governess perhaps, or somebody who had nursed him through illness, or otherwise been kind to him—and that it was by some of these unauthorised methods that she had become Colonel Hayward’s wife. Greta blushed crimson at this rebuke.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘no one meant anything that was not kind. I would not allow a word to be said. I—am very fond of her. She is my dear friend.’

‘Perhaps it is not very good taste to discuss any one,’ said the plain young lady. ‘But Mrs. Hayward probably does not know who she is.’

‘I know that she is your inferior,’ said Mrs. Hayward quickly; ‘but that should make you more particular, not less, to keep her name from being bandied about.’

‘What is that my wife is saying?’ said Colonel Hayward from the other end of the table. ‘I can hear her voice. What are you saying, Elizabeth? She must be taking somebody’s part.’

‘It is nothing, Henry, nothing; I am taking nobody’s part,’ said Mrs. Hayward, becoming the colour of a peony. He had leaned forward to see her, for she sat on the same side of the table; and she leaned forward to reply to him, meeting the looks of half the table, amused at this conjugal demand and response. And then she shrank back, obliterating herself as well as she could, half angry, half ashamed, with a look of high temper and nervous annoyance which the young people set down to her disadvantage, whispering between themselves, ‘Poor Colonel Hayward!’ and what a pity it was he had not a nicer wife!

After this another wave of conversation passed over the company. A new subject, or rather half a dozen new subjects, drew the attention and interest of the young people away from this, of which the new and crowning interest was still unknown; and it was not till some time after, in the course of a lively debate upon the universally attractive theme of private theatricals, that the name which had caused that little controversy and stir of discussion was mentioned again.

Naturally, as it had been already subject to comment, there was at that moment a sudden pause all round the table, and the word came forth with all the more effect, softly spoken with a pause before and after— ‘Joyce.’

‘Upon my word,’ said Mr. Bellendean impatiently, ‘I agree with Mrs. Hayward. The girl is not here, and she has done nothing to expose herself to perpetual comment. We hear a great deal too much of Joyce.’

And now it was that there occurred the extraordinary incident, remembered for years after, not only in Bellendean but elsewhere, which many people even unconnected with that part of the country must have heard of. There rose up suddenly by the side of Mrs. Bellendean, at the other end of the table, a tall figure, which stood swaying forward a little, hands resting on the table, looking down upon the astonished faces on either side. At sight of it Mrs. Hayward pushed back her chair impatiently, and bent her flushed face over her plate; while every one else looked up in expectation, some amused, all astonished, awaiting some little exhibition on the part of the guileless old soldier. Norman Bellendean turned his face towards his old Colonel with a smile, but yet a little regret. The vieux moustache, out of pure goodness of heart and simplicity of mind, was sometimes a little absurd. Probably he was going once again to propose his young friend’s health, to give testimony in his favour as a capital fellow. Norman held himself ready to spring up and cover the veteran’s retreat, or to take upon himself the inevitable laugh. But he was no more prepared than the rest for what was coming. Colonel Hayward stood for a moment, his outline clear against the window behind him, his face indistinct against that light. He looked down the table, addressing himself to the host at the end, who half rose to listen, with a face of severe politeness, concealing much annoyance and despite. ‘The old fool,’ Mr. Bellendean was saying to himself.

‘I want to say,’ said the Colonel, swaying forward, as if he rested on those two hands with which he leant on the table, rather than on his feet, ‘that a very great event has happened to me here. I came as a stranger, with no thought but to pass a few days, little thinking that I was to find what would affect all my future life. I owe it to the kindness of your house, Mr. Bellendean, and all I see about me, to tell you what has happened. Her name is on all your lips,’ he said, looking round him with the natural eloquence of an emotion which, now that the spectators were used to this strange occurrence, could be seen in the quiver of his lips and the moisture in his eyes. ‘It is a name that has long been full of sweetness but also of pain to me. Now I hope it will be sweetness only. Joyce—my kind friends, that have been so good to her when I knew nothing—nothing! How can I thank you and this kind lady—this dear lady here! Joyce—belongs to me. Joyce—is Joyce Hayward. She is my daughter. She is my—my only child.’

Close upon this word sounded one subdued but most audible sob from the other end of the table. It was from Mrs. Hayward, who could contain herself no longer. That, at least, might have been spared her—that the girl was his only child. She pushed back her chair and rose up, making a hurried movement towards the door; but fortunately Mrs. Bellendean had divined and frustrated her, and in the universal stir of chairs and hum of wondering voices, Mrs. Hayward’s action passed unnoticed, or almost unnoticed. And she escaped while the others all gathered round the Colonel, all speaking together, congratulating, wondering. These were moments when he was very able to act for himself, and did not think at all what Elizabeth would say.

CHAPTER XII

The girl retreated, almost overawed by the passion in the old woman’s eyes; and then there was silence in the cottage, broken only by the sound of Janet’s movements, as she cleared away everything, and moved about with her quick short step from one place to another. Joyce sat down beside the writing-table, which was her own especial domain, and the quietness of impassioned suspense fell upon the little house. The scent of the mignonette still came in through the window from the little garden behind; but the door was shut, that no cheerful interruption, no passing neighbour with friendly salutations, pausing for a minute’s gossip, might disturb the breathless silence. They both expected—but knew not what: whether some fairy chariot to carry Joyce away, some long-lost relatives hurrying to take her to their arms, or some one merely coming to reveal to them who she was,—to tell her that she belonged to some great house, and was the child of some injured princess. Strangely enough, neither of them suspected the real state of affairs. Janet divined that Mrs. Hayward had something to do with it, but Joyce had not even seen Mrs. Hayward; and the Colonel was to her an old friend who had known and probably loved her mother—but no more.

Thus they waited, not saying a word, devoured by a silent excitement, listening for some one coming, imagining steps that stopped at the door, and carriage-wheels that never came any nearer, but not communicating to each other what they thought. When Janet’s clearing away was over, she still found things to do to keep her in movement. On ordinary occasions, when the work was done, she would sit down in the big chair by the window with the door open (it was natural that the door should be open at all seasons), and take up the big blue-worsted stocking which she was always knitting for Peter. And if Joyce was busy, Janet would nod to her friends as they passed, and point with her thumb over her shoulder to show the need of quiet, which did not hinder a little subdued talk, all the more pleasant for being thus kept in check. ‘She’s aye busy,’ the passers-by would say, with looks of admiring wonder. ‘Oh ay, she’s aye busy; there was never the like of her for learning. She’s just never done,’ the proud old woman would say, with a pretence at impatience. How proud she had been of all her nursling’s wonderful ways! But now Janet could not sit down. She flung her stocking into a corner out of her way. She could not bear to see or speak to any one: the vicinity of other people was of itself an offence to her. If only she could quench with the sound of her steps those of the messenger of fate who was coming; if only she could keep him out for ever, and defend the treasure in her house behind that closed door!

The same suppressed fever of suspense was in Joyce’s mind, but in a different sense. With her all was impatience and longing. When would they come? though she knew not whom or what she looked for. When would this silence of fate be broken? The loud ticking of the clock filled the little house with a sound quite out of proportion to its importance, beating out the little lives of men with a methodical slow regularity, every minute taking so long; and the quick short steps of her old guardian never coming to an end, still bustling about when Joyce knew there was no longer anything to do, provoked her almost beyond bearing. So long as this went on, how could she hear them coming to the door?

They both started violently when at last there fell a sharp stroke, as of the end of a whip, on the closed door. It came as suddenly, and, to their exaggerated fancy, as solemnly, as the very stroke of fate: but it was only a footman from Bellendean, on horseback, with a note, which he almost flung at Janet as she opened the door, stopping Joyce, who sprang forward to do it. ‘Na, you’ll never open to a flunkey,’ cried the old woman, with a sort of desperation in her tone, pushing back the girl, whose cheeks she could see were flaming and her eyes blazing. Janet would not give up the note till she had hunted for her spectacles and put them on, and turned it over in her hand. ‘Oh ay, it’s to you after a’,’ she said; ‘I might have kent that,—and no a very ceevil direction. “Miss Joyce,” nothing but Miss Joyce: and its nae name when you come to think on’t—no’ like Marg’et or Mary. It’s as if it was your last name.’

‘Granny,’ said Joyce, in great excitement, ‘we are to go to the House immediately, to see Mrs. Bellendean.’

‘We—are to gang? Gang then,’ said Janet; ‘naebody keeps ye. So far as I can judge, what with one call and another, you’re there ‘maist every day.’

‘But never, never on such a day as this! And you are to come too. Granny, I’ll get you your shawl and your bonnet.’

‘Bide a moment. What for are ye in such a hurry? I’m no at Mrs. Bellendean’s beck and call, to go and come as she pleases. You can go yoursel’, as you’ve done many a time before.’

‘Granny,’ cried Joyce, putting her arm, though the old woman resisted, round Janet’s shoulders, ‘you’ll not refuse me? Think what it may be,—to hear about my mother—and who I am—and whom I belong to.’

‘Ay,’ said Janet bitterly; ‘to hear when you’re to drive away in your grand carridge, and leave the house that’s aye been your shelter desolate; to fix the moment when them that have been father and mother to ye are to be but twa puir servant-bodies, and belang to ye nae mair!’

‘Granny!’ cried Joyce, in consternation, drawing Janet’s face towards her, stooping over the little resisting figure.

‘Dinna put your airms about me. Do you ken what I’ll be for you the morn?—your auld nurse—a puir auld body that will be nothing to you. Oh, and that’s maybe just what should be for a leddy like you. You were aye a leddy from the beginning, and I might have kent if my een hadna been blinded. I aye said to Peter, “Haud a loose grip,” but, eh! I never took it to mysel’.’

‘Granny,’ cried Joyce, ‘do you think if the Queen herself were my mother,—if I were the Princess Royal, and everything at my beck and call,—do you think I could ever forsake you?’

‘Oh, how do I ken?’ cried Janet, still resisting the soft compulsion which was in Joyce’s arms; ‘and how can I tell what ye will be let do? You will no’ be your ain mistress as ye have been here. Ye will have to conform to other folks’ ways. Ye will have to do what’s becoming to your rank and your place in the world. If ye think that an auld wife in Bellendean village and an auld ploughman on the laird’s farm will be let come near ye——’

‘Granny, granny!’ cried Joyce, as Janet’s voice, overcome by her own argument, sank into an inarticulate murmur broken by sobs,—‘granny, granny! what have I done to make you think I have no heart?—and to give me up, and refuse to stand by me even before there’s a thing proved.’

‘Me!—refuse to stand by ye?’

‘That is just what you are doing—or at least it is what you are saying you will do; but as you never did an unkind thing in your life——’

‘Oh, many a one, many a one,’ cried the old woman. ‘I’ve just an unregenerate heart—but no’ to my ain.’

‘As you never did an unkind thing in your life,’ cried Joyce, out of breath, for she had hurried in the meantime to the aumry—the great oak cupboard which filled one side of the room—and made a rapid raid therein. ‘I have brought you your bonnet and your shawl.’

She proceeded to fold the big Paisley shawl as Janet wore it, with a large point descending to the hem of the old woman’s gown, and to put it round her shoulders. And then the large black satin bonnet, like the hood of a small carriage, was tied over Janet’s cap. It is true she wore only the cotton gown, her everyday garment, but the heavy folds of the shawl almost covered it, and Janet was thus equipped for any grandeur that might happen, and very well dressed in her own acceptation of the word. When these solemn garments were produced she struggled no more.

But though the ice was partially broken, there was very little said between them as they went up the avenue. Joyce’s heart went bounding before her, forestalling the disclosure, making a hundred mad suggestions. She forgot all the circumstances,—where she was going, and even the unwilling companion by her side, who plodded along, scarcely able to keep up with her, her face altogether invisible within the shadow of the big bonnet, which stooped forward like the head of some curious uncouth flower. Poor old Janet! the girl’s head was full of a romance more thrilling than any romance she had ever read; but Janet’s was tragedy, far deeper, sounding every depth of despair, rising to every height of self-abnegation. And Peter! poor old Peter, who had no suspicion of anything, whom she had always adjured to keep a loose grip, and to whom ‘the bit lassie’ was as the light of his eyes. Not only her own desolation, but his also, Janet would have to bear. She had no heart to speak, but plodded along, scarcely even seeing Joyce by her side, ruminating heavily, turning over everything in her mind, with her eyes fixed upon the ground under the shadow of the black bonnet. ‘Oh, haud a loose grip!’ she had said it to Peter, but she had not laid her own advice to heart.

There were two or three servants in the hall when Joyce went up the steps, leading, against her will, the old woman with her, who would fain have stolen round to the servants’ entrance as ‘mair becoming.’ And the butler and the footman looked very important, and were strangely respectful, having heard Colonel Hayward’s oration, or such echo of it as had been wafted to the servants’ hall. ‘This way, this way, Miss Joyce,’ the butler said, with a little emphasis, though he had known her all his life, and seldom used such extreme civility of address. ‘This way, Janet.’ They were taken across the hall, where Janet, roused and wondering, saw visions of other people glancing eagerly at Joyce, and at her own little figure, stiff as if under mail in the panoply of that great shawl—to Mrs. Bellendean’s room. There a little party of agitated people were gathered together. Mrs. Hayward seated very square, with her feet firm on the carpet: Mrs. Bellendean leaning over her writing-table, with a very nervous look: the Colonel standing against the big window, which exaggerated his outline, but made his features undiscernible. Janet made them a sort of curtsey as she went in, but held her head high, rather defiant than humble. For why should she be humble, she who had all the right on her side, and who owed nobody anything? It was they who should be humble to her if they were going to take away her child. But she could not but say the gentleman was very civil. He put out a chair for her. As she said afterwards, not the little cane one that Mr. Brown, the butler, thought good enough, but a muckle soft easy-chair, a’ springs and cushions, like the one his wife was sitting in. He didna seem to think that was ower good for the like of her. Joyce did not sit down at all. She stood with her hand upon Mrs. Bellendean’s table, looking into the agitated face of the lady to whom she had always looked up as her best friend.

‘You have got something to tell me?’ said Joyce, her voice trembling a little. ‘About my mother—about my—people?’

‘Yes, Joyce.’

The girl said nothing more. She did not so much as look at Mrs. Hayward, who sat nervously still, not making a movement. Joyce supported herself upon the back of the writing-table, which had a range of little drawers and pigeon-holes. She stood up, straight and tall, the flexible lines of her slim figure swaying a little, her hands clasped upon the upper ledge. Her hands were not, perhaps, very white in comparison with the hands of the young ladies who did nothing; but, coming out of her dark dress, which had no ornament of any kind, these hands clasped together looked like ivory or mother-of-pearl, and seemed to give out light. And then there was an interval of tremulous silence. Old Janet, watching them all with the keenest scrutiny, said to herself, ‘Will nobody speak?’

‘Joyce,’ Mrs. Bellendean said at last, with a trembling voice, ‘it will be a great, great change for you. You are a wise, good girl; you will not let it alter you to those who—deserve all your gratitude. My dear, it is a wonderful thing to think of. I can but think the hand of Heaven is in it.’ Here the poor lady, who had been speaking in slow and laboured tones, struggling against her emotion, became almost inaudible, and stopped, while old Janet, wringing her hands, cried out without knowing she did so, ‘Oh, will naebody put us out o’ our agony? Oh, will naebody tell us the truth?’

The Colonel made a step forward, then went back again. His child, his dead wife’s child, filled him with awe. The thought of going up to her, taking her into his arms, which would have been the natural thing which he had meant to do, appalled him as he stood and looked at her, a young lady whom he did not know. What would she say or think? There had been nothing to lead up to it, as there was when he had met her in the morning, and when his heart had gone forth to her. Now anxiety and a sort of alarm mingled with his emotion. What would she think? his daughter—and yet a young lady whom he did not know? ‘Elizabeth?’ he said tremulously, but he could say no more.

‘Young lady,’ said another voice behind, with a touch of impatience in it,— ‘Joyce: it appears I must tell, though I have never seen you before.’

Joyce had all but turned her back upon this lady, who, she thought, could have nothing to do with her. She turned round with a little start, and fixed her eyes upon the new speaker. It was curious that a stranger should tell her—one who had nothing to do with it. The little woman rose up, not a distinguished figure, looking commonplace to the girl’s excited eyes, who felt almost impatient, annoyed by this interference. ‘Joyce,’ Mrs. Hayward repeated again, ‘we don’t even know each other, but we shall have a great deal to do with each other, and I hope—I hope we shall get on. Your poor mother—was Colonel Hayward’s first wife before he married me. He is not to blame, for he never knew. Joyce: your name is Joyce Hayward. You are my husband’s daughter. Your father stands there. I don’t know why he doesn’t come forward. He is the best man that ever was born. You will love him when you know him—— I don’t know why he doesn’t come forward,’ cried his wife, in great agitation. She made herself a sudden stop, caught Joyce by the arm, and raising herself on tiptoe gave the girl a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘I am your step-mother, and I hope—I hope that we will get on.’

Joyce stood like a figure turned to stone. She felt the world whirling round her as if she were coming down, down some wonderful fall, too giddy and sickening to estimate. The colour and the eagerness went out of her face. She took no notice of Mrs. Hayward, whose interference at this strange moment she did not seem to understand, although she understood clearly all that she said. Her eyes were fixed, staring at the man there against the window, who was her father. Her father! Her heart had been very soft to him this morning, when she believed he was her mother’s friend: but her father!—this was not how she had figured her father. He stood against the light, his outline all wavering and trembling, making a hesitating step towards her, then stopping again. Colonel Hayward was more agitated than words could say. Oh, if he had but taken her in his arms in the morning when his heart was full! He came forward slowly, faltering, not knowing what to say. When he had come close to her, he put out his hands. ‘Joyce!’ he said, ‘you are your mother’s living image: I saw it from the first; have you—have you nothing—to say to me?’

‘Sir,’ said Joyce, making no advance, ‘my mother—must have had much to complain of—from you.’

His hands, which he had held out, with a quiver in them, fell to his sides. ‘Much to complain of,’ he said, with a tremulous astonishment; ‘much—to complain of!’

A murmur of voices sounded in Joyce’s ears; they sounded like the hum of the bees, or anything else inarticulate, with mingled tones of remonstrance, anger, entreaty: even old Janet’s quavering voice joined in. To hear the girl defying a gentleman, the Captain’s colonel, a grand soldier officer, took away the old woman’s breath.

‘You left her to die,’ cried Joyce, her soft voice fierce in excitement, ‘all alone in a strange place. Why was she alone at such a time, when she had a husband to care for her? You left her to die—and never asked after her for twenty years: never asked—till her child was a grown-up woman with other—other parents, and another home—of her own.’

‘Oh, dinna speak to the gentleman like that!’ cried old Janet, getting up with difficulty from her easy-chair. ‘Oh, Joyce, Joyce!’ cried Mrs. Bellendean. Mrs. Hayward said nothing, but she came up to the indignant young figure in the centre of this group, and laid an imperative hand upon her arm. Joyce shook it off. She did not know what she was doing. An immense disappointment, horror, anger with fate and all about her, surged up in her heart, and gave force to the passion of indignant feeling of which, amid all her thinkings on the subject, she had never been conscious before. She turned away from the three women who surrounded her, each remonstrating in her way, and confronted once more the man—the father—whose great fault perhaps was that he was not the father whom the excited girl looked for, and that the disillusion was more than she could bear.

Colonel Hayward came to himself a little as he looked at her, and recovered some spirit. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said, ‘for thinking so. No, Elizabeth, don’t blame her. I was in India. Short of deserting, I couldn’t get home.’

‘Why didn’t you desert, then,’ cried the girl in a flush of nervous passion, ‘rather than let her die?’ Then she turned round upon Janet, who stood behind, burdened with her great shawl, and threw herself upon the old woman’s shoulder. ‘Oh granny, granny, take me home, take me home again! for I have nothing to do here, nor among these strange folk,’ she cried.

CHAPTER XIII

There was no one who could detain her, for the agitated group in Mrs. Bellendean’s room were too much taken by surprise, in this curious development of affairs, to do anything but gaze astonished at Joyce’s unlooked-for passion. She went out of the room and out of the house, with old Janet, in her big shawl, following humbly, like a tall ship carrying out a humble little lugger in her train. Joyce seemed to have added to her stature in the intensity of her excitement. The nervous swiftness with which she moved, the air of passion in all her sails, to continue the metaphor, the unity of impassioned movement with which she swept forth—not looking back nor suffering any distracting influence to touch her—made the utmost impression upon the spectators who had been, to their own thinking, themselves chief actors in the scene, until this young creature’s surpassing emotion put them all into the position of audience while she herself filled the stage. Joyce would not see her father’s face, though it appealed to her with a keen touch of unaccustomed feeling which was like a stab—nor would she suffer herself to look at Mrs. Bellendean, whose faintest indication of a wish had hitherto been almost law to the enthusiast. The girl was possessed by a tempest of personal excitement which carried her far beyond all the habitual restraints and inducements of her life. Nothing weighed with her, nothing moved her, but that overwhelming tide which carried her forth, wounded, humiliated, indignant, angry, she could not tell why, in the desperation of this most bitter and entirely unreasonable disappointment which swept her soul. To think that it had come, the long-looked-for discovery—the revelation so often dreamt of—and that it should be this! Only a visionary, entirely abandoned to the devices of fancy by the bareness of all the facts that surrounded actual life in her experience, could have entertained such a vague grandeur of expectation, or could have fallen into such an abyss of disenchantment. It thrilled through and through her, giving a pride and loftiness indescribable to the carriage of her head, to the attitude of her person, to the swift and nervous splendour of her movements. Joyce, stung to the heart with her disappointment—with the bourdonnement in her ears and the jar in her nerves of a great downfall—was like a creature inspired. She swept out of the house, and crossed the open space of the drive, and disappeared in the shadows of the avenue, without a word, with scarcely a breath—carried along by that wind of passion, unconscious what she did.

Old Janet Matheson followed her child with feelings of almost equal intensity, but of a contradictoriness and mingled character which defies description. Her despair in the anticipation of losing Joyce was mingled with elation in the thought that Joyce was proved a lady beyond all possibility of doubt, fit to be received as an equal in the grand society at the House—which, however, in no way modified her profound and passionate sense of loss and anger against the fate which she declared to herself bitterly she had always foreseen. That she should not have felt a momentary joy in her child’s apparent rejection of the new life opening before her was impossible; but that too was mingled still more seriously by regret and alarm lest the girl should do anything to forfeit these advantages, and also by the dictates of honest judgment which showed her that resistance was impossible, and that it was foolish, and Joyce’s revolt a mere blaze of temporary impulse which could not, and must not, stand against the necessities of life. All these mixed and contradictory sentiments were in Janet’s mind as she hurried along, trying vainly to keep up with the swift, impassioned figure in front of her; trying, too, to reason with the unreasonable, and bring Joyce—strange travesty of all the usual circumstances of her life—to bring Joyce, the quick-witted, the all-understanding, to see what was right and wrong, what was practicable and impracticable. Her efforts in this respect were confined at present to a breathless interjection now and then— ‘Oh, Joyce!’ ‘Oh, my dear!’ ‘Oh, my bonnie woman!’ in various tones of remonstrance and deprecation. But Joyce’s impulse of swift passion lasted long and carried her far, straight down the long avenue, and out into the village road beyond; and her mind was so preoccupied that she did not take into consideration the fatigue and trouble of her companion, as, under any other circumstances, Joyce would have been sure to do. It was only when the sight of the village houses, and the contact once more with other human creatures, and the necessary reticences of life suddenly checked Joyce in her career, that she slackened her pace, and, turning round to keep her face from the keen investigation of some neighbours grouped around a door, suddenly perceived a little behind her the flushed cheeks and labouring breath of Janet, who would not be separated from her side, and yet had found the effort of keeping up with her so difficult. Joyce turned back to her faithful old friend with a cry of self-reproach.

‘Oh, granny! and I’ve tired you struggling after me, and had not the sense to mind.’

‘Oh ay, you have the sense to mind. You have sense for most things in this world—- but no’ the day, Joyce, no’ the day; you havena shown your sense the day.’

‘Granny,’ said Joyce, with trembling lips, ‘there has been nothing in my life till now that you have not had all authority in: but you must say nothing about this. I must be the judge in this. It is my business, and only mine.’

‘There is nothing,’ said Janet, ‘that can be your business and no’ mine: until the time comes when you yoursel’ are none of my business—when you’re in your father’s hands.’

‘Oh no, no,’ said Joyce under her breath, clasping her hands,—‘oh no, no, no!’

‘What are you murmurin’ and saying ower as if it was a charm? No, you havena shown your sense. You think the like of that can be at your pleesure to tak’ it or to leave it? Na, na, my bonnie woman. I’m the one that will have the most to bear. Ye needna answer me, though I can see the words in your mouth. I’m the one, whatever happens, that will have the maist to put up with. But I say it’s no’ at your pleesure. What’s richt is richt, and what’s nature is nature, whatever ye may say. I tell ye, Joyce Matheson—but you’re no Joyce Matheson: eh! to think me, that never used it, that I should gie ye that name noo! Ye’re Joyce Matheson nae mair.

‘Granny, granny, don’t throw me off—don’t cast me away, for I’ve nobody but you,’ cried Joyce, with a voice full of tears.

‘Me cast ye off! but it’s true ye’ve nae richt to the name, and Peter and me, we’ve nae richt to you; and the moment’s come which I’ve aye foreseen: oh, I have foreseen it! I never deceivit mysel’ like him, or made up dreams and visions like you. And it’s no’ at your command to tak’ it or to leave it—na, na. I’m no’ one that can deceive mysel’,’ said Janet, mournfully shaking her head, and in the depth of her trouble finding a little sad satisfaction in her own clear-sightedness. ‘The rest o’ ye may think that heaven and earth will yield to ye, and that what ye want is the thing ye will get if ye stand to it; but no’ me—oh, no’ me! It’s little comfort to the flesh to see sae clear, but I canna help it, for it’s my nature. Na, na. We canna just go back to what we were before, as if nothing had happened. It’s no’ permitted. Ye may do a heap o’ things in this world, but ye canna go back. Na, na. Yesterday’s no dead, nor ye canna kill it, whatever ye may do. It’s mair certain than the day or the morn, and it binds ye whether ye like it or no,—oh, it binds ye, it binds ye! We canna go back.

These little sentences came from her at intervals with breaks and pauses between, as they went along towards the cottage, sometimes interrupted by an exclamation from Joyce, sometimes by the greeting of a neighbour, sometimes by Janet’s own breathlessness as she laboured along in the warm evening under the weight of her big shawl. Such monologues were not unusual to her, and Joyce had accompanied them by a commentary of half-regarded questions and exclamations, in all the mutual calm of family understanding on many a previous occasion. The girl had not lent a very steady ear to the grandmother’s wisdom, nor had the grandmother paused to answer the girl’s questions or remonstrances. Half heard, half noted, they had gone on serenely, the notes of age and experience mingling with the dreams and impulses of youth. But that soft concert and harmony in which the two voices had differed without any jar, supplementing and completing each other, was not like this. The old woman was flushed and tearful, and Joyce was pale, with excited eyes that looked twice as large as usual, and a trembling in the lips which were so apt to move with impatient intelligence, answering before the question was made. It was apparent even to the neighbours that something must have happened, and still more apparent to Peter, who stood at the open door of the cottage looking out for them with a look which varied from the broad smile of pleasure with which he had perceived their two familiar figures approaching, to a troubled perception of something amiss which he could not fathom. Peter’s mind was slow in operating; and as all previous information had been kept from him, he was without any clue to the origin of the trouble which he began to feel about him. To return and find the cottage closed, and neither wife nor child waiting for him, was in itself a prodigy; and though his astonishment had been partly calmed by the explanation of the neighbours who gave him the key of the door, and informed him that Joyce and her granny had been sent for to ‘the Hoose,’ it was roused into a kind of dull anxiety by the agitated air which he slowly recognised as he watched them approaching, convinced, against his will, that something ailed them,—that some new event had happened. Nevertheless, Peter, in the voiceless delicacy of his peasant soul, assumed the smile, trembling on the edge of a laugh, which was his usual aspect when addressing his womenfolk.

‘Weel,’ he said, ‘ye’re bonnie hoosekeepers for a man to come hame to, wanting his tea! ‘Deed, I might just whistle for my tea, and the twa of you stravaigin’ naebody kens where. Joyce, my bonny lass, ye should just think shame of yoursel’, leading your auld granny into ill ways.’ He ended with a long, low laugh, which was his expression of content and emotion and pleasure, and which turned the reproach into the tenderest family jest—and made way for them, but not till he had said out his say. ‘Come awa,’ noo ye’re here; come awa’ ben, and mask the tea: for I’m wanting something to sloken me,’ he said.

‘Oh, my poor man—oh, my poor auld man!’ said Janet. She had not ceased to shake her head at intervals while he was speaking, and she uttered a suppressed groan as she went into the cottage. So long as all was uncertain, Janet had carefully kept every intimation of possible calamity from Peter; but now that the truth must be known, she had a kind of tragic pleasure in exciting his alarm.

‘What ails the woman?’ he said, ‘girnin’ and groanin’ as if we were a’ under sentence. What ails your granny, Joyce?’

‘And so we are,’ said Janet, ‘a’ under sentence, as ye say, and our days numbered, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. But, eh, that’s no’ what we do—far, far from it. And when misfortin’ comes, that comes to a’, it’s rare, rare that it doesn’t come unexpected. We’re eatin’ and drinkin’ and makin’ merry—or else we’re fechtin’, beatin’ our fellow-servants, and a’ in a word that the Lord delayeth his comin’. And in a moment,’ said the old woman, with a sob, ‘our house is left unto us desolate. That’s just the common way.’

‘What is she meaning with the house left desolate?’ said Peter, the smile slowly disappearing from his face. ‘The woman’s daft! Joyce what is she meanin’? I’m no’ very gleg at the uptake,—no’ like you, my bonnie woman, that are just as keen as a needle. What’s she meanin’? Janet, woman, as lang as the lassie is weel and spared——’

‘The lassie, says he—naething but the lassie. And have I no’ foreseen it a’ the time? How often have I cried out to ye, Peter, to keep a loose grip! oh, to haud a loose grip! But ye never would listen to me. And now it’s just come to pass, and neither you nor me prepared.’

Peter’s face, gazing at her while she went on, was like a landscape in the uncertain shining of a Scotch summer. It lightened all over with a smile of good-humoured derision which brought out the shaggy eyebrows, the grizzled whiskers, the cavernous hollows round the eyes, like the inequalities of the mountainous land. And then the light fled instantaneously, and a pale blank of shadow succeeded, leaving all that surface grey, while finer lines of anxiety and chill alarm developed about the large mouth and in the puckers of those many-folded eyelids, like movements of the wind among the herbage and trees. He stood and gazed at her with his eyes widely open, his lips apart. But Janet did not meet that look. She went to the fire, which burned dully, ‘gathered,’ as she had left it in her careful way, to smoulder frugally in her absence, and poked it with violence, with sharp thrusts of the poker, standing with the back of her great shawl turned towards her companions, and her big bonnet still on her head. There was nothing said till with those sudden strokes and blows she had roused the dormant fire to flame, when she put on the kettle, and swept the hearth with vigorous, nervous movements, though always encumbered by the weight of the shawl. Then Janet made a sudden turn upon herself, and setting open the doors of the aumry, which made a sort of screen between her and the others, proceeded to take off and fold away that shawl of state. ‘I’ll maybe never put it on again,’ she said to herself, almost under her breath, ‘for whatfor should I deck mysel’ and fash my heid about my claes or what I put on? It was a’ to be respectable for her: wha’s heeding when there’s nane but me?’

‘There’s something happened,’ said Peter, in his low tremulous bass, like the rolling of distant thunder. ‘Am I the maister of this hoose, and left to find oot by her parables and her metaphors, and no’ a word of sense that a man can understand? What is’t, woman? Speak plain out, or as sure’s death I’ll——’ He clenched his large fist with a sudden silent rage, which could find no other expression than this seeming threat—though Peter would have died sooner than touch with a finger to harm her the old companion of his life.

‘Grandfather,’ said Joyce, ‘I will tell you what has happened. Granny takes a thing into her head, and then you know, whatever we say, you or me, she never heeds, but follows her own fancy.’ The girl spoke quickly, her words hurrying, her breath panting,—then came to a sudden pause, flushed crimson, her paleness changing to the red of passionate feeling, and added, as slowly as she had been hurried before, ‘Somebody has been here—that knows who my mother was: somebody that says—that says he is my father. And she thinks I am to rise up and follow him,’ cried Joyce, in another burst of sudden, swift, vehement words,—‘to rise up and follow him, like the woman in the Old Testament, away from my home and my own people, and all that I care for in the world! But I’ll not do it—I’ll not do it. I’ll call no strange man my father. I’ll bide in my own place where I’ve been all my days. What are their letters, and their old stories, and their secrets that they’ve found out, and their injuries that they’re sorry for—sorry for after costing a woman’s life! What’s all that to me? I’ll bide in my own place with them that have nourished me and cherished me, and made me happy all my days.’

‘Eh, lassie! eh, lassie!’ was all Peter could say. His large old limbs had got a trembling in them. He sat down in the big wooden arm-chair which stood against the wall, where it had been put away after dinner, and from that unaccustomed place, as if he too had been put away out of the common strain of life, gazed at the two alternately,—at his wife still folding, folding that shawl that would not lie straight, and at Joyce, in her flush of impassioned determination, standing up drawn to her full height, her head thrown back, her slim young figure inspired by the rush and torrent of emotion which she herself scarcely understood in its vehemence and force. The little quiet, humble cottage was in a moment filled as with rushing wings and flashing weapons, the dust and jar of spiritual conflict: but not one of the three visible actors in this little tragic drama had for the moment a word to say. When this silence of fate was broken, it was by Janet, who had at last shut up her shawl in the aumry, and, coming and going from the fire to the table, filling the intense blank of that pause with a curious interlude of hasty sound and movement, said at last, almost fiercely, ‘Come to your tea. You’ll do little good standing glowering at ane anither. Sit down and tak’ your tea.’

CHAPTER XIV

The first day of the holidays had also been a delight to Mr. Andrew Halliday’s virtuous soul. More systematic in all he did than Joyce’s irregular impulses permitted her to be, he had taken advantage of the leisure of the morning to enjoy to the utmost the quietness and freedom of a man who has no rule but his own pleasure for the government of his time. He got up a little later than usual, lingered over his breakfast, exhausted the newspaper over which, on ordinary occasions, he could cast only a hurried glance, and tasted the sweetness of that pause of occupation as no habitually unoccupied man could ever do. Then he sallied forth, not, as Joyce did, to dream and muse, but to enjoy the conscious pleasure of a walk, during which, indeed, he turned over many things in his mind which were not unallied to happy dreams. For Andrew had come to a determination which filled him at once with sweet and tender fancies, and with the careful calculations of a prudent man in face of a great change in life. He had made up his mind to insist upon a decision from Joyce, to have the time of their marriage settled. Of this she had never permitted him to speak. Their engagement had been altogether of a highly refined and visionary kind, a sort of bond of intellectual sympathy which pleased and flattered the consciousness of superiority in Halliday’s mind, but in other respects was sometimes a little chilly, and so wanting in all warmer demonstration as to carry with it a perpetual subdued disappointment and tremor of uncertainty. Had not the schoolmaster possessed a great deal of self-approval and conscious worth, he might have sometimes lost confidence altogether in Joyce’s affection; but though he was often uncomfortable with a sensation of having much kept from him which was his due, he had not as yet come so far as to be able to imagine that Joyce was indifferent to him. He could not have done her that wrong. She had met nobody, could have met nobody, who was his equal, and how was it possible then that she could be unfaithful? It seemed to Halliday a wrong to Joyce to suppose her capable of such a lamentable want of judgment.

But he was heartily in love with her at the same time, as well as so much with himself, and the régime under which she held him was cold. He had become impatient of it, and very anxious to bring it to an end: and there was no reason, except her fantastic unreadiness, for delay. He said to himself that he must put a stop to it,—that he must step forward in all the decision of his manhood, and impress this determination upon the weaker feminine nature which was made to yield to his superior force and impulse. There was no reason in the world for delay. He had attained all the promotion which was likely for a long time to be his; and the position of schoolmistress in his parish was likely to be soon vacant, which would afford to Joyce the possibility of carrying on her professional work, and adding to their joint means, as no doubt she would insist upon doing. This was not a thing which Halliday himself would have insisted upon. He felt profoundly that to be able to keep his wife at home, and retain her altogether like a garden enclosed for his private enjoyment, was a supreme luxury, and one which it was the privilege of the superior classes alone to prize at its proper value. He had been a prudent young man all his life, and had laid by a little money, and he felt with a proud and not ungenerous expansion of his bosom that he was able to afford himself that luxury; but he doubted greatly whether it would be possible to bring Joyce to perceive that this was the more excellent way, and that it would be meet for her to give up her work and devote herself entirely to her husband. He comprehended something of her pride, her high independence, and even indulgently allowed for the presence in her of a great deal of that ambition which is more appropriate to a man than a woman; therefore he was prepared to yield the question in respect to the work, and to find a new element of satisfaction in the thought of placing her by his own side in the little rostrum of the school as well as in the seclusion of the home. The Board would be too glad to secure the services of Miss Matheson, so well known for her admirable management at Bellendean, as the mistress at Comely Green. And thus every exigency would be satisfied.

He went over his little house carefully, room by room, when he came in from his walk, and considered what it would be necessary to add, and what to repair and refresh, for Joyce’s reception. His mind was a thoroughly frugal and prudent one, tempted by no vain desires, spoiled by no habits of extravagance. Amid all the fond visions which filled him, as he realised the new necessities of a double life, he yet calculated very closely what would be necessary, what they could do without, how many things were strictly needful, and how and at what price these additions could be procured. The calculations were full of enchantment, but they were not reckoned up less carefully. He returned to them after he had eaten his dinner, and they occupied the greater part of the afternoon, with many an excursion into the realms of fancy to sweeten them, although of themselves they were sweet. And it was with the result of his calculations carefully jotted down upon a piece of paper in his pocket-book, that he set out before tea-time for Bellendean, to make known to Joyce his desires and determination, and to sway her mind as the female mind ought to be swayed, half by sweet persuasion, half by the magnetism of his superior force of impulse, to adopt it as her own. The idea that she might insist, and decline to be influenced, was one which he would not allow himself to take into consideration, though it lay in the background in one of the chambers of his mind with a sort of chill sense of unpleasant possibility, which, so far as possible, he put out of sight.

It was a lovely afternoon, and the road from Comely Green to Bellendean lay partly by the highroad within sight of the Firth, and partly through the woods and park of Bellendean House. Everything was cheerful round him, the birds singing, the water reflecting the sunshine in jewelled lines of sparkle and light. Andrew could not think of any such black thing as refusal, or even reluctance, amid all the sweet harmony and consent to be happy, which was in the lovely summer day.

When he reached the cottage it gave him a little thrill of surprise to find the door shut which usually stood so frankly open, admitting the genial summer atmosphere and something of the sights and sounds outside. It was strange to find the door closed on a summer evening; and an idea that somebody must be ill, or that something must have happened, sprang into instant life in Andrew’s mind. His knock was not even answered by the invitation to come in, which would have been natural in other circumstances. He heard a little movement inside, but no cheerful sound of voices, and presently the door was opened by Janet, who, looking out upon him with a jealous glance through a very small opening, breathed forth an ‘Oh! it’s you, Andrew;’ and, letting the door swing fully open, bade him come in. Within he was bewildered to see old Peter and Joyce seated at the table, upon which the tea-things still stood. There they were all three, nobody ill, no visible cause for this extraordinary seclusion. Peter gave him a grim little nod without speaking, and Joyce put forth—it almost seemed unwillingly—her hand, but without moving otherwise. He took the chair from which Janet had risen, and gazed at them bewildered. ‘What is the matter? Has anything happened?’ he said.

There was a pause. Peter drummed upon the table with his fingers, with something almost derisive in the measured sound; and Joyce half turned to him as if about to speak, but said nothing. It was Janet who answered his question. There was a hot flush upon her cheeks—the flush of excitement and emotion. She answered him shaking her head.

‘Ay, Andrew, there’s something happened. We’re no’ like oursel’s, as ye can see. Ye wouldna have gotten in this nicht to this afflicted house if ye had not been airt and pairt in it as weel as Peter and me.’

‘What is the matter?’ he repeated, with increased alarm.

‘Ye better tell him, Joyce. Puir lad, he has a richt to hear. He’s maybe thought like me of sic a thing happening, without fear, as if it might be a kind of diversion. The Lord help us short-sighted folk.’

‘What is it?’ he said; ‘you are driving me distracted. What has happened?’

Upon this Peter gave a short, dry laugh, which it was alarming to hear. ‘He’ll never find out,’ said the old man, ‘if ye give him years to do it. It’s against reason—it’s against sense—a man to step in and take another man’s bairn away.’

Joyce was very pale. He observed this for the first time in the confusion and the trouble of this incomprehensible scene. She sat with her hands clasped, looking at no one—not even at himself, though she had given him her hand. It was rare, indeed, that Joyce should be the last to explain. Halliday drew his chair a little nearer, and put his hand timidly upon hers, which made her start. She made a quick movement, as if to draw it away, then visibly controlled herself and permitted that mute interrogation and caress.

‘It is just what I aye kent would happen,’ said Janet, unconscious or indifferent to her self-contradictions; ‘and many a time have I implored my man no’ to build upon her, though I wasna so wise as to tak’ my ain advice. And as for you, Andrew, though I took good care you should hear a’ the circumstances, maybe I should have warned you mair clearly that you should not lippen to her, and ware a’ your heart upon her, when at ainy moment—at ainy moment—’ Here the old woman’s voice failed her, and broke off in a momentary, much-resisted sob. Halliday’s astonishment and anxiety grew at every word. His hand pressed Joyce’s hand with the increasing fervour of an eager demand.

‘Joyce! Joyce! what do they mean? Have you nothing to say?’

Joyce turned upon him, with a sudden flush taking the place of her paleness. ‘Granny would make you think that I was not worthy to be trusted,’ she said; ‘that to ware your heart upon me, as she says, was to be cheated and betrayed.’

‘No, no,—I never could believe that!’ he cried, not unwilling to prove the superiority of his own trust to that of the old people, who, Halliday felt, it would not be a bad thing to be clear of, or as nearly clear of as circumstances might permit.

Joyce scarcely paused to hear his response, but, having found her voice, went on hurriedly. ‘People have come that say—that say—— They are just strangers—we never saw them before. They say that I—I—belong to them. Oh, I am not going to pretend,’ cried Joyce, ‘that I have not thought of that happening, many a day! It was like a poem all to myself. It went round and round in my head. It was a kind of dream. But I never thought—I never, never thought what would become of me if it came true. And how do I know that it is true? Grandfather, you and granny are my father and my mother. I never knew any other. You have brought me up and cared for me, and I am your child to the end of my life. I will never, never——’

‘Hold your peace!’ cried Janet. She put up her hard hand against Joyce’s soft young mouth. The little old woman grew majestic in her sense of justice and right. ‘Hold your peace!’ she cried. ‘Make no vows, lest you should be tempted to break them and sin against the Lord. Ye’ll do what it’s your duty to do. You’ll no’ tell me this and that—that you’ll take the law in your ain hands. Haud your tongue, Peter Matheson! You’re an auld fool, putting nonsense into the bairn’s head. What!’ cried Janet, ‘a bairn of MINE to say that she’ll act as she likes and please hersel’, and take her choice what she’ll do! and a’ the time her duty straight forenenst her, and nae mainner o’ doubt what it is. Dinna speak such stuff to me.’

In the pause of this conflict Andrew Halliday’s voice came in, astonished, yet composed, with curiosity in it and strong expectation—sentiments entirely different from those which swayed the others, and which silenced them and aroused their attention from the very force of contrast. ‘People who say—that you belong to them? Your own people—your own friends—Joyce! Tell me who they are,—tell me—— You take away my breath. To think that they should have found her after all!’

They all paused in the impassioned strain of their thoughts to look at him. This new note struck in the midst of them was startling and incomprehensible, yet checked the excitement and vehemence of their own feelings. ‘Ah, Andro,’ said old Peter, ‘ye’re a wise man. Ye would like to hear a’ about it, and wha they are, and if the new freends—the new freends’—the old man coughed over the words to get his voice—‘if they’re maybe grander folk and mair to your credit’—he broke off into his usual laugh, but a laugh harsh and broken. ‘Ye’re a wise lad, Andro, my man—ye’re a wise lad.’

‘It is very natural, I think,’ said Andrew, reddening, ‘that I should wish to know. We have spoken many a time of Joyce’s—friends. I wish to know about them, and what they are, naturally, as any one in my position would do.’

‘Joyce’s freends!—I thocht I kent weel what that meant,’ said Janet. ‘Eh! to hear him speak of Joyce’s freends. I thocht I kent weel what that meant,’ she repeated, with a smile of bitterness. Halliday had taken her seat at the table, and she went and seated herself by the wall at as great a distance from the group as the limits of space would permit. The old woman’s eyes were keen with grief and bitter pain, and that sense of being superseded which is so hard to bear. She thought that Joyce had put her chair a little closer to that of the schoolmaster, detaching herself from Peter, and that the young people already formed a little party by themselves. This was the form her jealous consciousness of Joyce’s superiority had always taken, even when everything went well. She burst forth again in indignant prophetic strains, taking a little comfort in this thought.

‘But dinna you think you’ll get her,’ she cried, ‘no more than Peter or me!—dinna you believe that they’ll think you good enough for her, Andrew Halliday. If it’s ended for us, it’s mair than ended for you. Do you think a grand sodger-officer, that was the Captain’s commander, and high, high up, nigh to the Queen herself,—do you think a man like that will give his dauchter—and such a dauchter, fit for the Queen’s Court if ever lady was—to a bit poor little parish schoolmaister like you?’

The comfort which Janet took from this prognostication was bitter, but it was great. A curious pride in the grandeur of the officer who was ‘the Captain’s’ commander made her bosom swell. At least there was satisfaction in that and in the sudden downfall, the unmitigated and prompt destruction of all hopes that might be entertained by that whippersnapper, who dared to demand explanations on the subject of Joyce’s ‘friends’—friends in Scotch peasant parlance meaning what ‘parents’ means in French, the family and nearest relatives. Janet had rightly divined that Halliday received the news not with sympathetic pain or alarm, but with suppressed delight, looking forward to the acquisition to himself, through his promised wife, of ‘friends’ who would at once elevate him to the rank of gentleman, after which he longed with a consciousness of having no internal right to it, which old Janet’s keen instincts had always comprehended—far, far different from Joyce, who wanted no elevation,—who was a lady born.

‘Granny,’ said Joyce, with a trembling voice, ‘you think very little, very, very little—I see it now for the first time—of me.’

‘Me think little of ye! that’s a bonnie story; but weel, weel I ken what will happen. We will pairt with sore hearts, but a firm meaning to be just the same to ane anither. I’ve seen a heap of things in my lifetime,’ said Janet, with mournful pride. ‘Sae has my man; but they havena time to think—they’re no’ aye turning things ower and ower like a woman at the fireside. I’ve seen mony changes and pairtings, and how it was aye said it should make no difference. Eh! I’ve seen that in the maist natural way. It’s no’ that you’ll mean ony unfaithfulness, my bonnie woman. Na, na. I ken ye to the bottom o’ your heart, and there’s nae unfaithfulness in you—no’ even to him,’ said Janet, indicating Halliday half contemptuously by a pointing finger, ‘much less to your grandfaither and me. I’m whiles in an ill key, and I’ve been sae, I dinna deny it, since ever I heard this awfu’ news: but now I am coming to mysel’. Ye’ll do your duty, Joyce. Ye’ll accept what canna be refused, and ye’ll gang away from us with a sair heart, and it will be a’ settled that you’re to come back, maybe twice a year, maybe ance a year, to Peter and me, and be our ain bairn again. They’re no’ ill folk,’ she went on, the tears dropping upon her apron, on which she was folding hem after hem—‘they’re good folk; they’re kind, awfu’ kind—they’ll never wish ye to be ungrateful,—that’s what they’ll say. They’ll no’ oppose it, they’ll settle it a’—maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe mair; they’ll be real weel-meaning, real kind. And Peter and me, we’ll live a’ the year thinking o’ that time; and ye’ll come back, my bonnie dear—oh, ye’ll come back! with your heart licht to think of the pleasure of the auld folk. But, eh Joyce! ye’ll no’ be in the house a moment till ye’ll see the difference; ye’ll no’ have graspit my hand or looked me in the face till ye see the difference. Ye’ll see the glaur on your grandfaither’s shoon when he comes in, and the sweat on his brow. No’ with ony unkind meaning. Oh, far frae that—far frae that! Do I no’ ken your heart? But ye’ll be used to other things—it’ll a’ have turned strange to ye then—and ye’ll see where we’re wanting. Oh, ye’ll see it! It will just be mair plain to ye than all the rest. The wee bit place, the common things, the neebors a’ keen to ken, but chief of us, Peter and me our ainsels, twa common puir folk.’

‘Granny!’ cried Joyce, flinging herself upon her, unable to bear this gradual working up.

Peter came in with a chorus with his big broken laugh— ‘Ay, ay, just that, just that! an auld broken-down ploughman and his puir auld body of a wife. It’s just that, it’s just that!’