Joyce

CHAPTER XV

Great was the consternation in Bellendean over the unsatisfactory interview which it was so soon known had taken place between Joyce and her father. Colonel Hayward’s public intimation of the facts at luncheon had created, as might have been expected, the greatest commotion; and the ladies of the party assembled round Mrs. Bellendean with warm curiosity when the whisper ran through the house that Joyce had come—and had gone away again. Gone away! To explain it was very difficult, to understand it impossible. The schoolmistress, the village girl, to discover that she was Colonel Hayward’s daughter, and not to be elated, transported by the discovery! Why, it was a romance, it was like a fairy tale. Mrs. Bellendean’s suggestion that there was a second side to everything, though the fact was not generally recognised in fairy tales, contented no one; and a little mob of excited critics, all touched and interested by Colonel Hayward’s speech, turned upon the rustic heroine and denounced her pretensions. What did she expect, what had she looked for—to turn out a king’s daughter, or a duke’s? But it was generally agreed that few dukes were so delightful as Colonel Hayward, and that Joyce showed the worst of taste as well as the utmost ingratitude. Mrs. Bellendean was disappointed too; but she was partly comforted by the fact that Captain Bellendean, who was much bewildered by the girl’s caprice and folly, had fallen into a long and apparently interesting argument on the subject with Greta, her own special favourite and protégée. It is almost impossible for any natural woman to find a man in Norman’s position, well-looking, young, and rich, within her range, without forming matrimonial schemes for him of one kind or another; and Mrs. Bellendean had already made up her mind that the pang of leaving Bellendean would be much softened could she see her successor in Greta, the favourite of the house, a girl full of her own partialities and ways of thinking, and whom she had influenced all her life. She forgot Joyce in seeing the animated discussion that rose between these two. It was disappointing, however, that when in the very midst of this discussion Captain Bellendean saw from the window at which he was standing his old Colonel walking to and fro on the terrace with heavy steps and bowed head, his point of interest changed at once. He looked no more at Greta, though she was a much prettier sight: evidently all his sympathy was for Colonel Hayward; and after the talk had gone on languishing for a few moments, he excused himself for leaving her. ‘Poor old chap! I must go and try if I can do anything to console him,’ he said.

Norman found Colonel Hayward very much cast down and melancholy. He was pacing up and down, up and down—sometimes pausing to throw a blank look over the landscape, sometimes mechanically gathering a faded leaf from one of the creepers on the wall. He endeavoured to pull himself up when Captain Bellendean joined him; but the old soldier had no skill in concealing his feelings, and he was too anxious to get support and sympathy to remain long silent. He announced, with all the solemnity becoming a strange event, that Mrs. Hayward was lying down a little. ‘She travelled all night, you know; and though she can sleep on the railway, it never does one much good that sort of sleep; and there has been a great deal going on all day—a great deal that has been very agitating for us both. I persuaded her to lie down,’ Colonel Hayward said, looking at his companion furtively, as if afraid that Norman might think Elizabeth was to blame.

‘It was the best thing she could do,’ said Captain Bellendean.

‘That is exactly what I told her—the very best thing she could do. It is seldom she leaves me when I have so much need of her; but I insisted upon it. And then I am in full possession of her sentiments,’ said the Colonel. ‘She told me exactly what she thought; and she advised me to take a walk by myself and think it all out.’

‘Perhaps, then, I ought to leave you alone, Colonel? but I saw you from the window, and thought you looked out of spirits.’

‘My dear boy, I am glad—too glad—to have you. Thinking a thing out is easy to say, but not so easy to do. And you had always a great deal of sense, Bellendean. When we had difficulties in the regiment, I well remember—— But that was easy in comparison with this. You know what has happened. We’ve found my daughter. For I was married long before I met with my wife. It was only for a little time; and then she disappeared, poor girl, and I never could find out what became of her. It gave me a very great deal of trouble and distress—more than I could tell you; and now we have found out that she left a child. I told you all to-day at luncheon. Joyce, the girl they all talk about, is my daughter. Can you believe such a story?’

‘I had heard about it before; and then what you said to-day—it is very wonderful.’

‘Yes; but it’s quite true. And we told her—in Mrs. Bellendean’s room. And if you will believe it, she—— She as good as rejected me, Norman—refused to have me for her father. It has thrown me into a dreadful state of confusion. And Elizabeth can’t help me, it appears. She says I must work it out for myself. But it seems unnatural to work out a thing by myself; and especially a thing like this. Yes, the girl would have nothing to say to me, Bellendean. She says I must have ill-treated her mother—poor Joyce! the girl I told you that I had married. And I never did—indeed I never did!’

‘I am sure of that, sir. You never injured any one.’

‘Ah, my dear fellow! you don’t know how things happen. It seems to be nobody’s fault, and yet there’s injury done. It’s very bewildering to me, at my age, to think of having a child living. I never—thought of anything of the kind. I may have wished that my wife—and then again it would seem almost better that it shouldn’t be so.’

Colonel Hayward put his arm within that of Norman; he quickened his pace as they went up and down the terrace, and then would stop suddenly to deliver an emphatic sentence. ‘She looked me in the face, as if she defied me,’ he said, ‘and then went away and left me—with that old woman. Did you ever hear of such a position, Bellendean? My daughter, you know, my own daughter—and she looks me in the face, and tells me I must have harmed her mother, and why did I leave her? and goes away! What am I to do? When you have made such a discovery, there it is; you can’t put it out of your mind, or go upon your way, as if you had never found it out. I can’t be as I was before. I have got a daughter. You may smile, Bellendean, and think it’s just the old fellow’s confused way.’

‘I don’t indeed, sir. I can quite understand the embarrassment——’

‘That’s it—the embarrassment. She belongs to me, and her future should be my dearest care—my dearest care—a daughter, you know, more even than a boy. Just what I have often thought would make life perfect—just a sort of a glory to us, Elizabeth and me; but when you think of it, quite a stranger, brought up so different! And Elizabeth opposed, a little opposed. I can’t help seeing it, though she tries to hide it, telling me that it’s my affair—that I must think it out myself. How can I think it out myself? and then my daughter herself turning upon me! What can I do? I don’t know what to do!’

‘Everybody,’ said Captain Bellendean—though a little against the grain, for he was himself very indignant with Joyce—‘speaks highly of her; there is but one voice—every one likes and admires her.’

The Colonel gave a little pressure to the young man’s arm, as if in thanks, and said with a sigh, ‘She is very like her mother. You would say, if you had known her, the very same—more than a likeness. Elizabeth has had a good deal to put up with on that account. You can’t wonder if she is a little—opposed. And everything is at a standstill. I have to take the next step; they will neither of them help me—and what am I to do? Children—seem to bring love with them when they are born in a house. But when a grown-up young woman appears that you never saw before, and you are told she is your daughter! It is a dreadful position to be in, Bellendean. I don’t know, no more than a baby, what to do.’

‘That is rather an alarming view to take,’ said Norman. ‘But when you know her better, most likely everything will come right. You have a very kind heart, sir, and the young lady is very pretty, and nice, and clever, and nature will speak.’

The Colonel shook his head. ‘I believed this morning in nature speaking—but I am sadly shaken, sadly shaken, Bellendean. Why did she turn against me? You would have thought that merely to say, I am your father—but she turned upon me as if I had been her enemy. And what can I do? We can’t go away to-morrow and leave her here. We must have her to live with us, and perhaps she won’t come, and most likely she’ll not like it if she does. I am dreadfully down about it all. Joyce’s girl whom I don’t know, and Elizabeth, who gives me up and goes to lie down because she’s tired—just when I need her most!’

‘But, Colonel, it is true that Mrs. Hayward must be very tired: and no doubt she feels that you and Miss Joyce will understand each other better if you meet by yourselves, when she is not there.’

‘Eh? Do you think that’s what she means, Bellendean? and do you think so too? But even then I am no further advanced than I was before; for my daughter, you know, she’s not here, and how do I know where to find her, even if I were prepared to meet her? and heaven knows I am less prepared than ever—and very nervous and anxious; and if she were standing before me at this moment I don’t know what I should say.’

‘I can show you where to find her,’ said Captain Bellendean. ‘Come and see her, sir; you don’t want to be prepared—you have only to show her that she may trust to your kind heart, and settle everything before Mrs. Hayward wakes up.’

‘My kind heart!’ said Colonel Hayward. ‘I’m not so sure that my heart is kind—not, it appears, to my own flesh and blood. I feel almost as if I should be glad never to hear of her again.’

‘That is only because you are out of sorts, and got no sleep last night.’

‘How do you know I got no sleep? It’s quite true. Elizabeth thinks I only fancy it, but the truth is that when my mind is disturbed I cannot sleep. I am dreadfully down about it all, Bellendean. No, I haven’t the courage, I haven’t the courage. If she were to tell me again that her mother had much to complain of, I couldn’t answer a word. And yet it’s not so. I declare to you, Bellendean, upon my honour, it was no fault of mine.’

‘I am sure of it, sir,’ said Bellendean. ‘Don’t think any more of that, but come with me and see Miss Joyce, and settle it all.’

The Colonel said little as he walked down to the village leaning on young Bellendean’s arm. He was alarmed and nervous; his throat was dry, his mind was confused. Norman’s society, the touch of his arm, the moral force of his companionship, kept Colonel Hayward up to the mark, or it is possible that he might have turned back and fled from those difficulties which he did not feel himself able to cope with, and the new relationship that had already produced such confusion in his life. But he was firmly held by Norman’s arm, and did not resist the impulse, though it was not his own. He did not know what he was going to say to Joyce, or how to meet this proud young creature, filled with a fanciful indignation for her mother’s wrongs. He had never wronged her mother. Pitiful as the story was, and tenderly as he had always regarded her memory, the Joyce of his youth had been the instrument of her own misery and of much trouble and anguish to him, though the gentle-hearted soldier had accepted it always as a sort of natural calamity for which nobody was responsible, and never blamed her. But even the gentlest-hearted will be moved when the judgment which they have refrained from making is turned against themselves. It was not his fault, and yet how could he say so? How could he explain it to this second hot-headed Joyce without blaming the first who had so suffered, and over whom death had laid a shadowy veil of tenderness, an oblivion of all mistakes and errors? Colonel Hayward did not articulately discuss this question with himself, but it was at the bottom of all the confusion in his troubled mind. He was afraid of her, shy of her presence, not knowing how to address or approach this stranger, who was his own child. He had looked with a tender envy at other people’s daughters before now, thinking if only Elizabeth—— But a daughter who was not Elizabeth’s, and to whom his wife was even, as he said to himself, a little—opposed, was something that had never entered into his thoughts. How easy it was in the story-books!—how parents and children long separated sprang into each other’s arms and hearts by instinct. But it was very different in real life, when the problem how to receive into the intimacy of so small a household a third person who was so near in blood, so absolutely unknown in all that constitutes human sympathy, had to be solved at a moment’s notice! He had been very much excited and disturbed the day before, but he had not doubted the power of Elizabeth to put everything right. Now, however, Elizabeth had not only for the first time failed, but was—opposed. She had not said it, but he had felt it. She had declared herself tired, and lain down, and told him to work it out himself. Such a state of affairs was one which Colonel Hayward had never contemplated, and everything accordingly was much worse than yesterday, when he had still been able to feel that if Elizabeth were only here all would go well.

The party in the cottage were in a very subdued and depressed condition when Captain Bellendean knocked at the door. The heat of resistance in Joyce’s mind had died down. Whether it was the strain of argument which Janet still carried on, though Joyce had not consciously listened to it, or whether the mere effect of the short lapse of time which quenches excitement had operated unawares upon her mind, it is certain that her vehemence of feeling and rebellion of heart had sunk into that despondent suspension of thought which exhaustion brings. Resistance dies out, and the chill compulsion of circumstance comes in, making itself felt above all flashes of indignation, all revolts of sentiment. Joyce knew now, though she had not acknowledged it in words, that her power over her own life was gone,—that there was no strength in her to resist the new laws and subordination under which she felt herself to have fallen. She had not even the consciousness which a girl in a higher class might have been supported by, that her father’s rights over her were not supreme. She believed that she had no power to resist his decrees as to what was to become of her; and accordingly, after the first outburst of contradictory feeling, the girl’s heart and courage had altogether succumbed. She had fallen upon the neck of her old guardian—the true mother of her life—with tears, which quenched out every spark of the passion which had inspired her.

Joyce felt herself to be within the grasp of fate. She was like one of the heroines of the poets in a different aspect from that in which she had identified herself with Rosalind or Miranda. What she was like now was Iphigenia or Antigone caught in the remorseless bonds of destiny. She did not even feel that forlorn satisfaction in it which she might have done had there been more time, or had she been less unhappy. The only feeling she was conscious of was misery, life running low in her, all the elements and powers against her, and the possibility even of resistance gone out of her. Old Janet had pressed her close, and then had repulsed her with the impatience of highly excited feeling; and Joyce stood before the window, with the light upon her pale face, quite subdued, unresistant, dejected to the bottom of her heart. The only one of the group who showed any energy or satisfaction was Andrew Halliday, who could not refrain a rising and exhilaration of heart at the thought of being son-in-law to a man who was the ‘Captain’s’ commanding officer, and consequently occupied a position among the great ones of the earth. Andrew’s imagination had already leaped at all the good things that might follow for himself. He thought of possible elevations in the way of head-masterships, scholastic dignities, and honours. ‘They’ would never leave Joyce’s husband a parish schoolmaster! He had not time to follow it out, but his thoughts had swayed swiftly upwards to promotions and honours undefined.

‘Wha’s that at the door?’ said Janet, among her tears.

‘It’s the Captain,’ said Joyce, in a voice so low that she was almost inaudible. Then she added, ‘It’s—it’s—my father.’

‘Her father!’ Peter rose up with a lowering brow. ‘My hoose is no’ a place for every fremd person to come oot and in at their pleasure. Let them be. I forbid ainy person to open that door.’

‘Oh, haud your tongue, man!’ cried Janet; ‘can ye keep them oot with a steekit door—them that has the law on their side, and nature too?’

The old man took his blue bonnet, which hung on the back of his chair. ‘Stand back, sir,’ he said sternly to Andrew, who had risen to go to the door; ‘if my hoose is mine nae mair, nor my bairn mine nae mair, it’s me, at least, that has the richt to open, and nae ither man.’ He put his bonnet on his head, pulling it down upon his brows. ‘My head’s white and my heart’s sair: if the laird thinks I’ve nae mainners, he maun just put up wi’t, I’m no’ lang for this life that I should care.’ He threw the door wide open as he spoke, meeting the look of the newcomers with his head down, and his shaggy eyebrows half covering his eyes. ‘Gang in, gang in, if ye’ve business,’ he said, and flung heavily past them, without further greeting. The sound of his heavy footstep, hastening away, filled all the silence which, for a moment, no one broke.

Norman made way, and almost pushed the Colonel in before him. ‘They expect you,’ he said. And Colonel Hayward stepped in. A more embarrassed man, or one more incapable of filling so difficult a position, could not be. How willingly would he have followed Peter! But duty and necessity and Norman Bellendean all kept him up to the mark. Joyce stood straight up before him in front of the window. She turned to him her pale face, her eyes heavy with tears. The good man was accustomed to be received with pleasure, to dispense kindness wherever he went: to appear thus, in the aspect of a destroyer of domestic happiness, was more painful and confusing than words can say.

‘Young lady,’ he began, and stopped, growing more confused than ever. Then, desperation giving him courage, ‘Joyce—— It cannot be stranger to you than it is to me, to see you standing here before me, my daughter, when I never knew I had a daughter. My dear, we ought to love one another,—but how can we, being such strangers? I have never been used to—anything of the kind. It’s a great shock to us both, finding this out. But if you’ll trust yourself to me, I’ll—I’ll do my best. A man cannot say more.’

‘Sir,’ said Joyce; her voice faltered and died away in her throat. She made an effort and began again, ‘Sir,’ then broke down altogether, and, making a step backwards, clutched at old Janet’s dress. ‘Oh, granny, he’s very kind—his face is very kind,’ she cried.

‘Ay,’ said the old woman, ‘ye say true; he has a real kind face. Sir, what she wants to tell ye is, that though a’s strange, and it’s hard, hard to ken what to say, she’ll be a good daughter to ye, and do her duty, though maybe there’s mony things that may gang wrang at first. Ye see she’s had naebody but Peter and me: and she’s real fond of the twa auld folk, and has been the best bairn’—Janet’s voice shook a little, but she controlled it. ‘Never, never in this world was there a better bairn—though she’s aye had the nature o’ a lady and the mainners o’ ane, and might have thought shame of us puir country bodies. Na, my bonnie woman, na,—I ken ye never did. But, sir, ye need never fear to haud up yer head when ye’ve HER by your side. She’s fit to stand before kings—ay, that she is,—before kings, and no before meaner men.’

The Colonel gazed curiously at the little old woman, who stood so firm in her self-abnegation that he, at least, never realised how sadly it went against the grain. ‘Madam,’ he said, in his old-fashioned way, ‘I believe you fully; but it must be all to your credit and the way you have brought her up, that I find her what she is.’ He took Janet’s hand and held it in his own,—a hard little hand, scored and bony with work, worn with age—not lovely in any way. The Colonel recovered himself and regained his composure, now that he had come to the point at which he could pay compliments and give pleasure. ‘I thank you, madam, from the bottom of my heart, for what you have done for her, and for what you are giving up to me,’ he said, bowing low. Janet had no understanding of what he meant; and when he bent his grizzled moustache to kiss her hand, she gave a little shriek of mingled consternation and pleasure. ‘Eh, Colonel!’ she exclaimed, her old cheeks tingling with a blush that would not have shamed a girl’s. Never in her life had lips of man touched Janet’s hand before. She drew it from him and fell back upon her chair and sobbed, looking at the knotted fingers and prominent veins in an ecstasy of wonder and admiration. ‘Did you see that, Joyce? he’s kissed my hand; did ever mortal see the like? Eh, Colonel! I just havena a word—no’ a word—to say.’

Joyce put out both her hands to her father, her eyes swimming in tears, her face lighted up with that sudden gleam of instantaneous perception which was one of the charms of her face. ‘Oh, sir!’ she said: the other word, father, fluttered on her lips. It was a gentleman who did that, one of the species which Joyce knew so little, but only that she belonged to it. In her quick imagination rehearsing every incident before it happened, that was what she would have had him do. The little act of personal homage was more than words, more than deeds, and changed the current of her feelings as by magic. And the Colonel now was in his element too. The tender flattery and sincere extravagance of all those delicate ways of giving pleasure were easy and natural to him, and he was restored to himself. He took Joyce’s hands in one of his, and drew her within his arm.

‘My dear,’ he said, with moisture in his eyes, ‘you are very like your mother. God forgive me if I ever frightened her or neglected her! I could not look you in the face if I had ever done her conscious wrong. Will you kiss me, my child, and forgive your father? She would bid you do so if she were here.’

It was very strange to Joyce. She grew crimson, as old Janet had done, under her father’s kiss. He was her father; her heart no longer made any objections; it beat high with a strange mixture of elation and pain. Her father—who had done her mother no conscious wrong, who had proved himself, in that high fantastical way which alone is satisfactory to the visionary soul, to be such a gentleman as she had always longed to meet with: yet one whom she would have to follow, far from all she knew, and, what was far worse, leaving desolate the old parents who depended upon her for all the brightness in their life. Her other sensations of pain fled away like clouds before the dawn, but this tragic strain remained. How would they do without her?—how could they bear the separation? The causeless resentment, the fanciful resistance which Joyce had felt against her father, vanished in a moment, having no cause; but the other burden remained.

Meanwhile there was another burden of which she had not thought. Andrew Halliday had discreetly withdrawn himself while the main action of the scene was going on. He stepped aside, and began to talk to Captain Bellendean. It was not undesirable in any circumstances to make friends with Captain Bellendean; and the schoolmaster had all his wits about him. He took up a position aside, where he could still command a perfect view of what was going on, and then he said, ‘We are having very good weather for this time of the year.’

‘Yes,’ Norman said, a little surprised, ‘I think so. It is not very warm, but it is always fine.’

‘Not warm! That will be your Indian experiences, Captain; for we all think here it is a very fine season—the best we have had for years. The corn is looking well, and the farmers are content, which is a thing that does not happen every year.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Norman. He was not very much interested in the farmers, who had not yet begun to be the troublesome members of society they now are; but he did not wish to have his attention distracted from the scene going on so near; and but for innate civility, he would willingly have snubbed the schoolmaster. Andrew, however, was not a person to be suppressed so.

‘You are more interested,’ he said confidentially, ‘in what’s going on here; and so am I, Captain Bellendean. I have reason to be very deeply interested. Everything that concerns my dear Joyce——’

‘Your dear—what?’ cried the Captain abruptly, turning quickly upon him with an indignant air. Then, however, Captain Bellendean recollected himself. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said quickly; ‘I believe I have heard—something.’

‘You will have heard,’ said Halliday, ‘that we’ve been engaged for some time back. We should have been married before now but for some difficulties about—about her parents and mine. Not that there was not perfect satisfaction with the connection,’ he added, with his air of importance, ‘on both sides of the house.’

‘Oh,’ said Norman. He felt himself grow red with annoyance at this intrusive fellow, whose affairs were nothing to him. He added with conscious sarcasm, ‘Let us hope it will always continue to be equally satisfactory.’

‘I hope so,’ said Halliday. ‘It could scarcely, indeed, be otherwise, seeing that Joyce was my choice in very humble circumstances, when I might well have found a partner in a different sphere. My mother’s first word was, “Andrew, you might have done better;” but Joyce’s own merits turned the scale. She is an excellent creature, Captain Bellendean, admirable in tuition. She raises an enthusiasm in the children, especially the bigger girls, which really requires quite a gift. I looked forward to the day when she should be transferred to my own parish, and work under me. Judicious guidance was all she required—just a hint here, a suggestion there—and there would not be a head-mistress in Scotland to equal her.’

‘I fear,’ said Norman, smoothing his annoyance into a laugh, ‘that Colonel Hayward will put a stop to schoolmistressing.’

‘Why, sir, why? it’s a noble office. There could not be a finer occupation, nor one in which you can serve your country better. Ladies, indeed, after marriage, when they get the cares of a family, sometimes begin to flag a little,’ said Halliday, giving a complacent look at Joyce. ‘Of course,’ he added, after a pause—and, though he did not know it, he had never been so near being kicked out of a house in his life—‘if Colonel Hayward should wish her to settle near him, there are many fine appointments to be had in England. I would not say that I should insist upon remaining here.’

‘That would be kind,’ said Captain Bellendean, with a sarcasm which was scarcely intentional. He was confounded by the composure and by the assurance of this fellow, who was so calmly persuaded of his own property in Joyce.

‘I would think it only duty,’ said Halliday; ‘but you’ll excuse me, Captain,—I think I am wanted.’ He turned with a smile towards Joyce, still awed and astonished by the sudden change in her own sentiments, who continued to stand shy and tremulous within her father’s encircling arm.

‘Joyce,’ said Andrew, ‘I am glad to see this happy conclusion; but you have not yet introduced me to the Cornel—and we can have no secrets from him now.’

The Colonel turned with astonishment and something as like hauteur as was possible to his gentle and courteous temper, to the new speaker. He looked him over from head to foot, with a dim recollection of having seen him before, and of having somehow resented his appearance even then. He resented it much more now, when this half-bred person, whose outside was not that of a gentleman, yet was not that of a labouring man, came forward claiming a place between his daughter and himself. He turned upon Andrew that mild lightning of indignant eyes which had proved so efficacious in the regiment. But Halliday was not to be intimidated by any man’s eyes. He drew still nearer with an ingratiating smile, and said again, ‘Introduce me to the Cornel, Joyce.’

Joyce had accepted Andrew Halliday’s love—as little of it as possible: because he had forced it upon her, because his talk and acquaintance with books had dazzled her, because she had found a certain protection in him from other rustic suitors. She had allowed it to be understood that some time or other she would marry him. He was the nearest to herself in position, in ambition, of any in the country-side. But she lifted her eyes to him now with a shrinking and horror which she herself could not understand. He stood between her and Captain Bellendean, contrasting himself without the smallest reluctance or sense of danger with the man whose outward semblance was more like that of a hero than any man Joyce had seen. She made in a moment the comparison which it had never occurred to Halliday to make. His under-size, his imperfect development, the absence of natural grace and refinement in him, made themselves apparent to her sharply, as if by the sting of a sudden blow. She gazed at him, the colour again flushing over her face, with a slight start of surprise and something like repugnance. He had got her promise that she would marry him, but she had never promised to present him to her unknown dream-father as his future son.

‘Who is it?’ said Colonel Hayward. He curved his eyebrows over his eyes to assist his vision, which gave him a look of displeasure; and he was displeased to see this man,—a man with whom he had some previous unpleasant association, he could not tell what,—thrusting himself in at such an inappropriate moment between his daughter and himself.

‘It is—Andrew Halliday,’ said Joyce, very low, turning her head away. Halliday held his ground very sturdily, and acknowledged this abrupt description with an ingratiating smile.

‘How do you do, Cornel?’ he said. ‘After all, she’s shy—she leaves me to introduce myself; which is not perhaps to be wondered at. We have been engaged for nearly a year. I came here to-day, knowing nothing, to try and persuade her to name the day, and put an end to a wretched bachelor’s life. But when I arrived I found everything turned upside down, and Joyce quite past giving any heed to me. I hope I may leave my cause in your hand, Cornel,’ said the schoolmaster, with the utmost absence of perception. He thought he had made a very agreeable impression, and that his affairs were, as he said, safe in the Cornel’s hands.

‘You are engaged to this—gentleman?’ Colonel Hayward said.

Joyce felt herself quail as she looked into her father’s face. She read all that was in his at a glance. Colonel Hayward was quite ignorant of Halliday, quite unaccustomed to the kind of man, unprepared for this new claim; and yet his eyes expressed the same thoughts which were in hers. A little shiver of keen sympathetic feeling ran through her. She felt herself unable to say anything. She assented with a look in which, with horror at herself, she felt the shrinking, the reluctance to acknowledge the truth, the disinclination which she had never allowed even to herself up to this time. The Colonel looked from Joyce, standing with downcast eyes and that half-visible shrinking in every line of her figure and attitude, to the commonplace man with the smirk on his countenance: and breathed once more the habitual aspiration of his life, ‘Oh that Elizabeth were here!’ But then he remembered that Elizabeth had sent him away to work it out for himself.

‘We always knew,’ said Halliday, ‘that this day would come some time, and that her real origin would be known. I have looked forward to it, Cornel. I have always done my best to help her to prepare—for any position. I am not rich,’ he added, with demonstrative frankness; ‘but among people of high tone that’s but a secondary matter, and I know you’ll find we are true partners and mates, Joyce and myself, in every other way.’

‘Sir, I am very much confused with one discovery,’ said the Colonel, hesitating and tremulous. ‘I—I—can scarcely realise yet about my daughter. Let the other stand over a little—let it wait a little—till I have got accustomed—till I know how things are—till I——’

He looked at Joyce anxiously to help him out. But for the first time in her life Joyce failed in this emergency. She stood with her eyes cast down, slightly drawn back, keeping herself isolated by an instinctive movement. She had never been in such a strait before.

‘Oh,’ said Halliday, ‘I understand. I can enter into your feelings, Cornel; and I am not afraid to wait.’ He took Joyce’s hand, which hung by her side, and clasped it close. ‘Joyce,’ he said, ‘will speak for me; Joyce will see that I am not put off too long.’

A sudden heat like a flame seemed to envelop Joyce. She withdrew her hand quickly, yet almost stealthily, and turned upon her father—her father whom she had known only for a few hours, whose claims she had at first rejected—an appealing look. Then Joyce, too, remembered herself. Truth and honour stood by Halliday’s side, though he was not of their noble strain. The flame grew hotter and hotter, enveloping her, scorching her, turning from red to the white flames of devouring fire. She turned back to her betrothed lover, scarcely seeing through eyes dazzled by that glare, and put out her hand to him as if forced by some invisible power.

CHAPTER XVI

‘Haud your tongue,’ said his wife; ‘what good will it do you to fecht and warstle with Providence? The time’s come when we maun just submit. Na, na, never heed him, Joyce. The white’s far the best. And just you step into your carriage, my bonnie lady: it’s the way I’ve aye seen you going aff in my dreams. Peter, dinna sit there like a sulky bear. Give her a kiss and your blessing, and let her go.’

A laugh of hoarse derision burst from Peter’s lips. ‘I’m a bonnie man to kiss a grand lady! I never was ane for thae showings-off. If she maun go, she will hae to go, and there is an end o’t. Farewell to ye, Joyce!’

He got up hastily from his seat at the door. The footman outside and the coachman on the box, keenly observant both, looked on—and Peter knew their fathers and mothers, and was aware that any word he said would be public property next day. He gave himself a shake, and pulled his bonnet over his eyes, but did not stride away as he had done before. He stood leaning his back against the wall, his face half buried in the old coat-collar which rose to his ears when he bent his head, and in the shadow of his bonnet and the forest of his beard. It was Janet, in her quavering voice, who gave the blessing, putting up two hard hands, and drawing them over Joyce’s brown satin hair and soft cheeks: ’"The Lord bless thee and keep thee: the Lord lift up the light o’ His countenance upon thee.” Gang away, gang away! It will maybe no’ be sae hard when you’re out o’ our sight.’

The horses seemed to make but one bound, the air to fill with the sound of hoofs and wheels, and Joyce found herself beginning again to perceive the daylight through her blinding tears. And her heart, too, gave a bound, involuntary, unwilling. It was not so hard when they were out of sight, and the new world so full of expectation, of curiosity, of the unknown, opened before her in a minute. Joyce in her white dress, in the Bellendean carriage driving up the avenue to dinner, with her father waiting at the other end to receive her, was and could be Joyce Matheson no more. All that she knew and was familiar with departed from her like the rolling up of a map, like the visions of a dream.

There was, however, so much consciousness, so much curiosity, so many comments made upon Joyce and her story, that the strange witching scene of the dinner-table—a thing of enchantment to the girl, with its wonderful flowers and fine company—was for the other guests somewhat embarrassing and uncomfortable. Strangely enough Joyce was almost the only one at table who was unaffected by this feeling. To her there was something symbolical in the novelty which fitted in with all her dreams and hopes. The flowers, the pretty dresses, the glitter and show of the white table with its silver and porcelain, the conversation, a dozen different threads going on at once, the aspect of the smiling faces as they turned to each other,—all carried out her expectations. It seemed to Joyce, sitting almost silent, full of the keenest observation, that the meal, the vulgar eating and drinking, was so small a part of it. She could not hear what everybody was saying, nor was she, in the excitement and confusion of her mind, very capable of understanding the rapid interchange of words, so many people talking together; but it represented to her the feast of reason and the flow of soul better than the most brilliant company in the world, more distinctly heard and understood, could have done. She was not disappointed. Joyce knew by the novels she had read that in such circumstances as hers the newcomer full of expectation generally was disappointed, and found that, seen close, the finest company was no better than the humblest. Her imagination had rebelled against that discomfiting discovery even when she read of it; and now it was with great elation that she felt she had been right all through and the novels wrong. She was not disappointed. The food and the eating were quite secondary, as they ought to be. When she looked along the table, it was to see smiling faces raised in pleasure at something that had been said, or saying something with the little triumphant air of successful argument or happy wit, or listening with grave attention, assenting, objecting, as the case might be. She did not know what they were saying, but she was convinced that it was all beautiful, clever, witty, true conversation, the food for which her spirit had hungered. She had no desire for the moment to enter into it herself. She was dazzled by all the prettiness and brightness, moved to the heart by that sensation of having found what she longed for, and at last obtained entrance into the world to which she truly belonged. She smiled when she met Mrs. Bellendean’s eye, and answered slightly at random when she was spoken to. She was by her father’s side, and he did not speak to her much. She was kindly left with her impressions, to accustom herself gradually to the new scene. And she was entirely satisfied, elated, afloat in an ethereal atmosphere of contentment and pleasure. Her dreams, she thought, were all realised.

But next morning the old life came back with more force than ever. Joyce went over and over the scene of the evening. ‘Gang away, gang away! It will maybe no’ be sae hard when you’re out o’ our sight.’ Her foster-parents had thrust her from them, not meaning to see her again; and though her heart was all aching and bleeding, she did not know what to do, whether to attempt a second parting, whether to be content that the worst was over. She made the compromise which tender-hearted people are so apt to do. She got up very early, following her old habit with a curious sense of its unusualness and unnecessariness—to use two awkward words—and ran down all the way to the village through the dewy grass. But early as she was, she was not early enough for Peter, whom she saw in the distance striding along with his long, heavy tread, his head bowed, his bonnet drawn over his brows, a something of dreary abandon about him which went to Joyce’s heart. He was going through a field of corn which was already high, and left his head and shoulders alone visible as he trudged away to his work—the sun beating upon the rugged head under its broad blue bonnet, the heavy old shoulders slouched, the long step undulating, making his figure fall and rise almost like a ship at sea. The corn was ‘in the flower,’ still green, and rustled in the morning air; a few red poppies blazed like a fringe among the sparse stalks near the pathway; the sky was very clear in the grey blue of northern skies under summer heat; but the old man, she was sure, saw nothing as he jogged onward heavy-hearted. Joyce dared not call to him, dared not follow him. With a natural pang she stood and watched the old father bereaved going out to his work. Perhaps it would console him a little: she for whom he sorrowed could do so no more.

But Joyce had not the same awe of Janet. Is it perhaps that there is even in the anguish of the affections a certain luxury for a woman which is not for the man? She ran along the vacant sunny village street, and pushed open the half-closed door, and flung herself upon the old woman’s neck, who received her with a shriek of joy. Perhaps it crossed Janet’s mind for a moment that her child had come back, that she had discovered already that all these fine folk were not to be lippened to; but the feeling, though ecstatic, was but momentary, and would indeed have been sternly opposed by her own better sense had it been true.

‘Eh, and it’s you!’ she cried, seizing Joyce by the shoulders, gazing into her face.

‘It is me, granny. For all you said last night that I was better out of your sight, I could not. I could not go—without seeing you again.’

‘Did I say that?—the Lord forgive me! But it’s just true. I’ll be better when you’re clean gane; but eh! I am glad, glad. Joyce—my bonnie woman, did ye see him?’

‘Oh, granny, I saw him going across the big cornfield. Tell him I stood and watched him with his head down on his breast—but I daredna lift my voice. Tell him Joyce will never forget—the green corn and the hot sun, and him—alone.’

‘What would hinder him to be his lane at six o’clock in the morning?’ said Janet, with a tearful smile. ‘You never gaed wi’ him to his work, ye foolish bairn. If he had left ye sleeping sound in your wee garret, would he have been less his lane? Ay, ay, I ken weel what you mean; I ken what you mean. Well, it just had to be; we maunna complain. Run away, my dawtie: run away, my bonnie lady—ye’ll write when ye get there; but though it’s a hard thing to say, it’ll be the best thing for us a’ when you’re just clean gane.’

Two or three hours afterwards, Joyce found herself, all the little confusion of the start over, seated in the seclusion of the railway carriage, with the father and mother who were henceforward to dispose of her life.

She had seen very little of them up to this moment. Colonel Hayward, indeed, had kept by her during the evening, patting her softly on her arm from time to time, taking her hand, looking at her with very tender eyes, listening, when she opened her mouth at rare intervals, with the kind of pleased, half-alarmed look with which an anxious parent listens to the utterances of a child. He was very, very kind—more than kind. Joyce had become aware, she could scarcely tell how, that the other people sometimes smiled a little at the Colonel—a discovery which awoke the profoundest indignation in her mind; but she already began half to perceive his little uncertainties, his difficulty in forming his own opinion, the curious helplessness which made it apparent that this distinguished soldier required to be taken care of, and more or less guided in the way he had to go. But she had done nothing towards making acquaintance with Mrs. Hayward, whose relation to her was so much less distinct, and upon whom so much of her comfort must depend. This lady sat in the corner of the carriage next the window, with her back to the engine, very square and firm—a far more difficult study for her new companion than her husband was. She had not shown by look or word any hostility towards Joyce; but still a sentiment of antagonism had, in some subtle way, risen between them. With the exclusiveness common to English travellers, they had secured the compartment in which they sat for themselves alone; so that the three were here shut up for the day in the very closest contact, to shake together as they might. Joyce sat exactly opposite to her step-mother, whilst the Colonel, who had brought in with him a sheaf of newspapers, changed about from side to side as the view, or the locomotion, or his own restlessness required. He distributed his papers to all the party, thrusting a Graphic into Joyce’s hands, and heaping the remainder upon the seat. Mrs. Hayward took up the Scotsman which he had given her, and looked at it contemptuously. ‘What is it?’ she said, holding it between her finger and her thumb. ‘You know I don’t care for anything, Henry, but the Times or the Morning Post.’

‘You can have yesterday’s Times, my dear,’ said the Colonel; ‘but you know we are four hundred miles from London. We must be content with the papers of the place. There are all the telegrams just the same—and very clever articles, I hear.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to read Scotch articles,’ said Mrs. Hayward. She meant no harm. She was a little out of temper, out of heart. To say something sharp was a kind of relief to her; she did not think it would hurt any one, nor did she mean to do so. But Joyce grew red behind her Graphic. She looked at the pictures with eyes which were hot and dry with the great desire she had to shed the tears which seemed to be gathering in them. Now that Bellendean was left behind like a dream, now that the familiar fields were all out of sight, the village roofs disappeared for ever, and she, Joyce, not Joyce any longer, nor anything she knew, shut up here as in a strait little house with the people,—the people to whom she belonged,—a wild and secret anguish took possession of her. She sat quite still with the paper held before her face, trying to restrain and subdue herself. She felt that if the train would but stop, she would dart out and fly and lose herself in the crowd; and then she thought, with what seemed to her a new comprehension, of her mother who had done so—who had fled and been lost. Her poor young mother, a girl like herself! This thought, however, calmed Joyce; for if her mother had but been patient, the misery she was at present enduring need never have been. Had the first Joyce but subdued herself and restrained her hasty impulses, the second Joyce might have been a happy daughter, knowing her father and loving him, instead of the unhappy, uneasy creature she was, with her heart and her life torn in two. She paused with a kind of awe when that thought came into her mind. Her mother had entailed upon her the penalty of her hastiness, of her impatience and passion. She had paid the cost herself, but not all the cost—she had left the rest to be borne by her child. The costs of every foolish thing have to be borne, Joyce said to herself. Some one must drink out that cup to the dregs; it cannot pass away until it has been emptied by one or another. No; however tempting the crowd might be in which she could disappear, however many the stations at which she could escape, she would not take that step. She would not postpone the pang. She would bear it now, however it hurt her; for one time or another it would have to be borne.

The conversation went on all the same, as if none of these thoughts were passing through the troubled brain of Joyce,—and she was conscious of it, acutely yet dully, as if it had been written upon the paper which she held before her face.

‘You must not speak in that tone, my dear, of Scotch articles—before Joyce,’ the Colonel said. ‘I have never found that they liked it, however philosophical they might be——’

‘Does Joyce count herself Scotch?’ Mrs. Hayward asked, as if speaking from a distance.

‘Do you hear your mother, my dear, asking if you call yourself Scotch?’ he said.

Both Joyce and Mrs. Hayward winced at the name. There was nothing to call for its use, and neither of them intended to pick it up out of the oblivion of the past, or the still more effectual mystery of the might have been, to force it into their lives. But Joyce could not take notice of it: she could only reply to his question with a little exaggerated warmth— ‘I have never been out of Scotland, and all I care for has been always there. How could I call myself anything else?’

It was not very long since Peter had accused her of ‘standing up for the English.’ That had been partially true, and so was this. She thought of it with almost a laugh of ridicule at herself. Now she felt Scotch to the tips of her fingers, resenting everything that was said or hinted against her foster-country.

‘I see I must mind my p’s and q’s,’ said Mrs. Hayward; ‘but, fortunately, there will be no means of getting the Scotsman in Richmond, so we shall be exempt from that.’

There was something in Mrs. Hayward’s tone which seemed to imply that other subjects of quarrel would not be wanting, and there was a little smile on her lips which gave further meaning to what she said, or seemed to do so; though, as a matter of fact, poor Mrs. Hayward had no meaning at all, but could not, though she tried, get rid of that little bit of temper which had sprung up all lively and keen at sight of the Colonel’s solicitude about his daughter and her ‘things’—a solicitude which was quite new and unaccustomed, for he was not in the habit of thinking of any one’s ‘things,’ but rather, whenever he could, of losing his own. Among Joyce’s small baggage there was one little shabby old-fashioned box—a box which Mrs. Hayward divined at the first glance must contain the little relics of the mother, of itself a pitiful little object enough. There had not been a word said on the subject, but the Colonel had been startled by the sight of it. He had recognised it, or imagined that he recognised it, she said to herself severely, and had himself seen it put in the van, with a care which he had never taken for anything of hers. It was only a trifle, but it touched one of those chords that are ready to jar in the wayward human instrument of which the best of men and women have so little control. She could not get that jarring chord to be still; it vibrated all through her, giving an acrid tone to her voice, and something disagreeable to the smile that came, she could not tell how, to her lip. All these vibrations were hateful to her, as well as to the hapless antagonist who noted and divined them with quick responding indignation. But Mrs. Hayward could not help it, any more than she could help Joyce perceiving it. The close vicinity into which this little prison of a railway carriage brought them, so that not a tone or a look could be missed, was intolerable to the elder woman too. But she knew very well that she could not run away.

CHAPTER XVII

Mrs. Hayward was as proud of the house as the Colonel was of the garden. After India it cannot be described how delightful it was to them, both very insular people, to get back to the greenness and comfort of this English home; and they both watched for the effect it would have upon Joyce, with highly raised expectations. To bring a girl out of a Scotch cottage to such a place as this, to open to her all at once, from Peter Matheson’s kitchen, in which the broth was made and the oatcakes baked, the glories of that drawing-room, which Mrs. Hayward could scarcely leave to be tended by a mere housemaid, which she herself pervaded every morning, giving loving touches everywhere, arranging draperies, altering the positions of the furniture, laying out those lovely pieces of oriental stuff and Indian embroideries which, always put carefully away at night, adorned the sofas and chairs. Though she did not love ‘the girl’ she yet looked forward to the moment when all this splendour should dawn upon Joyce, with a feeling half sympathetic, realising the awe and admiration with which for the first time her untutored eyes must contemplate the beautiful room, and all the luxury of the place, which to her must look like splendour. Mrs. Hayward did not pretend that it was splendid—‘our little place’ she called it, with proud humility; but she knew that it was more perfect than anything about, and in itself without comparison, a sight to see. That Joyce would be dazzled, almost overwhelmed, by her sudden introduction into such a home, she had no manner of doubt. And this anticipation softened her, and gave her a certain interest in Joyce. She talked to her husband at night, after their arrival, about his daughter in a more friendly tone than she had yet employed.

‘I thought of giving her the little west room for herself. She will want a place to herself to be untidy in—all girls do: a place where she can keep her work—if she works—or her books: or—whatever she is fond of.’ Mrs. Hayward had a distinct vision in her eye of a little old-fashioned box—the ark of the relics which the Colonel had recognised—and made up her mind that it should be at once endued with a chintz cover, so that it might be recognisable no more.

‘There is nobody like you, Elizabeth, for kind thoughts,’ he said gratefully. Then with the same expectation that had softened her, he went on— ‘She has never been used to anything of the kind. I shouldn’t wonder if it was too much for her feelings—for she feels strongly, or else I am mistaken; and she is a girl who—if you once bind her to you by love and kindness——’ The Colonel’s own voice quivered a little. He was himself touched by that thought.

‘Don’t speak nonsense, Henry—we know nothing about the girl, neither you nor I. The thing in her favour is, that all those Scotch friends of yours thought very well of her: but then the Scotch stick to each other so——’ She has a spirit—and a temper too, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘No, my dear, it was only a flash, because she thought—because she was taken by surprise.’

‘I think none the worse of her for having a little temper; I have one myself,’ said Mrs. Hayward with candour. ‘People like that are far safer than the sweet yielding ones who show nothing. And another thing—we shall have to account for her. I don’t know if you have thought of that.’

‘Account for her?’

‘Yes, to be sure. People will be calling—and they will wonder how it was they never heard of your daughter before. One of the hardest things in life is, that whenever you are in any society you must explain. That was one advantage of being in none.’

‘I never liked it, Elizabeth. I always thought you were too particular—as the event has proved, my dear, as the event has proved!’

Mrs. Hayward withdrew a little from him and his congratulations. Now that her position was beyond question, she was unwilling in her impatient soul that any reference should be made to the doubt which had shadowed her life before. That was all over. She would have had it forgotten for ever, and in her heart resented his recollection of it. She resumed the previous subject without taking any notice of this.

‘Fortunately, we don’t know the people here so well that we need go into it from the beginning and tell everything. I have been thinking it over, and this is what I shall say—I shall say, Your daughter has been brought up by some old relations in Scotland, but that we both felt it was time she should come home. If they say, “O! we did not know Colonel Hayward had any family,” I shall answer, “Did I never tell you?” as if it had been quite an accidental oversight. Now don’t go and contradict me, Henry, and say more than there is any occasion for. Let us both be in one tale.’

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘to think that you should have settled all that while I was thinking about nothing; but why should we be in a tale at all? Why shouldn’t I just say simply——’

‘It is such a simple story, isn’t it?’ she cried, ‘that you should have had a child—an only child, as you said in Bellendean——’

There was a tone of exasperation in this which made Colonel Hayward look up. He said, ‘But it was quite true, Elizabeth. Providence has not thought meet to give us——’

‘As if I did not know that!’ cried the woman whom Providence—that synonym of all that goes against the wishes of humanity—had not permitted to be a mother. ‘But,’ she added quickly, taking up the thread again, ‘you will see, if you think of it, that we can’t go into all that story. There would be so much to explain. And besides, it’s nobody’s business.’

‘Then why say anything at all, my dear?’ the Colonel said.

‘Why know anybody at all, you mean? As if we could avoid explaining a thing which is a very strange thing, however you take it! Unless you have anything better to suggest, that is what I shall say. Brought up by some old relations in Scotland—you can say her mother’s relations if you please; but that we felt it was not right to leave her there any longer, now we are quite settled and she is grown up. Don’t contradict me just when I am in the middle of my story, Henry. Back me up about the relations—unless you have anything better to suggest.’

Colonel Hayward, however, had nothing to suggest, though he was much embarrassed by having a story to tell. ‘I’ll forget what it is you want me to say—or I’ll go too far—or I’ll—make a muddle of it one way or other,’ he said. ‘I shall feel as if there was something wrong about it, Elizabeth: and there is nothing wrong—nothing, nothing! all the time.’

‘Go to bed,’ said Mrs. Hayward; ‘you are too tired to begin to think at this hour. You know the railway always upsets you. Go to bed, my dear—go to bed.’

‘Well, perhaps it will be the best thing,’ the Colonel said.

They both got up next morning with one pleasant thought in their minds, that of dazzling Joyce. It took away the line even from Mrs. Hayward’s brow. It was pleasant to anticipate the astonishment, the admiration, the deep impression which all these unaccustomed splendours would make. Poor girl! it would be almost too much for her; and they both wondered what she would say—whether she would break down altogether in amazement and rapture—whether it would be by words or tears that she would show her sense of this wonderful change in her life.

Alas! Joyce had awoke with a pang of disappointment almost as keen as that which seized her when she was first told that Colonel Hayward was her father. She woke in a pretty room all dainty and fresh, with pretty paper, pretty furniture, everything that was most suitable and becoming for the character and dimensions of the place; and she hurried to the window and looked out eagerly upon the pretty English lawn so trim and well cared for, the trees that formed two long lines down to the river, shutting it out from other enclosures on either side, the brilliant flower-beds near the house, the clustering climbers that surrounded her window. And the cottage girl felt her high-vaulting thoughts go down, down, with a disappointment which made her giddy. Was ever anything so foolish, so wicked, so thankless? From the little garret in the cottage to this room filled with convenient and pretty things, of some of which she did not even understand the use—from the village street of Bellendean, seen through the open door or greenish bad glass of the cottage windows, to this warm luxurious landscape, and the silver Thames, and the noble trees! And yet Joyce was disappointed beyond what words could say.

She had no knowledge of this limited comfortable luxurious littleness; all that she knew was the cottage life—and Bellendean. There were, to be sure, the farmers’ houses, and the manse; but neither of these types resembled this, nor was either consistent with the image of Colonel Hayward, the Captain’s colonel, the ‘distinguished soldier’ with whose name Joyce had begun to flatter herself everybody was acquainted. She stood half dressed and gazed out upon the long but confined stretch of lawn, and the low gable which was within sight from the window, with dismay. A chill struck to her heart. She thought of Bellendean, not half so daintily cared for as this little demesne, with its groups of great trees, its wide stretches of park, its careless size and greatness. Poor Joyce! had she been the minister’s daughter at the manse, she might have been dazzled and delighted, as was expected from her. But she understood nothing of this. She knew the poor and their ways, and she knew the great people—the great houses and big parks, the cottages with a but and a ben and a little kailyard. The one was all-familiar to her—the other was her ideal, the natural alternative of poverty: but this she knew nothing about—nothing at all.

She did not understand it. The toil and care which made that lawn like velvet, perfect, without a weed, elastic, springing under the foot, soft as moss, and green as constant waterings and mowings could make it, was totally lost upon Joyce. She saw the two lines of trees and flowering shrubs, elaborately masking all more arbitrary lines of limitation on each side, shutting it off—and the sight of those green bonds made her heart turn back upon herself. Her father had recovered in her mind the greatness necessary for her ideal: he was a distinguished soldier—what could be better? He was finer in his fame (she said to herself) than if he had been a prince or a duke. But his house! She retired from her window and covered her face with her hands, and went back into the secret citadel of herself with a dismayed heart. She had never calculated upon this. To be just one among a crowd, to be nobody in particular, to have suffered this convulsion in her life and rending asunder of her being, for nothing—to be nobody. And all the time these two good people were forestalling each other in their anticipations, making pictures to themselves of Joyce’s transport and delight!

How she got through the ordeal will be best seen in the long letters which she wrote that evening to her old home.

‘My dearest old Granny, my own real true Mother—I wonder how you are, and how the day has passed, and how grandfather is, and even the cat, and everything at home. Oh what a thing it is to go away from your home, to be taken from the true place you belong to! You will never know how I felt when it all melted away into the sky, and Bellendean was a thing I could see no more. Oh my bonnie little Bellendean, where I’ve lived all my life, and the old ash-tree, and the rose-bushes, and my garret-window where I could see the Firth, and our kindly table where we ate our porridge and where I could see you! O Granny, my own Granny, that’s all gone away into the skies, and the place that has known me knows me no more: and here I am in a strange place, and I cannot tell whether I’m Joyce still, or if I’m like the woman in the old song, “and this is no’ me.”

‘Dear Granny, the journey was well enough: it was the best of all. I got a paper full of pictures (the Graphic, you know it), and they just talked their own talks, and did not ask me much: and then the country span along past the carriage-window, towns and castles, and rivers, and fields of corn, and all the people going about their business and knowing nothing at all of a poor lassie carried quick, quick away from her home. I pictured to myself that I might be going away for a governess to make some money for my grandfather and you—but that would not have been so bad, for I would have gone back again when I got the money: and then I tried to think I might be going to take care of somebody, perhaps a brother I might have had that was ill, and that you would be anxious at home—very anxious—but not like the present: for he would have begun to get better as soon as I was there to nurse him, and every day the time would have come nearer for taking him home. And I tried a great many other things, but none was bad enough—till I just came back to the truth, that here I was flying far away to a new life and a new name, and to try and be content and live with new people that I never saw, and leave all my own behind. Oh, Granny, I am ungrateful to say this, for they’re very good to me, and my father is kind and sweet and a real true gentleman: and would be that, as grandfather is, if he were a ploughman like grandfather: and what could you say more if you were Shakespeare’s self and had all the words in the world at your command?

‘We stopped in London, but I could not see at all what like it was, except just hundreds of railway lines all running into each other, and trains running this way and that way as if they were mad—but never any harm seemed to be done, so far as I could see: and then we took another train, and, after a little while, came here. To tell you about it is very difficult, for it is so different from anything that ever was before. Do you remember, Granny, the place where Argyle took Jeanie Deans after she had spoken to the Queen? where she said it would be fine feeding for the cows, and he just laughed—for it was the finest view and the most beautiful landscape, with the Thames running between green banks and big beautiful trees, and boats upon the river, and the woods all like billows of green leaves upon the brae? You will cry out when I tell you that this is here, and that the house is on that very brae, and that I’m looking out over the river, and see it running into the mist and the distance, going away north—or rather coming down from the north—where my heart can follow, but farther, farther away. And it is a very beautiful landscape: you never saw anything to compare to it; but oh, Granny, I never knew so well before what Sir Walter is and how he knew the hearts of men, for I’m always thinking what Jeanie said, “I like just as well to look at the craigs o’ Arthur Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them.” For me, I think of Bellendean and the Firth, and the hills drawing close round Queen Margaret’s Hope; but chiefly because you are there, Granny, and all I care for most.

‘I will tell you one thing: my father’s house is not, as we were fond to think, like Bellendean. The houses here are not great houses like that. I think they wonder I am not an enthusiast, as Mrs. Bellendean always said I was, for the things they have here. All the policy,[A] and everything in the house, is taken care of—as you used to take care of me. I can’t think of any other image. They are always at them. Mrs. Hayward puts on the things upon the chairs and the tables with her own hands. The things I mean are pieces of beautiful silk, sometimes woven in flowers like Mrs. Bellendean’s grandest gown, sometimes all worked with the needle as they do in India, fine, fine. I would like to copy some of them: but what would be the use? for they have them all from India itself, and what I did would be but an imitation. I am afraid to sit down upon the chairs for fear there should be some dust upon my gown, and I think I ought to take off my shoes before I go upon the carpet. You would like to go round and round as if you were in a collection, and look at everything. It will sometimes be ivory carving, and sometimes china that is very old and precious, and sometimes embroidery work, and sometimes silk with gold and silver woven in. And what you will laugh at, Granny, Mrs. Hayward has plates hung up instead of pictures—china plates like what you eat your dinner from, only painted in beautiful colours—and an ashet[B] she has which is blue, and very like what we have at home. All these things are very pretty—very pretty: but not to me like a room to live in. Of the three—this house, and Bellendean, and our own little housie at home—I would rather, of course, have Bellendean, I will not deny it, Granny; but next I would rather have our own little place, with my table at the back window, and you aye moving about whatever there was to do. They are more natural; but I try to look delighted with everything, for to Mrs. Hayward it is the apple of her eye.