Joyce

‘She has never had any children.

‘My father is just as fond of his policy and his gardens—(but it’s too little for a policy, and it’s more than a garden). The gardeners are never done. They are mowing, or they are watering, or they are sweeping, or they are weeding, all the long day. And it’s all very bonnie—very bonnie—grass that is like velvet, and rose-bushes not like our roses at home, but upon a long stalk, what they call standards, and trees and flowers of kinds that I cannot name. I will find out about them and I will tell you after. But oh, Granny, the grand trees are like a hedge to a field; they are separating us from the garden next door. It is very, very strange—you could not think how strange—to be in a fine place that is not a place at all, but just a house with houses next door—not like Bellendean, oh, not like Bellendean—and not like any kind of dwelling I have seen, so pretty and so well kept, and yet neither one thing nor another, not poor like us—oh, far from that!—and yet not great. I am praising it all, and saying everything I can think—and indeed it’s very pretty, far finer than anything I ever saw: but I think she sees that I am not doing it from my heart. I wish I could; but oh, Granny dear, how can I think so much of any place that takes me away from my real home?

She wrote at the same time her first letter to Halliday, lingering with the pen in her hand as if unwilling to begin. She was a little excited by what she had just written, her outpouring of her heart to her foster-mother. And this was different. But at last she made the plunge. She dried her eyes, and gave herself a little shake together, as if to dismiss the lingering emotion, and began, ‘Dear Andrew’; but then came to another pause. What was in Joyce’s thoughts? There was a spot of ink on the page, an innocent little blot. She removed the sheet hastily from the other paper, and thrust it below the leaves of her blotting-book. Then she took a steel pen, instead of the quill with which she had been hurrying along the other sheets—a good hard, unemotional piece of iron, which might make the clean and exact writing which the schoolmaster loved—and began again: and this time a little demure mischief was in Joyce’s eyes:—

Joyce Hayward—it was the first time she had signed her name. Her eyes were too full thinking of the old people to see how it looked, but when that lump had melted a little in her throat, and she had dried her eyes, turning hastily aside that no drop might fall upon the fair page and blot the nice and careful writing, Joyce looked at it, and again there came upon her face a faint little smile. Joyce Hayward—it did not look amiss. And it was a beautifully written letter, not a t but was crossed, not an i but was dotted. She had resisted all temptations to abridge the ‘affectionately.’ There it stood, fully written out in all its long syllables. That would please Andrew. When she had put up her letters, she rose from her seat and looked out once more, softly pushing aside the carefully drawn curtains, upon the landscape sleeping in the soft summer haze of starlight and night. All so still—no whisper of the sea near, no thrill of the north wind—a serene motionless stretch of lawn and river and shadowy trees. It was a lovely scene, but it saddened Joyce, who felt the soft dusk fill her soul and fold over all her life. And thus ended her first day in her father’s house.

CHAPTER XVIII

Her father had met her coming downstairs with her arms full of the books, and had stopped to take them from her with a shocked look, and insisted on carrying them down for her. ‘But why didn’t you ring for somebody to do it, my dear?’ he said. ‘They are not heavy,’ said Joyce; ‘they are no trouble,—and I always do things for myself.’ ‘But you must not here,’ Colonel Hayward said, putting them down on the table, and pausing a moment to brush off with his handkerchief the little stains of dust which they had left on his irreproachable coat. Joyce felt that little movement with another keen sensation of inappropriateness. It was not right, because she was unaccustomed to being served by others, that Colonel Hayward, a distinguished soldier, should get specks of dust on his coat. A hot blush enveloped her like a flame, while she stood looking at him, not knowing whether to say anything, whether to try to express the distress and bewilderment that filled her being, or if it would be better to be silent and mutely avoid such an occurrence again.

He looked up at her when he had brushed away the last speck, and smiled. ‘Books will gather dust,’ he said. ‘Don’t look as if you were to blame, my dear. But you must remember, Joyce, you are the young lady of the house, and everything in it is at your command.’ He patted her shoulder, with a very kind encouraging look, as he went away. It was a large assurance to give, and probably Mrs. Hayward would not have said quite so much; but it left Joyce in a state of indescribable emotion, her heart deeply touched, but her mind distracted with the impossibilities of her new position. How was she to know what to do? To avoid giving trouble, to save herself, was not the rule she could abide by when it ended in specking with dust the Colonel’s coat, and bringing him out of his own occupations to help her. Joyce sat down when she had arranged her books, and tried to thread her way through all this maze which bewildered her. She had nothing to do, and she thought she was intended to spend her life here, to sit alone and occupy herself. It was very kindly meant, she was sure, so as to leave her at her ease; and she was glad to have this refuge, not to be always in Mrs. Hayward’s way, sitting stiffly in the drawing-room waiting to be spoken to. Oh yes; she was glad to be here: yet she looked about the room with eyes a little forlorn.

It was a nice little room, with a large window looking out upon the flower-garden, and it was, so far as Joyce knew, very prettily furnished, but without the luxuries and decorations of the other rooms. There were no pictures, but a little standing frame or two on the mantelpiece, no doubt intended for those endless photographs of friends which she had seen in Greta’s room at Bellendean, always the first things taken out of her boxes when her belongings were unpacked. But Joyce had few friends. She had a little rude picture on glass, shut up in a little case, of old Peter and Janet, the old woman in her big bonnet and shawl, her husband, all one broad smile, looking over her shoulder—very dear to Joyce, but not to be exposed on the mantelpiece for Mrs. Hayward’s quick look of criticism. Joyce felt that Greta in a moment would make that room her own. She would bring down her photographs; she would throw down her work, which never was done, with all the pretty silks about. She would spread out her paper and her pens, and the letters she had received and those she had begun to write, upon the table where Joyce’s big old blotting-book lay, and the rosewood desk, closed and looking like an ugly oblong box as it was—long, bare, and miserable; but none of all these things could Joyce do. She had no work, and no photographs of her friends, and no letters, and nothing to do—nothing to do! And was this how she was to spend her life?

She sat there until the bell rang for lunch, saying to herself that it was far better than being in the drawing-room in Mrs. Hayward’s way; and then she went timidly out into the hall, where her father was standing, just come in from some supervision in the garden. ‘I have had a busy morning,’ he said, beaming upon her, ‘and so I suppose have you, my dear; but we’ll soon settle down. Mrs. Hayward——’ here he paused with a little uneasiness, and after a moment resumed—‘your mother—has been very busy too. There is always a great deal to do after one has been away.’

‘Considering that I was only away four days,’ said Mrs. Hayward, coming in from the other side, and leading the way to the dining-room. Joyce could not help feeling stiff and awkward as she followed, and hastily got into her seat before the butler could come behind and push forward the chair. She was a little afraid of him hovering behind, and wondered if he knew.

‘I hope you like your room,’ Mrs. Hayward said. ‘It is small, but I think it is nice; and, Baker, remember to let down the sun-blinds before the afternoon sun gets in. Miss Hayward will not like to find it all in a blaze. That is the worst of a western aspect. Henry, some invitations have come——’

‘Ah!’ said the Colonel, ‘we have more to consider now than we used to have, Elizabeth. There is Joyce to be thought of——’

‘Oh,’ Joyce cried, growing very red, ‘I hope you will not think of me!’

‘For some things, of course, we must consider her, Henry,’ said Mrs. Hayward, taking no notice of Joyce’s hurried exclamation. ‘There are nothing but garden-parties all about, and she must go to some of them. It will be the best way of making her known.’

‘You always think of the right thing, my dear,’ the Colonel said.

‘But when it is for dinner, Henry, until people know her, Joyce will not mind, she will stay at home.’

‘I wish,’ said Joyce, with a horrified alarm—‘oh, I wish you would never think of me! I would not like—I could not think, I—I would be afraid to go to parties—I——’

‘My dear,’ said Colonel Hayward, ‘perhaps there may be—dressmakers to think of—or something of that sort.’

‘I think you may trust me to look after that,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with a glance at Baker, who was listening with benignant interest. Joyce had a keen enough feminine sense to know that Baker was not to be taken into the confidence of the family; and accordingly she made no further interruption, but allowed the conversation to go on without attempting to take any part in it. She heard them discuss names which were without any meaning to her, and kept shyly, and, as she felt, stiffly still, endeavouring with all her might to look as if she knew nothing at all about it, as if it did not at all refer to her—which went sadly against her with her step-mother, who was eagerly on the outlook for indications of character, and to whom Joyce’s apparent indifference was an offence—though she would probably have been equally offended had the girl shown too much interest. When Baker left the room, Mrs. Hayward turned to her again.

‘The Colonel was quite right,’ she said; ‘though I didn’t wish to discuss it before the servants. You must want some dresses. You are very nice as you are for indoors, but there is a great deal of dress now worn at garden-parties. And what is called a simple toilet is just the most troublesome of all. For it has to be so fresh and so perfect, not a crumpled ribbon, not a fold out of order. You must go with me to choose some patterns.’

Joyce coloured high again. She felt offended, proud—and yet knew she had no right to be either. ‘If I may speak,’ she said, ‘I never thought of parties. I would perhaps not know—how to behave. Oh, if you will be so kind as never to mind me! I will stay at home.’

Colonel Hayward put out his hand with his tender smile, and patted hers where it touched the table. ‘You will behave prettier—than any of them,’ the old soldier said.

‘Oh, don’t put nonsense in the girl’s head, Henry!’ cried his wife with impatience. ‘You may very likely be wanting a little, Joyce. You may feel awkward: it would be quite natural. The only thing is, you must begin some time—and the best way is to get your awkwardness over as soon as possible. Afternoon parties are more informal than dances, and so forth. They don’t demand so much, and you could pass in the crowd.’

Though Joyce had been frightened at the idea of parties, and though it was her own suggestion that she would not know how to behave, she did not like this. It sent the blood coursing through her veins. To pass in a crowd—to be tolerated where much was not demanded! How different was this from the old dreams in which Lady Joyce had been supreme! But these were but dreams, and she was ashamed to have ever been so vain. She stole away, while they stood in the hall discussing this question, with a sense of humiliation unspeakable, and retreated so quickly that her disappearance was not remarked, back to the west room once more. She shut the door upon herself, and said half aloud in the silence and solitude, how good a thing it was that they had given her this room of her own in which she could take shelter, and be in nobody’s way: and then for want of anything else to do, she fell suddenly, without warning, into a long fit of crying, tears irrestrainable, silent, overwhelming, that seemed as if they would carry her away.

Poor Joyce felt that her fate was harder than she could bear—to be carried away from her homely state, in which she had been accustomed to something of the ideal eminence of her dreams, into this, which was supposed by everybody to be social elevation, and was humiliation, downfall—a fall into depths which she had never realised, which had never seemed possible for her. She cried like a child, feeling no power, nor indeed any wish, to stop crying, in a hopeless self-abandonment. Altogether, she was like a child, feeling herself lost, undervalued, neglected, and as if all the rest of the world were happy and in their natural places, while she was left here in a little room by herself all alone. And to add to the humiliation, Baker came in, soft, stepping like a large noiseless black cat, to put down the blinds, as his mistress had told him, and found her in the midst of that speechless torrent of weeping, unable to stop herself or to keep up appearances in any way. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Hayward,’ Baker said, in subdued apology, shot with a glance of eager curiosity and inquisitiveness: for he wanted very much to know something about this daughter who had appeared so suddenly, and of whom no one had ever heard before. Joyce started up to her feet, and hurrying to the bookcase, took out all the books again in order to give herself a countenance. She turned her back upon him, but he could see very well the quivering of her shoulders, which all her pride and dismay at having betrayed herself could not stop.

This curious state of affairs continued for two or three days. Joyce withdrew to her room when the meals were over, at which she was nervously on the watch for anything that might be said concerning her and her mode of existence. It was the third or fourth day before anything was said. Then Mrs. Hayward stopped her as she was stealing away, and laid a hand upon her shoulder. ‘Joyce, wait for a moment; let me speak to you. I am not going to interfere with what you wish: but do you really like best to spend all your time alone?’

‘I thought,’ said Joyce, with a choking voice, for her heart had suddenly begun to thump so in her throat that she could scarcely hear,— ‘I thought—that I was to stay there: that perhaps you thought it best.’

‘How could you think I was such a barbarous wretch! Joyce, if you mean to make life a fight——’

The girl opened her eyes wide with wonder and dismay.

‘That is not what you meant to say, Elizabeth,’ said the Colonel, coming up to them: his wife had thought he was out of the way, and made a little gesture of impatience on seeing him.

‘Don’t interfere, for heaven’s sake, Henry! unless you will manage affairs yourself, which would be much the best way. You make things much more difficult for me, as perhaps you are aware, Joyce.’

‘No; I did not know. I thought when you said I should have a room—for myself——’

‘That I meant you to live there like a prisoner in your father’s house? Are you aware that you are in your father’s house?’

Joyce turned her eyes from one to the other with a mute appeal. Then she said, ‘Yes,’ faintly, not with the vehemence of her former impulses. ‘If she had been patient and not run away,’ she added, with a little solemnity, after a pause, ‘it would not have been so unhappy for us all. I would at least have known—my father.’

‘You see that?’ cried Mrs. Hayward, though she did not understand why these words were said. ‘Then you have some common-sense after all, and surely you will get to understand.’

‘Why do you say that, Joyce—why do you say that?’ said the Colonel, laying his hand upon her arm. He was growing very pale and anxious, nervous and frightened, distinguished soldier as he was, by this sudden outburst of hostilities. To see two armies engaged is one thing, but it is quite another to see two women under your own roof——’ Joyce, you must not say that,’ he repeated, leaning his hand, which she could feel tremble, upon her arm; ‘you must listen to what Elizabeth—I mean, to what your mother says.’

‘Don’t call me her mother, Henry. She doesn’t like it, and I am not sure that I do either. But we might be friends for all that—so long as she has sense—— Don’t you see, child, that we can’t live if you go on in this way? It is getting on my nerves!’ cried Mrs. Hayward with excitement, ‘and upon his nerves, and affecting the whole house. Why should you like to shut yourself up as if we were your enemies, and upset everybody? I can’t settle to anything. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what I am doing. And how you can like——’

‘But I do not like it,’ said Joyce. ‘I did not think I could bear it any longer: everything is so strange to me. I used to think I would know by instinct; but it appears I was very silly all the time—for I don’t think I know how to behave.’

Joyce hated herself for feeling so near crying: why should a girl cry at everything when she does not wish to cry at all? The same thought was flying through Mrs. Hayward’s mind, who had actually dropped one hot and heavy tear, which she hoped no one saw. She put up her hand hastily to stop the Colonel, who was about to make one of those speeches which would have given the finishing touch.

‘Then,’ she said, ‘run and get your work, if you have any work, or your book, or whatever you are doing, and come to the drawing-room like a Christian: for we should all go out of our senses altogether if we went on much longer in this way.’

The Colonel patted his daughter’s arm and hastened to open the door for her like an old courtier. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘turning round to his wife, ‘that as soon as you spoke to her, Elizabeth, she would respond. You are a little hasty, my dear, though never with me. I knew that as soon as she saw what a heart you have——’

‘Oh, never mind my heart, Henry! Don’t talk to Joyce about my heart. I think she has a little common-sense. And if that’s so, we shall get on.’

And then Joyce began to spend all her time in the drawing-room, sadly ill at ease, not knowing what to do. She sat there sounding the depths of her own ignorance, often for hours together, as much alone as when in the west room, feeling herself to sit like a wooden figure in her chair, conscious to her finger-tips of awkwardness, foolishness, vacancy, which had never come into her life before. She had no needlework to give her a pretence of occupation: and as for books, those that were about on the tables were not intended to be read, except the novels from Mudie’s, which had this disadvantage, that when they were readable at all, Joyce got absorbed in them, and forgot herself, and would sometimes forget Mrs. Hayward too. She had a feeling that she should be at Mrs. Hayward’s disposal while they were together, so that this lapse occurring now and then, filled her with compunction and shame. But when visitors came, that was the worst of all.

CHAPTER XIX

‘But you did not come in? Come now. I have something to say to you.’ There was a look in the old soldier’s eye of unlawful pleasure, a gratification enhanced by the danger of being found out, and perhaps suffering for it. He led Joyce away with the glee of a truant schoolboy. ‘My wife is busy,’ he said, with an air of innocent hypocrisy. ‘She can’t want either of us for the moment. Come in, come in. And, my dear,’ he said, putting again his caressing hand upon his daughter’s shoulder, ‘remember, that when I am not in the garden, I’m here: and when you have anything to say to your father, I’m always ready—always ready. I hope you will learn—to take your father into your confidence, Joyce.’

She did not make any reply; her head drooped, and her voice was choked. He was so kind—and yet confidence was so hard a thing to give.

‘That reminds me,’ he said, still more gently, ‘that I don’t think you ever call me father, Joyce.’

‘Oh,’ she said, not daring to lift her eyes, ‘but I think it—in my heart.’

‘You must say it—with your lips, my dear; and you must not be afraid of the people who are nearest to you in the world. You must have confidence in us, Joyce. And now look here, my little girl; I have something to give you—not any pretty thing for a present,’ said the Colonel, sitting down before his desk and pulling out a drawer, ‘but something we can’t get on without. I got it for you in this form that you might use it as you please; remember it is not for clothes but only for your own pleasure, to do what you like with.’ He held out to her, with the most fatherly kind smile, four crisp and clean five-pound notes. Joyce looked at them bewildered, not knowing what they were, and then gave a choking cry, and drew back, covering her face with her hands.

‘Money!’ she cried, and a pang of mortification went through her like the sharp stab of a knife.

‘Well, my dear, you must have money, and who should give it you but your father? Joyce! why, this is worse and worse.’ The Colonel grew angry in his complete bewilderment, and the disagreeable sensation of kindness refused. ‘What can you mean?’ he cried; ‘am I to have nothing to do with you though you are my daughter?’ He got up from his chair impatiently. ‘I thought you would like it to be between ourselves. I made a little secret of it, thinking to please you. No; I confess that I don’t understand you, Joyce: if Elizabeth were here, I should tell her so.’ He flung down the notes upon his table, where they lay fluttering in the morning breeze that came in at the open window. ‘She must do what she can, for I don’t pretend to be able to do anything,’ the Colonel cried.

Joyce stood before him, collecting herself, calming down her own excitement as best she could. She said to herself that he was quite right—that it would have to be—that she had no independent life or plan of her own any more—that she must accept everything from her father’s hands. What right had she either to refuse or to resent? How foolish it was, how miserable, ungenerous of her, not to be able to take! Must it not sometimes be more gracious, more sweet to take, to receive, than to give? And yet to accept this from one who was almost a stranger though her father, seemed impossible, and made her whole being, body and soul, quiver with that sensation of the intolerable in which there is neither rhyme nor reason. Though she was so young, she had provided for her own necessities for years. They were very few, and her little salary was very small; but she had done it, giving rather than getting—for naturally there was nothing to spare from Peter Matheson’s ploughman’s wages. She stood shrinking a little from her father’s displeasure—so unused to anything of the kind!—but with all these thoughts sweeping through the mind, which was only a girl’s mind, in many ways wayward and fantastic, but yet at bottom a clear spirit, candid and reasonable. This would have to be. She must accept the money, she who had been so independent. She must learn how to live, that tremendous lesson, in the manner possible to her, not in her own way. Once more she thought of her mother obeying her foolish impulse, flying from her troubles—only to fall fatally under them, and to leave their heritage to her daughter. It did not require a moment to bring all these reflections in a flood through her mind, nor even to touch her with the thought of her father’s little tender artifice, and of how he had calculated no doubt that she would have presents to send, help to offer—or, at least, pleasure to bestow. Perhaps her imagination put thoughts even more delicate and kind into the Colonel’s mind than those which were there—which was saying much. She recovered her voice with a great effort.

‘Father——’ she said, then paused again, struggling with something in her throat,— ‘I hope you will forgive me. I—never took money—from any one—before——’

‘You never had your father before to give it you, Joyce.’ A little word calmed down the Colonel’s superficial resentment. It did more, it went straight to his heart. He came up to her and put his arm round her. ‘My child,’ he said, in the words of the parable, ’"all that I have is thine.” You forget that.’

‘Father, if I could only feel that you were mine. It is all wrong—all wrong!’ cried Joyce. ‘It is like what the Bible says; I want to be born again.’

The Colonel did not know what to say to this, which seemed to him almost profane; but he did better than speaking—he held her close to him, and patted her shoulder softly with his large tender hand.

‘And I will, I will,’ said Joyce, with a Scotch confusion of tenses, ‘if you will have a little patience with me. It cannot come all in a moment; but I will, I will.’

‘We’ll all have patience,’ said the Colonel, stooping over her, feeling in his general weakness, and with even a passing sigh for Elizabeth going through his mind, that it was sweet to have the positions reversed sometimes, and to feel somebody depend upon him, and appeal to his superior wisdom.

At this moment Mrs. Hayward opened the door of her husband’s room quickly, coming in with natural freedom. She stopped ’as if she had been shot’ when she saw this group—Joyce sheltered in her father’s arm, leaning against him. She made a rapid exclamation, ‘Oh!’ and turning as quickly as she had come, closed the door after her with a quick clear sound which said more than words. She did not slam it—far from that. She would not have done such a thing, neither for her own sake, nor out of regard for what the servants would say: but she shut it sharply, distinctly, with a punctuation which was more emphatic than any full stop could be.

In the afternoon there were callers, and Joyce became aware, for the first time, of the social difficulties of her position. She heard the words, ‘brought up by relations in Scotland,’ as she went through the drawing-room to the verandah where the visitors were sitting with Mrs. Hayward. Joyce did not apply the words to herself, but she perceived a little stir of interest when she appeared timidly at the glass door. The lady was a little woman, precise and neat, with an indescribable air of modest importance, yet insignificance, which Joyce learned afterwards to understand, and the gentleman was in a long black coat, with a soft felt hat in his hands. Eyes more instructed would have divined the clergyman and clergywoman of the district, not rector and rectoress, but simple incumbents. They rose up to meet her, and shook hands in a marked way, as ‘taking an interest’ in a new member of their little cure; but Joyce, unaccustomed, did not understand the meaning of this warmth. It disconcerted her a little, and so did the conversation into which Mr. Sitwell at once began to draw her, while his wife conversed in a lower tone with the lady of the house. He talked to her of the river and boating, of which she knew nothing, and then of lawn-tennis, to which her response was not more warm. The good clergyman thought that perhaps the game had not penetrated to the wilds of Scotland, and changed the subject.

‘We are going to have our children’s treat next week,’ he said. ‘It would be very kind of you to come and help my wife, who has everything to manage. Our district is but a new one—we have not much aid as yet. Do you take any interest in schools, Miss Hayward?’

‘Oh yes, a great interest,’ cried Joyce, lighting up, ‘that is just my——’ she was going to say profession, having a high opinion of the dignity of her former office: but before the word was said she caught a warning glance from Mrs. Hayward—‘it is what I care most for in the world,’ she said, with a sudden blush of shame to feel herself stopped in that avowal of enthusiasm for the work itself.

‘Indeed!’ cried the clergyman. ‘Do you hear, Dora? here is a help for you. Miss Hayward says that schools are what she cares most for in the world.’

‘Joyce says a little more than she means,’ said Mrs. Hayward quickly. ‘Young ladies have a way of being enthusiastic.’

‘Don’t damp it, please!’ cried Mrs. Sitwell, clasping her hands; ‘enthusiasm is so beautiful in young people: and there is so little of it. Oh, how delighted I shall be to have your help! The district is so new—as my husband would tell you.’

‘Of course I have enlisted Miss Hayward at once,’ cried he. ‘She is going to help at the school feast.’

‘Oh, thank you, THANK you,’ cried the clergyman’s wife, with devotion, once more clasping her hands.

Mrs. Hayward’s voice was more dry than ever—there was a sharp ring in it, which Joyce had begun to know. ‘You must let her give you an answer later,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t know her engagements yet. We have several things to do. When must I send in the cakes, Mrs. Sitwell? We always calculate, you know, on helping in that way.’

‘You are always so kind, dear Mrs. Hayward, so kind! How can we ever thank you enough!’ said the clergywoman. ‘Always kind,’ her husband echoed, with an impressive shake of Mrs. Hayward’s hand, and afterwards of Joyce’s, who was confused by so much feeling. Her step-mother was drier still as they went away.

‘I must ask you, just at first, to make no engagements without consulting me,’ she said very rigidly. ‘You cannot know—at first—what it is best for your own interests to do.’

Should she say that she had made no engagements, and wished for none? It is hard not to defend one’s self when one is blamed. But Joyce took the wiser way, and assented without explanations. She had scarcely time to do more when other people came—people more important, as was at once evident—a large lady in black satin and lace, a younger, slimmer one in white. They filled the verandah, which was not very broad, with the sweep of their draperies. They both gave a little glance of surprise when Miss Hayward was presented to them, and the elder lady permitted herself an ‘Oh——!’ She retired to the end of the verandah, where Mrs. Hayward had installed herself. ‘I never knew before that you had a grown-up daughter. I always thought, indeed, that there were no——’

‘My husband’s daughter by his first marriage,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘She has never lived at home. In India, you know, children can never be kept with their parents.’

‘It is a dreadful drawback. I am so glad my girls will have nothing to say to Indian men.’

The lady in white had begun to talk to Joyce, but the girl’s ears were intent on the other conversation which she felt to concern herself. She made vague replies, not knowing what she said, the two voices in the distance drawing all her attention from the one more near.

‘So she had to be left with relations—quite old-fashioned people—and she is very simple, and knows very little of the world.’

‘The less the better,’ said the visitor, whose name Joyce had not caught; and then there was a pause, and the young lady’s voice became more audible, close to her ear.

‘Brought up in Scotland? Oh, I hope you are not one of the learned ladies. Don’t they go in tremendously for education in Scotland?’ her visitor said.

‘They say our Scotch schools are the best,’ said Joyce sedately, with a mixture of national and professional pride.

‘Oh yes, so everybody says; you are taught everything. I know Scotland a little: everybody goes there in the autumn, don’t you know? I wonder if I have been in your part of the country? Papa has a moor whenever he can afford it. And we have quantities of Scotch cousins all over the place.’

‘It was near Edinburgh,’ said Joyce, with a little hesitation.

‘Yes? I have been at several places near Edinburgh,’ said the young lady. ‘Craigmoor where the Sinclairs live, for one. They are relations of ours. And there is another house, a very nice house close by, Bellendean. I suppose you know the Bellendeans.’

The colour rushed over Joyce’s face. She remembered her difficulties no more. The very sound of the name filled her with pleasure and encouragement.

‘Bellendean!’ she said; ‘oh, indeed, I know Bellendean! I know it better than any place in the world. And I know the lady—oh, better than any one. And would it be Miss Greta that was your cousin——?’ Joyce’s countenance shone. She forgot all about those bewildering explanations which she had overheard: and about herself, whose presence had to be accounted for. For a moment her natural ease and unconsciousness came back, and she felt herself Joyce again.

Mrs. Hayward rose suddenly from her chair. She, too, had been listening, through her own conversation, to the other voices. She made a step forward— ‘So you know the Bellendeans,’ she said, with an agitated smile. ‘We have just been staying there, and can give you the latest news of them. What a small world it is, as everybody says! I only heard of them for the first time when we went to fetch Joyce: and now I find my nearest neighbours know all about them! Joyce, will you ask if Baker is bringing tea?’

Lady St. Clair and her daughter gave each other a glance of mutual inquiry. And Joyce, as she obeyed, with a curious pang of wonder and pleasure and annoyance, heard the discussion begin, the interchange of questions mingled with remarks about her friends, the names so dear to her passing from mouth to mouth. She was sent away who knew all about them, while her stepmother, who knew so little, talked, adopting an air of familiarity. Why was she sent away? Then she remembered suddenly on what a humble footing she could alone claim knowledge of the Bellendeans, and divined with a shock of sudden pain that it was to stop any revelations on that subject that she had been despatched on this unnecessary errand. Joyce paused in the luxurious room, which seemed somehow to absorb all the air and leave none to breathe. Oh for the freedom of Bellendean, where everybody knew who she was and thought no harm! Oh for the little cottage, where there were no pretences! The great and the small were easy, they understood each other; but this middle country, all full of reserves and assumptions which lay between, how was an ignorant creature to learn how to live in it, to avoid the snares and keep clear of the pitfalls, not to contradict or expose the falsehoods, and yet to be herself true?

Mrs. Hayward, on her side, sitting painfully talking as if she knew all about these people, whom she thought she hated, so much were they involved with this painful episode of her life, was no more happy than Joyce. To think that her neighbours, the best people about, those whose friendship was most desirable, should be mixed up with the Bellendeans, who knew everything! So that now her skilful little romance must fall to the ground, and all the story be fully known.

CHAPTER XX

‘If it were giving a dance that was all!—you may be sure I shouldn’t come to you about that. There is a great deal involved that is of much more importance. If it all gets abroad about your daughter, everything will suffer—she in the first place. It will be like a governess—every one respects a governess——’

‘Surely, my dear. A good girl who perhaps does it to help her family, or support her old mother, or——’

‘Henry, my dear, you are very old-fashioned. But however good she may be, she is always at a disadvantage. It would be bad for us too. Colonel Hayward’s daughter a governess! They would say you were either less well off than you appeared, or that you had used her badly, or that I had used her badly—still more likely.’

‘But when we did not know of her very existence, Elizabeth!’

‘How are you to tell people that? The best thing is to keep quite quiet about it, if we only can. But now here is this new complication. These Bellendean people will talk it all over with the St. Clairs, and the St. Clairs will publish it everywhere. And people will be sorry for her, and pick her to pieces, and say it is easy to see she is unused to our world; they will be sorry for her for being with me, or else be sorry for me for being burdened with her.’

‘Elizabeth——’

‘And the worst is,’ she said vehemently, ‘that it will be quite true on both sides. She will be to be pitied, and I shall be to be pitied. If only these friends of hers could be kept quiet! If only she could be dressed properly, and taught to hold her tongue and say nothing about her past!’

The Colonel got up and began to walk about the room in great perturbation of spirit. He could not say, as he had been in the habit of saying, ‘If Elizabeth were but here!’ for it was Elizabeth herself—extraordinary fact!—who was the cause of the trouble. Social difficulties had not affected them till now; and what could he do or suggest in face of an emergency which was too much for Elizabeth? The poor gentleman was without resource, and he had a faint sense of injury, a feeling that he had never expected to be consulted or to have to advise in such a matter. All the difficulties in their way of a personal character had been Elizabeth’s business, not his. He walked about with a troubled brow, a face full of distress,—what could he do or say? It was almost cruel of her to consult him, to put matters which he had never pretended to be able to manage into his hands.

Mrs. Hayward, on her side, felt a faint gleam of alleviation in the midst of the gloom from the spectacle of the Colonel’s perturbation. It was his affair after all, and he had the best right to suffer; and though she expected no help from him, there was a certain satisfaction and almost diversion in the depth of his helpless distress. They were, however, brought to a sudden standstill, which was a relief to both, by a ring at the door-bell, a very unusual thing in the morning. The clouds dispersed from Mrs. Hayward’s brow. She put up her hand instinctively to her cap. Agitation of any kind, though it may seem a remarkable effect, does derange one’s cap, as everybody who wears such a head-dress knows. ‘It can’t be any one coming to call at this hour,’ she said. ‘It must be some of your men intending to stay for lunch.’

A weight was lifted off the Colonel’s mind by this resumption of ordinary tones and subjects. He was always glad to see one of ‘his men,’ as Mrs. Hayward called them, to lunch, being of the most hospitable disposition; and it was his experience that the presence of a stranger was always perfectly efficacious in blowing away clouds that might arise on the family firmament. Besides, in the strained condition of family affairs, a third, or rather fourth party, who knew nothing about the circumstances, could not but make that meal more cheerful. They stood and listened for a moment while some one was evidently admitted, with some surprise that Baker did not appear to announce the visitor. Presently, however, the door was opened with that mixture of swiftness and hesitation which was characteristic of Joyce, and she herself looked in, more awakened and with a brighter countenance than either of the pair had yet seen in her. Her shyness had disappeared in the excitement of a pleasant surprise; her cheeks had got a little colour; the eager air which had struck Colonel Hayward when he first saw her, but which of late had been so much subdued, had returned to her eyes and sensitive mouth. ‘Oh, it’s the Captain!’ she said, with a sense of the importance of the announcement, as if she had been presenting the Prince of Wales at least, which changed the entire sentiment of her face. Mrs. Hayward had never before seen the natural Joyce as she was in the humility of her early undisturbed state. She acknowledged the charm of the girl with a keen little sudden pang of that appreciation and comprehension of jealousy, which is more clear-sighted and certain than love.

‘The Captain!’ she said, not quite aware who was meant, yet putting on an air of more ignorance than was genuine.

‘Oh, Bellendean!’ cried the Colonel, going forward with cordiality. ‘My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you! You’ve got away, then, from all your anxious friends. Elizabeth, you remember Captain Bellendean?’

‘I am not likely to have forgotten him,’ Mrs. Hayward said graciously, yet with a meaning which perhaps was not so gracious as her speech. And there darted through her mind, as is so usual with women, a question, a calculation. Was it for Joyce? Men are so silly; who can tell how they may be influenced? There flashed through her a gleam of delight at the thought of thus getting rid of the interloper, and at the same time an angry grudge that this girl, who seemed to have all the luck, should come to such honour, and be thus set on high above so many who were her betters. All this in the twinkling of an eye. She stood for a minute or two and talked, asking the proper questions about his family, and when he came to town, and how long he meant to stay; then left the visitor with her husband, and hastened to say something about the luncheon to Baker, who on his part was lingering outside with a message from the cook. To those who feel an interest in such matters, we may say that Mrs. Hayward, when one of the Colonel’s men made his appearance unexpectedly for luncheon, generally added a dish of curry, for which her cook was noted (the men being almost all old Indians), to that meal.

When she returned to the drawing-room, Joyce was there, still with the same look of exhilaration and liveliness. She was even the first to speak—a singular circumstance. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘I was not wrong in taking the Captain to the library. I thought, as you were not here, he would like that better than just talking to me.’

Was this false humility? or affectation? or what was it? ‘You were quite right, no doubt; for it must have been your father he came to see,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with a quick glance. She was prepared to see a conscious smile upon Joyce’s mouth, the little air of demure triumph with which a girl who knows herself the object of such a visit acquiesces in the fact that it is for her father. But no such consciousness was upon Joyce’s countenance. ‘You seem to be very much pleased to see him,’ she continued. ‘And why do you call him the Captain, as if there were not another in the world?’

Joyce paused a little before she answered. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the people at Bellendean did think there was not another such Captain in the world.’

‘And you are glad to see him—because you know him so well? because he reminds you of your old life?’

Joyce grew red all at once with a blush, which surely meant something. Again she paused a little, with that sense of walking among snares and man-traps, which confuses the mind. ‘Oh no; I did not know him well. I have only spoken to him two or three times. It is so difficult to explain. You will perhaps not be pleased if I say it. To me that am not accustomed—the Captain’s coming seemed like a great honour.’ She stopped short, and the colour went out of her face as suddenly as it came.

‘A great honour!’ cried Mrs. Hayward with indignation,—‘to his commanding officer!’ It was all she could do to keep her temper. Her foot patted the carpet angrily, and she tore a band of calico off a piece upon her lap with vehemence, as if she were inflicting pain and liked to do so. ‘What an extraordinary notion!’ she cried. ‘Norman Bellendean, a little Scotch squire—that anybody should think his visit an honour to my husband!’ There was a sort of subdued fury in her laugh of scorn.

‘I can see,’ said Joyce, ‘it was very silly to say that; and it was only a sort of instinct. I forgot when I saw him—all that has happened—and that I was a—different creature.’

‘Joyce,’ cried Mrs. Hayward quickly, ‘I warn you that unless you can get over this constant going back upon your old life, and try and adapt yourself to your present circumstances, it will be impossible for us—impossible for me—almost beyond any one’s powers——’

Joyce had become very pale. She did not make any reply, but waited with her lips moving in an eagerness so different from that joyous eagerness of her former aspect, for the next word that should be said. What was it that would be impossible? There is something in a threat which rouses the most placid blood. If it was impossible, what would happen? Joyce was in no way in fault; the circumstances which had changed her life, and transplanted her from her home, were not of her creating any more than they were of Mrs. Hayward’s. But Mrs. Hayward said nothing more. She went on tearing, wounding, cutting her calico with stabs and thrusts of the scissors that seemed as if they must draw blood. But she had gone as far as could be done unintentionally by sudden impulse—which, and no set purpose, was what had moved her. And she had come to herself by dint of that half-spoken threat. She had no desire to be cruel or even unkind; her desire, indeed, was quite different, if one could have come to the bottom of her heart. She would have given a great deal to have been upon comfortable terms with her step-daughter, and to have been able to quench the jealousy and the grudge with which, deeply ashamed of them all the time, she had taken in this third between the two who were so happy—this interloper, this supplanter, whom she had seen her husband embrace so tenderly, and heard saying with a voice full of emotion ‘father’—a word never to be addressed to him by child of her own.

Once more, however, this uncomfortable state of affairs was brought to a pause by the recurrence of the ordinary course of domestic events. The voices of the Colonel and Captain Bellendean became audible crossing the hall towards the drawing-room door. At the first sound of these voices, Mrs. Hayward threw her calico into the work-basket, and tore and stabbed at it no more. She relapsed suddenly into tranquil hemming, like a good child at school. Joyce had not the same cover for her agitation, but yet she collected herself as quickly as was possible, and made believe to be as quietly occupied and at her ease as her step-mother was.

‘I should have thought,’ said the Colonel, opening the door as he spoke, and bringing in this new subject with him, ‘that a pokey house in London, now that the season is more than half over, would be a bad change after your beautiful place; but that’s our mistake thinking of other people, as if they were just the same as we are—which nobody is, as a matter of fact.’

Mrs. Hayward thought her husband meant this for her, as a reproach in respect to Joyce—which he did not, being totally incapable of any such covert assault.

‘My father has always been fond of society,’ said Captain Bellendean. ‘I suspect my beautiful place, as you are kind enough to call it, was always a great bondage to him.’

‘Joyce, I want you to show Bellendean the garden and the river,’ said the Colonel; ‘I have a—— letter to finish. Take him down to the water, and show him the willows, and the poet’s villa, and all that. Have you got a hat handy, my dear, or a parasol, or something? for it’s very hot. You must take care not to get a sunstroke, or anything of that sort. This is the way, Bellendean. It’s only a little bit of a place, not like your castle; but we’re very much pleased with it for all that. The verandah is our own idea. It is the nicest possible place in the afternoon, when the sun is off this side of the house. My wife planned it all herself. Walk down under the shrubbery: you will have shade the whole way. The river’s sparkling like diamonds,’ he said, as he stood bareheaded in the moderate English sun, which he kept up a pretence of dreading as an old Indian ought, and watched the pair as they obeyed his directions somewhat shyly, not quite understanding why they were sent off together. Colonel Hayward came back to the drawing-room where his wife sat, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. ‘I have sent them off that they may have a quiet word, with nobody to interfere.’

‘Why should they want a quiet word? Was it her he came to see? Do you suppose he means anything?’ said Mrs. Hayward, in that unsympathetic tone.

‘They may not perhaps have anything particular to say; but they come from the same place, and they know the same people, and probably they would not like to talk their little talks about old friends with us listening to every word; so I said I had a letter to finish,’ said the Colonel, with a mild chuckle. ‘I must go and do it though, that they may not think it was a pretence.’

‘Do you know, Henry,’ said Mrs. Hayward, ‘that some people would say you were throwing your daughter at Captain Bellendean’s head.’

‘Bless me!’ said the Colonel, with a wondering look; ‘throwing my daughter at—— Elizabeth, these would surely be very unpleasant people, not the kind that ever had anything to do with you and me.’ He paused a moment, looking at her with an appeal which she did not lift her eyes to see. Then he repeated, ‘I must go, though, and finish my letter, or they will think it was only a pretence.’

Perhaps Captain Bellendean had some faint notion that it was, as he walked along under the shade of the shrubbery skirting the long but narrow lawn towards the river, which flowed shining and sparkling in the full sun—half amused to find himself walking by the side of the heroine of the curious story which had been worked out under his roof—the little schoolmistress turned into a young lady of leisure, transplanted out of her natural place. He was not without a little natural curiosity as to how such a strange travesty would succeed. There was nothing in her appearance to emphasise the change. She walked slowly, almost reluctantly, with that shyness which is not unbecoming to youth, as if she would have liked to fly and leave him unguided to his own devices. He gave her a good many glances under his eyebrows as they walked along very gravely together, scarcely speaking. Certainly if Colonel Hayward meant to throw his daughter at the Captain’s head, she had no intention that way.

‘The last time I saw you, Miss Joyce,’ he said, ‘was the evening before you left home. And you thought England and London would be a new world. What do you think of the new world, now that you have seen them near?’

‘Did I say they would be a new world?’ Joyce sighed a little, looking up to the Captain with a faint smile, which made, he thought, a charming combination. She added, ‘I have only seen London in passing; but I’m beginning to think there is no new world, but just what we make it—and the same in every place.’

‘One of the old classical fellows says that, doesn’t he?’ said the Captain. ‘I’ve forgotten all my Latin; but you’re up to everything of that sort——’

‘Oh no; I am not a scholar. I just know a little at the very beginning. But I understand what you mean. It is something about changing the skies but not the mind.’

‘I wonder if that is what Mrs. Bellendean will do?’

‘Mrs. Bellendean?’

‘Oh, I forgot; it was your father to whom I was speaking; but you will know better all that this means. My father and his wife have left Bellendean—for good, do you understand, not to come back.’

‘For good! but I should think that would rather be for ill,’ Joyce said.

‘Yes, I knew you would understand. I didn’t myself, however, till very lately. I had no conception what she had done for the place, nor how much it was to her. And now they have shaken the dust from off their feet, and left it—as if I could have wished that.’

‘They would think,’ said Joyce, with an explanatory instinct that belonged to her old position—‘the lady would think that perhaps you were likely——’

Here she looked up at him, and suddenly realising that she was not Joyce the schoolmistress, with a little privilege of place, making matters clear, but a young woman discoursing about his own affairs to a young man, stopped suddenly, blushed deeply, and murmured, ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ with a horror of her own rashness which gave double meaning to all she said.

‘That perhaps I was likely——?’ said Norman. He found her very pleasant company, with her intelligent eager looks, her comprehension of what he meant before it was uttered. ‘Tell me what she would think likely. I know so little about—the lady, as you call her. She was only my step-mother, whom I didn’t much care for when I went away. It is a mistake to judge people before one knows them,’ he added reflectively; but this sentiment, so cognate to her own case, did not in the immediate urgency of the moment arrest Joyce’s attention, especially as he repeated with a smile, ‘what would she think me likely to do?’

‘I was going to speak like an old wife in a cottage—like my dear old granny.’

‘Do so, please,’ he said, with a laugh; and Joyce yielded to the unknown temptation, which had never come in her way before. The gentle malice of society, the undercurrent of meaning, the play with which youths and maidens amuse themselves in the beginning of an intercourse which may come to much more serious results, were quite out of her understanding and experience; but there are some things which are very quickly learnt.

‘She would think—the old wives would say—that now the Captain was come back, he would be bringing home a lady of his own.’

Joyce said this, not with the absolute calm of two minutes ago, but with a smile and blush which altogether changed the significance of the little speech. It had been an almost matter-of-fact explanation—it became now a little winged arrow of provocation, a sort of challenge. Captain Bellendean laughed.

‘I see,’ he said; ‘and you think that is a course open to me? But a lady of my own might not be so good as the lady—and then there are difficulties about time, for instance. I might not be able to bring her at once; and the one I wanted might not have me: and—— Miss Joyce, your attention flags—you are not interested in me.’

‘I was thinking,’ said Joyce, ‘that though you laugh, it would be no laughing for her to leave Bellendean.’

The Captain perceived that the joke was to go no further. ‘I do not believe it is her doing at all—it is my father’s doing. He prefers London—Half Moon Street, and rooms where you can scarcely turn round.’

‘Half Moon Street!’

‘Do you know it?’

‘No more than in books,’ said Joyce, with a smile; ‘there are so many places that seem kent places because they are in books.’

‘Italy, etc.,’ the Captain said, looking at her with a sympathetic glance.

‘Oh, but not etc.!’ cried Joyce. ‘Italy—is like nothing else in the world.’

‘Well,’ said Captain Bellendean, ‘when you are in the circumstances which you have just been suggesting to me, no doubt you will go to Italy; that is the right time and the right circumstances——’

Before he had half said these words, a sudden vision of Andrew Halliday flashed across his mind, and he stopped in sudden embarrassment. By this time they had reached the river’s side, and Joyce turned dutifully to point out to him the poet’s villa, as her father had bidden her; but there was something in her tone which betrayed to the sympathetic listener that the same image had suddenly overshadowed her imagination too. Captain Bellendean was very sympathetic—more so, perhaps, than he would have been had his companion been older or less pretty. He pretended to look with great interest at the willows sweeping into the water, and the lawn, with its little fringe of forget-me-nots reflected in the softly flowing stream. Joyce had lost the colour which was half excitement, and had kept coming and going like the shadows over the sky, while they walked together down the shady walk. It is very interesting to see a face change in this way, and to think that one’s own society, the quickening of the blood produced by one’s sudden advent, may have something to do with it. He had felt that it was very pleasant to watch these changes, and was conscious of a little agreeable thrill of responsive exhilaration in his own veins. But when this sudden shadow fell upon Joyce, his sympathy sprang into a warmer, energetic sentiment. Could that be the fate for which this girl was reserved? Surely some one must step in to save her from that fate!