Joyce

CHAPTER XXIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh no,’ said Joyce.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Dora, you know I hate bazaars.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘But——’ Joyce said, with timidity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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