Joyce

In all this there was no pang of jealous love. She was unaware that there was love in it, or anything save wonder and disappointment, and a strange realisation of difference and separation. She did not know where he had been, or who were with him: he might have passed her very door—the other side of the hedge—and she would have been none the wiser. She knew him so well, and yet not at all. Something of the astonishment with which the primitive traveller recognises the existence of a hundred circles of human creatures altogether beyond his ken, who must have gone on living for all those years totally outside of his knowledge, filled her now. The thought affected her with fantastic pain, and yet she had not a word to say against it. Her heart made a claim all unconsciously upon those people who had first awakened its sympathies; and to pass him on the road, as it were, like this, he not even seeing her, unexpectant of her appearance, like two strangers, out of reach of even a passing salutation, was more strange, more overpowering, more enlightening, than anything, she thought, that had ever happened before.

The tea after this was bewildering and rather tedious to Joyce. She wanted to get away to think over her new discovery by herself, and instead she was compelled to share in an evening of lively wit and laughter, solidified by much parish talk. A churchwarden, who was no more than a local tradesman—though one of the ‘best people’—and much overawed by finding himself there—and good Miss Marsham, were of the party. Mrs. Sitwell’s voice ran through the whole like the motif of a piece of music, never lost sight of. ‘You must sing, Mr. Bright, as soon as you have recovered your voice a little after tea. Eating, we all know, is very bad for the voice: we will give a little time for tired nature to restore herself, and then the songster must be heard. Miss Hayward has never heard you, don’t you know.’

‘I am not very much to hear. Miss Hayward would not lose much if she remained in that state of deprivation.’

‘Oh, we don’t think so,—do we, Mr. Cosham? What would the choir do without him? By the way, that dear boy of yours is coming on famously. He must have a solo in the anthem on our Saint’s day. He is quite like a cherub in his white surplice. That is one thing the Canon envies us. He would give his little finger to have a surpliced choir—but they won’t let him! Though he is so tyrannical to us, he has to knock under to all the old women who sit upon him. They call it sitting under him, but I don’t. Do you, Mr. Cosham?’

‘Really, ma’am,’ said the churchwarden, with his mouth full, ‘you put it so funnily, one can’t help laughing;’ and with humility, putting up his hand to conceal it, he indulged in an apologetic roar.

‘Oh, let’s laugh a little—it does nobody any harm,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘What I should delight in would be to have a band for the festival: it might be amateur, you know; there are so many amateurs about the world that want nothing for it—that are too glad to be allowed to play.’

‘And oh, so badly,’ said Mr. Bright.

‘Not always so very badly—especially when it is strings. Don’t you think we might have a band, Mr. Cosham, so long as it was strings? it would be such an attraction—with a solo from your dear little boy.’

‘I think it would be a great attraction; what do you think, sir?’ said the churchwarden, looking towards the chief authority. Mr. Sitwell shook his head.

‘Perhaps we think too much of outside attractions when our minds should be set upon higher influences; but if you think the people would like it——’

‘It helps a deal with the collection—does a band,’ said the churchwarden. ‘There’s a church I know where they have the military band, and the place is crowded, with people standing outside the doors.’

‘Not from the best of motives, I fear,’ said the parson, still shaking his head; ‘but to get them to come is something, by whatever means.’

‘That’s what I think—like Mrs. Sitwell; and a brass band——’

‘Oh no, Mr. Cosham!—strings! strings!’ cried the lady. ‘A brass band is a deal too noisy.’ She turned upon the unsuspecting man eyes which had suddenly become dull round orbs like his own, and spoke with the very echo of his voice. ‘It would drown Johnny’s voice, bless him!’ the little mimic cried. Mr. Cosham, good man, thought there was something a little strange and thick in this utterance; but he did not understand the convulsion of suppressed laughter on the curate’s face, nor the smile that curled about the corners of Mr. Sitwell’s mouth. These signs of merriment disturbed him a little, but he did not suspect how. He turned to the ladies, who were quite grave, and replied with much sincerity——

‘That’s quite true, ma’am—it’s wonderful how you do see things; it would drown Johnny’s voice—and he’s got a sweet little pipe of his own, and pleased and proud his mother would be to hear him in church.’

‘The boys’ voices are like angels,’ said Miss Marsham; ‘they’re sometimes naughty little things, but their voices are like heaven. But I can’t help saying, though I don’t like to disagree with you, that I’m not fond of a band in church.’

‘What! not strings?’ cried Mrs. Sitwell, with such an air of ingenuous and indeed plaintive surprise, that the tender-hearted woman was moved in spite of herself.

‘Well—perhaps strings are different,’ she answered, with hesitation.

‘We never thought of anything else: when our kind friend said brass, it was only a slip of the tongue. You meant violins all the time, Mr. Cosham, didn’t you?’ said the parson’s wife, with her appealing gaze, which made the churchwarden blush with emotion and pleasure.

‘I believe I did, ma’am,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I’m sure that’s what’s right if you say so: for naturally being so musical yourself, you know about these things better than me.’

‘Dear,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, addressing Joyce, whom she no longer called Miss Hayward, but whom she did not yet venture, in sight of a certain dignity of silence and reserve about that young woman, to call, except in her absence, by her Christian name,—‘you never give us your opinion on anything. Do give us your opinion; we have all said our say.’

‘Indeed I don’t know anything at all,’ said Joyce—‘nothing at all. I was never used to music—of that kind, in the church.’

‘And yet,’ said Mr. Sitwell, ‘the Scottish Church has a fine ceremonial of her own, where she has not been deadened by contact with Dissent. I have always heard there were things in her service which went further and were more perfect than anything attempted here—until quite recently. But of course there is always a tendency to be deadened by the atmosphere of Dissent.’

The party all listened very respectfully to this, which had almost the weight of an oracular statement. Joyce, for her part, was more bewildered than ever. The words he used bore to her a completely different meaning, and she was not sufficiently instructed to be aware of that which he intended to express. She understood the Canon when he asked her if she was a horrid little Presbyterian, but she had no comprehension of what Mr. Sitwell meant. She was wise enough, however, to be silent, and keep her ignorance to herself.

‘But we all believe the same in the chief points, after all,’ said Miss Marsham, laying her thin hand caressingly on Joyce’s arm. This kind lady could not bear the girl to be distressed if, perhaps, she might happen to be one of those who had been deadened by the atmosphere of Dissent.

‘Well, now that this great question is settled, and we are to have the band and Johnny’s solo—and mind you keep him in good voice, Mr. Cosham—let us go upstairs and have “Angels ever Bright and Fair.” We are so fond of “Angels ever Bright and Fair,"—aren’t we, Austin?’ cried the parson’s wife, putting her hand through her husband’s arm and looking up in his face. He laughed and put her away with a little pat. ‘You are incorrigible, Dora,’ he said. Mr. Bright lifted his eyebrows and looked at the others, asking why.

And then there followed songs and sallies, and bits of that involuntary mimicry of everybody in turn which the lively mistress of the house seemed to be unable to keep under. Joyce saw her assume a serious aspect, with a grave face and a little movement about her lips, as she said something in slow and soft tones, at which Miss Marsham did not laugh, but once more laid her thin hand tenderly upon Joyce’s arm, while the gentlemen did,—the churchwarden bursting out in a short abashed roar, while Mr. Bright went off to a corner, and Mr. Sitwell hid his face with his hand. This little pantomime perplexed Joyce much, but it was not till after that she realised how she herself had been ‘taken off’ for the amusement of her friends.

She got home at last in the dusk of the summer night, feeling as if the world were full of a babble of voices, and of jests, and of calculations and little intrigues, and attempts to do something unnamed by means of something else. Joyce had not been altogether unaware that all was not perfectly straightforward and true in the world before. She had been fully acquainted with the extraordinary little deceptions and stories made up by children to save themselves from punishment, or to procure some pleasure, or even for nothing at all—out of pleasure apparently in the mere invention; but these little falsities were of altogether a different kind, and her brain throbbed with the contact of so many unaccustomed trifles which were like the buzz of the flies in the air. The piquancy of mimicking an individual in his own presence, though she was not insensible to the fact, was strange to her serious soul: it helped to increase the queer unreality of this world in which she found herself, where there were droll little plays going on on all sides upon somebody’s weakness, from the silly correspondents of the Pictorial to the rich soap-boiler who was to be wheedled by praise of his house, and the humble churchwarden who was bound hand and foot in reverential servility by praise of his boy—and people who were to be brought to church by the attraction of a band as being better than not going at all. And what was it for? For the parsonage? Joyce was not so hard a critic as to believe this. She saw the good parson tired with his day’s work, and she had seen that kind mischievous little woman as good as an angel to the poor people. Their meaning at the bottom was good, and the parsonage only an incident in the strong desire they both had to make the district of St. Augustine’s as near perfection as possible, and chase all sorrow and sickness and trouble out of it, and set up a beautiful service, and steal the people’s hearts with angelic voices in the choir and celestial thrilling of violin-strings—to steal their hearts, but only for God, or for what they thought God,—for the Church at least. This part of it Joyce but faintly comprehended, yet more or less divined.

And then from the conception she dimly attained of this real and great motive, her mind came down again to the laughter and the mimicry and the photographs, and that perplexing utterance about an atmosphere deadened by Dissent. What a strange world it was! making good things look bad by dint of trying to get good out of evil! Joyce wondered whether it would not succeed better to reject the artifices, and try what simple means would do. And then having shaken off that coil, her mind suddenly returned with a spring to what was for herself the central event of this day—the Captain standing up in that boat among those unknown people, in that other world. Strange! and he was her friend—but yet belonged to her no more than the river itself flowing on its way, with so many other lawns to reflect besides that little bit of green which Joyce, watching the stream go by, had begun to think of as her own. But it was not hers, and neither was he. Bellendean had been hers, and her old people, and—— Joyce hurried her steps to get refuge in her father’s house from that shadow which began to start up in her path and look at her, and filled her with alarm—a shadow demure and serious, with no thought of other worlds or other influences strong enough to eclipse his own.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Sir Sam was, to use his own phraseology, the chief partner in his own concern. Nobody remarked Lady Thompson. She was not the leader of the expenditure and display, as the wife of a self-made man so often is. She was a homely stout little person, who did not love her grandeur—who would have been far happier in the housekeeper’s room. Even in the finest dresses—and she had very fine dresses—there was to understanding eyes the shadow of an apron, a sort of ghostly representation of a soft white comfortable lap to which a child might cling, where stockings to be darned might lie. She stood a step behind Sir Sam to receive their guests. He said, ‘How do you do? hope I see you well. Hope you’ve brought a large party—the more the merrier; there’s plenty of room for all;’ while she only shook hands with the visitors and beamed upon them. She went everywhere with her husband, but always in this subsidiary capacity. And Sir Sam was by no means reluctant to bestow the light of his countenance. It was not so difficult a thing to persuade him to appear at an afternoon party as the deluded Sitwells had supposed. He liked to show himself and his fat horses and his carriage, which was the last and newest and most comfortable that had ever been fashioned. But there he stopped. He took a cup of tea from any one; but if they thought to get anything more in return they were mistaken, and justly too,—for why should a millionaire’s good offices be purchased by a cup of tea? He had the right on his side.

This poor Mrs. Sitwell found when she made her anxious and at last desperate attempt to gain his ear. To waste his attentions upon the wife of the incumbent of St. Augustine’s did not in the least commend itself to Sir Sam. He was not aware that she was amusing, and could take off all his friends; and he thought with justice that she was not worthy to be selected out from that fine company only because she had asked him to her school-feast. In return for the cup of tea offered to him there—which he did not drink—he had asked her and her husband to his gorgeous house, and put it within their power to drink tea of the finest quality, coffee iced and otherwise, claret-cup or champagne-cup; and to eat ices of various kinds, cakes, fruit, grapes, which at that time of the year, had they been sold, would have been worth ever so much a pound. Sir Sam thought he had given the parson of St. Augustine’s and his wife a very ample equivalent for their cup of tea.

Joyce went to this great gathering in Mrs. Hayward’s train, as usual, following—with a silence and gravity which were gradually acquiring for her the character of a very dignified and somewhat proud young woman—her stepmother’s active steps. She knew a few people now, and silently accepted offered hands put out to her as she bowed with a smile and response to the greeting, but no more. The crowd was no longer a blank to her. She did not now feel as if left alone and among strangers when, in the course of Mrs. Hayward’s more brilliant career, she was left to take care of herself. On this occasion it was not long before she saw the portly Canon swinging down upon her, with the lapels of his long coat swinging too, on either side of the round and vast black silk waistcoat. She had been watching, with a disturbed amusement, the greetings made at the corner of a green alley between Mrs. Jenkinson and Mrs. Sitwell. They had been full of cordiality—the elder lady stooping to give the younger one a dab upon her cheek, which represented a kiss. ‘I could not think it was you,’ Mrs. Jenkinson said; ‘I have been watching you these ten minutes. How are you, and how are the dear children? I am very pleased to see you here. I did not know you knew the Thompsons.’

‘Oh yes; very well indeed,’ said the parson’s wife, with a beaming smile. ‘What a pretty party it is!’

‘A party cannot well fail to be pretty when it is given in such gardens as these; and with such a house behind it, flowing with wine and oil.’

‘You mean with ices and tea. It’s very fine, no doubt; but I like something humbler, that one can call one’s own, quite as well.’

‘No one should attempt these parties,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson, ‘who has not a large place to give them in, and plenty of things going on—tennis and all that, or music, or a beautiful prospect: we have them all here.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, ‘we did very well indeed, I assure you, in Wombwell’s field. You did not do me the honour to come, but everybody else did—the Thompsons and all.’

‘Really,’ Mrs. Jenkinson said. She added pointedly, feeling that she was not a match for the lively and nimble person with whom she was engaged— ‘It must, I fear, have been very expensive.’

‘Oh, not at all,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘You see, we gave nothing but tea. People don’t come for what they get, though dear Sir Sam thinks so; they come to see other people, and meet their friends, and spend the afternoon pleasantly. Don’t you think so, dear Mrs. Jenkinson? If I had the smallest little place of my own, with a little bit of a garden, such as we might have if there ever is a parsonage to St. Augustine’s, I should not be at all afraid to ask even the Duchess to tea. She would come for me, she is such a dear,’ Mrs. Sitwell said.

‘I am afraid I am not half so courageous,’ the Canon’s wife replied; and she added quickly, ‘There is Lady St. Clair; excuse me, I must say a word to her,’ and hastened away. She was routed, horse and foot; for Mrs. Jenkinson did not know the Duchess, and this little district incumbent, this nobody, this scheming, all-daring little woman, actually did, by some freak of fortune,—and probably would have the audacity—and succeed in it, as such sort of persons so often do—to ask that great lady to tea.

The Canon swooped down upon Joyce after this little scene was over. She was standing by herself, only half-seeing the fun, perhaps because her sense of humour was faint, perhaps only because of her vague understanding of all that lay underneath, and made it funny. He took her hand and drew it within his arm. ‘Here you are, you little rebel,’ he said. ‘I have got you at last. There is nobody eligible within sight. Come and take a walk with me.’

Joyce had very little idea what he meant by some one eligible; but she was very well content to be led away, hurrying her own steps to suit the swinging gait of the big Churchman. He led her through the green alleys and broad walks of the soap-boiler’s magnificent grounds to the mount of vision which crowned them. ‘There now! look at that view,’ he said, ‘and tell me if you have anything like it in Scotland. You brag us out for scenery, I know; but where did you ever see anything like that?’

Joyce looked up in his face for a moment, then answered, with a smile, ‘I like as well to see the Crags below Arthur’s Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them.’

‘Eh!’ cried the Canon, lifting his brows. ‘What do you mean by that? You don’t generally speak like that.’

With nobody was Joyce so much at her ease as with this big impetuous man. ‘There was once,’ she said, in the tone, half bantering, half reproachful, with which she had once been wont to recall her ‘big’ class to the horror of having forgotten something in Shakespeare, ‘a little Scotswoman whose name was Jeanie Deans.’

‘Eh!’ cried the Canon again; and then he pressed, with half angry affectionateness, the hand that was on his arm. ‘Oh, you are at me with Scott!’ he said—‘taking a base advantage; for it’s a long time since I read him. So Jeanie Deans said that, did she? I don’t remember much about her. They say Scott is played out, you know, in these days.’

‘Then, sir,’ said Joyce quickly, ‘they say what they don’t understand; for look how it comes to me just as the natural thing to say. Sir Walter knew—he and some others, they know almost like God—what is in the hearts of the common people that have no words to speak.’

‘Ah!’ said the Canon; and then he laughed and added, ‘So you are one of the common people that have no words to speak? It’s not the account I should have given of you. Sit down here, and let’s pluck our crow. You have gone entirely off, you little schismatic, to the other side.’

‘No,’ said Joyce.

‘No! how can you tell me no, when I know to the contrary? You’ve been out in the district visiting with her. You are going to undertake something about the schools. They’ve had you to tea in company with the curate and that fat dolt Cosham whom they lead by the nose. Oh, you wonder how I know! My dear,’ said the Canon, with a slight blush, if it is to be supposed that a canon can blush, ‘a clergyman in a country parish knows everything—whether he will or not. Now, isn’t it true?’

‘Yes, it is quite true,’ said Joyce; and then she added, looking up at him again with a smile, and a little rising colour, caused by what she felt to be her boldness, ‘But still I like you best.’

‘My dear girl,’ cried the Canon. He patted her shoulder with his large white hand, and Joyce saw with astonishment a little moisture in his big eyes. ‘I always knew you were an exceeding nice little girl,’ he said. ‘I took a fancy to you the first time I met you. It gives me the greatest pleasure that you should like me best. But, my dear, why do you go over to the other side if you are so wise and discerning and sensible as to prefer me?’

Joyce hesitated a little, and then she said, ‘They wish very much to do everything that is best.’

‘Eh?’ the Canon cried, this time in astonished interrogation.

‘They want to do good to everybody,’ said Joyce, in her slow soft voice, which to ears accustomed to lighter and louder tones had an air of being very emphatic. ‘They would like to make their parish perfect.’

‘District,’ said the Canon.

‘District—but I don’t know the difference; and I don’t know many of the things they want to do. I was not brought up that way. Many things they say are all dark to me; but what they want in their hearts is to do good to everybody. They would like to have their church service and everything perfect.’

‘High ritual, as they call it,—music and all sorts of fal-lals.’

‘And to get everybody to come,’ continued Joyce, ‘and to teach everybody, and to help the poor folk. I could not do it that way,’ she added, shaking her head, ‘but to them it’s the right way. They have no other thought but to be good and do their best.’

‘Oh!’ said the Canon, this time in a dubious and disturbed tone.

‘They go among the poor folk every day,’ said Joyce; ‘they would like to take the command of them, and give them everything, and guide them altogether. It is not—oh, not my way—not our way at all, at home; but they say it is the way here. They never spare themselves any trouble. They would like to take it all on their shoulders; to nurse all the ill people, and mend all the bad ones, and even cut out all the clothes for the poor little things that have none. They will sometimes do things that look as if they were—very different: but it is all for this end.’

‘For making themselves important, and proving their own merit, and last, but not least, getting themselves that parsonage about which they make my life a burden to me. Why, your father has taken it up now—that must be your doing. These people, though your excellent sense keeps you from liking them, are taking you in, my dear. The parsonage—that’s what they’re aiming at.’

‘And why not?’ said Joyce.

‘Eh?’ The Canon turned round upon her with a snort of impatience. Then he elevated his large hands, and gave forth a still larger sigh. ‘You women are so gullible,’ he said; ‘you believe whatever is told you.’

‘I believe,’ said Joyce, ‘that it would be better to have a house of your own, and not to pay rent when you have very little money for one that lets in the rain, and is very, very small—so small, it would scarcely hold you,’ she said, looking at her companion.

‘It is fortunate I haven’t got to live in it,’ he said.

‘Very fortunate—for you. But, sir,’ said Joyce, feeling more and more the authority and power of this big friendly man, like a very kind inspector in the old days—‘you are far more fortunate than they are. You are like a prince to them. You have everything you want—money and honour, and a beautiful house, and plenty of room, and power to do what you please. They say in my country, “It is ill talking between a full man and a fasting,"—if you understand that.’

The Canon humphed and shook his head, and then he laughed and said, ‘Oh yes, I understand that. So I am the full man and Sitwell the empty one, you think, Miss Joyce.’

‘It makes a great difference,’ said Joyce; ‘and then they think—that it was promised to them before they came here.’

‘Yes,’ said the Canon, after a pause, ‘it was promised to them in a way—before they showed what sort of free-lances they were.’

‘And that makes a sense of wrong,’ said Joyce, wisely taking no notice of the last remark. ‘If you think there is an injustice, it always hangs on the heart.’

‘The Canon is ‘ere before us,’ said the fat voice of Sir Samuel, as the sound of much scattering of the gravel under heavy feet broke suddenly upon this colloquy; ‘and I would say, by the looks of them, that this young lady has been a-lecturing the Canon. Good joke that, preaching to the Canon, that most times ’as it all his own way.’

Sir Sam’s laugh was a little asthmatic—it shook him subterraneously and in a succession of rolling echoes. ‘Good joke that, preaching to the Canon,’ he went on, as if his announcement of the fact was the climax of the joke. He was followed by Mrs. Jenkinson, tall and energetic, wrapped in a white chudder, the softest and most comfortable of shawls—and by Lady Thompson, panting and red in the face with the climb, and gorgeous in all the colours of the rainbow. The Canon made room for the two ladies on the bench, and Sir Sam got a garden-chair and seated himself in front of them, against the view which they had come to see, half shutting it out with his bulky person. But the view was no novelty to any there.

‘Yes,’ said the Canon, ‘it is quite true. This little thing has been lecturing me. Indeed I don’t hesitate to say she’s been giving it me hot and strong—about the Sitwells,’ he added, in a sort of aside to his wife.

‘I must say,’ said that lady indignantly, ‘I think that young ladies should keep their hastily-formed opinions to themselves. What can she know about the Sitwells that we don’t all know?’

‘Well, she says she likes us best,’ said the Canon, quite irrelevantly; ‘so it’s not from partiality, or taking their side.’

‘Oh!’ cried Mrs. Jenkinson, darting a glance of anger mingled with a certain respect at the girl, whom she immediately set down as a foeman worthy of her steel.

‘She says they’re very hard-working people, working at their district night and day. She doesn’t understand their ways (she’s Scotch, you know), but she sees they mean the best by their people—hush for a moment, my dear. And she says that they think they were promised a parsonage, and that this makes a sense of wrong. Well, you know, she’s about right there—they were promised a——’

‘Before any one knew what they were—before we understood all the schemes and designs—the setting up to be something altogether above—the ridiculous fuss about everything—the flowers and the lights and the surpliced choir, and Bach’s music, with little Johnny Cosham to sing the soprano parts—if she doesn’t do it herself, as I verily believe she does, done up in a surplice and put at the end of the row: such a thing as was never heard of!’

‘Well, my dear—well, my dear! Joyce here’, patting her hand, ‘who has no sympathy with all that (being Scotch, you know), says they mean it all well, to get people to go to church. And they do get a number of that hopeless lot down by the river to go. But, however, that’s not the question; they were promised a parsonage if they got on and stayed a year or two. I can’t say but what that’s quite true.’

The Canon looked at Sir Samuel, and Sir Sam looked at the Canon. The rich man’s countenance fell a little in harmony with that of his oracle, and he replied subdued, ‘I don’t say neither but what it’s true.’

‘She says it makes a sense of wrong: well, perhaps it does make a sense of wrong. We have very nice houses, Sir Samuel,—mine naturally not magnificent like yours, but on the whole a nice, comfortable, old-fashioned place.’

‘Oh, very nice,’ sighed Lady Thompson, who till now had been recovering herself, and had just got back her voice; ‘nicer than this, Canon, if you were to ask me.’

There was a pause, and the two pairs looked at each other, a little conscious, pleased with their own good fortune, feeling perhaps a little prick of conscience—at all events aware that a moral was about to be drawn.

‘Well, and what then?’ Mrs. Jenkinson said at last, in her highest pitch of voice.

Nobody spoke until Joyce said timidly, ‘They would be happier, and she would not scheme any more. The rain comes in upon the little children.’ She had half said ‘bairns,’ which was not at all Joyce’s way, and she changed the word, which would have been very effective if she had but known. ‘There is no room for the little children.’

‘People in such circumstances ’as no business with children. I always said so,’ said Sir Sam, with a wary eye upon his spiritual director, of whose opinion he stood much in awe.

Joyce was as innocent and ignorant as a girl should be. She lifted up her fair serene brow with no false shame upon it, knowing none. ‘How can they help that?’ she said. ‘It is God that sends the children, not the will of men.’

‘Oh, my pretty dear!’ cried Lady Thompson, who was so homely a woman, reaching across Mrs. Jenkinson’s prim lap to seize Joyce’s hand. ‘Oh, my dear!’—with tears in her homely eyes—‘however you knows it, that’s true.’

Mrs. Jenkinson did not say a word: emotion of this kind is contagious, and these two women, though without another feature in common, were both childless women, and felt it to the bottom of their hearts.

‘Canon,’ said Sir Sam, with a slight huskiness in his voice, ‘if you’re of that opinion I’ve got a cheque-book always ’andy. It was an understood thing, so far as I can remember. There was to be an ’ouse.’

‘Yes, there was to be an ’ouse,’ the Canon replied, without any intention of mimicry. At this moment of feeling he could not reprove the soap-boiler even by too marked an accentuation of the h which he had lost. He turned to his wife as he rose to accompany the soap-boiler, laying his hand upon Joyce’s shoulder. ‘This child has got very pretty turns of phraseology,’ he said. ‘Her Scotch is winning. You should have heard one or two things she said.’

‘Oh, go away, Canon!’ cried his wife. ‘She is just a pretty girl, and that is what you never could resist in your life.’

Thus Joyce’s first interference, and attempt to ascertain whether plain truth might not be more effectual than scheming, ended fortunately, as such attempts do not always do. It was her first appearance separately in the society of the new world she had been so strangely thrown into. But she had not time for much more, and perhaps it was as well. Such a success may happen once in a way, but it is seldom repeated. She was found sitting on that garden-seat with those two ladies a short time afterwards by her father, who had come late, and who brought with him Captain Bellendean.

Joyce had not seen Bellendean since that curious moment when she stood a spectator and watched him like a stranger, passing with his friends, steering the laden boat with all the ladies down the river. She was as much startled by his appearance now as if some strange embarrassing thing, requiring painful explanations, had passed since last they met.

CHAPTER XXIX

Joyce was always shy, but she had never been embarrassed by the presence of Norman Bellendean. She had been able even to laugh with him when the gloom of her arrival in this new sphere, and of her severance from the old, was heaviest upon her. She had the reassuring consciousness that he knew all about her, and could not be in any way deceived. No need of fictions to account for her, nor apologies for her ignorance, were necessary with him. And she gave him from the first that most flattering proof of preference by being at her ease with him, when she was so with no one else. But there was something in the air to-night which suggested embarrassment—something too familiar, over-sweet. Mrs. Hayward and the Colonel did not feel this. They said to each other that it was a lovely evening, and then they talked of their own concerns. Joyce was not like them—the rose-tinted vapours on the sky had got into her very soul.

‘Was there ever such a sunset?’ said Norman Bellendean. ‘And yet, Miss Joyce, you and I remember something better still,—the long, long lingering of the warm days——’

‘In summer,’ she said, with a little catching of her breath, ‘when you never could tell whether there was any night at all.’

‘And when the night was better than the day, if better could be, and morning and evening ran into each other.’

‘And it was all like paradise,’ said Joyce, chiming in. Their voices were full of emotion, though they were speaking only of such unexciting things as the atmosphere and the twilight—two safe subjects surely, if any subjects could be safe.

‘It is not like that,’ Joyce added, with a little reluctance; ‘but still the river when the last flash of the sun is upon it, and all the clouds hanging like roses upon the sky, and the water glimmering like a glass, and making everything double like the swan——’

Norman was one of the unread. He did not know what swan it was that floated ‘double, swan and shadow,’ for ever and ever, since that day the poet saw it: but he understood the scene and the little failure of breath in the enthusiasm of her description with which Joyce spoke.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was like that the other night—but there was a charm wanting.’

‘Oh,’ Joyce said, still breathless; and she added, with an impulse that was involuntary, beyond her power of control, not what she meant or wished to say— ‘When you were up the river—the other night—passing——’

Did she mean it as a reproach? He looked at her quickly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is true I passed—the very lawn, the enchanted place—and looked and looked, but did not see you.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘but I saw you, Captain Bellendean. I saw you go below the bridge steering. It was strange, among all the strange folk, and the boats coming and going, suddenly to see—a kent face.’

She laughed, in a curious embarrassed way, as if laughing at herself, yet with a rising colour, and eyes that did not turn to him, rather avoided him. Norman had a sudden gleam of perception, and understood more or less the little fanciful shock which Joyce had received to see him pass.

‘You could not think it more strange than I did,’ he said, in an unconscious tone of self-defence, ‘nor half so disagreeable. To pass with people I cared nothing for, the same way that has become associated to me with—with—— And to look perhaps as if it were just the same whether it was they or—others.’

He began with self-defence, but ended with an inflection of half complaint and subdued indignation in his tone.

‘Indeed,’ said Joyce, startled, ‘I did not think——’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you did not think about me at all, and I am a fool for supposing you did; but if you thought for a moment that it was any pleasure to me to be there, apart from all that had made it delightful——’

‘Oh,’ cried Joyce, in an anxious effort not to understand this inference which flooded all her veins with a sudden rush of indescribable celestial delight, ‘but the river was as bright as ever I saw it, and the sky like heaven; and why should you not be happy—with your friends?’

He had given her a sensation more exquisite than any she had ever known in all her life; and on her side she was giving him pain, and knew it, and was not ill-pleased to have it so. Such, as the old moralists would say, are the strange contradictions of human feeling! He turned upon her an aggrieved expostulating glance.

‘You think it was the same, whoever my companions might be? You don’t understand what it was to me to be bound to the oar like the galley slaves, to listen to all their inane nonsense and their jokes, when my heart was in—oh, a very different place.’

‘You have been all over the world, Captain Bellendean, you must remember so many other places—more beautiful than this.’

‘Do you think that is what I mean?’ he said quickly, in a tone almost of irritation. Joyce knew very well it was not what he meant. But she had to defend herself with the first weapons that came in her way.

‘Don’t you know,’ he said, after a pause, ‘that this has been such a summer as I never had before? I have been a great deal about the world, as you say. I have had many experiences: but never yet have I felt as I have felt this year. I never was romantic, nor had I much poetry in me. But I begin to think the poets are the fellows, after all, who understand best.’

‘That is true, I am sure,’ said Joyce in a subdued voice. She was thankful to find something that she could say. She walked along mechanically by the Captain’s side, feeling as if she were floating in some vague enchantment, not able to pause or realise anything, not able to escape, carried along by the delicious soft air which was breathing within her being as well as without, a rapture that could not be explained.

‘I believe it is true—but I never thought so before. And the cause is that I never knew—you before,’ the Captain said.

Did the people know who were passing? could they see in the faces of those two walking—nay, floating by, surrounded by a golden mist—what was being said between them? A vague wonder stole into Joyce’s mind as she perceived dimly through that mist the face of a wayfarer going by. She herself but vaguely realised the meaning of the words. She understood their sentiment well enough,—felt it in that silent ecstasy that swept her along, but had no power to think or exercise her own faculties at all, only to let herself be carried on, and away.

‘You have been the enchantment to me,’ he said hurriedly; ‘and now it is almost over, and I shall have to go away. The charm will be gone from everything. I don’t know how I am to reconcile myself to the dull world and the long days—unless——’

‘Captain Bellendean——’ Joyce said faintly, hearing her own voice, as if it came from a long distance, feeling a vague necessity for a pause.

‘Unless I may—come back,’ he said. ‘I must go home and put things in order—but it need not be for very long—if I may come back?’

There was something vaguely defective in these words, she could not tell what. For that very reason they relieved her, because they were not what they might have been. She came to herself as if she had touched the earth after that vague swaying, floating, in realms above the earth, in the soft delicious air.

‘Surely,’ she said, ‘you will come back. There is no reason for not coming back.’

He, it seemed, had not felt that touch of reality which had brought Joyce out of her rapture. He was confused and floating still. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘not to return merely to town or—but to come back to this moment, to those days. I have never known anything like them. They have opened a new world to me: Joyce——’

‘Captain Bellendean!’

‘I mean no familiarity—no want of respect; could you think so? The name came out without intention—only because I say it over, and over—— Joyce—I may come back?’

Surely the passers-by must see! He had turned and was looking at her with pleading eyes; while she, with the red of the western sky in her face, with the mist in her eyes, did not look at him, or make him any reply.

‘I don’t ask you to say more. This is not the place. I don’t want to disturb your mind,—only say I may come, and that you will not send me away?’

Her heart had sprung up and was beating loud. A terror of what the people on the road would think took possession of her. ‘No, it is not the place,’ she murmured, scarcely knowing what she said.

‘What could I do? there was no other: say I may——’

‘Bellendean!’ cried Colonel Hayward’s cheerful voice from behind; ‘are you coming in to have some dinner? You had better. Why, you are taking the way to the river, Joyce and you.’

‘I beg your pardon!’ cried Captain Bellendean, with a startled air. ‘I beg your pardon! I did not observe——’

‘Joyce should have observed,’ said Mrs. Hayward quietly. ‘It is nearly half-past seven. You cannot do less than stay to dinner—especially as I hear you are going away.’

‘I will, with many thanks,’ said Norman. He looked like a man waked out of a dream; and Mrs. Hayward hastened on, not without a sense of Christian charity, to let them have it out, as she said to herself. But they were now both awakened. The charm was broken, and the golden air dispersed. They walked on behind the elder pair to the door, and went in very gravely both of them, without another word said.

A more extraordinary evening never was. Joyce had known many agitated and unhappy ones within the last six months, but none like this, during which she saw everything through a haze of excitement, with something weighing on her eyelids—something murmuring in her ears—something which made it impossible for her to meet the light or clearly realise what was going on. There seemed a sort of dumb expectation in the air besides that curious sense of something arrested and untold that was in her own mind. Her step-mother looked at her with a question in her eyes, and even touched her with a half-caress as she went upstairs to prepare for dinner. Joyce did not know why, and yet had a sort of far-off perception of some meaning and kindness in it, which notwithstanding was half an offence. And when she came downstairs the haze had filled the dining-room, so that she could not see clearly the face on the other side of the table—the face which did not look at her any more than she looked at him, and yet was keenly aware of every movement on her part, as she was of his. She herself scarcely spoke a word during the whole meal, and he not much,—not more than was necessary. The others went on with their ordinary conversation, which seemed to drift about upon the haze; names—the names with which Joyce’s mind had been busy a little while before—floating about, falling now and then like stones, catching her vague attention. Sir Sam, the Canon, the Sitwells—who were they, all these people? It seemed so strange that any one could concern themselves with their vague affairs.

The dinner was very long, and yet flew like a dream; and then came the twilight drawing-room, the dimness outside, the evening chilled out of that heavenly warmth and calm. Joyce did not go out to-night as was her wont, though she could not tell why. She kept by Mrs. Hayward, sedately seated near a table, upon which there was work, as if that were her object. Captain Bellendean stood near her when the gentlemen came from the dining-room. There was not much light, and he stood up like a tall pillar, slightly inclining over her, a sort of Pisan tower, leaning, yet firm. If he had anything more to say to her, it was clear that was not the place, any more than the road with the Colonel and his wife behind. But he lingered there still, saying little, until Colonel Hayward had to say, ‘I don’t want to hurry you, Bellendean. You’re always welcome, and my wife would give you a bed with pleasure; but if you are going by that train——’ Then Captain Bellendean roused himself like a man startled out of a dream, and shook hands with them all. He said Good-bye, not Good-night; and when Joyce had seated herself again, all trembling after that pressure of her hand, which almost hurt her, he suddenly came back, and looked in at the door. Mrs. Hayward’s back was turned: she had indeed gone out to the verandah to look at the moon, as she said afterwards. He looked in, then made one step to where Joyce was sitting, and took her hand and kissed it. ‘Remember I am to come back!’ he said, and then was gone.

‘What did Bellendean forget? his gloves, or a book, or what was it?’ the Colonel said, with some curiosity, when the door was closed and the visitor departed.

‘I don’t know,—I was in the verandah,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘What did he forget, Joyce?’

Joyce looked at them with a startled, guilty countenance, knowing what they had said, yet not knowing, and made no reply. She dared not move, nor speak, lest she should betray—what? There was nothing to betray, except that he was coming back, and that was no information—for of course he was coming back. She was very glad to escape to her room when the lawful time came for that, and Mrs. Hayward gave the signal, but had not the strength or courage even to rise from her seat till that signal was given, not knowing whether she would be able to walk straight, or to preserve her ordinary appearance if she relinquished, with both those eyes upon her, the support of her chair. She was vaguely sensible of Mrs. Hayward’s inquiring looks, which were half indignant, half angry, as well. When they said good-night, her step-mother took her hand with a quick monitory touch. ‘Have you anything to tell me, or would you like to speak to your father?’ she said. Joyce gave her a wondering look, and said ‘No.’ ‘I am not thrusting myself into your confidence: but tell your father,’ Mrs. Hayward said again imperatively, with a gleam of excitement in her blue eyes. Then as Joyce made no response, her step-mother flung past her, flushed and indignant. ‘I might have known better than to make any such appeal,’ she cried angrily, and shut her door with a clang that rang through the silent house.

Joyce stole away very silently into her room, disturbed and full of trouble. What could she tell? there was nothing to tell. She felt guilty without having any reason for it, and very sorry to offend without knowing how to help it. Tell her father!—but when she had nothing to tell him! There was a grieved look on his countenance, too, when he said good-night. It was all a confusion, and wrong somehow; but what could she do? Disturbed by this, there was a moment of troubled uncertainty in Joyce’s mind a longing to be pardoned, to say that she was sorry, that she was concealing nothing, which was, however, contradicted by the desire she had to be alone, and the shrinking even from a look which might penetrate her seclusion, and read the secret of her heart before she had spelled it out to herself. Softly, apologetically, with a sense of asking pardon, she closed her door and then sat down and came face to face with herself.

It was a very strange agitated meeting, as with some one she was unwilling to see and still more unwilling to question—some one who had a story to tell which would crush all the beginnings of peace and all the gleams of happiness that had been in Joyce’s life. She thought in the confusion of her mind of De Musset’s spectre, whom he had seen sitting by him in all the conjunctions of his life—the being, qui me ressemblait comme un frère; but Joyce’s meeting with herself was more important than anything recorded by the poet. All trembling with the sensations she had gone through, her nerves vibrating with the strain, her energies all melted in the exquisite sense of happiness which had floated her away, and in the chill check of the real which had brought her to earth again, she had questions to revolve and discoveries to make such as she knew now she had avoided and turned away from. She was afraid to look into those eyes which were her own, and find out the secret there. She sat down, putting her candle on the table, without lighting any other, conscious that she preferred the darkness, and not even to see, if she could help it, what she must see,—what could not be hidden any more. What had she done? She had meant no harm, thought of nothing that was wrong, nor of injuring any one, nor of failing in her faith. If Joyce had been made to disclose her opinion of herself, she would have described herself as true and faithful—faithful above all things. She would not have claimed excellence, though she might think perhaps that there was that in her which was above the multitude; but she would have claimed to be faithful and constant, not variable in her affections, true to the last, whatever temptation might come upon her.

Oh, strange delusion! oh, failure beyond example! when all the time she had failed, failed without knowing it, without meaning it, helplessly, like a fool and a traitor! It all came upon her in a sudden scathing flash of consciousness, which seemed to scorch her drooping face. She, in whom Joyce had always felt such confidence, herself—she, betrothed and bound and beyond all possibilities of other sentiment—almost as much as a wife already in solemn promise and engagement—she! heaven help her! what had she done? Her veins all swelled to bursting with the rush of her guilty blood. Horror and darkness enveloped her all around; she hid her face in her hands, and her lips gave forth a low quivering cry. She—loved another man. It was all the worse for her that she had felt herself superior to all vagaries of passion, thought herself above them, and believed that her own half-shrinking acceptance of love was all that was consistent with a woman’s dignity. She had thought this, and she thought it still—yet discovered that she had departed from it, thrown all those restraints to the winds, and loved—loved—Norman Bellendean! The discovery horrified, humiliated, crushed her to the ground, and yet sprang with an impulse of warmer life than she had ever known before through all the throbbing of her veins.

CHAPTER XXX

‘I wish you would not bring in her name,’ cried the old soldier—‘a young woman’s name! I know what you say is for—for our good, Elizabeth; but I can’t, indeed I can’t—it’s not possible. I ask a man—as if I meant to force him into—— My dear, you can’t know what that means; you can’t say what you’re thinking. I to put shame upon my own child!’ The Colonel walked up and down the room in the greatest perturbation. ‘I can’t—I can’t!’ he said; ‘you must never think of such a thing again. I—Elizabeth! Good Lord——!’ He stopped. ‘My dear, I beg your pardon. I don’t mean to be profane—but to tell me—oh, good Lord!’ the Colonel cried, feeling that no words were adequate to express the horror and incongruity of the suggestion.

Mrs. Hayward had stood watching him without any relaxation of her look. There was a certain vulgar fibre in her which was not moved by that incongruity. A faint disdain of his incapacity, and still more of his delicacy about his daughter’s name, as if she were of more importance than any one else, was visible in her face. Who was Joyce that she was not to be warned, that her lover was not to be brought to book? Mrs. Hayward, in that perpetual secret antagonism which was in her mind, though she disapproved of it and suffered from it, was more vulgar than her nature. She was ready to scoff at these prejudices about Joyce, though in her natural mind she would have herself shielded a young woman’s name from every breath.

‘I am speaking in Joyce’s interests,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t want to break her heart.’

‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth!’ said the Colonel, ‘I beseech you, don’t talk like that. Why, you can’t know, you can’t, you don’t realise what a girl is to a man, especially when he is her father. It’s bad enough to think of her caring for one of those fellows at all; but to break her heart—good Lord!—and for me to interfere, to call up a man to—to the scratch—to—— Oh, good Lord, good Lord!’ cried Colonel Hayward, with a blush like a girl. ‘I might shoot him and take the penalty, but you might as well ask me to—to shoot myself at once—as to do that: or to acknowledge that my child, that young creature, my Joyce——’

‘You can’t expect me to follow you in your raptures, Henry,’ said his wife, sitting down at the breakfast-table, for this discussion had been held in the morning, before Joyce appeared: and at that moment the door opened and she came in, putting a stop to the conversation. She was paler than usual, and graver; but the two were confused by her entrance, and for the moment so much taken up in concealing their own embarrassment, that they did not remark her looks. Joyce was very quiet, but she was not unhappy. How could she be with the thrill of Norman Bellendean’s voice still in her ears, and his last look, which meant so much, so clear before her? She was wrong, she was guilty; it might be that misery and shame should be her portion. She knew that she had failed to honour, if not to love, and that her way before her was very dark; but do what she would, Joyce could not force herself to be unhappy now. The first thing that had occurred to her when she opened her eyes upon the morning light was not any breach of faith or failure in duty, but that voice and those eyes with their revelation which made her heart bound out of all the shadows of the night. She was pale with all this agitation, uneasy even when she slept, distracted by spectres; but in the morning light she could not be wretched, however she tried. She was very quiet, however, much more so than usual; and the absence of that eager vitality which kept continual light and shadow on her sensitive face gave her a certain dignity, which was again enhanced by her complete unconsciousness of it. Her father cast a glance at her in this composed stateliness of aspect, and had to hasten away to the sideboard and cut at the ham to hide the horrified shame of his countenance. A creature like that to break her heart for any fellow! to be called upon to ask any man his intentions—his intentions—in respect to her! The Colonel hewed down the ham till his wife had to remonstrate. ‘You are not cutting for a dozen people, Henry.’ ‘Oh, I beg your pardon my dear,’ he cried, and came back to his seat very shamefaced with a small solitary slice upon his plate.

When the Colonel went out for his usual walk, with Joyce as his companion, Mrs. Hayward came after them to the door, and laid her hand significantly on her husband’s shoulder. ‘Now don’t forget,’ she said. Forget! as if he were likely to forget what weighed upon him like a mountain. He thought to himself that he would put off any allusion till the walk was half over; but the Colonel had not the skill nor the self-control to do this, the uneasy importance of his looks betraying something of his commission even to the dreamy eyes of Joyce. Had she been fully awake and aroused, she must have seen through all his innocent devices at the first glance.

‘It was rather a pleasant party, yesterday,’ he said, ‘especially afterwards, when we were by ourselves.’ The Colonel meant no bull, but had lost himself in a confusion of words.

‘Yes,’ said Joyce very sedately, without even a smile.

‘By the way,’ said the Colonel briskly, seizing the first means of avoiding for a little longer the evil moment, ‘you did great execution, Joyce. I don’t know what you said to the Canon, my dear, but I think you accomplished in a minute what all the good people have been trying to do for weeks and weeks. What did you say?’

What did she say? She gave her father a wondering look. Who was the Canon, it seemed to ask, and when was yesterday? It looked a century ago.

‘That is what I like to see a woman do,’ cried the Colonel, rousing himself into enthusiasm for the sake of gaining a little time—‘not making any show, but with a word of hers showing what’s kind and right, and getting people to do it. That’s what I like to see. You have done your friends the best turn they ever had done them in their life.’

‘Was it so?’ said Joyce, with a faint smile. ‘I am very glad; but it was the Canon that was good to pay attention to the like of me.’

‘The like of you!’ cried the Colonel. ‘I don’t know the man that wouldn’t pay attention to the like of you.’ Then he got suddenly grave, being thus brought back headlong to the very subject which he had been trying to escape. ‘Oh, I was going to say,’ he added, with a look that was almost solemn— ‘I am afraid we shall miss him very much—I mean Norman Bellendean.’

‘Yes,’ said Joyce. He spoke slowly, and she had time to steady her voice.

‘Perhaps you knew before that he was going, my dear?’

‘No,’ she replied, feeling all the significance of these monosyllables, yet incapable of more.

‘I thought he had perhaps told you—at least Elizabeth—Elizabeth thought he might have told you.’

‘Why should he have told me?’ said Joyce, with an awakening of surprise.

The Colonel was full of confusion. He did not know what to say. He felt guilty and miserable, like a spy, and yet he was faithful to his consigne, and to the task that had been set him to do. ‘Indeed,’ he said, in his troubled voice, ‘my dear, I don’t know; but it was thought—I mean I thought, perhaps, that it would be a comfort to you—if you could have a little confidence in me.’

Joyce began to perceive dimly what he meant, and it brought a flush to her pale face. ‘But I have confidence—a great confidence,’ she said, very low, not looking at him. The Colonel took courage from these words.

‘Your father, you know, Joyce,—that is very proud of you, and to have such a daughter—and that would let no one vex you, not for a moment, my dear—not by a word or a thought—and that would like you to make a friend of him, and tell him—whatever you might like to tell him,’ he added, hastily breaking off in the middle of what he had meant to be a long speech, and giving double force to so much as he had said by these means.

Joyce had gradually aroused herself out of her dreams to understand the meaning in her father’s voice, which trembled and quickened, and then broke with a fulness of tender feeling which penetrated all the mists that were about her. There suddenly came to her a sense of help at hand—a belief in the being nearest to her in the world—a sort of viceroy of God more true than any pope—her father. What no one else could do he might do for her. It would be his place to do it; and it would be her right to appeal to him, to put her troubles into his hands. She had never realised this before: her father—who would let no one vex her, who would stand between her and harm, who would have a right to answer for her, and take upon himself her defence. The tears rushed to her eyes, and a sense of relief and lightening to her heart.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I will mind that. I will never forget it: my father, that is like God, to know the meaning in my heart, even if I am far wrong: and not to be hard on me, but to see where I was deceived, and to take my cause in hand.’

‘Deceived!’ the Colonel faltered, with mingled consternation and wrath. ‘Show me the man that would deceive you, my dear child, and leave him to me—leave him to me.’

‘What man? There is no man,’ said Joyce, shaking her head. ‘Oh, if it was but that! but when it is me that has been the deceiver—and yet meant no harm!’

Her eyes swimming in tears that made them larger and softer than ever eyes were, the Colonel thought, turned to him with a tender look of trust which went to his heart, and yet was less comprehensible to him than all that had gone before. He was puzzled beyond expression, and touched, and exalted, and dismayed. He had gained that confidence which he had sought, and yet he knew less than ever what it meant. And she had said he was like God, which confused and troubled the good man, and was very different from the mission that had been given him to find out his child’s secret, and to bring to book—what horrible words were these!—to bring to book! But whatever Joyce had on her mind, at least it was not Norman Bellendean.

And here in the emotion of the moment, and the rising of other and profounder emotions, the Colonel dropped his consigne, and gave up his investigations. He did not in the least understand what Joyce meant; but she had given him her confidence, and he was touched to the bottom of his tender heart. She had said that he would take her cause in hand, that he was her father like God—a new and curiously impressive view, turning all usual metaphors round about—that he would know her meaning, even if she were far wrong. Not a word of this did the Colonel comprehend—that is, the matter which called forth these expressions remained entirely dark to him; but it would have been profane, he felt, to ask for further enlightenment after she had thus thrown herself upon him for protection and help. He was glad to relieve the tension by having recourse to common subjects, so that without any further strain upon her, his delightful, tender, incomprehensible child might get rid of the tears in her eyes, and calm down.

The result was that the Colonel talked more than usual on that morning walk, and told Joyce more stories than usual of his old Indian comrades, and of things that had passed in his youth, going back thirty, forty years with at first a kind conscious effort to set her at her ease again, but after a while with his usual enjoyment in the lively recollection of these bright days which the old soldier loved to recall. And Joyce walked by his side in an atmosphere of her own, full of the bewitchment of a new enchanting presence suddenly revealed to her, full of the mystic, half-veiled consciousness of Love—love that was real love, the love of the poets, not anything she had ever known before. Her father’s voice seemed to keep the shadow away, the thought of the wrong she had done and the troth she had broken, but did not interfere with that new revelation, the light and joy with which the world was radiant, the inconceivable new thing which had looked at her out of Norman Bellendean’s eyes. She walked along as if she had been buoyed up by air, her heart filled with a great elation which was indescribable, which was not caused by anything, which looked forward to nothing, which was more than happiness, a nameless, causeless delight.

If she had been in a condition to examine what Captain Bellendean had said, or in any way to question what Mrs. Hayward called his intentions, Joyce’s feelings might have been very different. But of this she took no thought whatever, nor asked herself any question. What she did ask, with a triumphant yet trembling certainty, was whether this was not the Vita Nuova of which she had read? The answer came in the same breath with that question. She knew it was the Vita Nuova—the same which had made the streets of Florence an enchanted land such as never was by sea or shore, and turned the woods of Arden into Paradise. The pride and glory and delight of having come into that company of lovers, and received her inheritance, softly turned her dreaming brain. She had never been so much herself—for all those references to other people and pervading circumstances which shape a young woman’s dutiful existence had disappeared altogether from her consciousness—and yet she was not herself at all, but a dream. The accompaniment of her kind father’s pleasant voice, running on with his old stories, gave her a delightful shelter and cover for the voiceless song which was going on in her own heart. She had put her cause into his hands, as she felt, though she was not clear how it had been done. He would not blame her, though she was wrong. He would defend her. And thus Joyce escaped from life with all its burdens and penalties, and floated away upon the soft delicious air into the Vita Nuova. Never was such a walk—her feet did not touch the ground, her consciousness was not touched by any vulgar sound or sight. Soft monosyllables of assent dropped from her dreaming lips as the delighted historian by her side went on with the records of his youth. He felt that he had all her interest—he felt how sweet it was to have a dear child, a girl such as he had always wished for, who had given him her full confidence, and who cared for everything that ever had happened to him, and was absorbed in it as if the story had been her own. In all their goings and comings together, there had never been a walk like this.