Joyce

CHAPTER IV

It was not very far from the terrace at Bellendean to Peter Matheson’s cottage in the village, which was a cottage with a but and a ben—that is, an outer and an inner, two rooms downstairs, into one of which the door opened, and two others above. There was nothing in front but the village street, from which you could tap at the window of the kitchen in which the family lived; but behind there was a little garden, with some large lilac and rose bushes, and an ash-tree with a small plot of grass round its patriarchal feet. Joyce had come back tired from the dusty walk with the children just as her granny, as she called the old woman who had been her guardian all her life, had taken off the large Paisley shawl and the close black satin bonnet, which were her state costume out of doors. Mrs. Matheson—called Janet in the village, a freedom which Joyce resented—had folded up carefully her ‘grand shawl’ and laid her bonnet upon it, to be put away presently, and had seated herself in the high-backed wooden chair to rest. The kettle was beginning to boil on a fire kept as low as possible in compliment to the hot June day. Though she had shared in the refreshment under the tent, Janet was not contented to accept that in place of the much-prized cordial of her own brewing. ‘Na, na; what ye get out o’ an urn may be gran’ drinking,’ she said, ‘but it’s never like my tea.’ She was waiting till the kettle should boil to ‘mask the tea,’ which even Joyce did not do altogether to her liking. When the door opened and the girl came in, Janet was sitting, musing as she waited, near the fire, according to cottage custom. She was old, and it was not too warm for her, and she was tired and enjoying what it requires the long habit of toil to enjoy thoroughly, the entire quiescence of physical rest. To sit there, doing nothing, was sweet at her age. In former times she could remember being impatient for the boiling of the kettle. In these days she would have whipped up her bonnet and shawl and ran upstairs with them, thinking it an idle thing to leave them there even for a moment; and she would have set out the cups while she waited. But now she was not impatient. There was no hurry, and rest was sweet. She looked up when her child came in—who was her child certainly, though not her daughter—with a pride and admiration of her looks, and her dress, and everything about her, that never failed. Joyce wore a dark dress, which she had made herself, after the model of a dress of Greta’s. Her little collars and cuffs were like those the young ladies wore, without the slightest ornament. It vexed Janet a little that she would not wear a locket, as all the girls did in the village, and as the young ladies also did. It was as if they took her siller from her, or hoarded it up, or grudged her any bonnie thing she would wear. ‘Eh! if it was me,’ Janet said, ‘she would be just as fine as the best. There’s naething I would not ware upon her—a gold chain on her neck, and a gold watch at her side, and a ring upon her finger; but she will not be guided by me. And to see her looking like a young queen, and no a thing to show for it but just her ain bonnie looks; eh! I hope it’ll not be remembered against us if we’re awfu’ proud; for Peter is just as bad as me.’ But all this was said in the absence of Joyce, and to her face the old mother gave utterance to little phases of detraction, as it is the part of a mother to do.

‘You’re very soon back; you’re back maist as soon as me. I am just waiting for the water to come a-boil, and then I’ll mask the tea. You will be better, after a’ yon botheration, and the trouble you’ve been giving yoursel’, of a good cup of tea.’

‘I had some in the tent, granny,’ said Joyce, sitting down wearily near the door.

‘Oh ay! in the tent. If yon’s what pleases the leddies it doesna please me. What’s the matter with ye? You’ve just weariet yoursel’ with thae weans and their pieces, till ye canna tell whether you’re on your head or your heels. Na, na; sit still and rest. I’ve had naething to tire me. I’ll get out the cups mysel’, and we’ll keep the teapot warm at the side of the fire for Peter. He likes it a’ the better the mair it tastes o’ the pot.’

‘What did you think of it all, granny? Who did you like best? Did you like the tableau, with the Queen and the ladies? Wasn’t it like a picture? I wonder if the real Queen Margaret was as handsome as ours, and all her maidens as sweet.’

‘Your head is just turned with them, J’yce; and yon would be your doing, too? Putting up Mrs. Bellendean upon a throne, as if she was the duchess. I thought that bid to be one o’ your fancies; and they just do what ye tell them, it seems to me, young and auld, and the leddy hersel’. Your head would be just turned, if it werena for me, that never spoilt ye. Sit to the table like a reasonable creature, and take your tea.’

‘I don’t want any tea, granny. I am only tired. There was a gentleman there——’

‘And what’s that to you, if there were a hundred gentlemen?’ said her guardian quickly. ‘Na, na; there’s to be nae talk about gentlemen between you and me.’

‘It was an old gentleman, granny,’ said Joyce, with a smile curving slightly the grave lines of her mouth.

‘The auld anes are often waur than the young anes,’ the old woman said.

‘Oh, granny!’ cried Joyce, ‘what is that to me, if they are old or young? This one asked me—granny, listen! listen! for my heart is beating hard, and I must get some one to listen to me;—he asked me, where I had got my name,—who had given me my name? with a look—oh, if I could let you see his look! Not as some do, just staring, which means nothing but folly—but a look that made his eyes open wide, and the colour go out of his face.’

‘It was just very impident of any man to look at you like that.’

‘No, it was not impudent. He was an old man with a sweet face, as if he was somebody’s father—some girl’s father that is my age. And he asked me, “Young lady” (he did not know who I was)—“young lady, where did you get your name?"’

The terms of this address moved Janet much more than the meaning. ‘Well, I’ll not say that I’m surprised: for if ever there was a young lass that looked like a lady, no to flatter ye—for flattery’s no my way——’

‘Granny, granny, you don’t see what I mean. It was not me that he was thinking of. He was wondering to hear me called Joyce; and he knew somebody—he knew—some one that was like me—that had the same name.’

Old Janet paused in the act of pouring out the tea. ‘I mind now,’ she said. ‘There was somebody asking me where ye got it,—if it was a name in the family; but I took no thought. Bless me! can ye no be contented with them that have done their best for you all your life?’

‘I am very well contented,’ said Joyce; but the involuntary movement of her mouth contradicted her words. She added, after a little pause, ‘No one is so well off as I am. I have the kind of work I like, and my big girls that learn so well, and you, granny dear, that are always so kind.’

‘Kind!’ said the old woman, with quick offence; ‘if you think I’m wanting to be thought kind——’

‘But I should like,’ said Joyce, who in the meantime had been murmuring something to herself about the ‘Happy Warrior,’ and had not given much attention to this disclaimer—‘oh, I should like to hear who I am,—to hear something about her, to know——’ She paused, as if words were insufficient to express her thoughts, with a thrill of meaning more intense than anything she could say, quivering in her lips.

‘Oh ay,’ said Janet, ‘I ken what you mean; to hear that you were born a grand lady, though you’ve been bred up a cottage lass; that you’re Leddy Joyce or maybe Princess—how can I tell?—instead of just what you are, Joyce Matheson, that has made herself very weel respectit, and a’ her ain doing—which is a far greater credit than to be born a queen.’

‘Granny, you whip me, but it’s with roses—no, not roses, for there are thorns to them, but lily flowers. Oh no, not Lady Joyce, nor anything of the kind,’ she went on, with a tell-tale blush suddenly dyeing her pale face. ‘I might have thought that when I was young—but not now. It is only a kind of yearning to know—to know—I cannot tell what I want to know—about my mother,’ she added in a lower tone.

‘Bairn,’ said Janet, ‘let that be—let it be. Poor young thing, she’s been long long in her Maker’s hands, and a’ forgotten and forgiven.’

‘If there was anything to forget and forgive; you take that for granted, granny!’ cried the girl, with a sudden flush of indignation.

‘Onything to forgive? There’s aye plenty to forgive even to the best; but oh, J’yce, my poor lassie, take my advice and let it be. Many strange things happen in this world: but a poor thing that wanders into a strange place her lane with no a living creature to care if she lives or dies—oh, J’yce, my bonnie bairn, let it be!’

Joyce had risen, as if the remark was intolerable, and stood at the window looking out blankly. It was a discussion which had taken place often before, and always with the same result. Old Mrs. Matheson took, as was natural, the matter-of-fact view of the question, and felt a certainty that shame as well as sorrow must be involved in the secret of Joyce’s birth, and that to inquire into it was very undesirable. But, as was equally natural, Joyce, since she had been old enough to understand, had built a hundred castles in the air on the subject of her birth, and occupied many an hour with dreams of perhaps a father who should come and seek her, perhaps a mother’s mother, like an old queen—people who would be noble in look and thought—perhaps, who could tell, in birth too? The Lady Joyce, with which old Janet taunted her, had not been altogether a fiction. Who could say? Mysteries were more common among the great than among the small, the girl said to herself. And how many romances are there in which such a story appears? There was the ‘Gentle Shepherd,’ the one poem beside Burns and Blair’s ‘Grave,’ which was to be found in the cottage, and which she had known by heart almost before she could speak. Was not the shepherd Patie a gentleman all the time and Peggy a lady? and both of them in their first estate full of poetry, and distinguished among their seeming peers, as Joyce was well aware she had always been?

By some strange grace of nature Joyce had escaped the self-conceit which is so common to the self-taught, so usual, must we say it, in Scotland? Her consciousness of being able to do a great many things as other people could not do them, got vent in a little innocent astonishment at the other people, who either were dull beyond what is permitted, or would not ‘give their thoughts’ to the proper subjects. She grew impatient by times with their determined stupidity, but thought it their fault, and not any special gift of hers that made the difference. It was for this reason that she had very sedately accepted the addresses of Mr. Andrew Halliday, who was schoolmaster in the next parish. He was a young man who was full of intellectual ambitions. He could talk of books, and quote poetry as long and as much as any one could desire. Joyce had been moved by enthusiasm on their first acquaintance. She had felt herself altogether lifted out of the vulgarities of common life, when he talked about Shakespeare and Shelley, and Scott and Burns—and with a little smiling commendation, as from a superior altitude, even of the ‘Gentle Shepherd.’ It sobered her a little to find that, like the other ‘lads’ in the village, he was intent upon a ‘lass,’ and that she was the object of his choice. But she gave in to it with dignity, feeling that he was indeed the only person with whom she could mate; and looked forward to the career of the schoolmistress, the schoolmaster’s wife, with an adaptation to herself of the now so well-worn lines of the ‘Happy Warrior,’ which Joyce was not aware anybody had ever appropriated before. Yes; she would work out her life upon the plan which had pleased her childish thought. For it had been her ambition since ever she began to be able to do and learn so many things which the girls around her would not in their invincible ignorance be persuaded to attempt to do—to coax, or drag, or force them into better things. Who but a teacher who would never let them rest, who would give them no peace till they understood, could do that? And she was resolved to do it, with a hope that Providence might throw in the possibility of something heroical—the saving of somebody’s life, the redemption of some one who was going wrong—to make up. This was all laid out before her, the career which was to be hers.

But nevertheless (though she had abandoned all that folly about the Lady Joyce), when her mind was free, and nothing before her that compelled her attention, the romance of her unknown origin would come in, with a hundred vague attractions; and Colonel Hayward’s question was more than enough to call everything back. ‘Young lady, where did you get your name?’ and then his look! She had caught that look again, constantly coming back to her. Joyce was well enough aware what looks of admiration are like. She had met them of every kind—the innocent, the modest, the bold—but this was not one of them; not even the fatherly kind, of which she had been conscious too. This look was very different: it was the look of a man so startled, so absorbed, that he could think of nothing else; and then he had said, ‘I once knew—some one’—Joyce stood and listened, yet did not listen to what old Janet went on saying behind. The old woman was launched on a subject which filled her with eloquence. She was jealous of the poor little mother who had died—jealous at least of the idea that somebody might arrive some fine morning who would turn out to have a better claim than herself upon her nursling. In her heart Janet had always been certain that this was what would happen some day. She had spoken of it freely when the child was young, bidding Peter, her husband, to ‘haud a loose grip.’ ‘We maunna think too much of her,’ she had said; ‘for just when we’re bound up in her, and canna do without her, her ain kith and kin will come and carry her away.’ She had gone on saying this until the slumbering light in Joyce’s eyes had leaped out, and her quick intelligence had seized upon the expectation; after which Janet had changed her tone. She went on now in a very different strain, while Joyce stood at the window turning her back. ‘If I were in your place,’ she was saying, ‘I wouldna hear a word—no a word—that would maybe make me think shame o’ my mother. Oh, I wouldna listen—no, if it was the Queen hersel’!’ Joyce made no reply to these exhortations, but her heart burned. Her imagination rejected the idea with a fervour of suppressed indignation and resentment, which it needed all her gratitude and affection to keep in check. She stood and looked out, her foot tapping impatiently on the floor, her hand on the window. It was hard, very hard, to keep silent, though it was her duty so to do.

‘Granny,’ she said at last, ‘say no more, please. For one thing, I cannot bear it—and for another, here is Miss Greta, and I think she is coming to our door.’

‘Miss Greta! They might have kept her to her ain right name, which is a hantle bonnier than ony of your outlandish names; but she’s very free to come and very welcome, and grand company for you—I’m aye glad to see her coming here: is that her at the door? Come in, come in, my bonnie leddy. Joyce was just telling me—and we’re just awfu’ fain to see you, both her and me.’

‘Oh, thank you, Mrs. Matheson. Joyce! you are to come up to the house to-night,’ said the young lady, coming in, in the gaiety of her pretty summer dress, like a sunbeam. ‘Aunt Margaret has sent me to tell you: and I’ve run half the way, but I could not catch you up; you are to come to-night.’

Once more Joyce became crimson with expectation and excitement. Her eyes seemed to send out eager questions, and her lips to repeat the answer before the question was made. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Has the gentleman——’ and then stopped short, devouring the young visitor with eager eyes.

‘We want to have tableaux,’ cried the girl; ‘it was you yourself that put it into our heads: and you must come and help us—we could do nothing without you. Joyce, we want to do Queen Margaret—the same scene we had on the lawn for one. Captain Bellendean said it was beautiful: and then—something else. You are the one that knows all about Queen Margaret, Joyce.’

While Greta made her little speech, with a wondering sense after a word or two that she had stumbled into the midst of some dramatic scene which she did not understand, the face of Joyce was like a changing sky, save that the changes upon it were of swifter operation than those which alter the face of the heavens. It was full of a brilliant glow and flush of expectation at first: then the clouds suddenly swept over it, extinguishing all the higher lights: and then the shadows in their turn wavered and broke, and a chill clearness of self-repression came in their place, a calm which was like the usual calm of the countenance in repose, but intensified by the fact that this repose was not that of nature but of a violent effort, and had in it the gleam of self-scorn which answered in a certain vivid paleness to the effect of the light. A few instants were enough to work out all this drama, which was the truest reflection of Joyce’s mind. For one wild moment of hope, she had thought with a kind of certainty that her patroness, ‘the lady,’ the source of so many pleasures in Joyce’s life, was sending for her to tell her that her anticipations were realised, that her birth and kindred were discovered, and that she was to be told who she was. So swift are the operations of the mind that in her instantaneous conception of this, Joyce had time to make sure that there was no shame but only happiness in the revelation about to be made, or Mrs. Bellendean, always kind, would not have sent for her in this marked way. The thought sent the blood dancing through her veins, and though, perhaps, she did not picture herself as Lady Joyce, her mind yet rushed towards unknown glories in which insignificance at least had no place. And then there came a sense of absolute and sickening disappointment, such as seems to check the very fountains of life—disappointment so overwhelming that she felt herself stand up merely like a piece of mechanism by no strength or will of her own—a state of mental collapse from which she awoke to such scorn of herself for her former incoherent hopes as brought the blood to her cheeks again.

It takes longer time to describe these varying moods than it did to go through them, one sensation sweeping through her mind after the other. She had come to herself again after mounting to those heights and descending to those depths, when she replied, rather coldly, vaguely, to Greta’s petition, ‘If I can get away—if I can be spared from home.’

‘Spared from home! oh ay, she can be spared, Miss Greta, weel spared. She is aye so busy and taken up with thae bairns that a little pleasure will just do her a great deal of good.’

‘Pleasure!’ said Joyce, echoing the word. ‘I will come if the lady wants me; but there is a good deal to do—things to prepare. And then—and then——’ She paused with a conscious effort, making the most of her hindrances— ‘I am expecting a friend to-night.’

‘A friend?—that will be Andrew Halliday,’ said the old woman, again interposing anxiously; ‘you can see him ony day of the week; he’s no that far away nor sweared to come. Where are your manners, Joyce? to keep Miss Greta standing, and hum and ha, as if ye werena aye ready to do what will pleasure the lady—aye ready, night or day.’

‘If Joyce is tired, Mrs. Matheson,’ said Greta, ‘I will not have her troubled. But are you really so tired, Joyce? We cannot do anything without you. And it was all my idea, for there is no party or anything: but I thought it would please—all of them. Only I could do nothing without you.’

‘Yes, yes, I am coming,’ cried Joyce suddenly; ‘I was only what granny calls cankered and out of heart.’

‘Why should you be out of heart,’ said the other girl, ‘when everything went so well and everybody was so pleased? It is perhaps because you will miss Mr. Halliday? But then he can come up for you, and it’s moonlight, and that will be better than sitting in the house. Don’t you think so, Joyce?’

‘The moonlight is fine coming down the avenue,’ Joyce said vaguely. And then she asked, ‘Will the old Colonel—the old gentleman—will he be there?’

‘Oh, did you take a fancy to him, Joyce? So have I. Yes, he will be there—they will all be there. We are to have it in the great drawing-room—and leave to rummage in all the presses in the red room, you know, where the old Lady’s dresses are kept, and to take what we like.’

‘That would be fine,’ said Joyce, ‘if it was for last century; but if Queen Margaret is what you are wanting, that’s far, far back, and the old Lady’s dresses will do little good. There will be nothing half so old as Queen Margaret——’

‘Oh,’ cried Greta, her countenance falling, ‘I never thought of that.’

Joyce hesitated a moment, and the light returned to her eyes. ‘I will go up with you to the house now, if granny can spare me, and I will speak to Merritt, and we will think, she and I; and when you come out from your dinner we will have settled something. Oh, never fear but we will find something. It is just what I like,’ said Joyce, restored to full energy—‘to make out what’s impossible. That’s real pleasure!’ she cried, with sparkling eyes.

‘Did ever ony mortal see the like,’ said Janet to herself as she stood at the door watching the two girls go down the village street. ‘What’s impossible! that’s just what she likes, that wonderful bairn. And if onybody was to ask which was the leddy, it’s our Joyce and not Miss Greta that ilka ane would say. But, eh me! though I am so fain to get her a bit pleasure, what’s to come o’ a’ that if she is just to settle doon and marry Andrew Halliday? That’s what is impossible, and nae pleasure in it so far as I can see!’

CHAPTER V

She did not venture to say this to herself, yet the thought was in her mind as she stepped out with a sigh down the terrace steps, leaving the lights blazing, and the voices, so refined, as she thought, and delightful, rising in a soft tumult behind. She was tempted to steal along the terrace to an open window, to hear what they were saying, to peep in for a moment out of the gloom. But Joyce would not, could not do this thing. The temptation wounded her pride even while it moved her. What! she, Joyce, go and peep and listen, like a waiting-maid in a play! No, no; though they were so sweet, though they drew her as if with a magnet—no, no. She turned round resolutely away from this snare. On the other side the housekeeper’s room was shining too, and there was quite a fine company there—the ladies’-maids so fine, and gentlemen in evening clothes, quite equal to anything that was to be seen in the drawing-room. Joyce flung her head high—not there at least! though with a keen pang of self-humiliation she felt that there everybody would think was her appropriate place. But the fine ladies’-maids were too fine for her. There was something in that. It enabled her to feel a consolatory thrill of disdainful pride.

When she had gone on a little, and reached the beginning of the avenue, a shadow shaped itself out of the darkness of the night, and a shawl, unnecessary and undesired, was quickly put upon her shoulders. ‘I was told to bring you this—and I’ve been waiting half an hour. Oh, keep it on, the night is chilly—to please me, Joyce.’

‘Why should you make me do what I don’t wish, to please you?’

‘Well, if it is what you don’t wish; but consider that your health is of great consequence, and if you were to catch cold—or any unpleasant thing——’

‘There could not be a better time,’ said Joyce, ‘at the beginning of the holidays.’

‘Has something gone wrong with you to-night?—you are not as sweet as your ordinary—oh yes—sweet always, sweet ever to me. But something has come over you. You are so merry about them sometimes. You make me laugh, though I am not sure that it is right to laugh at the aristocracy—they have their difficulties, as we have ours.’

‘I wonder at you! Wherein are they different?—the same flesh and blood, I hope—no better education, often not so good. What then? Who was it they referred to for everything to-night?—to know all about the story and the history: the history of their own country, and we in sight of the very scene! Who did they come to ask from as if I were an oracle? and you say that knowledge is power——’

‘Yes, in a way, assuredly it is. There is a moral superiority; there is a sense of true nobility——’

‘Oh, stop, stop! In spite of all, if I had stayed there,’ cried Joyce, with an indignant sweeping motion of her arm towards the lighted windows, which now shone like faint stars in the distance, ‘should I have been like them? They would have talked and been kind; they would have asked me questions. What would you like, Joyce?—a cup of tea? Have you seen these pictures, Joyce? What can we show her to amuse her? And a gentleman would have come forward and said something, looking as if he were afraid I would curtsey when I spoke to him, like one of the children! and there would be little looks at me as if it were wonderful I could behave myself. And the lady herself, who is all goodness—yes, she is all goodness!—would give me a glance after a while, or perhaps a whisper, Now, Joyce, run away. Why—why should it be—so little difference, and yet so much? To feel nothing but scorn at the thought they are our betters, and yet never to feel at ease with them!’ Her foot gave an impatient mortified stamp on the ground, and her eyes, unseen, overflowed with hot and angry tears.

‘These are questions which are sometimes painful—but not necessarily so,’ said the young schoolmaster. ‘Take hold of my arm going down the avenue. Oh do! It is dark, and you might stumble, and the moon gives little light under the trees. And then, don’t you think I have a right to a little, just a little, kindness, more than everybody else? Well, then,’ he went on in a satisfied tone, as Joyce, moved by this argument, conceded the arm, though with some reluctance. ‘I will tell you all about it. It would be painful if it were not looked at from a high point of view. It is mortifying when there is no difference—when you are just as well instructed, perhaps better, and acquainted with all the rules of politeness, and even etiquette, and all the rest of it’—Joyce moved uneasily, impatiently, on his arm, and he had to hold her fast to retain it—‘to feel that there is a difference!’ he went on hastily; ‘and founded upon nothing reasonable, upon no solid ground. For to call them our betters is folly. Wherein are they our betters? not in acquaintance with everything that is best—with literature, with science, with what Tennyson calls the long results of time.’

‘If you think you are explaining, you are making a mistake,’ said Joyce,—‘you are only repeating what I said.’

The young schoolmaster laughed, but with confusion and a little resentment. ‘I am coming to the explanation,’ he said. ‘For one thing, it’s against our dignity, yours and mine, that are just as good as they are, to take offence. It’s a pitiful thing to take offence.’

He said ‘peetiful,’ and now and then made other betrayals in accent of his northern origin; but that was nothing, for some of the gentlemen did the same. This thought flew through Joyce’s mind with the rapidity of light, followed, like its attendant shadow, by another, a painful, hateful consciousness of this involuntary proof of the differences which they were discussing. The gentlemen! Why or how this distinction, which she herself made without knowing? In the darkness, unsuspected of her companion, who was going on quite easily, she blushed to her hair, to her heels, with a glow all over her.

‘But we must reflect,’ he said, ‘that in this world there must always be a certain sacrifice to appearances. And it’s more lovely and of good report to keep up different grades. Abstract justice is one thing, but fair-seeming also has to be considered. An aristocracy is a graceful thing. People like us, that consider these matters, may well consent to keep it up for the beauty of it. We cultivate flowers for the same end. It would be more profitable to fill all the garden beds with cabbages or gooseberries. We yield that for beauty, and we yield the other too. And then you and I, Joyce,’ he said, pressing her arm, ‘we have the advantage or the disadvantage, whichever you like to call it, of belonging to an exceptional class.’

Here again a murmur made itself heard in Joyce’s mind. Did he? For herself she made no question. She put him in her mind beside Captain Bellendean,—the Captain, as everybody called him—and her brain grew confused. But Halliday continued, with an equable sense of giving instruction, which confused her more and more.

‘We are, so to speak, everybody’s equal,’ he said. ‘We are probably superior to most of these people, but we are not going to compete with them in their way. There is no doubt that we are superior to the other classes, who cannot, in any manner, hold their own with us, except just by sheer force of money, or something of that measurable kind. We have therefore a rank—a rank, Joyce, that is by itself, that is becoming more and more acknowledged every day.’

He pressed her arm as he spoke, and she, wildly roving in her mind through every kind of bye-way of thought, did not like it, but made no sign, restraining herself, answering nothing, which was not Joyce’s way. She was thus caught and attached to reality, while her mind went wandering through space, in no way agreeing in the supposed triumphant argument of his—sometimes flashing a contradiction upon him which he could not see; chafing at the restraint; eager to throw him off, yet not doing so; held fast by circumstances and her fate.

‘When you and I set up together, Joyce,’ he said, clasping her arm closer, ‘which I hope will be soon, for I’m weary waiting—when you and I have our home together, we’ll have a home where any one may be proud to come to; where every meal will be a feast, and nothing spoken of or thought of that is not high—above the ideas of the common. We’ll have nothing common there. We’ll talk of the grandest things. We’ll be better than princes or kings; and by and by, when the world’s a little wiser—as we’re making it wiser every day—when a great statesman comes to Mid-Lothian, or a great scholar or a poet, it’s you and me he’ll come to. We’ll not have grand rooms to put him in, but it’s with us he’ll find the minds to understand him. Even now, if Tennyson were to be up yonder,’ he pointed back to the house—‘would he care for them, who could not quote a line he ever wrote, or us, who could say—what could we not say?—all his poems, I believe between you and me.’

At this Joyce laughed aloud with a sudden burst of ridicule. ‘Do you think he would care to hear his own poems? I think he would rather go up to the house, where nobody would be afraid of him.’

‘Afraid of him! why should we be afraid? I hope our manners are good enough for—as good as——’

‘Oh, what do you mean about manners? doesn’t that just prove what I say?—we should be afraid of him. We could quote all his poems one after another. What would he care for that? Miss Greta, that knows none of them, except perhaps the Queen of the May, would please him better. Why? Oh, how can I tell you? but I know it! She would know the people he knows; and, don’t you see, when you speak about manners, that alone shows—— Oh yes, we are different, and that is the truth. We may know more—and we might know double again, and it would not make any difference. There is more in it than that.’

‘Yes, there is money in it, if that is what you mean,’ said the schoolmaster scornfully.

‘That is not what I mean; but it’s true—there is money in it—and beautiful rooms, and people that have lived in them all their life, and their fathers before them, and that are used to be the best wherever they go. We say we’re the best, but we’re not used to it. It is in our thoughts, but not in other people’s. Oh, there is a difference! I feel I don’t belong to the cotters’ houses, but I am at ease in them: and in the farmers’ I feel—oh, a little queerish, as if I were smiling at their money and their notion that they were better than me—superior as you say. But in Bellendean I would be awkward and blush. I would say, Thank you, mem, or sir. Perhaps I could talk better than the rest if I were to try——’

‘You could—you could.’

‘What would that matter?’ cried this stern philosopher. ‘I would be just Joyce Matheson among them all. But here I’m not Joyce Matheson, I’m—anything. I’m Desdemona or even Rosalind. I’m Lady Joyce, as granny says. I’m no match for any but a prince—oh, Andrew!—what I meant to say was that in my thoughts I’m a grand lady, but in Bellendean, nobody—nobody! a little schoolmistress, a little country girl.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said, recovering the hand she had drawn from his arm. ‘But if you love me, Joyce, I’m prince enough for anything,’ he said in a lower tone.

This touch of feeling suddenly coming in silenced Joyce. She made no reply. Love had been little talked of between them. They had thought more of Shakespeare and the poets generally, and of that culture which levels all distinctions, and makes of those who are engaged ‘in tuition’ the superiors of the world. There was always this strange question, too, so little explicable, of class distinctions, which contradicted all theories, and set culture aside as if it meant nothing. They were both aristocrats by birth, holding fondly to the doctrine of a superior race, but feeling also a wistful, nay, sometimes angry, wonder why their own special affinities for that race were not more justly recognised.

‘After all, the class that we belong to is the greatest of all,’ said Halliday. ‘The greatest men have come out of it. The peasant is a kind of king. He has nothing to do with money-making, and poor sordid trades. He digs his bread out of the soil. However we may get up and up, we have no reason to be ashamed of him. In the cottages you are at your ease, you said——’

‘But not because I belong to them,’ cried Joyce, with a flash of her eyes. ‘If I did, I would not say so; it would be natural. But I don’t: I belong to nobody: if I were a peasant, I would be a peasant and nothing more; but I am nobody, and I think and think—and sometimes I have silly dreams.’

He tried again to take her hand. ‘Not silly, perhaps,’ he said; ‘the world is before us. I see nothing that we might not do—you and me together, Joyce.’

You and me together! This was not what she was thinking of. The vague exaltation and vaguer hope which sometimes swept her up to heights unknown had nothing to do, it must be confessed, with Andrew Halliday. She drew herself apart from him, on the evident ground that they were emerging from the darkness of the avenue into the bright moonlight at the park gates. The village street opened beyond, with various groups about enjoying the freshness of the night. The women were out at their doors; a knot of men smoking their pipes and talking in their slow rustic way, stood together at a corner. Without a doubt, there were two or three pairs, not so bashful as Joyce, taking advantage of the moonlight. But it was in conformity with Halliday’s principles as well as her own to maintain the loftiest decorum. They walked down side by side, with quiet gravity and propriety, talking of what Mr. Halliday called ‘the topics of the day’: the success of all the festivities in honour of the Captain’s return, the Captain himself and his character, and other cognate subjects,—a kind of conversation which anybody might have listened to with edification. Indeed, even in the avenue, where it was dark, and Joyce’s arm was in that of her lover, the talk had not been any drivel of love-making, as the reader knows. But Joyce had not said a word to him of the excitement which lay deep at the bottom of her heart. She had never said a word to Halliday of the commotions which the thought of her possible origin awoke; and of Colonel Hayward and his strange questions and looks she had said nothing. All this was kept a secret from her lover; she kept it jealously, but she could scarcely have told why.

Old Peter Matheson stood at his door, in the full light of the moon, which threw all the roughnesses upon his surface into shadow, as if he had been a mountain. He was a mountain in his way, or rather an angular tall old crag, his face seamed as with torrents. The moon subdued the high colour, the deep frosty-red and russet-brown of his weather-beaten countenance, and made his scanty circle of white locks like a silver crown. He was standing in the middle filling up the doorway, with a lordly indifference to his wife, who stood spying at the moonlight from under his arm.

‘Yon’ll be them,’ Janet had said, as the two slim figures suddenly rose out of the white distance.

‘How can ye tell it’s them? It might be onybody,’ said Peter, in his deep voice.

‘Wha would it be but them? It’s no the Captain and some young lady—therefore,’ said Janet, ‘it’s bound to be our twa. There’s nae ither twa like them. And I would ken our Joyce at ten mile.’

Peter grumbled something about the impossibility of seeing anything except the hills or the sea at ten miles, and about the nonsensical character of her remarks generally. But with a swelling at his old heart which almost brought the water to his eyes (not hard to do), decided that she was right, and that Joyce could be distinguished as far as mortal vision would carry. The way she stepped, and the carriage of her—like a lady! she was just like the Queen!

‘Sae it’s you after a’. I was thinking nae ither pair would move along like twa steeples, nae nearer. Come away. It’s a bonnie night, but I’m wantin’ my supper. I canna fill my wame with the moonlicht, like you twa.’

‘Is it late, grandfather? I might have known it was late, as it’s so dark, or would be but for the moon.’

‘Na, na,’ said the old man, with a laugh as deep and bass as his voice; ‘it wasna to be expected you should mind. We’re no lookin’ for impossibilities. But there is a fine smell of stoved ta’aties. Your granny is a woman that loses no time.’

‘Now that they are come,’ said Janet from within, ‘come in, come in to your supper. Dinna stand and chatter there.’

The supper was simple enough. There were oatcakes and cheese on the table, a large dish of stoved potatoes, steaming and savoury, and a jug of milk. The potatoes were a feast for a king; the steam of them rose like domestic incense to the dim roof. The table was set as far from the fire as possible, the door left open, the moonlight, silver to the threshold, stopped about a yard within, drawing a clear line of separation between its intense ethereal whiteness and the ruddy light of the little lamp. Joyce sat facing the moonlight, looking out across the homely table into that mystic world outside: conscious of the contrast between the little human group, so well defined and distinct, the smoky lamplight on their faces, and the great universe beyond, all filled with spiritual light, with moving shadows and subdued voices—mystic, mysterious. Now and then a step passed, the line of some flitting figure crossed the doorway, and sometimes a cheerful voice called ‘Good-night’ at them in passing, while the talk went on within.

‘Weel, and did a’ yon nonsense come to pass, and were ye satisfied?’ Janet asked.

‘Yes, granny; pretty well. Everybody was pleased.’

‘Except yoursel’, ye exacting thing! They wouldna do just a’ ye told them, that would be the cause.’

‘J’yce is a lass that likes her ain gait. Ye manna gang into it wi’ your eyes blindfold, Andrew, my man.’

‘Yes, they did what I told them, granny. But the Scots maidens could hardly be distinguished from the Saxon maidens, which was a mistake; and we could not get anything like right costume, there was so little time. But they knew no better,’ said Joyce, with a slight inflection of contempt; ‘they were quite pleased.’

‘And that is a very difficult question,’ said the schoolmaster. ‘Do you think there would be much difference at that early period?’

‘What!’ cried Joyce, lighting up, ‘between the Saxon ladies that were with the Athelings, that had been in a Court, and the wives of the wild Picts, or whatever they were—for history knows little of them—on the other side!’

‘And what were you?’ said Janet, while Peter burst into one of his long, derisive, admiring laughs, with a ‘Hearken to her!’ which brought the water to his eyes.

‘I was nobody. I was a tirewoman. I was not thinking of me. I was in the lady’s train in her journey, with a big cloak of the Captain’s,’ said Joyce, permitting herself to laugh.

‘And wherefore no’ a Scots lady, to wait upon her in her kingdom,’ said Janet, half offended. ‘You have aye an awfu’ troke with thae English, as if you liked them the best.’

‘How can she do that when she never kent ane?’ said Peter, in his innocence.

But Joyce made no reply.

CHAPTER VI

‘Oh no; it didn’t matter. I knew you would come. I have one box, and I know exactly where it is. Don’t let us hurry. I don’t suppose there is any hurry.’

‘No—perhaps not,—but something very serious, very serious, Elizabeth.’

‘I suppose so, or you would not have sent for me. Wait till we get out of the noise. I could not hear you, so what would be the use? We are going to a hotel, I suppose?’

‘We are going to Bellendean, where I am staying. Don’t be surprised.’

‘But I am surprised, Henry. To the great house you wrote to me about? full of ladies? You forget——’

‘I—forget? No; I forget nothing—all you have done for me, your kindness, your patience.’

The little lady took him by the arm, with a look of alarm in her face. She had already sighted her box, and in the course of her dialogue with her husband, had managed telegraphically to secure a porter and a cab. Evidently she was of the order of women who take care of others, and do not expect to be taken care of. She led him towards the cab, as if a little afraid of his sanity. ‘Where is he to drive to? tell him,’ she said, keeping a close hold to the Colonel’s arm. She held him fast still, when they were seated together, until they had got clear of the tumult of the railway station. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me. It must be something very much out of the ordinary when you talk of my kindness, Henry. My kindness!’ In this Mrs. Hayward resembled old Janet Matheson. It was an offence to her to be praised in that way.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I am more perplexed than I can tell you. You will say I have often been perplexed before, when you saw little cause for it; and this is why I sent for you so suddenly; for if anybody can bring light out of darkness, it is you.’

‘What is it? I am very willing to be sent for, Henry; the only difficulty is going to this house, when you know my principle, and how long I have kept out of all invitations and acquaintances.’

‘You that would shine anywhere!’ said the Colonel, with the water in his eyes, ‘and all for my sake.’

She looked at him again for a moment with a sort of consternation. ‘There you are making a mistake, my dear—for my own. Because I did not choose that there should ever be a remark.’

He put his hand upon her arm with a heavy pressure. ‘Elizabeth, I am dreadfully perplexed; but I think, if I am not wrong, that I have come upon the settlement of all that question; of everything—of what has hung over us. I think, my dear, that all is right—that all has been right from the very beginning.’ He stopped a little, and then added, drawing a long breath, ‘I never had any doubt of it myself.’

A gleam, half of anger, half of fun, darted up into her bright eyes, and flashed like an arrow of light at him, which the good man did not even see, and which ended, on her part, with a quick laugh, in which there was a little amusement, a little excitement, though not very much expectation. ‘You never had any doubt!’ she said. Then she added, with a half sigh of impatience— ‘Tell me all about your new discovery, and we’ll pull it to pieces and see if there’s anything in it. Have we a long drive before us? Is there time to get it all out?’

‘Plenty of time; and, oh, the comfort to know that you are here, and to be able to tell you! I will do what you like best, Elizabeth. I will tell you all the facts, and then you can judge for yourself. I came to Bellendean, you know, nearly a week ago. There has been all sorts of things going on. Great dinners, and all the fine people of the county—and then the tenantry. It is a—a tidy estate—a number of tenants—not small farms like what we are used to, but men, you know, whom really I should have taken for country gentlemen—men paying big rents, and able to make speeches—and—and that sort of thing.’

Mrs. Hayward kept her eyes upon her husband’s face. She was used, it was evident, to long explanations, and expected them, and had learned that patience which comes of necessity. He knew this fact, that she always heard him out, and never interrupted him, as other people did. But what he did not know, was that a thrill of natural impatience, never altogether overcome, was in the veins of the little woman who sat by him, keeping him to the point with her eyes, never interrupting him in any other way. ‘Yes,’ she said, when he paused to take breath: but that was all.

‘Yes; and then, last of all, there was a supper to the labourers and cottagers. Well, no, not exactly last of all, for the last was the children’s entertainment—the school-feast we should have called it, but they don’t say school-feast here—a sort of gathering in the afternoon, you know, with a band and games, and tea in a great tent, and—you know?’

‘Yes, I know what a school-feast is.’

‘Well!’—he drew a long breath now, and settled himself down in a manner which betokened, as his wife by long experience knew, that he was about coming to the point; but she could scarcely believe it after so short a preamble. ‘The first thing that happened was at the labourers’ supper: we were all walking about, and I for my part said a word now and then, while they were cheering Norman Bellendean—that he was a good fellow, you know, and all that—the sort of thing one would say at an affair of the kind, when you do think well of the fellow, you know, and get into the swim——’

‘Yes?’ said Mrs. Hayward again.

‘Well then. I had the very words in my mouth, when at the end of one of the tables, between an old man and an old woman, evidently cottagers, I saw—I declare to you, Elizabeth, my heart leapt into my mouth—I was choked, I could not say another syllable. I saw her as clear as I see you.’

‘Whom did you see, Henry?’

‘Joyce!’ He got out the word with difficulty, and, taking out his handkerchief, fanned himself, puffing forth a hot breath of excitement. His bronzed face took a coppery tone in the heat of his reawakened feelings; and this time Mrs. Hayward did not retain her usual calm. She repeated the cry, ‘Joyce!’ with a tone of mingled astonishment and dismay— ‘Joyce!—then why in the name of heaven did you bring me here?’

‘Stop a minute, stop a minute, Elizabeth: you have not heard all; and how is it possible you could understand? I have described her to you often. It was as if I saw her, exactly as I had seen her last—the same looks, the same age.’

‘You must be dreaming,’ cried his wife, almost with anger. ‘If she is living, according to all you have always said, she must be as old as I am——’

Sudden indignation seemed to burst from her in these words. She grew red, she grew pale. The impatience, so entirely concealed before, showed now in every finger, in every limb, mingled with angry surprise. ‘If you have sent for me, disturbed me, exposed me, only to tell me this at the end—that you saw her—the same age as you saw her last! I hope she has a good reason to give for all the misery she has caused—but the same age!’ Mrs. Hayward gasped, and said no more.

‘Ah,’ said the Colonel, shaking his head, ‘you don’t see, you don’t see! No more did I. I couldn’t say a word—I just stopped and stared—a young lady, clearly a lady, between the two old cottagers—and that look. Well! I came to myself, Elizabeth, and I thought it is just some chance resemblance, and I left the place: but disturbed—disturbed beyond what words could say. I got little sleep—you know how little sleep I get when I am upset.’

‘I know you think so,’ said his wife, in an undertone.

‘But in the morning I felt calm. I said to myself that it must be some chance—— Of course there are people who are like each other all over the world. I knew myself, up in the Punjaub, a man—but that is neither here nor there. However, next day I was quite easy. I thought nothing more of it. And then there came the school-feast I told you of—well, the thing that was the same as a school-feast, though they didn’t call it a school-feast, you know. I was walking about, thinking of nothing in particular, and of course it was daylight, and everything quite clear—when I saw that girl again.’

‘Oh, you call her a girl now!’ Mrs. Hayward said, with that air of resentment which he did not understand. He paused and looked at her with sudden anxiety.

‘You are not feeling poorly, Elizabeth? You are not over-tired? You are not——?’ He could not say angry, it seemed ridiculous; but his attention was roused, and nothing but her health could be the cause, he thought, of her change of tone.

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘go on. I am not feeling anything—but a wish to know what you mean.’

There was a difference in her for all that. And if Elizabeth was going to fail him, what would become of him? He gave her a serious, anxious, inquiring look. Then, in reply to an impatient movement on her part, continued—

‘That’s not all. I went and asked Mrs. Bellendean who she was—though I had scarcely breath to ask. Elizabeth—conceive what I felt when she turned round and called Joyce!’

‘Joyce!—well I suppose you did not expect she had changed her name?’ She said this sharply; then added, with an evident effort, ‘My dear, I beg your pardon. I don’t wonder you were upset. Joyce—and it is a name one never hears. Did she—know you?’

‘Know me? She had never seen me, nor heard of me—how should she know me? And I was left for a long time in a state I can’t describe—wondering whether it could be a relation—God knows what I didn’t think! Everybody knew the girl. She was the schoolmistress, as it turned out, but a lady every inch of her. Everybody liked her, consulted her, clustered about her. I heard nothing but Joyce, Joyce, wherever I turned.’

Mrs. Hayward’s impatience seemed to have died away. She patted his arm with her small hand, saying, ‘Poor Henry!’ with a tone of compunction in her pity. She had done him wrong, or else she had done wrong to Joyce. To Joyce—the very name, though she had heard it so often, was like an arrow quivering in her heart.

‘Elizabeth, all that is as nothing to what I am going to tell you now. I want all your attention. I have waited till you came: I haven’t even tried to think: I have said to myself, Elizabeth will know. Now you must give your mind to it, and tell me what to do. Elizabeth, this is the story I heard. Twenty years ago, just the date I’ve often told you—the date I remember so well—you know, my dear, you know——’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Well!—Just then this girl’s mother came to Bellendean—all by herself, going north, it was thought. She was going to have a baby——’ The old Colonel here fell a trembling, and his wife took his hands and held them in her own, caressing them—two large brown tremulous hands—between her small white nervous ones. He leant back on her shoulder too, which was not half broad enough to support him. ‘The short and the long is this: she had her baby, and she died. And the baby is Joyce—named after her mother; and there are clothes and letters to prove who she was——’

‘My poor Henry! God help you, my dear! You have seen them? it was—she?’

‘No—I haven’t seen them. I hadn’t the courage. I could think of nothing but you. You’ll do it for me, Elizabeth? you’ll see what you think. I—I couldn’t look up the old things. I—couldn’t—decide—I couldn’t——’

He could do nothing but tremble, it seemed, and falter out these broken words, and lean back upon her, the colour going out of his face. She thought he was about to faint.

‘Come, Henry, this will never do,’ she said quickly. ‘Rouse yourself, my dear fellow—rouse yourself up. We will bear it together, whatever it may be. And it doesn’t seem, so far as I can see, as if there would be anything new to bear.’

‘If it was so. She never told me, Elizabeth—that anything like that could happen.’

‘Perhaps she did not know. You have always said she was young and inexperienced. Oh, poor thing! poor thing!’

He loosed his hands from hers, and suddenly threw his arms round her, enfolding her, with something like a sound of sobbing. ‘If it was fault of mine, God forgive me! God forgive me! But, Elizabeth, my dear! it has always been all right between you and me—as I felt sure all along.’

Her bright eyes were for a moment dimmed too. She gave him a sudden light kiss upon his old cheek, and then softly detached herself. ‘We will say no more about that just now. If all this is as you think, Henry, there is something more important even than you and me—the girl.’

‘Ah, the girl!’ He spoke vaguely, as if his attention had been distracted from that part of the subject. ‘You will see her,’ he said, ‘the very living image—and then the name—just as she was the last time I ever saw her. Elizabeth: you will understand the kind of creature she was—the—the impetuosity—the——’

‘Don’t dwell on all that, or you will upset yourself again. See her! of course I shall see her. You don’t seem to realise what a wonderful change for her—and us too. But don’t you think it is you who ought to see her first and tell her—you who are, after all, the chief person——’

‘I!’ he cried with dismay, interrupting her. ‘Why the chief person? Did I ever set myself up as the chief person? We have gone along with each other, Elizabeth, in everything that has been done.’

‘Yes, but in the case of—Joyce.’ She made a little pause before she said the name. ‘Henry, Joyce, whether living or dead, must be yours—yours alone. She would have a right to complain if you left her to me.’

He caught her again, with an alarmed look, by her arm. ‘Is there anything mine that is not yours too? Has there ever been anything of mine that was not yours? Don’t go and make a separation just when—just when——’

‘Separation! it is likely that I should make a separation,’ she cried, with a laugh in which there was, though he was unconscious of it, a great deal of nervous excitement. Then she looked out of the carriage with a little cry of admiration: ‘What is this? Have we got to Bellendean already? What beautiful trees! I did not know there were such fine trees in the north. And now I must think of meeting Mrs. Bellendean. Isn’t it rather bold of you to bring me here?’

‘Not bold at all. The invitation was from her. I did not ask for it. It was she herself—entirely she——’

‘I know what you did,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with a smile. ‘You said, I wish Elizabeth were here. And she heard it, and suggested that you send for me. Most likely she was a little amused about Elizabeth. I know your way, and what the young fellows say, that you always want Elizabeth, whatever happens.’

‘So I do—so I do; though I can’t tell how they know, the jackanapes. Here we are at the door.’

‘You must smuggle me upstairs before anybody sees me, for I’m very untidy; and I know how fresh they will all look in their morning things,’ cried Mrs. Hayward, with a shade of disquietude in her eyes.

‘Oh yes, you shall be smuggled upstairs,’ cried the Colonel, confident in the security of the early hour. And presently the pair found themselves in the cheerful room prepared for the newcomer, with tea set out upon a table. Elizabeth took at once the command of the position. She gave him some tea, then dismissed him to an easy chair in his own room, which communicated with hers, where, as he began to doze, he could see her little figure moving about, appearing and disappearing, as she unpacked her things and made herself comfortable. She looked, he thought, as if she had been there all her life. It was a faculty peculiar to her. She made the barest barrack-room look like herself somehow, before she had been half an hour in it. Wherever she was, the place began to appear like home directly. He had the immense sense of relief which a man in charge of a difficult post feels on the arrival of his commanding officer who takes over the responsibility, and that delightful loosening of moral tension filled him with pleasant drowsiness. His eyes, half shut, half open, were conscious of her, and that everything was being looked after; and, as a matter of fact, he had not slept well for two or three nights, though Elizabeth had scoffed at this. He had a most refreshing doze while she dressed and made herself look as fresh as the morning. As for her having been untidy, even after the night-journey, that was a thing impossible to Elizabeth. But he knew that she would come out looking fresher than the day.

She was a little woman of about forty-five, with the complexion of a girl, and eyes that were as blue as an infant’s, but with the quality of brightness which belongs more frequently to a darker hue. Not soft and dreamy as blue eyes should be, but keen and clear, dancing with light—eyes which saw behind as well as before, and which nothing could elude. There was no sleep or weariness in them, but there was, visible to her own perception as she looked at herself in the glass, a keener glitter of uneasiness, a little curve of anxiety in the lids. He seemed to think only of this possible revelation of the past—which, no doubt, was important, very important; but of the future, which she saw so distinctly opening upon them, a future entirely new, distracting, for which neither she nor he had any preparation, he seemed to take no thought. That was Henry’s way, she said to herself, to be overwhelmed by one view of a question, which had half a dozen other aspects more important, and to make himself quite comfortable about it when the first shock was over, without an idea of what the consequences might be: dear old stupid that he was! She, too, glanced at him as she passed and repassed the doorway, with a tenderness in which there was a mixture of amusement and partial irritation and fun and sympathy, all mingled together. His goodness, his strength, his helplessness and confusion of mind, his high courage and authority and judgment, and his complete dependence and docility, were all so evident to those keen eyes of hers, which adored him, laughed at him, smote him with keen shafts of criticism, made haloes of glory about him all at one and the same moment. He had brought her many a ravelled skein to disentangle, but never any so serious as this. Joyce dead had been a shadow often discouraging upon her life, but Joyce living filled her lively soul with a shrinking of dismay. And of this he did not seem to have a thought.