is changed. She must be thought of. A different kind of entertainment is
wanted for a girl. I ought to take her to balls, and to water-parties,
and to all sorts of gaieties. You would not like her to be left out.’

‘Well, my dear,’ said the Colonel, more cheerfully, ‘I like young faces,
and I don’t object to a little dance now and then. I always, indeed,
encouraged the young fellows in the regiment----’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Elizabeth----’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Mrs. Bellendean?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Half Moon Street!’

‘Do you know it?’

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXI

It was some days before the new difficulties which possessed all Mrs.
Hayward’s thoughts were fully revealed to Joyce. These early days were
long, being full of so many confusing circumstances and new problems to
be encountered, solved, or left aside for further trouble in their turn;
and what she had heard her stepmother say about her bringing up had
passed over Joyce’s mind with little effect. She had enough to do in
other ways: to find out a mode of living which would be practicable, to
subdue her own spirit, to reconcile herself with so many new necessities
all rushing upon her at once. How to apportion her time was in itself a
difficulty almost beyond her untried powers: to be long enough, yet not
too long, with Mrs. Hayward--to find something to do during these hours
which she had to pass in that drawing-room which was so pretty and
comfortable, but so little homelike to the stranger. Joyce had abundant
resources in herself. She was fully instructed in all kinds of work--a
mistress of fine-sewing and mending, able to clothe her household with
needlework, like the woman in the Proverbs; but there was no need for
these qualifications here. And she had gone through all the studies
which were open to her in design, besides having found out somehow, amid
those gifts of nature which to all her early friends had seemed so
lavish, a faculty for drawing, which had been of endless pleasure to
her, and pride to her belongings in the old time. Music, indeed, was
left out, except in so far as it belonged to her profession. She had
learned the Hullah system, or something like it, and could read easily
all the simple songs which were taught to the children; but a piano had
never been within her reach, nor had she heard anything that a musician
would think worth hearing. At home in Bellendean the old people thought
that nobody could sing the ‘Flowers of the Forest’, or the ‘Banks of
Doon,’ or the old Psalm tunes, which were still dearer, like, their
Joyce. But these were not the sort of performances with which to please
Mrs. Hayward.

Thus, though she was full of accomplishments in her way, none of Joyce’s
acquirements stood her in much stead in her new circumstances. She had
to contrive something for herself to do, which was far from being easy.
She had to think of what she could talk about, to take her fit part in
the household intercourse--not to sit like an uninterested spectator
between these two strange people, who were her nearest relations. And
this was almost the hardest of all; for Colonel Hayward and his wife
were like so many people of their class--they had read little, they were
puzzled by references to books, and did not understand that keen sense
of association and fellowship with her favourite writers and their
productions which made Joyce an inhabitant of a second world, to her
consciousness almost more real than the external sphere. The Colonel
said ‘Eh?’ as if he had become a little deaf, with a kind but bewildered
smile, when she adduced the example--to Joyce more natural than the most
familiar examples of every day--of somebody in Scott, or, as she loved
to say, Sir Walter, to illustrate a position; while Mrs. Hayward was
more apt to frown and to say impatiently that she thought it very wrong
for young people to read so many novels. They did not even know what she
meant by Sir Walter!--her father, with his puzzled look, suggesting,
‘Sir Walter--Gilbert, did you mean, my dear? Now, where can you have met
Gilbert, Joyce? and what could he know about the oyster-dredging in the
North?’ Thus it was against her that she knew more than they did, as
well as that she knew less: in either case, she was left out of their
circle, out of their world,--her very wealth futile, and more useless
than had she been without endowment at all.

But in the preoccupation of so many matters, important beyond measure to
her new existence, and much pondering of the way to make that existence
possible, which seemed to her sometimes a problem almost beyond her
powers of solving, Joyce was not at all quick to catch up the allusions
of her stepmother, or to perceive what it was that filled Mrs. Hayward’s
mind with new alarms. The possibility of there being something to be
ashamed of in respect to herself--something to conceal or gloss over, in
case it might revolt the visitors, of whom Joyce, hitherto measuring
them by the standard of Bellendean, had not formed a very high idea--had
never entered her mind; and she was startled beyond measure when Mrs.
Hayward opened the subject directly in a moment of impatience, and
notwithstanding her own excellent resolutions against doing so. Joyce
had been betrayed into some reference to her old work, which she had
instinctively felt to be distasteful and seldom alluded to, but which
would crop up now and then. It was Mr. Sitwell, the clergyman, and his
school feast, which was the original subject of the talk.

‘I think they are playing at school work,’ Joyce said. ‘I would like to
see the mistress, and hear what she says.’

‘I beg you will do nothing of the kind,’ cried Mrs. Hayward. ‘I did not
at all like your enthusiasm about the schools when the Sitwells were
here. I think you said you were more interested in them than in anything
else in the world. I am never fond of extravagance.’

‘But it was true,’ said Joyce, with a deprecating smile. ‘When you have
been interested about one thing all your life, and always thinking which
is the best way, what can you do but feel it the most important?’

‘It is time,’ said Mrs. Hayward, ‘that you should find another channel
for your thoughts. I didn’t mean to say anything to vex you, Joyce. But
you must know that your father’s daughter should have been brought up in
a very different way; and, to tell the truth, I would much rather our
friends here knew as little as possible--about your antecedents.’

Joyce looked up astonished, with a quick cry, ‘Antecedents!’ which was a
word that seemed to imply something bad, like the reports in the
newspapers. She was, to be sure, too well instructed to think that
implication necessary; but there are prejudices of which even the
best-informed persons cannot shake themselves free.

‘You know what I mean!--the teaching, and all that. That you should be
fond of the schools, and interested in them, is all very well; but that
you were a----’

A flush of deep colour had rushed over Joyce’s uplifted face.
‘A--schoolmistress,’ she said, with the quiver of a piteous little
smile.

‘I can’t bear to hear you say it--your father’s daughter!--and of course
it is impossible to enter into particulars, and explain everything to
everybody. I think it better, far better, to draw a veil. You were
brought up by relations in Scotland--that is what I mean to say.’

‘Relations!’ repeated Joyce softly; ‘thank you for saying that. Oh, and
so they were!--the kindest relations that ever a poor little girl had.’

‘I am glad I have pleased you, so far as that goes,’ said Mrs. Hayward,
in a tone of relief. ‘Well, then, I hope you will back me up, and show
yourself grateful to your old friends. There are various other things I
may mention as we are on this subject. For instance, when you were
talking to Alice St. Clair you said _Miss_ Greta. Now that young lady,
if you were to renew your acquaintance with her, would certainly not
allow you to call her Miss _now_.’

Joyce opened her eager lips to reply, but, struck by a sudden sense of
the uselessness of any explanation, closed them again--a movement not
unnoticed by her companion.

‘I notice also,’ said Mrs. Hayward, ‘that you have a way of calling Mrs.
Bellendean the Lady. That’s all very well if it’s one of the fantastic
names that girls are so fond of nowadays--I mean, if other young people
use it as well as you; but if it’s one of your terms of respect----
Remember, Joyce, that to go on speaking in that way is a--is a kind of
insult to your father and to your own family, which is quite as good as
Mrs. Bellendean’s.’

As good as Mrs. Bellendean’s!--her heart revolted against this claim.
The old homage which she had given with youthful enthusiasm was not to
Mrs. Bellendean’s position or her family. But how was Joyce to explain
this to her judge, who did not look upon her or her romances with a
favourable eye? And yet she could not but say a word in self-defence.
‘It was for kindness,’ she said,--‘for,’ hesitating with her Scotch
shyness, ‘for love!’

‘For love!’ Mrs. Hayward echoed the word with a tone of opposition, and
almost offence. ‘She is one of the women who seem to have the gift of
attracting girls. I don’t know how they do it, for girls have always
seemed to me the most uncertain, unappreciative----’ She sighed
impatiently, then added in a softened tone, ‘If it’s only a sort of pet
name, that’s different. But you must see that it is your duty to avoid
everything that could seem to--to discredit your father. And we can’t
explain the circumstances to everybody, and prove that it was not his
fault. For my part,’ she cried, with a flash of quick feeling in her
clear eyes, ‘I’d say anything or do anything rather than let it be
supposed for a moment that the Colonel--had anything to be ashamed of in
the whole course of his existence. He has not, and never had, whatever
you may think. That’s what I call love,’ she cried, vehemently, with a
sudden tear or two taking her by surprise.

Joyce turned towards her step-mother with a quick responsive look; but
Mrs. Hayward was ashamed of her own emotion, and had turned away to
conceal it, thus missing the eager overture of sympathy. She went on in
another moment with a little laugh: ‘It shows we never should be sure of
anything. If there was one thing more unlikely than another, I should
have said it was the gossip of a Scotch village getting abroad here. I
should have thought that nobody here had ever heard the name of
Bellendean--when lo! it turns out that we are in a perfect wasp’s nest
of relations and connections. Your Miss Greta, as you call her, a
cousin, and the St. Clairs themselves visitors of the Bellendeans. I
suppose before another week is over all Richmond will know the story. It
is very vexatious, when I had planned to take you about everywhere, and
do all sorts of things!’

She was called out of the room at this moment by some domestic
requirement, and did not hear Joyce’s troubled murmur. ‘Was there
anything, then, to think shame of?’ Joyce had said, her voice trembling,
with the Scotch idiom which Mrs. Hayward disliked. She added to herself,
‘in me,’ with a wondering pang. Perhaps the girl had too high a
conception of herself, which it was well to bring down; but such an
operation is always a painful one. Though she had been brought up in a
ploughman’s cottage, and occupied the humblest position, yet nothing had
ever happened in her life to humiliate Joyce. She had been admired and
praised, and placed upon a little pedestal from her earliest
consciousness: and that any one should be ashamed of her struck her as
something so incredible and extraordinary, that it took away her
breath,--‘anything to think shame of--in me.’ She had no defence against
such a sudden dart: it went through and through her, cutting to her
heart. She rose up quickly, with a sensation intolerable--a quick and
passionate impulse. To do what? She could not tell. To have the wings of
a dove and fly away--but where? She stopped herself, clasping her hands
together, holding herself fast that she might not be so unreasonable as
to do it. The mother had done it, and what had come of it? To herself
madness and death, and to her poor child this,--that the people to whom
she belonged were ashamed of her--ashamed of Joyce! It seemed a thing
impossible, not to be realised. She said it over to herself
incredulously, making an effort to smile. Ashamed!--but no, no! Whatever
there was to bear, it must be borne, even though those wings for which
so many have sighed should be given to her: she must not fly, she must
stay.

But Joyce had in this particular still something more hard to bear. A
few days after the visit of the captain, Mrs. Bellendean came to
Richmond, bringing with her Greta. The two ladies came with a purpose.
They had been warned by Captain Bellendean that there were difficulties
in the Colonel’s household, and that Joyce’s position was not of the
happiest. How he had divined that much it would be difficult to say, for
divination was not Norman’s _forte_. But for once his sympathy or
interest had given insight to his eyes.

‘You should go and let them see that the poor girl has friends,’ he
said.

‘I shall go,’ said Mrs. Bellendean, who was very sure that she must know
better than Norman, ‘and make myself very agreeable to the step-mother.
She is not a bad sort of woman. She will be pleased if we go and call at
once, and I confess I shall do everything I know to make her like me and
trust me: that will be the best way of serving Joyce.’ With this intent
the ladies arrived and played their part very prettily. They were
delighted with the house, the drawing-room, the lovely things, Indian
and otherwise, admiring them with a comprehension and knowledge which
Joyce had not possessed, and making Mrs. Hayward glow with gratification
and modest pride. Joyce followed her beloved lady with her looks,--her
usual and faithful admiration of everything Mrs. Bellendean said and did
very slightly modified by surprise at this new aspect of her. They had
not failed in any mark of affection to herself--nay, had startled her by
the warmth of their greetings. Mrs. Bellendean had met her with
outstretched arms and a kiss which confused Joyce with pleasure, and
afterwards with--something else, which was not so agreeable. Joyce,
indeed, was the one silent in the midst of the effusive cordiality and
pleasantness of this meeting. She did not know how to respond or what to
say. It was the first time she had met her friends under this new
aspect. The night she had spent at Bellendean before leaving had been
different. She was then in all the excitement of the great revolution in
her life, and nothing seemed too extraordinary for that crisis; but
Joyce had calmed down, she had returned to life’s ordinary, though with
so amazing a difference--and her lady’s kiss and Greta’s eager
outstretched arms overwhelmed her with doubts and questions which half
blotted out the pleasure.

Finally, they strayed out upon the lawn, and down the shaded walk
towards the river, as all visitors did. Joyce had made that little
pilgrimage only in company with Captain Bellendean as yet; and there did
not fail to pass through her mind a comparison which affected her in a
way she did not understand. She knew him so much less than Greta, cared
for him much less--and yet---- Joyce fled from the faint rising of an
uncomprehended thought with a thrill of strange alarm, and turned to
her friend, who was so sweet, the admired of all her youthful thoughts,
her little paragon of prettiness and sweetness. Greta had twined her arm
within her companion’s, and was looking tenderly into her face.

‘And are you happy?’ Greta said. ‘Oh, Joyce! I remember how you used to
fancy all manner of things. You would not have been surprised if you had
turned out to be a princess--like Queen Mary’s daughter, who was
“unknown to history."’

‘If there ever was such a person,’ said schoolmistress Joyce. ‘Yes, I
think I was quite prepared to be a princess.’

‘It would have been much more troublesome than this, and not half so
nice, I think. To have had that horrible Bothwell for a father, or some
one else as dreadful, instead of delightful Colonel Hayward.’

‘My father,’ said Joyce, with a little flush and stir of feeling which
was always called forth by his name, ‘is better--than anything I ever
could have dreamed.’

‘Then why are you not happy?’ cried Greta, going direct to the heart of
the matter, as children do.

‘But perhaps I am happy,’ said Joyce, with a little sigh, followed by a
smile. ‘To be happy is a strange thing: it is not at your own will, nor
because you are well off, and have everything you can want. It is just
for nothing, and comes when it pleases. And life is very confusing.
There are so many things to think of that I never thought of before. How
to please them--and I always used to please, just because it was me. And
sometimes I think they are ashamed.’

‘Ashamed, Joyce!’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not of me, as me: but because of what I was. You used
all to say pretty things to me, Miss Greta, about the fine work I was
doing,--about the use I was to the children--even to the country,’ Joyce
added, with a light in her eyes.

‘Miss Greta, Joyce! is that like the friends we are? I shall call you
Miss Hayward if you say that again.’

Joyce turned upon her with a sudden flash, raising her head with an
involuntary movement that looked like disdain. ‘See now,’ she said, ‘you
yourself! You never said _that_ when I was Joyce Matheson, the
schoolmistress at Bellendean. And yet you all praised me, and said I was
doing a good work. I am doing no work nor anything here. I am just a
cumberer of the ground. They don’t know what to do with me, though they
want to be very kind. And I don’t know what to do with myself. But you
never said _that_ to me in the old time.’

‘Oh, Joyce!’ cried Greta, with conviction and shame. She added, holding
her companion’s arm close, ‘Not that I didn’t want to say it--many and
many a time! You were always much better, much higher than I.’

Joyce put her hand upon her friend’s, but shook her head, her cheeks
flushed with a transient glow of feeling, her eyes troubled and
unconvinced. ‘We’ll say nothing about that. It was all as it ought to
be, and natural: anything else would have been out of place both for you
and me. But you did not then; and now you would have me in a moment
change, and say Miss Greta no more, because I am no longer the
schoolmistress, but Colonel Hayward’s daughter. But how can I do that?
that would mean a change in me. And there is no change in me.’

Greta did not understand what was in her friend’s face. Joyce no longer
looked at her, but away into the blue distance over the river among the
tufts and clusters of the soft English trees--looking but seeing not;
perceiving only the mists and confusion of a change with which her own
will and thoughts had nothing to do, against which she could not help
rebelling, though she was compelled to acknowledge that it was all
natural, inevitable, not to be resisted. It wounded her native sense of
dignity to be thus elevated, to have a position given to her, even in
the hearts of her friends, which had not been hers before. Mrs.
Bellendean’s kiss, and Greta’s eager affection, what were they to the
real Joyce, to whom both had been so kind, so friendly, even tender, but
never with this demonstration of equality? If Joyce had been embittered,
she would have considered them insults to her old and true self; but she
was not bitter. She was only humiliated, strangely wounded, and astray,
seeing the necessity of it, and the hardness of it, and only feeling in
her heart the absence of any place for her, herself, the true Joyce, who
had never changed amid all these strange alterations. She put her hand
upon that which was trembling yet clinging fast to her arm, and softly
patted it, with something of the feeling of the elder to the younger,
the superior to the inferior--which was a change too, though Joyce was
scarcely cognisant of it; for in her unawakened days she had looked up
with genuine faith to Miss Greta, making a little ideal of her. Now,
though Joyce did not know it, that balance had turned too, and she was
keenly perceiving, pardoning, excusing that in which her ideal had
failed. ‘I could have wished,’ she said, ‘_you_ had not done it. I could
have wished that we should bide--as we always were--just you, and me.’

‘Oh, Joyce!’ faltered Greta, clinging more and more. ‘I have been so
glad that you and I could be like sisters--as I have always felt.’

‘You and--Colonel’s Hayward’s daughter, Miss Greta,’ she said.

By this time the two elder ladies had followed to the water’s edge, and
stood looking up the Thames at the sweeping willows, and the spot, which
none of them cared the least about, where the poet’s villa had been
planted. Mrs. Bellendean, who was very quick in observation, saw that
Greta was disturbed, and came up, laying her hand on Joyce’s shoulder.
‘Let me have her a little now,’ she said. ‘Norman told us about your
river-side, Joyce, and how you had showed him everything. He could talk
of nothing else when he came back.’

‘It was a beautiful day--which was all that is wanted; for you see
yourself there is not much to show.’

‘And you,’ said Mrs. Bellendean, ‘who were the first thing to be taken
into consideration, perhaps. Joyce, I want to speak to you, my dear.
Your--yes, I know, she is not your mother; but she wants to be as kind
as you will let her. She is troubled about all this story being known.’

‘All what story?’ said Joyce, with a catching of her breath.

‘Oh, my dear, you know. And I don’t wonder at it. You were a miracle in
your own--I mean in that position. But now it is very natural your
parents should wish--no more to be said about it than is necessary. Mrs.
Hayward says very truly that it is better a girl shouldn’t be talked
about, even when it is all to her credit. She wanted to warn _me_,’ Mrs.
Bellendean said, with a smile at the ignorance thus manifested. She had
put her arm into that of Joyce, and led her along the velvet turf, as
far as the lawn extended, leaving Greta with Mrs. Hayward. ‘As if I were
likely to betray you! But I want you to promise, Joyce, that you
won’t--betray yourself, which is far more likely.’

‘Betray!’ cried Joyce. She had been humiliated by Greta; she was
indignant now. ‘What have I to betray?’ she cried; ‘that I am a waif,
and a foundling, and an abandoned creature that belongs to nobody? or
that I am a trouble and a charge to everybody that has to do with me,
breaking my poor Granny’s heart because she wants me, and a shame to the
others that don’t want me? Myself! what is it to betray myself? Oh, you
are kind; you are very kind. You were my dear lady that I honoured above
everything. But you kiss me to-day because I’m--not Joyce, but Colonel
Hayward’s daughter; and you bid me not to betray myself. To betray that
I am myself--is that what you mean?’

‘Joyce! Joyce!’ cried Mrs. Bellendean.

Joyce paused for a moment to dry the sudden tears which had betrayed
her, coming with a rush to her eyes--girls being such poor creatures,
that cannot do anything or feel anything without crying! She had drawn
her arm out of her friend’s arm, and her eyes were shining, and a swift
nervous movement, scarcely restrainable, thrilling through her. That
impulse, as of a hunted deer, to give one momentary glance round, and
then turn and fly--the impulse of her mother, which was in all Joyce’s
veins, though nothing had occurred till now to bring it out,--took hold
upon her, and shook her like a sudden wind. She knew what it was, though
no one else had any warning of it; and it frightened her to the depths
of her soul.

CHAPTER XXII

Notwithstanding this sense of outrage and injury, time and the hour had
their usual effect upon Joyce. There are few things that the common
strain of everyday does not subdue in time--few things, that is, that
are of the nature of sentiment, not actual evil or wrong. She reconciled
herself to the affectionate demonstrations of her old friends, which
were such as they had not made in the old times, without at least saying
again that these were for Colonel Hayward’s daughter, and not for Joyce;
and she learnt to make new ones, or at least to receive shyly and
respond as much as her nature permitted to the overtures of
acquaintanceship made to her by the society among which she lived. The
sense of strangeness faded away; she became familiar with her
surroundings, and with the things which were required of her. She
acquired, to her astonishment and amusement, and pleasure too, when she
had become a little accustomed to her own appearance in them, a number
of new dresses and ornaments, the latter chiefly presents from her
father, who found it the most delightful amusement to make a little
expedition into town--a thing which was at all times a pleasant
diversion to him--to go to Hancock’s, or some other costly place, before
or after he went to his club, and bring Joyce a bracelet or a ring.
These expeditions were not always agreeable to Mrs. Hayward. She said,
‘If you would tell me what you wanted, Henry, I could get it a great
deal cheaper for you at the Stores--half the price: these Hancock people
are ruinous.’

‘But, my dear, I bought it only because it chanced to take my fancy--in
the shop-window,’ said the scheming Colonel, with wiles which he had
learned of recent days. His wife knew as well as he did that this little
fable was of doubtful credence, but she said no more. After all, if he
could not give his child a bracelet or two, it would be a strange thing,
Mrs. Hayward said to herself with a little heat. She was determined to
be reasonable, but she could not help being slightly suspicious of his
meaning, when he announced his intention at the breakfast-table of
taking a little run up to town, and seeing how those fellows were
getting on. He meant his old cronies at the club, whom he was always
pleased to see; but it always turned out that there were other little
things to be done as well.

And Joyce was far from being without pleasure in these pretty presents,
and in the tenderness which beamed from the Colonel’s face when he stole
his little packet out of his pocket with the air of a schoolboy bringing
home a bird’s nest. ‘My dear, I happened to see this as I passed, and I
thought you would like it.’ She did not know much about the value of
these gifts, overestimating it at first, underrating it afterwards--and
cared very little, to tell the truth, after the first sensation of awe
with which she had regarded the gold and precious stones, when she found
such unexpected treasures in her own possession. But what was of far
greater importance was the tender bond which, by means of all the kind
thoughts which resulted in these gifts, and the grateful and pleased
sentiment which these kind thoughts called forth, grew up between the
Colonel and his daughter. She became the companion of a morning walk
which up to this time he had been in the habit of taking alone--Mrs.
Hayward considering it necessary to be ‘on the spot,’ as she said, and
looking after her household. The Colonel, who never liked to be alone,
took advantage one lovely morning of a chance meeting with Joyce, who
was straying somewhat listlessly along the shrubbery walk, thinking of
many things. ‘I am going for my walk,’ he said--his walk being a habit
as regular as the nursery performance of the same kind. ‘If you have
nothing to do, get your hat and come with me, my dear.’ And this walk
came to be delightful to both, Joyce making acquaintance thereby with
those genuine reflections of a mind uninstructed save by life, which are
so often full of insight and interest; while the Colonel on his side
listened with delighted admiration to Joyce’s information on all kinds
of subjects, which was drawn entirely from books. He talked to her about
India and his old friends there and all their histories, enchanted to
rouse her interest and to have to stir up his memory in order to satisfy
her as to how an incident ended, or what became of a man.

‘What happened after? My dear, I believe he was killed at Delhi, poor
fellow!--after all they had gone through. Yes, it was hard: but that’s a
soldier’s life, you know; he never knows where he may have to leave his
bones. The poor little woman had to be sent home. We got up some money
for her, and I believe she had friends to whom she went with her baby.
That’s all I know about them. As for Brown, he got on very well--retired
now with the rank of a general, and lives at Cheltenham. The last time I
saw him, he was at Woolwich with his third boy for an exam. It is either
the one thing or the other, Joyce--either they get killed young, or they
live through everything and come home, regular old _vieux moustaches_,
as the French say, with immense families to set out in the world. The
number of fine fellows I’ve seen drop! and then the number of others who
survive everything, and are not so much the better for it after all.’

‘When I read the vision of Mirza to my old granny at home---- at
Bellendean--she said life was like that,’ said Joyce gravely,--‘some
dropping suddenly in a moment, so that you only saw that they had
disappeared.’

‘The vision of---- what, my dear? It has an Eastern sound, but I don’t
think it’s in the Bible. Very likely I’ve heard it somewhere: but my
memory is rather bad’--(he had been giving her a hundred personal
details of all kinds of people, in the range of some thirty or forty
years)--‘especially for books.’ Colonel Hayward added, ‘More shame to
me,’ with a shake of his grey head.

And then she told him Mirza’s vision, with the warm natural eloquence of
her inexperience and profound conviction that literature was the one
deathless and universal influence. The Colonel was greatly pleased with
it, and received it as the most original of allegories. ‘It’s
wonderful,’ he said, ‘what imagination these Eastern chaps have, Joyce.
They carry it too far, you know, calling you the emperor’s brother, the
flower of all the warriors of the West, and that sort of thing, which is
nonsense, and never after the first time takes in the veriest Johnny Raw
of a young ensign. Well, but your old woman was very right, my dear. If
I were to tell you about all the fellows that started in life with
me--such a lot of them, Joyce; as cheery a set--not so clever, perhaps,
as the new men nowadays, but up to anything--it’s very like that old
humbug’s bridge, which, between you and me, never existed, you know--you
may be quite sure of that.’

Joyce held her breath when she heard the beloved Addison called an old
humbug, but reflected that the Colonel did not mean it, and made no
remark.

‘It is very like that,’ he continued musingly. ‘One doesn’t even notice
at the time--but when you look back. There was Jack Hunter went almost
as soon as we landed: such a nice fellow--I seem to hear his laugh now,
though I haven’t so much as thought upon him for forty years,--dropped,
you know, without ever hearing a shot fired, with the laugh in his
mouth, so to speak. And Jim Jenkinson, the first time we were under
fire, in a bit of a skirmish for no use. His brother, though--by George!
he hasn’t dropped at all; for here he comes, as tough an old parson as
ever lived, Joyce. Excuse the exclamation, my dear. It slips out, though
I hate swearing as much as you can do. We’ll have to stop and speak to
Canon Jenkinson. I think, on the whole, rather than grow into such a
pursy parson, I’d rather have dropped like poor Jim.’

Colonel Hayward directed his daughter’s attention to a large clergyman,
who was walking along on the other side of the road. The Colonel had the
contempt of all slim men for all fat ones; and Joyce, too, being
imaginative and young, looked with sympathetic disapproval at the
rotundity which was approaching. Canon Jenkinson was more than a fat
man--he was a fat clergyman. His black waistcoat was tightly, but with
many wrinkles, strained across a protuberance which is often anything
but amusing to the unfortunate individual who has to carry it, but which
invariably arouses the smiles of unfeeling spectators; the long lapels
of his black coat swung on either side as he moved quickly with a step
very light for such a weight--swinging, too, a neatly rolled umbrella,
which he carried horizontally like a balance to keep his arm extended to
its full length. When he saw Colonel Hayward he crossed the road towards
him, with a larger swing still of his great person altogether. ‘Halloa,
Hayward!’ he said, in a big, rolling, bass voice.

‘Well, Canon; I am glad to see you have come back.’

‘And what is this you have been about in my absence, my good
fellow,--increasing and multiplying at a time of life when I should have
thought you beyond all such vanities? Is this the young lady? As a very
old friend of your father’s, Miss Hayward, and as he doesn’t say a word
to help us, I must introduce myself.’

He held out a large hand in which Joyce’s timid one was for a moment
buried, and then he said, ‘You’ve hidden her away a long time, Hayward,
and kept her dark; but I’ve always remarked of you that when you did
produce a thing at the last, it was worth the trouble. My wife told me
you had sprung a family upon us. No story was ever diminished by being
retold.’

‘No, no, my daughter only--Joyce, who has been brought up by--her
mother’s relations--in Scotland.’ The Colonel had learned his lesson,
but he said it with a little hesitation and faltering.

‘Oh!’ said the clergyman, and then he added in an undertone, ‘Your first
poor wife, I suppose?’

The Colonel replied only by a nod, while Joyce stood embarrassed and
half indignant. She was deeply vexed by the interrogatory of which she
was the subject, and still more by her father’s look and tone. For the
poor Colonel was the last person in the world to be trusted with the
utterance of a fiction, and his looks contradicted the words which he
managed to say.

‘Ah!’ said Canon Jenkinson: and then he turned suddenly upon Joyce. ‘Are
you a good Churchwoman, or are you a little Presbyterian?’ he said. ‘I
must have that out with you before we are much older. And I hear you are
going to range yourself on the side of Sitwell, and help him to defy me.
His school feast, _par exemple_, when I am having the whole parish three
or four days after! You know a good deal of the insubordination of
subalterns, Hayward, but you don’t know what the incumbent of a district
can do when he tries. He is not your curate, so you can’t squash him.
Miss Hayward, I take it amiss of you that you should have gone over to
Sitwell’s side.’

‘I don’t know even the gentleman’s name,’ said Joyce. ‘There was
somebody spoke of his schools--and I am very fond of schools.’

‘His schools! You shall come and see the parish schools, and tell me
what you think of them. Don’t take a wretched little district as an
example. I’ll tell you what, Hayward,--she shall come with me at once
and see what we can do. I don’t go touting round for unpaid curates, as
Sitwell does. But I do think a nice woman’s the best of school
inspectors--in an unofficial way, _bien entendu_. I don’t mean to
propose you to the Government, Miss Hayward, to get an appointment, when
there are so much too few for the men.’

He spoke with a swing, too, of such fluent talk, rolling out in the
deep, round, agreeable bass which was so well known in the
neighbourhood, that the two helpless persons thus caught were almost
carried away by the stream.

‘I don’t think she can go now, Jenkinson. Elizabeth will be wondering
already what has become of us.’

‘Is that so?’ said the Canon, with a laugh. ‘We all know there’s no
going against the commanding officer. Another time, then--another time.
But, Miss Hayward, you must give me your promise not to let yourself be
prejudiced; and, above all, don’t go over to Sitwell’s side.’

He pressed her hand in his, gave her a beaming smile, waved his hand to
the Colonel, and swung along upon his way, exchanging greetings with
everybody he encountered.

‘My dear,’ said Colonel Hayward, ‘there is no telling what that man
might have plunged you into if I had not been here to defend you. Let us
go home lest something worse befall us. I think I see the Sitwells
coming up Grove Road. If you should fall into their hands, I know not
what would happen. Walk quickly, and perhaps they will not see us.
Elizabeth will say I am not fit to be trusted with you if I let you be
torn to pieces by the clergy. The Canon, you see, Joyce, was the means
of having this new district church set up. And Sitwell has not behaved
prudently--not at all prudently. He has played his cards badly. He has
taken up the opposition party--those that were always against the Canon,
whatever he might do. They are good people, and mean well, but---- Oh,
Mrs. Sitwell! I am sure I beg your pardon. I never imagined it was you.’

There had been a quick little pattering of feet behind them, and Mrs.
Sitwell, out of breath, panting out inquiries after their health and the
health of dear Mrs. Hayward, captured the reluctant pair. She was a
small woman, as light as a feather, and full of energy. She took Joyce
by both her hands. ‘Oh, dear Miss Hayward!’ she cried, breathless, ‘I
ran after you to tell you about the school feast. I hope you don’t
forget your promise. Austin’s coming after me--he’ll be here directly,
but I ran to tell you. To-morrow afternoon in Wombwell’s field. Colonel
Hayward, you’ll bring her, won’t you? I know you like to see the poor
little children enjoying themselves.’

‘My dear lady,’ said the Colonel, ‘I am distressed to see you so out of
breath.’

‘Oh, that’s nothing. There’s no harm done,’ said Mrs. Sitwell. ‘I am
always running about. Here is Austin to back me up. He will tell you how
I have been calculating upon you, Miss Hayward. Dear, don’t pant, but
tell her. I have told every one you were coming. Oh, don’t disappoint
me--don’t, don’t!’

‘I can’t help panting,’ said the clergyman; ‘it is my usual state. I am
always running after my wife. But, Miss Hayward, it is quite true. We
want you very much, and she has quite set her heart upon it. I do hope
you will come--as I think you said.’

Mrs. Sitwell left Joyce no time to reply. ‘You must, you must, indeed,’
she said. ‘Ah, Colonel Hayward, I saw what you did. You brought down the
Great Gun upon her. Was that fair? when we had been so fortunate as to
see her first, and when she had begun to take to us. And whatever he may
say, you are in our district. Of course the parish includes everything.
I think that man would like to have all England in his parish--all the
best people. He would not mind leaving us the poor.’

‘Hush, Dora,’ said her husband. ‘I don’t wonder you should form a strong
opinion: but we must not say what is against Christian charity.’

‘Oh, charity!’ cried the clergyman’s wife; ‘I think _he_ should begin. I
am sure he told Miss Hayward that she was to have nothing to do with us.
Now, didn’t he? I can read it in your face. Austin himself, though he
pretends to be so charitable, said to me when we saw him talking, “Now
you may give up all hopes;” but I said, No; I had more opinion of your
face than that. I knew you would stick to your first friends and hold by
your word.’

‘You ought to be warned, Miss Hayward,’ said the Rev. Austin Sitwell;
‘my wife’s quite a dangerous person. She professes to know all about you
if she only sees your photograph--much more when she has the chance of
reading your face.’

‘Don’t betray me, you horrid tell-tale,’ said his wife, threatening him
with a little finger. There was a hole in the glove which covered this
small member, which Joyce could not but notice as it was held up; and
this curious colloquy held across her bewildered her so much, that she
had scarcely time to be amused by it. For one thing, there was no need
for her to reply. ‘But I do know the language of the face,’ said Mrs.
Sitwell. ‘I don’t know how I do it, it is just a gift. And I know Miss
Hayward is true. Wombwell’s field at three o’clock to-morrow afternoon.
You won’t fail me! Colonel Hayward, you’ll bring her, now won’t you? or
it will quite break my heart.’

‘Sooner than do that, my dear lady,’ said the Colonel, with his hat in
his hand----

‘Ah, you laugh--you all laugh; you don’t think what it is to a poor
little woman trying to do her best. Good-bye, then, good-bye till
to-morrow--Wombwell’s field. I shall quite calculate on seeing you. My
love to dear Mrs. Hayward. Tell her we got the cakes this morning--such
lovely cakes. I shall keep a piece for my own chicks. Good-bye,
good-bye.’

‘Thank heaven, Joyce, my dear,’ said the Colonel piously, ‘we have got
away without any pledge. If Elizabeth had only been there! but I don’t
think she is very sure herself which side she is on. The Canon is the
head of the parish, to be sure, and a sort of an old friend besides; but
these young people take a great deal of trouble. And we were all
instrumental in getting this new church built, so I think we ought to
stand by them. But, thank goodness, we neither said one thing nor
another. So we can’t be blamed, my dear, neither you nor I.’

CHAPTER XXIII

As it turned out, they all went to the school feast.

Mrs. Hayward was not quite sure, as the Colonel had said, which side she
was on. The Canon had a great influence over her, as he had over most of
the ladies in the parish; but the Canon had a way of making jokes about
India and her husband’s youth, which were apt to turn Mrs. Hayward
sharply round to the other side. When the Colonel reported to her all
that happened, and the meeting in the road, and Canon Jenkinson’s
questions, Elizabeth’s suspicions were at once aroused. ‘What did you
tell him?’ she said.

‘I said exactly what you told me, my dear. I don’t quite approve of
it--but I wouldn’t run the risk of contradicting you----’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Well, my dear,’ said Colonel Hayward, a little flushed by this rapid
questioning, ‘he said something about “your first poor wife"--which was
quite natural--for he knows that we have no----’

‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs. Hayward cried indignantly. ‘I knew he was just the man
to make references of that sort.’ And after a few minutes she added, ‘I
think we’ll go to the school feast. It will please the Sitwells, who
have a great many difficulties, and who do the very best they can for
their people; and it will show the Canon----’

‘But I assure you, my dear----’

‘You have no occasion to assure me of anything, Henry--I hope I know him
well enough. He is just the sort of man,’ Mrs. Hayward said. And on the
next afternoon she dressed very well indeed, as for one of the best of
her afternoon parties, and went to the school feast. To see her going in
at the swinging-gate, with Joyce and the Colonel following in her train,
was a very fine sight. But the group was not so conspicuous as it might
have been, from the fact that a great many people equally fine had
already gathered in Wombwell’s field, where the Sitwells, though they
were poor, had gone to the expense of having a tent put up,--an
extravagance which the people who shared their humble hospitalities did
not forget for many a long day. It was not a school feast only, but a
demonstration of the faction of St. Augustine’s as against the parish.
Mrs. Sitwell had worked for this great end with an energy worthy of the
best of causes. She had not neglected any inducements. ‘The Haywards are
coming,’ she said, ‘with their daughter, you know,--the young lady whom
no one ever heard of before. I am sure there is some mystery about that
daughter.’ This was how it was that she had been so anxious and
importunate with Joyce.

It was the very first occasion on which Joyce had found herself among a
company of ladies and gentlemen as one of themselves, and she had not at
all expected it. She had gone expecting to find children, among whom she
was always at home,--poor children who, though they would be English,
and talk with that accent which, to Joyce’s unaccustomed ears, meant
refinement almost as extraordinary as the strange acquirement of
speaking French, which continues to astonish unaccustomed travellers on
the other side of the Channel--would still be not so much unlike Scotch
children that one used to them should not find means of making friends.
She had made sure that there would be some young woman in charge of them
with whom, perhaps, she might be allowed to make acquaintance, who would
tell her how she managed, and what were her difficulties, and which was
the way approved in England. In short, Joyce had looked forward
wistfully to a momentary half-clandestine return to what had heretofore
been her life. It was disappointing to go in company with her father and
his wife, who would be on the outlook to see that she did not commit
herself. But then, on the other hand, she was unexpectedly reinforced by
the arrival of Captain Bellendean, in whom she found a curious support
and consolation. He knew--that she was Joyce the schoolmistress, not a
fine young lady. That of itself felt like a backing up--just as it had
been a backing up in the old times that the lady at Bellendean knew that
perhaps she was not altogether Joyce the schoolmistress, but Joyce the
princess, Lady Joyce, if all were known.

But when Joyce found herself in the midst of this well-dressed company,
and understood that she was, so to speak, quite accidentally plunged
into the world, a great tremor came over her. The scene was very
animated and pretty, though not exactly what it professed to be.
Wombwell’s field was a large grassy space, very green and open,
surrounded on three sides by overhanging foliage, and with a few trees
at the upper end, where the ground sloped a little. In the flat ground
at the bottom the travelling menageries which visited Richmond were in
the habit of establishing themselves from time to time, whence its name.
The round spot created by innumerable circuses showed upon the grass;
but beyond the turf was of unbroken greenness, and there stood the
little tent within which tea was dispensed to the company. The children
were at the other end of the field occupied with divers games, with a
few of the faithful of the district superintending and inspiring. But
Joyce found herself not in that division of the entertainment, where she
might have been at her ease, but in the midst of all the well-dressed
people--the people who knew each other, and exchanged greetings and
smiles and polite conversation.

‘Dear Mrs. Hayward, how kind of you to come to our little treat! Dear
Miss Hayward, how sweet of you to remember! Colonel, you are always so
kind; I am sure you have been working for me,’ cried Mrs. Sitwell,
meeting them with extended hands. She was beaming with smiles and
delight. ‘I asked a few friends to look in, and people are so kind,
everybody has come. It is quite an ovation! Dear Austin is quite
overcome. It is such an encouragement in the face of opposition to find
his friends rallying round him like this.’

‘Why are his friends rallying round him?’ said Captain Bellendean. ‘I
thought it was a school feast.’

‘And so did I,’ said Joyce, looking somewhat piteously round her, and
wistfully at the children in the distance. The Colonel and Mrs. Hayward
had both been swallowed up by the crowd. They were shaking hands with
all their acquaintances, exchanging smiles and remarks. Joyce said to
herself, with a thrill of mingled alarm and self-congratulation, What
should I have done had not the Captain been here?

Norman looked round upon the company, though with different feelings
from those of Joyce. ‘I don’t know a soul,’ he said, with a little
amusement--the consciousness, so soon acquired by a man who has been for
however short a time ‘in society’--not only that it is a very
extraordinary thing to know nobody, but also that the people among whom
he cannot find a single acquaintance cannot be of much account.

‘And neither do I,’ said Joyce, with a wistful look. Her feeling was
very different. She was a little fluttered by the sight of so many
people, and looked at them with a longing to see a face she knew, a
face which would smile upon her. She met many looks, and could even see
that there were little scraps of conversation about her, and that she
was pointed out to one and another; but there was no greeting or
recognition for her among the pleasant crowd. She turned round again,
very grateful, to the Captain, whose society sustained her--but, alas!
the Captain had been spied and seized upon by Lady St. Clair, and Joyce
felt herself left alone. She looked wistfully at the collection of
daughters who surrounded Lady St. Clair, ready to claim acquaintance
with a smile if the Miss St. Clair who had called should be among the
array. But either the Miss St. Clair who had called was not there, or
else she had forgotten Joyce. She stood for a moment shy yet desolate,
not knowing where to turn; then, with a little sense of taking flight,
moved quickly away to where the children were.

‘Miss Hayward, Miss Hayward!’ cried a voice behind. She paused, glad
that some one cared enough to stop her, and saw Mr. Sitwell hastening
after her, with a young man following closely,--a very young man in the
long coat and close waistcoat which were quite unusual things to Joyce.
‘You are so kind as _really_ to wish to help with the children? Let me
introduce my young friend and curate, Mr. Bright; he will take you to
them,’ the clergyman said.

The other little clergyman made his bow, and said how fortunate they
were in having such a fine day, and what a pretty party it was. ‘I
always think this is such a nice place for outdoor parties: not so nice
as one’s own lawn, of course--but if one has no lawn, what can one do?
In most places there is no alternative but a vulgar field. Now this is
quite pretty--don’t you think it is quite pretty, Miss Hayward?’

‘There is so much green, and such fine trees, that everything here is
pretty,’ said Joyce.

‘You put it much more nicely than I did; but I’m so glad you like the
place; and how very gratifying for the Sitwells! It really was time that
there should be a demonstration. After beguiling Sitwell here with such
large promises, to have the rectory set itself against him! But there is
a generosity about society, don’t you think, Miss Hayward, as soon as
people really see the state of affairs. It will be a dreadful slap in
the face for Jenkinson, don’t you think?’

‘Indeed----’ Joyce had begun, meaning to say she was too ignorant to
form an opinion, but her new companion did not wait for the expression
of her sentiments.

‘Yes, indeed--you are quite right; and for Mrs. Jenkinson, who, between
ourselves, is a great deal worse than the Canon. Every one who comes to
St. Augustine’s she seems to think is taking away something from her.
That is the greatest testimonial we can give to the ladies,’ said the
little gentleman, with a laugh; ‘when they are disagreeable, they are so
very disagreeable--beyond the power of any man. But, fortunately for us,
that happens very seldom.’ The curate glanced up for the smile of
approval with which his little sallies were generally received, but
getting none, went on again undismayed. ‘Which kind of children do you
like, Miss Hayward,--the quite little ones, the roly-polies, or the big
ones? I prefer the babies myself: they roll about on the grass like
puppies, and they are quite happy--whereas you have to keep the other
ones going. Miss Marsham takes the big girls in hand. You must let me
introduce her to you. She is our great stand-by in the district--a
little peculiar, but such a good creature. Well, Miss Marsham, how are
you getting on here?’

‘Very well, oh, very well. We always do nicely. We have been playing at
Tom Tidler’s ground. We just wanted some one to take the head of the
other side. Oh, Mr. Bright,’ cried this new personage, clasping her
hands together, ‘what a pleasure for everybody; what a good thing; what
a thorough success!’

‘Isn’t it?’ cried the curate; and they both turned round to look down
upon the many-coloured groups below with beaming faces.

‘Nobody can say now that St. Augustine’s was not wanted,’ said the lady.

‘No, indeed; I have just been saying to Miss Hayward what a slap in the
face for the Canon,’ the gentleman added, again giving vent to his
feelings in a triumphant laugh.

‘Oh, is this Miss Hayward?’ said Miss Marsham, offering her hand to
Joyce. She was a thin woman, with long meagre arms, and hands thrust
into gloves too big for her. Without being badly dressed, she had the
general air of having been taken out of a wardrobe of old clothes:
everything she wore being a little old-fashioned, a little odd, badly
matched, and hanging unharmoniously together. Even those gloves, which
were too big, had the air of having had two hands thrust into them at
random, without any thought whether or not they were a pair. But the old
clothes were all of good quality; the little frills of lace were what
ladies call ‘real,’ not the cottony imitations which are current in the
present day. She had a worn face, lit up by a pair of soft brown eyes,
in which there was still a great deal of sparkle left, when their owner
pleased.

‘I have heard so much of you,’ she said. ‘Dear Mrs. Sitwell takes such
an interest! it is so very kind to come and see how the children are
getting on: and here they are all waiting for their game. Mr. Bright,
you must take the other side. Now then, children, I hope that is high
enough for you. Come on.’

Joyce stood by with great gravity while the game proceeded--Mr. Bright
and Miss Marsham making an arch with their joined hands, through which
the children streamed. The curate, no doubt, would have taken this part
of his duties quite simply if it had not been for the presence of this
spectator, whose momentary smile died off into a look of very serious
contemplation as she stood by, taking no part in the fun, which, with
the stimulus of Mr. Bright’s presence, grew fast and furious. Joyce
could not have told why she felt so serious. She stood looking on at
Miss Marsham’s old clothes on the one side--the thin wrist, with its
little edge of yellow lace, the big glove, made doubly visible by the
elevation of the hand--and Mr. Bright in his neat coat, falling to his
knee, extremely spruce in his professional blackness, against the vivid
green of the sloping field. Joyce thought him very good to do it, nor
was she conscious of any ridicule. She compared Mr. Bright with the
minister at home, who would have looked on as she herself was doing, but
certainly would not have joined in the play: and she thought that the
children were very much made of in England, and should be very happy.
Presently, however, Mr. Bright detached himself from the game, and came
and joined her.

‘I am afraid you thought me a great gaby,’ he said; ‘but at a school
feast, you know, one can’t stand on one’s dignity.’

‘Oh no,’ said Joyce, ‘it was I that was the great---- for not joining
in. I should like to do something; but I don’t know what would please
them.’

‘Something new to play at,’ said Miss Marsham. ‘I always ask strangers
if they can’t recommend something new. Look, look!’ she cried, suddenly
clutching the curate’s arm; ‘do you see? the Thompsons’ carriage, his
very greatest supporters! Dear me, dear me! who could have thought of
that!’

‘And Sir Sam himself,’ said the curate exultantly. ‘Well, this is
triumph indeed. I must go and see what they say.’

‘Sir Sam himself,’ said Miss Marsham musingly. ‘Do you know, Miss
Hayward, if you will not think it strange of me to say it, I am
beginning to get a little sorry for the Canon. It is not that Sir Sam is
such a great person. He is only a soap-boiler, or something of that
sort; but he is enormously rich, and the Canon has always been by way
of having him in his pocket. Whatever was wanted, there was always a big
subscription from Sir Sam. Yes, dear, by all means. Hunt the Slipper is
a very nice, noisy---- You will think it very queer, Miss Hayward, but I
_am_ beginning to get sorry for the Canon. I can’t help recollecting,
you know, the time before St. Augustine’s was thought of. Yes, yes, my
dear; but let me talk for a moment to the young lady.’

‘I know so little,’ said Joyce,--‘scarcely either the one or the other.’

‘And you must think us so frivolous,’ said the kind woman, with a sigh.
‘The fact is, I was very anxious it should be a success. St. Augustine’s
was very much wanted--it really was. There are such a number of those
people that live by the river, you know--boatmen, and those sort of
people--and so neglected. I tried a few things--a night-school, and so
forth; but by one’s self one can do so little. Have you much experience,
Miss Hayward, in parish work?’

‘Oh, none--none at all.’

‘Ah!’ said Miss Marsham, with a sigh, ‘that’s how one’s illusions go. I
thought you would be such a help. But never mind, my dear, you’re very
young. Oh, you’ve begun, children, without me! All right, all right; I
am not disappointed at all. I want to talk to this young lady. They
think we care for it just as much as they do,’ she went on turning to
Joyce; ‘but if truth be told, I am a little stiff for Hunt the Slipper.
And you can’t think how good the Sitwells are. He is in the parish--I
ought to say the district--morning, noon, and night. And she--well, if I
did not know she had three children, and did everything for them
herself, and really only one servant, for the other is quite a girl, and
always taken up with the baby--besides her work about the photographs,
you know--I should say she was in the parish too, morning, noon, and
night.’

Joyce stood and looked down upon the people flitting in and out of the
tent, arranging and rearranging themselves in different groups, and on
the rush of the hosts to the swinging-gate, at which a fat man and a
large lady were getting down, and listened to the narrative going on in
her ear with the accompaniment of the cries and laughter of the
children, all in that tone which, to her northern ears, was high-pitched
and a little shrill. How strange it all was! She might have fallen into
a new world. It was curious to listen to this new opening of human life;
but she was young, and not enough of a spectator to be able to
disengage herself, and be amused with a free mind by the humours of a
scene with which she had nothing to do. She looked still a little
wistfully at the little crowd, where there was nobody who knew anything
of herself, or thought her worth the trouble of making acquaintance
with. Joyce had not heard any fine conversation as yet, nor had she
encountered any of the wit or wisdom which she had expected; but still
she could not free herself from the idea that to be among the ladies and
the gentlemen would be more entertaining than here, with Miss Marsham
giving her a sketch of the history of the Sitwells and the church
controversies of the place, and the school children quite beyond her
reach playing Hunt the Slipper in the background. She was much too young
to take any comfort in the thought that such is life, and that the gay
whirl of society very often resolves itself into standing in a corner
and hearing somebody else’s private history, not always so innocent or
from so benevolent a historian.

But presently, and all in a moment, the aspect of affairs changed for
Joyce. It changed in a completely unreasonable, and, indeed, altogether
inadequate way,--not by an introduction among the best people, the crowd
whose appearance filled the clergyman and his wife, and all their
retainers, with transports a trifle short of celestial; not in making
acquaintance with Sir Sam Thompson, the soap-boiler, whose appearance
was the climax of the triumph--a climax so complete that it turned the
scale, and made the Sitwells’ hard-hearted partisan sorry for the Canon.
None of these great things befell Joyce. All that happened was the
appearance of a tall individual, separating himself from the crowd, and
walking towards her from the lower level.

‘Here is a gentleman coming this way,’ said Miss Marsham. ‘I don’t think
he is one of the school committee, or any one I know. But I am rather
short-sighted, and I may be mistaking him for some one else, as I do so
often. Dear Miss Hayward, I am sure you must have good eyes: will you
look and tell me. Ah, I see you know him.’

‘It is Captain Bellendean,’ said Joyce. Her musing face had grown
bright.

‘Who is Captain Bellendean? Does he take an interest in Sunday schools?
Is he----’ Here Miss Marsham turned to look at her companion, and
though she was short-sighted, she was not without certain insights which
women seldom altogether lose. ‘Oh!’ she said, and, with a subdued smile
and a sparkle out of her brown eyes, which for a moment made her
middle-aged face both young and bright, returned to the children who
were playing Hunt the Slipper, and though she had said she was too
stiff for that game, was down among them in a moment as lively as any
there.

It is to be doubted whether Joyce was conscious that her friend of ten
minutes’ standing had left her, or how she left her. She stood looking
down upon the same scene, her face still full of musing, but touched
with light which changed and softened every line. ‘I have been looking
for you everywhere,’ said Captain Bellendean; ‘when I got free of that
rabble you were nowhere to be seen. I might have thought you would turn
to the children, who have some nature about them. And so I had the sense
to do at last.’

‘Do you call them rabble?’ said Joyce.

‘Not if it displeases you,’ he said. ‘But what are they after all?
Society is always more or less a rabble, and here you get it naked,
without the brilliancy and the glow which takes one in town.’

Perhaps Captain Bellendean had not found himself so much appreciated as
he thought himself entitled to be in town, and thus produced these
sentiments, which are so common, with a little air of conviction, as if
they had never been heard before. And indeed, save in books, where she
had often met them, Joyce had never heard them before.

‘And yet,’ said Joyce, ‘when educated people meet--people that have read
and have seen the world--it must be more interesting to hear them talk
than--than any other pleasure.’

‘May we sit down here? the grass is quite dry. Educated people? I am
sure I don’t know, for I seldom meet them, and I’m very uninstructed
myself. But I’ll tell you what, Miss Joyce, you are the only educated
person I know. Talk to me, and I will listen, and I have no doubt it
will be far more entertaining to me than any other diversion; but
whether it may have the same effect on you----’ he said, looking up to
her from the grass upon which he had thrown himself, with inquiring
eyes.

Oh, Andrew Halliday! whose boast was education, who would have tackled
her upon the most abstruse subjects, or talked Shakespeare and the
musical glasses as long as she pleased,--how was it that the soldier’s
brag of his ignorance seemed to Joyce far more delightful than any such
music of the spheres?

CHAPTER XXIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh no,’ said Joyce.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Dora, you know I hate bazaars.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVI

Joyce, being so untrained, had, however, but a poor account to give of
her intercession. The Colonel could do nothing without Elizabeth, and
his promise to consult his wife and see what steps could be taken did
not convey much comfort to the parson’s wife. She listened to Joyce’s
account of the manner in which she had fulfilled her commission with a
lengthening face. At the end she jumped up and gave the girl a kiss
which took Joyce very much by surprise. To this inexperienced Scotch
peasant-girl the ways of the English were extravagant and full of
demonstration, as are to English persons the manners of ‘foreigners’ in
general, both being disposed to believe that to show so much was rather
an indication that there was little feeling to show.

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

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

‘Now tell me,’ she said, ‘what would you think was the character of that
gentleman, supposing that you were going to marry him, or to make him