CHAPTER XIII
THERE was no one who could detain her, for the agitated group in Mrs. Bellendean’s room were too much taken by surprise, in this curious development of affairs, to do anything but gaze astonished at Joyce’s unlooked-for passion. She went out of the room and out of the house, with old Janet, in her big shawl, following humbly, like a tall ship carrying out a humble little lugger in her train. Joyce seemed to have added to her stature in the intensity of her excitement. The nervous swiftness with which she moved, the air of passion in all her sails, to continue the metaphor, the unity of impassioned movement with which she swept forth—not looking back nor suffering any distracting influence to touch her—made the utmost impression upon the spectators who had been, to their own thinking, themselves chief actors in the scene, until this young creature’s surpassing emotion put them all into the position of audience while she herself filled the stage. Joyce would not see her father’s face, though it appealed to her with a keen touch of unaccustomed feeling which was like a stab—nor would she suffer herself to look at Mrs. Bellendean, whose faintest indication of a wish had hitherto been almost law to the enthusiast. The girl was possessed by a tempest of personal excitement which carried her far beyond all the habitual restraints and inducements of her life. Nothing weighed with her, nothing moved her, but that overwhelming tide which carried her forth, wounded, humiliated, indignant, angry, she could not tell why, in the desperation of this most bitter and entirely unreasonable disappointment which swept her soul. To think that it had come, the long-looked-for discovery—the revelation so often dreamt of—and that it should be this! Only a visionary, entirely abandoned to the devices of fancy by the bareness of all the facts that surrounded actual life in her experience, could have entertained such a vague grandeur of expectation, or could have fallen into such an abyss of disenchantment. It thrilled through and through her, giving a pride and loftiness indescribable to the carriage of her head, to the attitude of her person, to the swift and nervous splendour of her movements. Joyce, stung to the heart with her disappointment—with the bourdonnement in her ears and the jar in her nerves of a great downfall—was like a creature inspired. She swept out of the house, and crossed the open space of the drive, and disappeared in the shadows of the avenue, without a word, with scarcely a breath—carried along by that wind of passion, unconscious what she did.
Old Janet Matheson followed her child with feelings of almost equal intensity, but of a contradictoriness and mingled character which defies description. Her despair in the anticipation of losing Joyce was mingled with elation in the thought that Joyce was proved a lady beyond all possibility of doubt, fit to be received as an equal in the grand society at the House—which, however, in no way modified her profound and passionate sense of loss and anger against the fate which she declared to herself bitterly she had always foreseen. That she should not have felt a momentary joy in her child’s apparent rejection of the new life opening before her was impossible; but that too was mingled still more seriously by regret and alarm lest the girl should do anything to forfeit these advantages, and also by the dictates of honest judgment which showed her that resistance was impossible, and that it was foolish, and Joyce’s revolt a mere blaze of temporary impulse which could not, and must not, stand against the necessities of life. All these mixed and contradictory sentiments were in Janet’s mind as she hurried along, trying vainly to keep up with the swift, impassioned figure in front of her; trying, too, to reason with the unreasonable, and bring Joyce—strange travesty of all the usual circumstances of her life—to bring Joyce, the quick-witted, the all-understanding, to see what was right and wrong, what was practicable and impracticable. Her efforts in this respect were confined at present to a breathless interjection now and then— ‘Oh, Joyce!’ ‘Oh, my dear!’ ‘Oh, my bonnie woman!’ in various tones of remonstrance and deprecation. But Joyce’s impulse of swift passion lasted long and carried her far, straight down the long avenue, and out into the village road beyond; and her mind was so preoccupied that she did not take into consideration the fatigue and trouble of her companion, as, under any other circumstances, Joyce would have been sure to do. It was only when the sight of the village houses, and the contact once more with other human creatures, and the necessary reticences of life suddenly checked Joyce in her career, that she slackened her pace, and, turning round to keep her face from the keen investigation of some neighbours grouped around a door, suddenly perceived a little behind her the flushed cheeks and labouring breath of Janet, who would not be separated from her side, and yet had found the effort of keeping up with her so difficult. Joyce turned back to her faithful old friend with a cry of self-reproach.
‘Oh, granny! and I’ve tired you struggling after me, and had not the sense to mind.’
‘Oh ay, you have the sense to mind. You have sense for most things in this world—- but no’ the day, Joyce, no’ the day; you havena shown your sense the day.’
‘Granny,’ said Joyce, with trembling lips, ‘there has been nothing in my life till now that you have not had all authority in: but you must say nothing about this. I must be the judge in this. It is my business, and only mine.’
‘There is nothing,’ said Janet, ‘that can be your business and no’ mine: until the time comes when you yoursel’ are none of my business—when you’re in your father’s hands.’
‘Oh no, no,’ said Joyce under her breath, clasping her hands,—‘oh no, no, no!’
‘What are you murmurin’ and saying ower as if it was a charm? No, you havena shown your sense. You think the like of that can be at your pleesure to tak’ it or to leave it? Na, na, my bonnie woman. I’m the one that will have the most to bear. Ye needna answer me, though I can see the words in your mouth. I’m the one, whatever happens, that will have the maist to put up with. But I say it’s no’ at your pleesure. What’s richt is richt, and what’s nature is nature, whatever ye may say. I tell ye, Joyce Matheson—but you’re no Joyce Matheson: eh! to think me, that never used it, that I should gie ye that name noo! Ye’re Joyce Matheson nae mair.
‘Granny, granny, don’t throw me off—don’t cast me away, for I’ve nobody but you,’ cried Joyce, with a voice full of tears.
‘Me cast ye off! but it’s true ye’ve nae richt to the name, and Peter and me, we’ve nae richt to you; and the moment’s come which I’ve aye foreseen: oh, I have foreseen it! I never deceivit mysel’ like him, or made up dreams and visions like you. And it’s no’ at your command to tak’ it or to leave it—na, na. I’m no’ one that can deceive mysel’,’ said Janet, mournfully shaking her head, and in the depth of her trouble finding a little sad satisfaction in her own clear-sightedness. ‘The rest o’ ye may think that heaven and earth will yield to ye, and that what ye want is the thing ye will get if ye stand to it; but no’ me—oh, no’ me! It’s little comfort to the flesh to see sae clear, but I canna help it, for it’s my nature. Na, na. We canna just go back to what we were before, as if nothing had happened. It’s no’ permitted. Ye may do a heap o’ things in this world, but ye canna go back. Na, na. Yesterday’s no dead, nor ye canna kill it, whatever ye may do. It’s mair certain than the day or the morn, and it binds ye whether ye like it or no,—oh, it binds ye, it binds ye! We canna go back.
These little sentences came from her at intervals with breaks and pauses between, as they went along towards the cottage, sometimes interrupted by an exclamation from Joyce, sometimes by the greeting of a neighbour, sometimes by Janet’s own breathlessness as she laboured along in the warm evening under the weight of her big shawl. Such monologues were not unusual to her, and Joyce had accompanied them by a commentary of half-regarded questions and exclamations, in all the mutual calm of family understanding on many a previous occasion. The girl had not lent a very steady ear to the grandmother’s wisdom, nor had the grandmother paused to answer the girl’s questions or remonstrances. Half heard, half noted, they had gone on serenely, the notes of age and experience mingling with the dreams and impulses of youth. But that soft concert and harmony in which the two voices had differed without any jar, supplementing and completing each other, was not like this. The old woman was flushed and tearful, and Joyce was pale, with excited eyes that looked twice as large as usual, and a trembling in the lips which were so apt to move with impatient intelligence, answering before the question was made. It was apparent even to the neighbours that something must have happened, and still more apparent to Peter, who stood at the open door of the cottage looking out for them with a look which varied from the broad smile of pleasure with which he had perceived their two familiar figures approaching, to a troubled perception of something amiss which he could not fathom. Peter’s mind was slow in operating; and as all previous information had been kept from him, he was without any clue to the origin of the trouble which he began to feel about him. To return and find the cottage closed, and neither wife nor child waiting for him, was in itself a prodigy; and though his astonishment had been partly calmed by the explanation of the neighbours who gave him the key of the door, and informed him that Joyce and her granny had been sent for to ‘the Hoose,’ it was roused into a kind of dull anxiety by the agitated air which he slowly recognised as he watched them approaching, convinced, against his will, that something ailed them,—that some new event had happened. Nevertheless, Peter, in the voiceless delicacy of his peasant soul, assumed the smile, trembling on the edge of a laugh, which was his usual aspect when addressing his womenfolk.
‘Weel,’ he said, ‘ye’re bonnie hoosekeepers for a man to come hame to, wanting his tea! ‘Deed, I might just whistle for my tea, and the twa of you stravaigin’ naebody kens where. Joyce, my bonny lass, ye should just think shame of yoursel’, leading your auld granny into ill ways.’ He ended with a long, low laugh, which was his expression of content and emotion and pleasure, and which turned the reproach into the tenderest family jest—and made way for them, but not till he had said out his say. ‘Come awa,’ noo ye’re here; come awa’ ben, and mask the tea: for I’m wanting something to sloken me,’ he said.
‘Oh, my poor man—oh, my poor auld man!’ said Janet. She had not ceased to shake her head at intervals while he was speaking, and she uttered a suppressed groan as she went into the cottage. So long as all was uncertain, Janet had carefully kept every intimation of possible calamity from Peter; but now that the truth must be known, she had a kind of tragic pleasure in exciting his alarm.
‘What ails the woman?’ he said, ‘girnin’ and groanin’ as if we were a’ under sentence. What ails your granny, Joyce?’
‘And so we are,’ said Janet, ‘a’ under sentence, as ye say, and our days numbered, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. But, eh, that’s no’ what we do—far, far from it. And when misfortin’ comes, that comes to a’, it’s rare, rare that it doesn’t come unexpected. We’re eatin’ and drinkin’ and makin’ merry—or else we’re fechtin’, beatin’ our fellow-servants, and a’ in a word that the Lord delayeth his comin’. And in a moment,’ said the old woman, with a sob, ‘our house is left unto us desolate. That’s just the common way.’
‘What is she meaning with the house left desolate?’ said Peter, the smile slowly disappearing from his face. ‘The woman’s daft! Joyce what is she meanin’? I’m no’ very gleg at the uptake,—no’ like you, my bonnie woman, that are just as keen as a needle. What’s she meanin’? Janet, woman, as lang as the lassie is weel and spared——’
‘The lassie, says he—naething but the lassie. And have I no’ foreseen it a’ the time? How often have I cried out to ye, Peter, to keep a loose grip! oh, to haud a loose grip! But ye never would listen to me. And now it’s just come to pass, and neither you nor me prepared.’
Peter’s face, gazing at her while she went on, was like a landscape in the uncertain shining of a Scotch summer. It lightened all over with a smile of good-humoured derision which brought out the shaggy eyebrows, the grizzled whiskers, the cavernous hollows round the eyes, like the inequalities of the mountainous land. And then the light fled instantaneously, and a pale blank of shadow succeeded, leaving all that surface grey, while finer lines of anxiety and chill alarm developed about the large mouth and in the puckers of those many-folded eyelids, like movements of the wind among the herbage and trees. He stood and gazed at her with his eyes widely open, his lips apart. But Janet did not meet that look. She went to the fire, which burned dully, ‘gathered,’ as she had left it in her careful way, to smoulder frugally in her absence, and poked it with violence, with sharp thrusts of the poker, standing with the back of her great shawl turned towards her companions, and her big bonnet still on her head. There was nothing said till with those sudden strokes and blows she had roused the dormant fire to flame, when she put on the kettle, and swept the hearth with vigorous, nervous movements, though always encumbered by the weight of the shawl. Then Janet made a sudden turn upon herself, and setting open the doors of the aumry, which made a sort of screen between her and the others, proceeded to take off and fold away that shawl of state. ‘I’ll maybe never put it on again,’ she said to herself, almost under her breath, ‘for whatfor should I deck mysel’ and fash my heid about my claes or what I put on? It was a’ to be respectable for her: wha’s heeding when there’s nane but me?’
‘There’s something happened,’ said Peter, in his low tremulous bass, like the rolling of distant thunder. ‘Am I the maister of this hoose, and left to find oot by her parables and her metaphors, and no’ a word of sense that a man can understand? What is’t, woman? Speak plain out, or as sure’s death I’ll——’ He clenched his large fist with a sudden silent rage, which could find no other expression than this seeming threat—though Peter would have died sooner than touch with a finger to harm her the old companion of his life.
‘Grandfather,’ said Joyce, ‘I will tell you what has happened. Granny takes a thing into her head, and then you know, whatever we say, you or me, she never heeds, but follows her own fancy.’ The girl spoke quickly, her words hurrying, her breath panting,—then came to a sudden pause, flushed crimson, her paleness changing to the red of passionate feeling, and added, as slowly as she had been hurried before, ‘Somebody has been here—that knows who my mother was: somebody that says—that says he is my father. And she thinks I am to rise up and follow him,’ cried Joyce, in another burst of sudden, swift, vehement words,—‘to rise up and follow him, like the woman in the Old Testament, away from my home and my own people, and all that I care for in the world! But I’ll not do it—I’ll not do it. I’ll call no strange man my father. I’ll bide in my own place where I’ve been all my days. What are their letters, and their old stories, and their secrets that they’ve found out, and their injuries that they’re sorry for—sorry for after costing a woman’s life! What’s all that to me? I’ll bide in my own place with them that have nourished me and cherished me, and made me happy all my days.’
‘Eh, lassie! eh, lassie!’ was all Peter could say. His large old limbs had got a trembling in them. He sat down in the big wooden arm-chair which stood against the wall, where it had been put away after dinner, and from that unaccustomed place, as if he too had been put away out of the common strain of life, gazed at the two alternately,—at his wife still folding, folding that shawl that would not lie straight, and at Joyce, in her flush of impassioned determination, standing up drawn to her full height, her head thrown back, her slim young figure inspired by the rush and torrent of emotion which she herself scarcely understood in its vehemence and force. The little quiet, humble cottage was in a moment filled as with rushing wings and flashing weapons, the dust and jar of spiritual conflict: but not one of the three visible actors in this little tragic drama had for the moment a word to say. When this silence of fate was broken, it was by Janet, who had at last shut up her shawl in the aumry, and, coming and going from the fire to the table, filling the intense blank of that pause with a curious interlude of hasty sound and movement, said at last, almost fiercely, ‘Come to your tea. You’ll do little good standing glowering at ane anither. Sit down and tak’ your tea.’