CHAPTER XX
THE discussions held upon this question in the Colonel’s room were many. Mrs. Hayward had kept herself for many years out of society, rejecting it all the more sternly because she loved it and held all its little punctilios dear. And now that all necessity for such self-denial was over, to have everything risked again was terrible to her. She who had so carefully kept her husband from annoyance, in this matter departed from all her traditions. The good Colonel himself was fond of society too. He liked to know people, to gather kindly faces about him, and to be surrounded by a cheerful stir of human interests; but to tell the truth, he did not care very much about Lady St. Clair and the best people in the neighbourhood. It was seldom—very seldom—that it occurred to him to criticise his Elizabeth; but on this point he thought her a little mistaken, and not so infallible as she usually was.
‘Have patience a little, my dear,’ he said, falling upon a simple philosophy, which, indeed, he was not at all disposed himself to put in practice, ‘and you’ll see all will come right.’
‘Nothing will come right,’ said Mrs. Hayward, ‘unless we can get your daughter properly introduced. It alters everything in our position, Henry. We were settling down to society such as suits you and me; but that will not do now. The moment there is a young lady in the house all 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!