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.